• The Woman of Colour and Black Atlantic Movement

    Author(s):
    Brigitte Fielder (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Subject(s):
    Literature, Eighteenth century, Blacks--Study and teaching, Atlantic Ocean Region, Race
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Tag(s):
    Black Atlantic, The Woman of Colour, 18th-century literature, Black Atlantic studies
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6BK1G
    Abstract:
    “I read black Atlantic circulations through the friendships between this mixed-race heroine and both her white governess and her black maid. Following Paul Gilroy’s construction of the black Atlantic as a space of movement, I consider Olivia’s movement within the frames of identification that position her relative racial privilege somewhere between white English/creole Mrs. Milbanke and black Dido. Olivia is constituted by not only the fluidity of racial mixture but also, as a member of the black Atlantic diaspora, the community to which she returns at the end of the novel. Though representing only its mixed-race heroine’s experiences in England, The Woman of Colour suggests larger considerations for racial relationships within slave-holding empires and the black diaspora. This black Atlantic frame and Olivia and Dido’s return to Jamaica at the novel’s end affirm that we ought not to read figures of racial mixture only through their orientation toward white relations and Anglo society.”
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Book chapter    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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