Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T10:07:08.193Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Addison, Joseph Cato. 1713. British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan. Ed. George, H. Nettleton. Boston: Houghton, 1939.477-503.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Nancy Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Atkinson, Colin B., and Atkinson, Jo “Maria Edgeworth, Belinda, and Women's Rights.” Eire Ireland 19 (1984): 94–118.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Robin The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848. London: Verso, 1988.Google Scholar
Brown, Laura Alexander Pope. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.Google Scholar
Brown, Laura “Amazons and Africans: Gender, Race, and Empire in Daniel Defoe.” Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period. Ed. Hendricks, Margo and Parker, Patricia. London: Routledge, 1994. 118–11.Google Scholar
Brown, Laura Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Brown, Laura “The Romance of Empire: Oroonoko and the Trade in Slaves.” The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature. Ed. Nussbaum, Felicity and Brown, Laura. New York: Methuen, 1987.41-61.Google Scholar
Burns, Alan History of the British West Indies. London: Allen, 1965.Google Scholar
Burt, Alfred LeRoy The British Empire and Commonwealth from the American Revolution. Boston: Heath, 1956.Google Scholar
Bush, Barbara Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650-1838. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Butler, Marilyn Introduction. Castle Rackrent and Ennui. By Edgeworth, Maria. New York: Penguin, 1992. 1–54.Google Scholar
Butler, Marilyn Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.Google Scholar
Campbell, Jill “Edgeworth's Belinda and the Culture of Advertisement.” Northeast Amer. Soc. for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conf. New York. October 1994.Google Scholar
Castle, Terry The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Nupur, and Strobel, Margaret Introduction. Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance. Ed. Chaudhuri and Strobel. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992. 1–15.Google Scholar
Chrisman, Laura Introduction to “Theorising Gender.” Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory. Ed. Williams, Patrick and Chrisman, . New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 193–19.Google Scholar
Colgan, Maurice “After Rackrent: Ascendancy Nationalism in Maria Edgeworth's Late Irish Novels.” Studies in Anglo-Irish Literature. Ed. Kosok, Heinz. Bonn: Bouvier, 1982. 37–42.Google Scholar
David, Deirdre Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.10.7591/9781501723674CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Day, Thomas “Advertisement.” The Dying Negro, A Poetical Epistle, Supposed to be Written by a Black, (Who lately shot himself on board a vessel in the river Thames;) to his intended Wife. London: W. Flexney, 1773.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Laura E Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender, and Empire-Building. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1992.Google Scholar
Dugaw, Dianne Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Dunne, Tom Maria Edgeworth and the Colonial Mind. Cork: University Coll., 1984.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, Maria Belinda. Ed. Kirkpatrick, Kathryn J. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, Maria Castle Rackrent. Castle Rackrent and Ennui. Ed. Butler, Marilyn. London: Penguin, 1992. 59–138.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, Maria “The Grateful Negro.” Popular Tales. London: J. Johnson, 1805. 193–240.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, Maria “Original Sketch of Belinda: ‘Abroad and at Home.‘” Edgeworth, Belinda 479–47.Google Scholar
Epstein, Julia “Either/Or—Neither/Both: Sexual Ambiguity and the Ideology of Gender.” Genders 7 (1990): 99–142.Google Scholar
Epstein, Julia The Iron Pen: Frances Burney and the Politics of Women's Writing. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989.Google Scholar
Felsenstein, Frank Anti-Semitic Stereotypes: A Paradigm of Otherness in English Popular Culture, 1660-1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Margaret W “Juggling the Categories of Race, Class, and Gender: Aphra Behn's Oroonoko.” Women, “Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period. Ed. Hendricks, Margo and Parker, Patricia. London: Routledge, 1994. 209–20.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Margaret W “News from the New World: Miscegenous Romance in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter.” The Production of English Renaissance Culture. Ed. Miller, David Lee, O'Dair, Sharon, and Weber, Harold. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994. 151–15.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Moira “Mansfield Park: Slavery, Colonialism, and Gender.” Oxford Literary Review 13 (1991): 118–11.10.3366/olr.1991.006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Moira Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834. New York: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Fieldhouse, D K. The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth Century. London: Weidenfeld, 1965.10.1007/978-1-349-06338-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flanagan, Thomas The Irish Novelists, 1800-1850. New York: Columbia UP, 1959.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Act of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670-1820. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.10.1525/9780520917149CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Ian The English Vice: Beating, Sex, and Shame in Victorian England and After. London: Duckworth, 1978.Google Scholar
Greenfield, Susan C “Fanny's Misreading and the Misreading of Fanny: Women, Literature, and Interiority in Mansfield Park.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 36 (1994): 306–30.Google Scholar
