Malagon 1

Janelle Malagon
Dr. R. Zuck
ENGL 8191
4 March 2019

Critical Response: The Woman of Colour and “Introduction”

Like Lyndon J. Dominique and many of the novel’s first readers, I am struck with the
title of this text. Until Iread the introduction and caught the difference, I was convinced the title
was A Woman of Colour, not The Woman of Colour. While this may be a textually minute
difference, its implications in light of Dominique’s introduction to the conversation of black
female protagonists in the eighteenth century is significant. Were she simply a woman of colour,
that would immediately imply that there are more like her and therefore she is somehow less
remarkable—after all, a good narrative must be both uncommon and obvious. Olivia is not just a
woman of color; she is the woman, which has a number of implications. The definitive singular
of “the” can be read as a reference to Olivia’s role as an individual distinguishable from those
around her. Alternatively, it can be read as representative of all women like her, advocating for
Olivia Fairfield’s narrative as representative of other black women in the eighteenth-century. The
possibility of representation seems possible given Dominique’s point that there were thousands
of black women in London in spite of the increased visibility of black men because of their
constant mobility and their public work as sailors and merchants (32). Given that, it makes me
wonder about the reactions of the text’s readers. Were there women of colour (as defined by
English culture at the time, meaning a freed black person (Dominique 21), who was more likely
to have wealth) reading this text and feeling that there was finally some representation for them
in literary texts?
The representation that feels most similar to Olivia and her journey is, unsurprisingly,
Bertha Rochester of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and her adapted narrative in Jean Rhys’s Wide
Sargasso Sea as Antoinette. The nightmarish negotiation of Antoinette’s identity in the face of
transnational mobility is especially interesting in light of Olivia’s complicated eager
apprehension on her journey to England. In both Wide Sargasso Sea and The Woman of Colour,
marriage functions as the condition of slavery that entraps both Antoinette and Olivia.
Antoinette and (Rochester) are bound to one another as Olivia is bound to her father’s
will, each executor of colonial traditions and wills. In their subjection to the wills of men who
control them economically, both women lose their autonomous voices. Olivia expresses this in a
concern to Honeywood as they discuss their future as the end of their voyage approaches:
from the moment when I set my foot on your land of liberty, I yield up my
independence—my uncle’s family are then to be the disposers of my future fate’
and, though they can never teach my heart to forego its nature, or my mind its
principles, yet in all irrelevant points, and in all local opinions, I must resolve to
yield myself to their guidance! (TWoC 66).

Rhetorically, this passage feels very intentional given its length and specificity. If we have the
time, I would love to do a close reading of this text and its implications as we progress through
 Malagon 2

Olivia’s narrative. Her recognition of the many different ways that she will become subject to her
uncle’s family upon her arrival in England seems intentional and probably specific to the
anonymous author’s audience.

Questions/Discussion Point:
1. In the introduction, Lyndon J. Dominique discusses the increased visibility of black
men/men of color because of their very public work. However, the kind of visibility that
Dominique discusses seems to differ from our conversations about spectacle and
surveillance from earlier in the semester. See p. 17 where Dominique discusses the
presence of black women in different kinds of texts, and note that Dominique advocates
for another form of representation. If these are different, how are they different?
2. Close-reading of the passage cited above (TWoC 66). Why would the author go into such
detail as to account for all the specific ways that Olivia is subject to her uncle? In
answering this question, maybe we can make some conjectures on who the anonymous
author’s intended audience would be, given this rhetoric.