'The Woman of Colour: A Tale' (1808) - Anon

‘…this was evidently meant to mortify your Olivia; it was blending her with the poor negro slaves of the West Indies! It was meant to show her, that, in Mrs. Merton’s idea, there was no distinction between us—you will believe that I could not be wounded at being classed with my brethren!’

The Woman of Colour: A Tale (1808)

Anon

This week, I want to tell you about a recent new favourite of mine, something I hadn’t even heard of until just last year. When I finally read it, I was sorry I hadn’t found it sooner because it’s absolutely tremendous! Published anonymously in 1808, The Woman of Colour is a romance novel that resists cliché, and that has much to teach us about eighteenth-century society and issues surrounding diversity and inclusivity.

Attributed to Jean-Étienne Liotard,
Portrait of a young woman, c. 1790s
(Saint Louis Art Museum)

There has long been a completely inaccurate assumption in popular culture that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British society was almost totally populated with white people. Fortunately, this notion is finally beginning to be challenged, not least through a more accurate, representative approach to casting in TV dramas and films (albeit dented by insidious suggestions that this kind of casting is for “political correctness” rather than because the absence of a variety of skin-tone in eighteenth and nineteenth century society is just plain wrong). The other trap of popular belief is to assume eighteenth-century roles for black people must either be slaves or servants – whilst there were sadly very many people of colour who were enslaved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is also very wrong to assume that people of colour were always and only victims of labour exploitation. In The Woman of Colour, a mixed-race heiress recently orphaned by the death of her white slave-owner father sets sail for England. Her name is Olivia Fairfield and her plan is to follow her beloved father’s last request and marry the younger of her two cousins, Mr. Augustus Merton. On the boat journey she meets an attractive single gentleman and his elderly mother, and you might be thinking that this is all starting to sound quite Austenian – it absolutely is of course, but it doesn’t turn out at all the way you might be expecting it to.

Once ashore and introduced to her uncle and his family, Miss Fairfield becomes the target of the social snobbery of her older cousin’s wife, Mrs Merton, something that would also be quite Austenian were it not for the fact that Mrs Merton’s campaign of snide and malevolence is barbed with the most obnoxious racism. That Miss Fairfield is able to rise above Mrs Merton’s wilful offensiveness is only a further indication that she is a heroine in the truest and best sense of the word. Attempts by Mrs Merton to categorise her ‘with the poor negro slave of the West Indies’ for example, fail simply because a presumption that this would be insulting relies upon a perception of race-based inferiority– something that Miss Fairfield roundly and quite rightly rejects when she describes these people living in slavery as her ‘brethren’.

As the novel progresses, it continues to blend romance with a humanitarian assertion of the rights of all people to equality and freedom. Olivia Fairfield gets married (no, I’m not going to tell you who to), but things don’t always go to plan, and it all wraps up with a final outcome that perhaps shouldn’t be as unexpected as it is. Throughout, Olivia Fairfield is a witty, intelligent, affectionate young woman, deeply committed to liberating and improving the lives of people living in slavery. We don’t know who wrote this book – perhaps we never will. In Lyndon B. Dominique’s introduction to his superb edition of the text, he theorises that it might have been authored by one of two sisters whose lives partially reflect that of the novel’s heroine – but there is no absolute proof. Whoever it was, though, the novel’s biting insight into the experience of being the target of racist abuse, together with the comparatively unusual presentation of a genuinely independent woman who does not consider marriage to be the only means of achieving happiness, must surely make it extremely likely that the author of this extraordinary work was, like its title, a woman of colour.

Happy Reading everyone!

You can find this novel here:

The Woman of Colour: A Tale, ed. by Lyndon J. Dominique (Broadview Press, 2007)

(available at most good bookstores – if they haven’t got a copy, they should be able to order it in).

'The Banished Man' - Charlotte Smith

‘In losing every thing but my honour and my integrity, I have learned, that he who retains those qualities can never be degraded, however humble may be his fortune.’

The Banished Man (1794)

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

If you’ve heard of Charlotte Smith at all – and a lot of folks sadly still haven’t – then it will probably be because of her poetry. Her rather more famous contemporary William Wordsworth (the chap who most people will have heard of thanks to a certain poem about clouds and daffodils) described her as ‘a lady to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered’. I could write a lot about how amazing her poetry is; but during her writing career Smith also wrote ten novels and it’s upon one of these that I want to focus today. Published in 1794, The Banished Man is a startlingly modern narrative following the adventures of the French aristocrat D’Alonville during the time of the French Revolution. Fleeing persecution in his own country, he journeys through Europe where he faces continual and humiliating suspicion and rejection. Even when the people he meet don’t actually suspect him of being a dangerous revolutionary travelling in the disguise of a refugee, they are often unwilling to involve themselves in assisting a penniless exile: it’s a concept that is as bitingly relevant today as it was two hundred years ago.