Greenfield, Susan C “Veiled Desire: Mother-Daughter Love and Sexual Imagery in Ann Radcliffe's The Italian.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 33 (1992): 73–89.Google Scholar
Grewal, Inderpal, and Kaplan, Caren Introduction. “Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity.” Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Ed. Grewal and Kaplan. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. 1–33.Google Scholar
Hall, Catherine White, Male, and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History. New York: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Hurst, Michael Maria Edgeworth and the Public Scene: Intellect, Fine Feeling, and Landlordism in the Age of Reform. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1969.Google Scholar
Johnson, Claudia L Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s: Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Kathryn J ‘“Gentlemen Have Horrors upon This Subject’: West Indian Suitors in Maria Edgeworth's Belinda.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 5 (1993): 331–33.10.1353/ecf.1993.0056CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirkpatrick, Kathryn J Introduction. Edgeworth, Belinda ix-xxxii.Google Scholar
Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth Their Fathers' Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Patriarchal Complicity. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Long, Edward The History of Jamaica. 1774. 3 vols. New York: Arno, 1972.Google Scholar
MacFadyen, Heather “Lady Delacour's Library: Maria Edgeworth's Belinda and Fashionable Reading.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 48 (1994): 423–42.Google Scholar
Mc Cormack, W. J Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish Literary History from 1789-1939. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.Google Scholar
McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H. The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Mellor, Anne K Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Moore, Lisa ‘“Something More Tender Still Than Friendship’: Romantic Friendship in Early-Nineteenth-Century England.” Feminist Studies 18 (1992): 499–520.10.2307/3178079CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosse, George L Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: Fertig, 1985.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Felicity A Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Parker, Andrew, Russo, Mary, Sommer, Doris, and Yaeger, Patricia Introduction. Nationalisms and Sexualities. Ed. Parker, Russo, Sommer, and Yaeger. London: Routledge, 1992. 1–18.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica. London: Cox, 1967.Google Scholar
Perera, Suvendrini Reaches of Empire: The English Novel from Edgeworth to Dickens. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Perry, Ruth “Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth-Century England.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2 (1991): 204–20.Google ScholarPubMed
Pollak, Ellen The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and Ideology in the Verse of Swift and Pope. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.Google Scholar
Poovey, Mary Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988.10.7208/chicago/9780226675312.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pope, Alexander The Rape of the Lock. Ed. Cunningham, J. S. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.Google Scholar
Richardson, Ronald Kent Moral Imperium: Afro-Caribheans and the Transformation of British Rule, 1776-1838. New York: Greenwood, 1987.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W “Jane Austen and Empire.” Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives. Ed. Eagleton, Terry. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1989. 150-64. Rpt. in Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993. 80–97.Google Scholar
Saint-Pierre, J. H. Bernardin de Paul and Virginia. 1796. Trans. Helen Maria Williams. Oxford: Woodstock, 1989.Google Scholar
Shaffer, Julie “Not Subordinate: Empowering Women in the Marriage-Plot—The Novels of Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen.” Criticism 34 (1992): 51–73.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Jenny Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.Google Scholar
Shyllon, Folarin Black People in Britain, 1555-1833. London: Oxford UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Sloan, Barry The Pioneers of Anglo-Irish Fiction, 1800-1850. Totowa: Barnes, 1986.Google Scholar
Spencer, Jane The Rise of the Woman Novelist, from Aphra Belm to Jane Austen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty “Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” “Race,” Writing, and Difference. Ed. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985. 262–26.Google Scholar
Stewart, Maaja A Domestic Realities and Imperial Fictions: Jane Austen's Novels in Eighteenth-Century Contexts. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1993.Google Scholar
Sypher, Wylie “The West-Indian as a ‘Character’ in the Eighteenth Century.” Studies in Philology 36 (1939): 503–50.Google Scholar
Trumbach, Randolph “London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture.” Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity. Ed. Epstein, Julia and Straub, Kristina. New York: Routledge, 1991. 112–11.Google Scholar
Ward, J. R British West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.Google Scholar
Williams, Patrick, and Chrisman, Laura Introduction. Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory. Ed. Williams and Chrisman. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 1–20.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, Nira, and Anthias, Floya Introduction. Woman-Nation-State. Ed. Yuval-Davis and Anthias. London: Macmillan, 1989. 1–15.10.1007/978-1-349-19865-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar