'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.

'The True-Born Englishman. A Satire' - Daniel Defoe

‘A horrid Medly of Thieves and Drones,

Who ransack’d Kingdoms, and dispeopl’d Towns.

The Pict and Painted Britain, Treach’rous Scot,

By Hunger, Theft, and Rapine, hither brought.

Norwegian Pirates, Buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-hair’d Offspring ev’ry where remains.
Who join’d with Norman-French, compound the Breed
From whence your True-Born Englishmen proceed.’

‘The True-Born Englishman.  A Satire’

Daniel Defoe

1701

At first glance, it is difficult to know what to make of this poem.  In its earliest stages the poem positively fumes acid from the earnest bigotry with which Defoe constructs stereotypes for just about every kind of nationality that existed at the time.  Readers be reassured, however: this text was in fact intended as a critique of the racist elements of English society who thought the ‘True-Born Englishman’ was a being altogether superior to the rest of humanity.  He does this by first listing all the faults that such racist detractors might identify with these supposedly inferior nationalities, and then by pointing out that the ‘True-Born Englishman’ of the title is in fact descended from all these various nations through Britain’s mottled history of invasions, raids, violence, and intermarriage (or similar).  Thus he asserts the fundamental absurdity of claiming that any Englishman is ‘True-Born’, as they are all basically descended from what the racists would term ‘foreigners’.  To avoid the risk of misinterpretation, Defoe provides the helpful pointer in his Preface that he is ‘one that would be glad to see Englishmen behave themselves better to Strangers’ (with 'strangers' in this context meaning foreigners). 



Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht,
after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the
18th century.  This copy was, er, 'borrowed' from
the Encyclopædia Britannica.  The earliest image
of Defoe was recently discovered by Joseph Hone,
and is an illustration on a pack of playing cards
(in which Defoe is depicted being pilloried as
punishment for penning some political pamphlets).

Indeed, the importance of this Preface as a means of interpreting the poem would seem to be very great. At the Defoe Society’s biennial conference this week, Andreas Mueller gave a very interesting talk on later reprints of the text, in particular American reprints; somewhat amusingly, an abridged version was published in Philadelphia around the time of the British occupation of that same city during the American Revolutionary War.  The removal of the Preface was one of various alterations which, Muller showed, had reconstructed the text as a depiction of the ‘True-Born Englishman’ as a somewhat vain and inglorious individual.  Defoe would probably have been horrified.



For the aim of his original poem would seem to have been to promote racial integration rather than to just annoy everyone.  Defoe claims in his poem’s Preface that ‘The End of Satire is Reformation’, referring here to the reform of absurd or offensive ideologies; in particular, he is keen to whip up support for the Dutch King William of Orange (the Protestant William III who, together with his wife Mary, had just usurped the English throne from Mary’s father James II).  Yet the sense that this is primarily a piece of political propaganda is perhaps dispelled by considering the broader attitude towards foreigners that is featured across Defoe’s writings.  As Angela Gehling demonstrated in her conference talk, Defoe was somewhat unique in his depiction (across various works) of Spaniards as paragons of honesty and courteousness.  At the time, Spaniards were often regarded as being the complete opposite of this (a stereotype which Gehling demonstrated still features in popular culture today). 

These are complex issues and this is a complicated poem, but don’t let this put you off: it is also an enormously engaging and thought provoking text, and the issues it deals with surrounding racism and politics remain vividly relevant in today’s political arena.  Frankly, this is a poem that everyone should read, whether or not they regard themselves as ‘True-Born’ English. 

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

You can find this poem:

http://thetruebornenglishman.co.uk/

(a digital edition of the original, first edition of Defoe’s poem, compiled by Luke Dawson; a very concise, useful, and free way to enjoy this text)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/True-Born-Englishman-Satire-Daniel-Defoe/dp/B00UL585MY/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437847223&sr=1-4&keywords=true+born+englishman

(a new printed version of the book… a word to the wise, though, don’t bother reading the Amazon reviews.  One of them claims that this is ‘Austen from a man’s point of view’, and I have to admit it has been a very long time since I read a sentence that was such complete tosh!)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173337

(This is a short extract from the poem on Poetry Foundation, which omits the most vitriolic aspects of the poem.  It is nonetheless interesting if you just want a quick snapshot of the style of the piece)

About the Defoe Society Conference:

The Defoe Society ( http://www.defoesociety.org/ ) was established in 2006 to promote research upon, and interest in, the works of Daniel Defoe, and to basically just spread the word about what a masterful and engaging writer he is.  This week’s conference was an opportunity for Defoe scholars from all over the world to come together and exchange ideas; the people I’ve referenced in my discussion above are only a very small sample of what was a vibrant and absorbing array of academic knowledge.  To gain access to a broader range of the thoughts and ideas that were being mooted, search for the hashtag #Defoe15 on Twitter to look back over the excellent live-tweeting of Stephen Gregg ( @gregg_sh ) during the conference.  Because literary research is for everyone, not just academics!

You can find out more about Defoe:

http://www.defoesociety.org/defoe.html

(The Defoe Society website pages have lots of fascinating info)

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

(Wikipedia!!)

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Defoe

Encyclopædia Britannica (a more sophisticated, and perhaps more reliable, form of Wikipedia)