The tale’s first audiences believed that the novel’s sympathetic portrayal of an aristocratic main character indicated a shift in Smith’s political allegiance. Smith had initially been a vocal supporter of the French Revolution’s aims of liberty and equality for all. In fact, the truth is rather more nuanced. Rather than expressing overt political support or disdain for either faction, Smith instead focuses her anger upon the selfish and violent individuals who have exploited the Revolution for their own personal gain. A Polish Revolutionary is able to establish a close friendship with the French aristocrat D’Alonville because, even if the two have different opinions, each is willing to listen to and to respect the other’s point of view. Smith’s hero even acknowledges the fact that, had their situations been switched, ‘I might have thought and have acted as you have done’.

Intertwined with the stark realities of D’Alonville’s experiences as a persecuted refugee, is the life of the British woman Arabella Denzil. She is the daughter of an impoverished gentlewoman who supports her family through her writing, and who is widely believed to be an autobiographical portrait of Smith herself. Like Smith’s own husband, Arabella’s father has long since left the scene, and without any significant male relatives the family is left vulnerable to the machinations of sexual predators interested in Arabella’s beauty. Her inevitable romance with D’Alonville is likewise hampered by the unpopularity that attends such a cross-national relationship in the then deeply nationalistic British society.

At the time, one of the most popular genres of novel was the Gothic mode, in which heroes and heroines frequently faced both real and supernatural dangers in exotically portrayed European locations. Smith had written Gothic novels before and would do so again, but in The Banished Man she draws upon the conventions of the Gothic only to twist them around into a realistic portrayal of the genuine hardships suffered by those caught up in the all-too-real horrors of the French Revolution. She even underscores the originality of the novel by including a short section entitled ‘Avis Au Lecteur’ or ‘Advice to the Reader’, in which she points out her avoidance of a boy-meets-girl romance narrative. She writes that she believed ‘the situation of [her] hero was of itself interesting enough to enable [her] to carry him on for sometime, without making him violently in love’.¹ Even though D’Alonville’s and Arabella Denzil do inevitably become involved with each other, this romance remains very much a subplot to the novel’s main aim of presenting and exploring ideas of cultural dislocation, and exile inflicted by civil conflict. The depth, subtlety, and acute perception that Smith demonstrates here make this novel one of her best and most riveting.

You can find Smith’s The Banished Man:

 

Charlotte Smith, The Banished Man (Dodo Press, 2009)
(An affordable, printed copy of this almost-out-of-print novel: despite the occasional typo, this is a very useful edition for a general reader and is available from many popular online stores)

Charlotte Smith, The Banished Man, in Works of Charlotte Smith, ed. M. O. Grenby, gen. ed. Stuart Curran, vol. 7 (London: Pickering, 2006)

(An excellently edited copy of the text, though rather pricey for a general reader)

You can find more information about Charlotte Smith here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Turner_Smith

(Wikipedia: always a useful starting point) 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Smith

(Encyclopaedia Britannica – a valuable free resource)

¹ Wordsworth's note to "Stanzas Suggested in a Steamboat off Saint bees' Heads," from ‘Poems Composed or Suggested during a Tour, in the Summer of 1833’, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. by E. DeSelincourt and Helen Darbishire, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1949), IV, p. 403.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

‘Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was.  I cherished hope, it is true; but it vanished, when I beheld my person reflected in water, or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade.’

(Chapter XV)

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley
(1818, reprinted and amended in 1831)

Ok, so you’re probably wondering why I didn’t save this for Halloween.  I didn’t because, despite popular myth, this actually isn’t a horror story.  Over a century of cinematic dramatizations and ‘reimaginings’ have created an image of this tale as a straightforward terrifying-monster-chases-helpless-populace kind of plot; a bit like an eighteenth-century Jurassic Park.  I’m not much of a horror/thriller fan myself, so I must confess that it was quite a long time before I finally decided to read Shelley’s original novel Frankenstein.  When I did, I was astonished to discover that the ‘monster’ is actually quite an appealing character.  

I know I said this book isn't about a rampaging
monster, but isn't he cute?  Lego Frankenstein,
with many thanks to www.dailybrick.co.uk
who don't realise they have generously lent this image.

