Race and the Myth of a Happy Ending
“An unproportioned girl of my colour can never be a dangerous object”
— Olivia Fairfield, The Woman of Colour
This quotation from Olivia Fairfield, biracial heroine of the anonymously-written epistolary novel The Woman of Colour (1808) stands out to me as I’ve watched much of the coverage of “Megxit,” a pejorative for Meghan and Harry’s decision to split their time between North America and England and to distance themselves from Royal activities.
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Like many of us here in the U.S., I watched the wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. As much as I have my reservations about marriage itself, I love weddings. Pomp and circumstance are always enjoyable, especially if my taxes do not pay for it.
Yet, in addition to a love of ceremony, I must admit that much of the fascination here with Harry and Meghan depends on believing a lie. We believe a successful life includes money, power, and proximity to institutions previously reliant on white exclusivity. As “Megxit” confirms, this is more fantasy than reality.
In predominantly white societies, there’s priceless value in one’s proximity to white exclusivity, wealth, and patriarchalism. The monarchy in the British isles has represented this exclusivity since…Henry VIII? William the Conqueror? the Saxon kings?
There are, of course, countless examples to choose from.
The Fate of Dangerous Women
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The history of the British monarchy has not been very kind to its queens. There have been several British Queens regnant – Lady Jane Grey, “Bloody” Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. However, out of these six women, half experienced short reigns due to death by execution or illness.
Meghan will never be a biracial queen; that distinction may lie with Queen Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Streliz, consort to George III and a woman whom many believe had Moorish ancestry. But the cards are stacked against Meghan more than any woman within the royal family.
Just as President Barack Obama’s 2-terms symbolized a post-racial America, Meghan’s entrance into the Royal family presented a new era of multi-racial inclusivity.
But, as The Woman of Colour teaches its readers, often such apparences of openness are deceptive.
The Woman of Colour: A Dangerous Object
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The Woman of Colour (1808) is an anonymously written epistolary novel possibly written by a woman of African-descent, that, according to Lyndon Dominique, editor of its 2007 republication, may be “the first novel in British literature to be based on the literal experiences of a real woman of African descent” (33).
Orphaned by the death of enslaved mother and her slaveholding father, the novel’s heroine Olivia Fairfield must leave her home in Jamaica and either marry her emotionally distant first cousin Augustus or become financially dependent on her brother George, whose wife treats Olivia as an inferior.
Olivia marries Augustus but struggles to find happiness in her marriage or on English soil. Eventually, the marriage ends due to the surprise reappearance of Augustus’ presumed-dead first wife, Angelina.
Of course, Angelina is much fairer (in skin tone) than Olivia, and she is the woman Augustus truly loves. As a result, Olivia steps back and steps aside, and she returns to Jamaica as a “widow” to find peace in uplifting the enslaved people on her father’s estate.
An Appeal to a Skeptical Public
There’s a lot to explore in this complicated novel. Olivia’s survival at the end of her marriage and choice to remain a single woman is a remarkable ending for a woman of color in the nineteenth-century novel. She retains her wealth and independence at the end of her tale without having to depend on the white men in her family.
However, her humble protestation above that, “An unproportioned girl of my colour, can never be a dangerous object,” reveals Olivia’s existence as overdetermined by failed but earnest attempts to appease white anxieties about her sexuality and presence as a foreigner on English soil (56).
Throughout the majority of the novel, Olivia discloses her private thoughts in letters to Mrs. Milbanke, her friend and confidant in Jamaica. This transparency is important to the novel’s mission, which, published a year after the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, encourages its “skeptical European” readership to show compassion to the “despised native of Africa” (189).
Yet, her patience in the face of racism, betrayal and ignorance and overall self-sacrifice set an impossible standard for human behavior and reveals shortcomings of this particularly mode of appeasement.
The Need for Privacy
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The construction of Olivia’s legibility invokes Antonio Viego’s conclusions in Dead Subjects that “Racism depends on a reading of ethnic-racialized subjects that insists on their transparency; racism also banks on the faith and conceit that these subjects can be exhaustively and fully elucidated through a certain masterful operation of language” (Viego 6). Olivia becomes a clear symbol of morality and religious devotion in the novel. Yet arguably, Olivia’s return to Jamaica is a corrective to this forced transparency.
Meghan is not necessarily an Olivia Fairfield. However, comparing her as a biracial woman to a nineteenth-century biracial female character highlights certain similarities in the cultures in which they exist and the demands for transparency and appeasement both cultures place on black women.
As wife to a member of the royal family, Meghan’s life is public. But she has been cast as a dangerously public figure: someone who threatens the stability of the royal family. In side-by-side comparisons of their media coverage, Meghan’s actions has been disparaged where Kate has often been praised. Clearly, Meghan remains a perceived “dangerous object,” for whom appeasement of her skeptics seems impossible.
Restoration: The Return to America
Most importantly, Olivia and Meghan’s journeys are poignantly similar: they start their lives in the Americas, go to England to start their new married life only to return home to reclaim what has been lost along the way.
Near the very end of The Woman of Colour, Olivia writes to her friend of her return home and plans to use her status to educate the “poor blacks” on the island. However, most of her exultations focus on Jamaica as the site of her psychological restoration. She writes, “My beloved friend, I am coming to you…I shall come back to the scenes of my infantine happiness – of my youthful tranquility…I shall forget the lapse of time which has occurred since I parted from [you], and shall again be happy!” (188).
Although, it blurs the lines between fiction and reality, what Olivia and Meghan reaffirm is that for women, particularly black women, the absence of public scrutiny and judgement is more important than marriage, wealth, and fame. A true happy ending strives for the possibility to live a full and private life among people who treat you not as an alien but as a human being.
Works Cited
Hall, Ellie. “Here are 20 Headlines Comparing Meghan Markle to Kate Middleton That May Show Why She and Prince Harry Are Cutting Off Royal Reporters.” Buzzfeed News, 13 January 2020, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/meghan-markle-kate-middleton-double-standards-royal. Accessed 13 January 2020.
Johnson, Ben. “Kings and Queens of England and Britain.” Historic UK, https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/KingsQueensofBritain/. Accessed 20 January 2020.
Viego, Antonio. Dead Subjects: Toward a Politics of Loss in Latino Studies. Duke UP, 2007.
Walk-Morris, Tatiana. “Five Things to Know About Queen Charlotte.” Smithsonian Magazine, 30 November 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews-arts-culture/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-queen-charlotte-180967373/. Accessed 20 January 2020.
The Woman of Colour: A Tale, edited by Lyndon Dominic, Broadview Press, 2007.
Poetics of Interiority 