{"title":"Radical Conduct: Politics, Sociability and Equality in London 1789–1815 by Mark Philp (review)","authors":"Miriam L. Wallace","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.172","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"172 - 174"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69299136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:An important aspect of The Woman of Colour (1808) is its treatment of the linked concepts of selfishness, self-interest, and sympathy. Although its author does not mention Adam Smith, his discussion of these ideas in Theory of Moral Sentiments offers insights into both the novel's plot and characters and its engagement with the ideals and practices of commerce, empire, and slavery. The protagonist, Olivia Fairfield, experiences numerous disappointments and betrayals during her stay in England, yet when she is about to return to her Jamaican home, she describes England as a "favoured isle" because it has produced some ideal men. In order for England and Jamaica to become "favoured isles," it is essential that white residents of both locales abjure the selfishness that pervades imperialist and capitalist accumulation and treat everyone, including enslaved people, with sympathy. Doing so allows the novel's several heroes to see themselves and be seen by others as benevolent, yet allows them to continue to reap the benefits of empire.
{"title":"Favoured Isles: Selfishness and Sacrifice in the Capital of Capital","authors":"Natalie A. Zacek","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.113","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:An important aspect of The Woman of Colour (1808) is its treatment of the linked concepts of selfishness, self-interest, and sympathy. Although its author does not mention Adam Smith, his discussion of these ideas in Theory of Moral Sentiments offers insights into both the novel's plot and characters and its engagement with the ideals and practices of commerce, empire, and slavery. The protagonist, Olivia Fairfield, experiences numerous disappointments and betrayals during her stay in England, yet when she is about to return to her Jamaican home, she describes England as a \"favoured isle\" because it has produced some ideal men. In order for England and Jamaica to become \"favoured isles,\" it is essential that white residents of both locales abjure the selfishness that pervades imperialist and capitalist accumulation and treat everyone, including enslaved people, with sympathy. Doing so allows the novel's several heroes to see themselves and be seen by others as benevolent, yet allows them to continue to reap the benefits of empire.","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"113 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43394548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The Woman of Colour (1808) refuses to provide its biracial heroine with "the usual meed of virtue—a husband!" This article argues that the novel's dismissal of the marriage plot results from its scathing critique of white men of feeling. Olivia's rejection of marriage acts as a Romantic-era version of Black women's "culture of dissemblance": a deliberate cultivation of privacy and disavowal of reproductive sexuality that is designed to evade the threat of sexual violation in a hostile society. Rather than abolitionist allies, sentimental men are shown to be self-serving and hypocritical: deploying benevolence, moral duty, and emotion to abuse and coerce. Sentimental paternalism entails white women's conjugal misery, as the transatlantic marriage market secures British colonial networks at the expense of women's happiness. Olivia's white father facilitates his daughter's exploitation at the hands of emotionally incontinent, self-absorbed, and sexually threatening white men of feeling whose behaviour discredits the authority of imperial masculinity and forces readers to evaluate the moral and political inadequacies of white abolitionism.
{"title":"Sentiment and Sexual Servitude: White Men of Feeling and The Woman of Colour","authors":"R. Barr","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.81","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Woman of Colour (1808) refuses to provide its biracial heroine with \"the usual meed of virtue—a husband!\" This article argues that the novel's dismissal of the marriage plot results from its scathing critique of white men of feeling. Olivia's rejection of marriage acts as a Romantic-era version of Black women's \"culture of dissemblance\": a deliberate cultivation of privacy and disavowal of reproductive sexuality that is designed to evade the threat of sexual violation in a hostile society. Rather than abolitionist allies, sentimental men are shown to be self-serving and hypocritical: deploying benevolence, moral duty, and emotion to abuse and coerce. Sentimental paternalism entails white women's conjugal misery, as the transatlantic marriage market secures British colonial networks at the expense of women's happiness. Olivia's white father facilitates his daughter's exploitation at the hands of emotionally incontinent, self-absorbed, and sexually threatening white men of feeling whose behaviour discredits the authority of imperial masculinity and forces readers to evaluate the moral and political inadequacies of white abolitionism.","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"102 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42770836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Throughout The Woman of Colour (1808), Olivia Fairfield, the Black mixed-race heroine, ridicules the "fair sex" bodies of white female characters who irrationally judge the heroine as inferior because of the colour of her skin. In this article, I extend Lyndon J. Dominique's reading of Olivia's subversive gaze and laughter found in Imoinda's Shade (2012). In building on Dominique's insights, I show how Olivia paradoxically uses caricatural tropes of fat versus thin and young versus old to envision caricature on her own terms: to challenge and resist anti-Black stereotypes. When the novel is examined within the context of contemporary visual caricatures that depict the Black female body as grotesque, one recognizes that Olivia's defensive use of verbal caricature is a rhetorically strategic attempt to challenge England's racial hierarchy, by reaffirming her own femininity and "fairness."
