Sentiment and Sexual Servitude: White Men of Feeling and The Woman of Colour.

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 versio...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Eighteenth Century Fiction Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 81 - 103
Autor principal: Barr, Rebecca Anne
Formato: Literary Criticism
Publicado: University of Toronto Press Jan2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=160643547&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: hlh
    uiTerm: 160643547
    longDbName: Humanities International Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        08406286
        7SD
      jtl: Eighteenth Century Fiction
      issn: 08406286
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: Jan2023
      vid: 35
      iid: 1
      pid: 678
      pub: University of Toronto Press
    artinfo:
      ui:
        160643547
        10.3138/ecf.35.1.81
      ppf: 81
      ppct: 22
      formats:
        fmt:
          @attributes:
            type: P
            size: 902KB
      tig:
        atl: Sentiment and Sexual Servitude: White Men of Feeling and The Woman of Colour.
      aug:
        au: Barr, Rebecca Anne
        affil:
          Associate Professor in Gender and Sexualities at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
          Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
      su:
        Woman of Colour: A Tale, The (Book)
        Dominique, Lyndon J.
        Race in literature
        Literary characters
        Black women in literature
      sug:
        subj:
          Woman of Colour: A Tale, The (Book)
          Dominique, Lyndon J.
          Race in literature
          Literary characters
          Black women in literature
      ab: 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.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Literary Criticism
      src: R
    language: English
    refInfo:
    copyright:
      @attributes:
        flag: Y
      custom: Copyright of Eighteenth Century Fiction is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
      item: Eighteenth Century Fiction
      holder: University of Toronto Press
      dt:
        @attributes:
          year: 2023
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N