In the context of the long 18th century, the term “lady” refers to a woman, one who is refined, higher up in social status, classy, and usually wealthy. Within The Woman of Colour, A Tale, lady is often used to refer to both Olivia, our protagonist, and the women she finds herself surrounded by in England. The difference lies in the intentions behind each person’s diction. Whereas characters like Mrs. Merton (the racist and judgemental wife of Olivia’s cousin) use the term with sarcasm, characters like Dido (Olivia’s servant) use it with the utmost reverence. Ultimately this provides a commentary on Olivia’s position as both a woman of consequence and a mixed person, and how those positionalities are viewed in the context of 18th century Britain.
Fairly early on in her experience in England, Olivia finds herself sitting around the living room with her uncle and Mrs. Merton, idly completing their own tasks. Olivia offers to help make tea, which prompts Mrs. Merton to say, “Oh yes, the lady is of an active turn I find,” (77). Although Olivia is a lady by the true definition of the term, Mrs. Merton has a different societal expectation of ladies—one that she clearly does not believe Olivia fits into. In Mrs. Merton’s mind, ladies are white women born and bred in England, who maintain a classy lifestyle and are well married. Although Olivia is educated, kind, generous, and in the process of seeking matrimony (all things expected of a lady of the time) Mrs. Merton still rejects her, and uses the term lady sarcastically.
In contrast, when Olivia’s servant Dido refers to her as a lady, she means it most sincerely. When tasked with hosting Mrs. Merton after Olivia and Augustus have married, Dido “says, ‘thanks to my good lady,—Dido be Missee below stairs, and treated by all as if me was as good as another, for all me be poor ***** wench!” to which Olivia responds to this comment in her letter to Mrs. Milbanke, “Ah, my good Dido, perhaps both your ‘good lady,’ and yourself, may find the difference of entertaining, and being entertained!” (127). Dido holds Olivia in the best regard, as they both share an identity of being Black Caribbean women, despite Olivia maintaining a higher status of “lady” because her father was a white planter. Dido idolizes Olivia and trusts her, so to her, Olivia truly is a lady. Interestingly, when Olivia is talking about Dido in her letter to Mrs. Milbanke, she uses Dido’s phrasing of “good lady” and puts it in quotes. It feels somewhat cheeky, as though Olivia is poking fun at having that identity herself, in an almost self-deprecating way. This could allude to Olivia’s internalized racism.
In Kathleen Lubey’s article. “The Woman of Colour’s Counter-Domesticity,” she discusses similar facets of this dynamic:
“Her polarizing reception in Britain—admired as “above the standard of her sex” and reviled as an “outlandish creature”—testifies that for only some, her white patrimony tempers her descent from an enslaved mother sufficiently for her social incorporation (102, 101). Olivia is made both hypervisible and highly legible by her inheritances, her mixed race a point of aesthetic scrutiny to be weighed against her widely known net worth” (Lubey 2).
With Lubey’s arguement in mind, Olivia’s internalized racism stands out more—she is somehow both praised and shunned for different aspects of her identity simultaneously. This is further explored in Jennifer Reed’s “Moving Fortunes: Caribbean Women’s Marriage, Mobility, and Money in the Novel of Sentiment”, as she explains how
“Olivia Fairfield, the titular protagonist, is at once the stigmatized person, the source of the money, and the benevolent figure hoping to do good. She has all the virtues and charitable impulses of George Ellison, and of the typical white English heroine, but because of her Jamaican birth and mixedrace parentage she bears the colonial contamination associated with Mrs Ellison—a problem signalled by the novel’s refusal to let her remain in England” (13 Reed).
Reed takes this all a step further, calling out the text’s inability to keep Olivia in England. Although she is a lady by all accounts other than race, she cannot really be a lady in England.
Lastly, to connect this argument to another Black Romantic text, in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, Seacole refers to “these ladies” as women who are othering her. She writes,
“Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs? Tears streamed down my foolish cheeks, as I stood in the fast thinning streets; tears of grief that any should doubt my motives – that Heaven should deny me the opportunity that I sought.” (Seacole 46).
In Seacole’s text, the term “lady” shifts to be more directly aimed at white women. Although, like Olivia, Seacole is equipped with all the social tools needed to navigate the parts of the world they are each in, they are not viewed as equal by particularly the white women.
Related page numbers in TWOC: 58, 60, 62, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 88, 90, 91, 100, 109, 111, 113, 114, 120, 128, 130, 132, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 174, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184
Anonymous. The Woman of Colour, A Tale. [1808]. Ed. Lyndon J. Dominique. Broadview, 2008. Print.
Lubey, Kathleen. “The Woman of Colour’s Counter-Domesticity.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 61, no. 1, Spring 2022, pp. 113–23. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.libproxy.scu.edu/10.1353/srm.2022.0010.
Reed, Jennifer. “Moving Fortunes: Caribbean Women’s Marriage, Mobility, and Money in the Novel of Sentiment.” Eighteenth Century Fiction, vol. 31, no. 3, Spring 2019, pp. 509–28. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.libproxy.scu.edu/10.3138/ecf.31.3.509.
Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.