{"title":"\"Mind Is Revealed in the Countenance\": Subversive Laughter and Caricature in The Woman of Colour","authors":"L. George","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.43","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.43","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Throughout The Woman of Colour (1808), Olivia Fairfield, the Black mixed-race heroine, ridicules the \"fair sex\" bodies of white female characters who irrationally judge the heroine as inferior because of the colour of her skin. In this article, I extend Lyndon J. Dominique's reading of Olivia's subversive gaze and laughter found in Imoinda's Shade (2012). In building on Dominique's insights, I show how Olivia paradoxically uses caricatural tropes of fat versus thin and young versus old to envision caricature on her own terms: to challenge and resist anti-Black stereotypes. When the novel is examined within the context of contemporary visual caricatures that depict the Black female body as grotesque, one recognizes that Olivia's defensive use of verbal caricature is a rhetorically strategic attempt to challenge England's racial hierarchy, by reaffirming her own femininity and \"fairness.\"","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"43 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49559973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson's Novels by Simone Eva Höhn (review)","authors":"Karen Lipsedge","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.184","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"184 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41740095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The Woman of Colour (1808), an anonymous epistolary novel, remained out of print until the 2008 release of Lyndon J. Dominique's Broadview edition. It has since become central to studies in the long eighteenth century because of its subversion of the marriage plot and the intertwining of this plot with Black liberation struggles through the voice of the mixed-race Jamaican protagonist Olivia Fairfield. In this introduction to an ECF special issue dedicated to the novel, the authors trace developments in Black British history, Black womanist historiography, and global Romanticism in order to situate The Woman of Colour within a radical Black Atlantic tradition. They argue that the novel foregrounds the resistance of Black and enslaved people, and that the refractive force of the plot breaks away from the teleology of colonial conquest and opens up multiple interpretive possibilities.
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"Nicole N. Aljoe, Kerry. Sinanan, M. Wassif","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Woman of Colour (1808), an anonymous epistolary novel, remained out of print until the 2008 release of Lyndon J. Dominique's Broadview edition. It has since become central to studies in the long eighteenth century because of its subversion of the marriage plot and the intertwining of this plot with Black liberation struggles through the voice of the mixed-race Jamaican protagonist Olivia Fairfield. In this introduction to an ECF special issue dedicated to the novel, the authors trace developments in Black British history, Black womanist historiography, and global Romanticism in order to situate The Woman of Colour within a radical Black Atlantic tradition. They argue that the novel foregrounds the resistance of Black and enslaved people, and that the refractive force of the plot breaks away from the teleology of colonial conquest and opens up multiple interpretive possibilities.","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"1 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45134808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In The Woman of Colour (1808), Augustus Merton is taken aback when he first sees his soon-to-be wife, Olivia Fairfield, expressing his aversion to the darkness of her skin before eventually coming to admire her other qualities. The novel depicts him as a paragon of virtue and sentiment, with characters like Olivia praising his high moral worth. This article argues that Augustus exemplifies the ideals of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century aesthetic traditions, including their views on race. Augustus's aversion to the colour of Olivia's skin is not out of character nor is it depicted as a foible to be rectified. The expression of disgust toward mercantile behaviour and Blackness is at the core of the culture of taste that Augustus represents.