To me, he is portrayed as something of an ‘ugly duckling’ figure, always searching for a place to belong yet unable ever to overcome the sense of revulsion that his own physical being creates in others.  There’s certainly the midnight laboratory scene of popular and pulp fantasy, but even here it is a misguided rather than an evil Dr. Frankenstein who creates the ‘creature’, and who is promptly so horrified by his actions that he goes to bed.  Yes, he really does go to bed, and then becomes terrified when he wakes to see his creation peeping at him through the bed curtains.  What did he expect his little ‘monster’ to do? 

It is after this creation scene, though, that things become really interesting. In a cosy fireside reunion sometime later, the ‘creature’ tells Frankenstein what he has been up to since leaving the workshop.  This includes voyeuristically watching the daily life of a small family, during the course of which he performs small, silent acts of kindness for them such as cutting firewood.  He longs for inclusion within the affectionate arms of this family, but when he attempts to place himself under their protection he is repulsed, not because he is not a nice person (indeed, he is at this point quite an affectionate and philosophical individual, who has spent his leisure time reading classics such as Milton’s Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives).  Rather, he is rejected because they just find him hideous to look at.  There is an poignant scene involving a blind father, and a couple of young, sight-possessing, fainting girls which Shelley uses to explore judgements based upon personal appearance…but you probably get the idea.

Suffice to say, this is a book that deals with far more than a simple monster-rampage.  The question of whether the ‘monster’ even is a genuine ‘monster’ is a good starting point for discussion.  Shelley uses her novel to explore a meeting point between theology and science, and to confront issues of the moral responsibility attached to the creation of artificial life that remain relevant to this day.  The added dimension of the creature’s apparent ‘ugliness’ also seems designed to provoke thought and discussion upon perceptions of so-called deformity, a useful exercise in itself.

This is only a small book, but it is an immensely powerful one.  Philosophical rather than horrific, thought-provoking rather than nightmare-inducing, this is a book that all readers should investigate at some point.  So why not this week, hey?

You can find this text:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/frankenstein-or-the-modern-prometheus/mary-shelley/dr-siv-jansson/9781853260230

(If you’re on a tight budget, this Wordsworth classics edition is a great choice: nice presentation of text, only £1.99 at the moment!  Also, as this is a text that habitually recurs on university and A-Level courses, it’s always worth checking second hand dealers for nice affordable copies of Penguin or Oxford World’s Classics editions!)

https://www.waterstones.com/book/frankenstein-or-the-modern-prometheus/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley/mary-shelley/9780141439471

(Penguin classics edition of the text.  I’ve linked to Waterstones rather than Amazon because I believe in supporting actual bookshops! I have no idea what the cover image has to do with the story, but that aside this looks a very interesting edition! As always, try to buy a copy of the text that has explanatory notes, as these can be enormously useful when reading novels that were written in a different century)

You can find out more about Mary Shelley:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley

(Wikipedia!!)

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Wollstonecraft-Shelley

(Encylopædia Britannica: the more sophisticated Wikipedia.  I would say, though, that this article seems ludicrously short for an account of the life of a woman who is widely regarded as the founder of the modern sci-fi genre.  Just saying.)

 

'Evelina' - Frances (Fanny) Burney

‘This moment arrived.  Just going to Drury-Lane theatre.   The celebrated Mr. Garrick performs Ranger.  I am quite in extacy.  So is Miss Mirvan.  How fortunate, that he should happen to play!  We would not let Mrs. Mirvan rest till she consented to go; her chief objection was to our dress, for we have had no time to Londonize ourselves; but we teized her into compliance, and so we are to sit in some obscure place, that she may not be seen.  As to me, I should be alike unknown in the most conspicuous or most private part of the house.

   I can write no more now.  I have hardly time to breathe – only just this, the houses and streets are not quite so superb as I expected.  However, I have seen nothing yet, so I ought not to judge.’

(from Letter X)

Evelina or The History a Young Lady’s Entrance Into the World

Frances (Fanny) Burney
1778

A mother abandoned by her husband; a paternity dispute; a child brought up by a foster carer; a quest for identity as the child becomes a young woman; her struggle to assert her own worth amidst a crowd of embarrassing relatives.  All sounds like it could be from a modern-day TV drama, doesn’t it?  In fact, all these elements combine within Frances Burney’s first (and in my opinion best) novel Evelina, or The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance Into the World.   

One of Hugh Thomson's superb illustrations
from a 1903 publication of the novel.

