Daughter of Destiny

Travel Guide

Barbados

A sunny, hot sticky place where the Strong family plantation house is. This is the place where white people own the land and the houses and the black slaves have to do what they are told. The opening chapter shows just what they have to do and the consequences of not obeying and more importantly, obeying.

Black women are expected to entertain white men. The Riverhead plantation is like many others in the region where sugar is money and the future and anything else doesn’t seem to matter. Bridgetown is the major city where Viola and the women go shopping but this is described as having a stench to it. The stench is made up of the smell of animals, overripe fruit and fish sizzling in ramshackle brazziers ( the later actually sounds quite nice but still)

It’s a hard place to live for a woman and when Blanche is set to England, things take a very difficult turn.

England

Sent to  Bristol and the Marstone Court home of the Strong family, this is the location where the sugar owners and  businessmen ply their trade. The waterways and harbour are doing  roaring trade here. The women go and feed the children who try and make a living on the dirty docks. There are several inns along the waterway such as the Hole and the Wall, Shakespeare and Radcliffe Wharf.

The Merchant Seaman Apprenticeship shop which features in the novel is also located here.

The author says: The tall ships are long gone from the city centre except during the Festival of the Sea which occurs in the summer when sailing ships from all over the world sail into what’s left of the old port. Brunel’s SS Great Britain is also docked in one facet that remains of the older part of the port. I based Marstone Court, the Strong’s mansion on Ashton Court which was once the home of the Smythe family who did indeed own sugar plantations in the West Indies. It is, like the Strong mansion, within sight of the Avon Gorge, though in their day Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge had not been built.