The term “will” can be defined in many ways—and its versatility is in part why it is such a rich term within The Woman of Colour, A Tale. It is the auxiliary verb used to describe a future action, persistence, consent, and inevitability. It is the noun used to describe the document left behind after someone passes, instructing what to do with the things and people they have left behind. It is also the noun used to describe one’s power and desire over their own choices. Within The Woman of Colour, A Tale it serves all of these purposes. Mr. Fairfield’s will and testament dictates Olivia’s life options for her, but Olivia also uses the word to describe what her father willed for her. Mr. Fairfield has left her with two options, neither of which keep her in her home in Jamaica. Option one is that she marries her cousin Augustus Merton and he takes her last name and inherits her father’s fortune. Option two is that Augustus’ brother and his wife, Mrs. Merton, inherit the fortune and become Olivia’s guardian. Both of these options require her to move to England. Ironically, although Olivia is our heroine, every other character has more power over their own will than she does. Ultimately this highlights the distinctly rigid rules and regulations of 18th century British society regarding gender and race—because of Olivia’s intersectionality she is positioned to have little to no choices, yet she is able to will a different life into existence.
Fairly early within the first packet of letters to Mrs. Milbanke, Olivia sets up the circumstances of her marriage-plot, writing,
“I see the generous intention of my father’s will; I see that he meant at once to secure to his child a proper protector in a husband, and to place her far from scenes which were daily hurting her sensibility and the pride of human nature!—But, ah! respected Mrs. Milbanke! in guarding against these evils may he not have opened the way to those which are still more dangerous for your poor Olivia?” (56).
This use of the term “will” contextualizes both her father’s literal will (last will and testament) but also his wishes for his daughter after his passing. Although his choices make some sense within the socio-political context of the time, readers can not help but see how Olivia is stuck between a rock and hard place. She has zero control, as both a woman and a mixed individual.
Lack of control is a well established phenomenon within romantic era writing—particularly the marriage-plot, as Susan Lanser describes in her essay, “Second-Sex Economics: Race, Rescue, and the Heroine’s Plot”. Interestingly, the marriage-plot often creates the illusion of control for women, while still ultimately forcing them to stay within the patriarchal structures of the 18th century. Lanser references Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, how Charlotte Lucas’s choice to marry Mr. Collins out of convenience positions Elizabeth and Jane’s marriages to seem truly out of love and not out of need for survival (Lanser). This only gets more complex when race becomes a factor. In The Woman of Colour, Olivia truly is forced to marry for economic convenience, although ironically for access to her own money. Her father’s will acts as an additionally patriarchal force separating her from control over her own life. What differentiates Olivia from Austen’s heroines though, is that she ultimately makes the choice to remove herself—despite the risked economic insecurity. At the end of the novel when Olivia returns to Jamaica, she is reclaiming her will.
Perhaps this is not as revolutionary as it feels to the reader at first glance, since Olivia is now completely alone without the financial or societal protection of a husband, especially since she is now a mixed woman in Jamaica where slavery is still in full swing. However, one could argue that this is still an improvement over remaining in England wrapped up in the web of the Mertons, or marrying Honeywood.
In “Sentiment and Sexual Servitude: White Men of Feeling and The Woman of Colour”, Rebecca Anne Barr dives headfirst into the relationship between seemingly “kindly patriarchs” and women (particularly women of color), uncovering these men to be “linchpins of racial capital [who expose] the damaging self-involvement of sentimental manhood and its capacity to indulge in tactics of sexual extortion that approximate coercive control” (Barr 82). In a letter to Lionel Monkland, Augustus writes, “Unwilling as I was to accompany my father to this place, and averse in bestowing any portion of my thoughts towards that clause in my uncle’s will which referred to myself, I yet at this moment behold things in a very different light” (102). As Barr alludes to, Augustus has full control over whether or not he will marry Olivia, and his interest in her reflects more so on the potential fetishization of Olivia than her character as a person. Here, the term “will” can be thrown around casually, since for Augustus he has all the willpower in the world.
In addition the importance and relevance of the term “will” within TWOC, it also plays a role in other texts that center Black Romanticism. Although “will” does not appear once within the entire text of Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, it is an omnipresent force. Here I refer to the word will as it pertains to someone’s willpower, choice, or lack thereof. In contrast to Olivia, who functions based on the will of others (until she doesn’t), Mary Seacole prioritizes her own will throughout her adventures. Towards the end, she reflects upon her journey next to that of a soldier-friend, writing,
“for he, as well as I, clearly had no home to go to. He was a soldier by choice and necessity, as well as by profession. He had no home, no loved friends; the peace would bring no particular pleasure to him, whereas war and action were necessary to his existence, gave him excitement, occupation, the chance of promotion. Now and then, but seldom, however, you came across such a disappointed one. Was it not so with me? Had I not been happy through the months of toil and danger, never knowing what fear or depression was, finding every moment of the day mortgaged hours in advance, and earning sound sleep and contentment by sheer hard work? What better or happier lot could possibly befall me? And, alas! how likely was it that my present occupation gone, I might long in vain for another so stirring and so useful. Besides which, it was pretty sure that I should go to England poorer than I left it, and although I was not ashamed of poverty; beginning life again in the autumn – I mean late in the summer of life – is hard up-hill work” (Seacole 115).
Mary Seacole has made a choice—to follow her own will—her whole career, and now as she is facing down the autumn of her life, she is forced to begin again. Despite their different circumstances, this is an easy parallel with Olivia, returning to Jamaica and starting again. The difference, is that now Olivia has control over her will whereas now Mary Seacole does not.
Ultimately, the conversation surrounding “will” is one of race, patriarchy, and power. Although a small word, it holds multitudes of meaning.
Related page numbers in TWOC: 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 162, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 179, 180, 183, 184, 188, 189, 190
Anonymous. The Woman of Colour, A Tale. [1808]. Ed. Lyndon J. Dominique. Broadview, 2008. Print.
Barr, Rebecca Anne. “Sentiment and Sexual Servitude: White Men of Feeling and The Woman of Colour.” Eighteenth Century Fiction, vol. 35, no. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 81–102. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.libproxy.scu.edu/10.3138/ecf.35.1.81.
Lanser, Susan S. “Second-Sex Economics: Race, Rescue, and the Heroine’s Plot.” Eighteenth Century: Theory & Interpretation, vol. 61, no. 2, Summer 2020, pp. 227–44. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.libproxy.scu.edu/10.1353/ecy.2020.0016
Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.