Written in the form of an exchange of letters (technically known as an epistolary novel), there is an immediacy to the story that simply leaps off the page.  The quotation I have included for today’s header is a good example of this: the events of the story are not simply narrated to the reader.  Rather, we get to live the events with the heroine, the Evelina of the title (the technical term for this is the eponymous heroine; a useful word with which to dazzle people at parties and pub quizzes).  It’s a bit like having an eighteenth-century pen-pal.  Evelina is an extremely easy person with whom to empathise: keen for adventure, longing to sample life in the big city, yet inexperienced and thus often getting things a little bit wrong.  Kind, intelligent, sensitive, and always trying to do the right thing, she is continually caught up in the ludicrous, pretentious, and sometimes downright dangerous behaviour of relatives whom it is socially impossible for her to avoid; it is perhaps this more than anything else that sweeps you up into the story, making you cheer for her every success, and wince with her at every unintentional faux pas.

Characters’ reactions may occasionally seem a little overblown (there is one point later on in the book where there is a lot of bursting into tears and dropping onto knees in a context that, perhaps surprisingly, has absolutely nothing to do with marriage proposals).  The only thing I can say about this is just to remember that the book was written at a time when sentimentality was a highly prized attribute.  If Evelina seems a little susceptible to what might today seem rather theatrical displays of emotion in one or two places, it is only eighteenth-century code for her general worth as a character. 

One of the most vibrant and engaging of eighteenth-century novels, this is a book that deserves to be savoured and enjoyed.  It is the story of a young woman’s entrance into the world, into life, into love, and it is the story of her quest for a sense of identity and of belonging. 

Happy reading!! And, as always, feel free to ask questions  in comments!  

You can find this book:

 http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/burney/evelina/evelina.html

(this is a free edition of the text, and thus a quick, economical way of reading it!  A word of caution though: readers unfamiliar with some eighteenth-century words and phrases might enjoy enhanced reading pleasure by obtaining an edition of the text that has helpful annotations to explain unusual or archaic terms)

 Free editions may be available for Kindle, also a great way of accessing a text or taking it with you on the bus; just be aware that such editions might not have had the benefit of proper editorial production and thus may contain errors and spelling mistakes. 

 http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199536931.do

(Oxford World Classics edition! I am slightly biased in recommending this, as it is the edition that I first read the novel from in my early teens.  It is full of really useful explanatory notes and so is a great way to read this story.  As this book frequently occurs on students’ reading lists, there is a plentiful supply of economically priced second-hand copies continually available from reputable second-hand dealers.)

http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/books/evelina/9780141198866/

(Penguin Classics edition!  This does have a snazzy cover, but I can’t see anything online about whether it has any explanatory notes.  Worth checking before purchase: I cannot overstate the importance of a healthy scattering of notes when first approaching a text like this!)

About the Author:

France Burney, painted by her cousin Edward
Francesco Burney.  This is the most popular,
and frequently reproduced, portrait of Burney.
This image was, er, 'borrowed' from Wikipedia.

 

Frances (Fanny) Burney had a long and enormously fascinating life; indeed, to try and condense this into one neat paragraph has been one of the greatest challenges of this blogpost.  The daughter of the musician Charles Burney, Frances was a personal friend of countless major eighteenth-century figures, including the actor David Garrick and Dr Samuel Johnson (the author of the subject of a previous blogpost, ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’).  Later, in 1786, she became the second keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte, a post which she greatly disliked and which she was very glad to leave in 1791.  In 1793 (aged 41) Frances married Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard D’Arblay, a French émigré who had escaped to Britain in the wake of the French Revolution; they had one son, who died in 1837.  When Frances Burney died in 1840, she left behind a copious wealth of literary material, including an extensive collection of letters exchanged with some of the most prominent figures of the eighteenth-century, and also four major published novels, of which Evelina is the first. 

You can find out more about Frances Burney:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Burney
(Wikipedia!!)

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Fanny-Burney

(Encyclopædia Britannica: kind of like a more sophisticated version of Wikipedia.  Do try and follow up the little blue links to other eighteenth-century figures, such as the wonderful David Garrick: it can lead you round an absorbing who’s who of eighteenth-century society)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05r3zjk

(this is an engaging radio programme aired this year; I don’t want to sound like I’m namedropping or anything, but I have actually been fortunate enough to make acquaintance with two of the guests on the programme, Dr Nicole Pohl and Prof. Judith Hawley, and was impressed by their friendliness, enthusiasm and kind encouragement!  If you have a spare forty minutes, this programme is definitely worth a listen!) 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fanny-Burney-biography-Claire-Harman/dp/0006550363/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1436539876&sr=8-4&keywords=fanny+burney

(Claire Harman’s Fanny Burney: A biography.  Apologies for only giving a link to this on Amazon: it is available at numerous other retailers, including independent bookstores!)