{"title":"August Disgust: Distinction, Disinterest, and Race in The Woman of Colour","authors":"Dan Yu","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.103","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In The Woman of Colour (1808), Augustus Merton is taken aback when he first sees his soon-to-be wife, Olivia Fairfield, expressing his aversion to the darkness of her skin before eventually coming to admire her other qualities. The novel depicts him as a paragon of virtue and sentiment, with characters like Olivia praising his high moral worth. This article argues that Augustus exemplifies the ideals of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century aesthetic traditions, including their views on race. Augustus's aversion to the colour of Olivia's skin is not out of character nor is it depicted as a foible to be rectified. The expression of disgust toward mercantile behaviour and Blackness is at the core of the culture of taste that Augustus represents.","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"103 - 111"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47667391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Before the Raj: Writing Early Anglophone India by James Mulholland (review)","authors":"P. Rangarajan","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.175","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"175 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48623719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay explores the concept of storytelling in Jamaican culture by connecting my account of childhood stories told by my Jamaican father with the text The Woman of Colour (1808). As a mixed-heritage woman who discovered the text while living in Bristol, England, I highlight in my personal narrative why Olivia's story was significant and how it helped me to contextualize my own identity and experience. Through a series of unexpected events, which are described through my own storytelling, this essay reveals how historic, fictional texts such as The Woman of Colour humanize historical accounts and bring an appreciation of the complexity of identity.
{"title":"Coda: The Woman of Colour and Living Memory","authors":"Addy Adelaine","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.133","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explores the concept of storytelling in Jamaican culture by connecting my account of childhood stories told by my Jamaican father with the text The Woman of Colour (1808). As a mixed-heritage woman who discovered the text while living in Bristol, England, I highlight in my personal narrative why Olivia's story was significant and how it helped me to contextualize my own identity and experience. Through a series of unexpected events, which are described through my own storytelling, this essay reveals how historic, fictional texts such as The Woman of Colour humanize historical accounts and bring an appreciation of the complexity of identity.","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"133 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49634425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:As an epistolary novel, The Woman of Colour (1808) sets certain formal expectations, but strikingly fails to fulfill them. At its climax, the letters of its biracial protagonist Olivia Fairfield come to an end and are replaced by a correspondence between the book's editor and his friend. This essay argues that readers' loss of access to Olivia's innermost thoughts and feelings is the formal manifestation of the novel's inability to imagine a future for her in English society. Its choice of a literary form already out of fashion by its publication in 1808 speaks to a desire to return to a notional time before the extent of empire's moral costs, which included the sexual abuse of enslaved women like Olivia's mother Marcia, were fully known. In search of plausible deniability about slavery and the operations of capital, the novel finally exiles knowledge of those costs from its domestic sphere back across the Atlantic, when Olivia returns alone to Jamaica.
{"title":"Interracial Sex and Narrative Crisis in The Woman of Colour","authors":"J. Macdonald","doi":"10.3138/ecf.35.1.65","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.35.1.65","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:As an epistolary novel, The Woman of Colour (1808) sets certain formal expectations, but strikingly fails to fulfill them. At its climax, the letters of its biracial protagonist Olivia Fairfield come to an end and are replaced by a correspondence between the book's editor and his friend. This essay argues that readers' loss of access to Olivia's innermost thoughts and feelings is the formal manifestation of the novel's inability to imagine a future for her in English society. Its choice of a literary form already out of fashion by its publication in 1808 speaks to a desire to return to a notional time before the extent of empire's moral costs, which included the sexual abuse of enslaved women like Olivia's mother Marcia, were fully known. In search of plausible deniability about slavery and the operations of capital, the novel finally exiles knowledge of those costs from its domestic sphere back across the Atlantic, when Olivia returns alone to Jamaica.","PeriodicalId":43800,"journal":{"name":"Eighteenth-Century Fiction","volume":"35 1","pages":"65 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49106693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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