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“Abroad and at Home”: Sexual Ambiguity, Miscegenation, and Colonial Boundaries in Edgeworth's Belinda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Susan C. Greenfield
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Abstract

A number of critics suggest that in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literature femininity is portrayed as both similar to and different from colonial otherness in ways that destabilize the English woman's relation to empire. Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801) presents an opportunity to enrich this discussion because of the novel's synchronization of domestic and colonial authority, sustained attention to the sexual, national, and racial ambiguities posed by transvestites and Creoles, and chaotic variety of events that prohibits political fixity. Following the multiple allusions to “home” and “abroad” in Belinda, I argue that female homoeroticism and miscegenation become analogous dangers and reflect eighteenth-century concerns about the mutability of bodily and colonial boundaries.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 112 , Issue 2 , March 1997 , pp. 214 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1997

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