Information for this blogpost was taken from the following resource:

Pat Rogers, ‘Burney, Frances (1752-1840)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2015 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/603 [accessed 9 July 2015]

(unfortunately, access to this resource is by subscription only)  

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg

'I felt a sort of invisible power which drew me towards him, something like the force of enchantment, which I could not resist'

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg
(Novel, first published 1824)

Catchy title, huh?  I suspect this book is one of those whose title is probably its worst enemy.  What it sounds like you’re going to get is a lengthy biographical account of a religious devotee.  What you actually get is a weird little story of doppelgangers and devilry, in which murder and mayhem abound, and where two women finally turn detective to uncover the truth. 

It begins, somewhat unconventionally, with a wedding scene in which a disgruntled bride is disgusted with her new husband’s dissipated partying, but quickly takes up the story of their two sons (well at least, there is some scope for debate about the parentage of one of the boys… but I won’t spoil it for you!).  The important thing to know before reading this book is that the ‘Justified Sinner’ of the title refers to an offshoot of Christianity called Antinomianism which adopts the belief that ‘Christians are by grace set free from the need to observe any moral law’ (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ‘antinomianism’ definition).  More simply put, this system states that a person can only gain a place in heaven through faith and the grace of God, and not by earning it through good deeds.  What James Hogg does in his book is to explore a bigoted, extremist version of this idea, in which one man comes to believe that, no matter what crimes he commits, it cannot be morally wrong because he believes he is one of God’s chosen people.

Underlying this is a brilliantly subtle, and typically eighteenth-century, conflict of supernatural vs scientific explanation.  One of my university tutors argued that, despite appearances, it is possible to provide a rational explanation for everything that occurs in the text... but then there are others (myself included) who simply cannot believe that there is not (quite literally) some devilry at work…

One other thing I should mention, when it says ‘Editor’s Narrative’ at the beginning, this is not some tedious explanation of abstract editorial practice, it is actually the start of the story.  As a way of giving the tale an enhanced realism, Hogg creates the character of an editor into whose hands have come the interesting documents in which the story continues.  Kind of a way of writing himself into his own story; neat, eh?

 

Set in Scotland, much of the action of the narrative occurs in Edinburgh, and as I’ve just got back from a brief visit there I couldn’t resist including a photo of Arthur’s Seat (the scene of an important encounter in this novel, but as I don’t want to give away any spoilers I had better say no more…)

With its emphasis on religious zealotry and the tragic absurdities to which this can lead, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is actually an extremely modern narrative, and a truly absorbing read.  Think Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is an intriguing character?  Just wait until you meet the elusive Gil-Martin…

 
Happy reading!  As always, feel free to ask questions in comments!

 

You can find this book:

Oxford World Classics edition: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199217953.do
(always hugely recommended: these offer just the right balance of historical information to understand the story without intruding on the text too much!)

Edinburgh University Press edition: http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748663156

(a detailed scholarly edition) 

Wordsworth Classics edition: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Private-Confessions-Justified-Wordsworth-Classics/dp/1853261882

(an affordable edition, with some explanatory notes; apologies for the commercial bias of referencing Amazon here, this edition is available in various other shops)

All these editions have various quantities of annotation, a useful tool when reading texts this old, and something that I hope to discuss further in future blogposts.  Don’t worry, though, what are known as ‘scholarly editions’ don’t have to cost the earth: check out sites such as Ebay, etc. for second hand copies, as these are often readily available at very economical rates!  Free versions may be available for e-readers, though it should be remembered that such texts have not always been prepared carefully for publication.  I cannot overemphasise the importance of the helpful little notes that a publisher like Penguin or Oxford World Classics would include in illuminating obscure or archaic references!

If you want to know more about James Hogg:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hogg
(a useful starting point)

Interesting BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/29mbnSxdmTg99TpfkcHpRtm/james-hogg

(includes an extensive reading list for those thirsting to know more!)

The James Hogg Society blog:

http://jameshoggblog.blogspot.ca/

(contains lots of interesting info)

The quotation in this blogpost is from:

E.A. Livingstone, (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.  Oxford Reference, 2006.  Online version [accessed 15 June 2015]