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 version of Black women's culture of dissemblance: a deliberate cultivation of privacy and dis-avowal 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.

Automated summary

The novel "The Woman of Colour" challenges traditional notions of virtue by refusing to give its biracial protagonist a husband. It argues that the dismissal of the marriage plot is a critique of sentimental white men who abuse their emotions and moral duty. The rejection of marriage by the protagonist is a form of the Black women's culture of dissemblance to protect themselves from sexual violation. The novel exposes the self-serving and hypocritical nature of sentimental paternalism and its negative impact on women's happiness and the authority of white abolitionism.