Susan C. Greenfield

"Abroad and at Home": Sexual Ambiguity, Miscegenation, and Colonial Boundaries in
Edgeworth's Belinda
Author(s): Susan C. Greenfield
Source: PMLA, Vol. 112, No. 2 (Mar., 1997), pp. 214-228
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463091
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SusanC. Greenfield
"Abroad
and
at
Home":
Sexual
Ambiguity, Miscegenation,
and
Colonial
Boundaries in
Edgeworth's Belinda
SUSAN C. GREENFIELD
teaches English literature at
FordhamUniversity.She is the
authorof articles in Eighteenth-
CenturyFiction (1991), The
Eighteenth Century: Theory
andInterpretation
(1992),Texas
Studiesin LiteratureandLanguage(1994),andEnglishLiteraryHistory(1995). This essay
is excerptedfroma book-length
study she is completingon lateeighteenth-century novels by
women.
214
W H^^ HEN MARIAEDGEWORTHentitledthe originalsketchof
VY
Belinda"Abroadandat Home,"she demarcatedan opposition
between the public, or artificial,female self and the private,or genuine,
one. The sketchrevolvesaroundLadyDelacour,a characterdistinguished
by "the contrastbetween [her] apparentprosperityand real misery...
At home she is wretched;abroadshe assumesthe airof exuberantgaiety"
("Sketch"480). Lady Delacour suffers from breast cancer, the consequenceof a woundshe receivedwhen duelingwith anotherwomanwhile
they were cross-dressed.Reflectingher sexual ambiguityandher general
resistance to domesticity, "the hideous spectacle" of the breast marks
Lady Delacour's"incurable"dissipationof "mind"before she dies (481).
The events teach Belinda, Lady Delacour's young friend and protegee,
that"happinessat Home"is preferableto "happinessAbroad"(483).
In the novel that emerged from the sketch in 1801, Lady Delacour's
breastpresentsthe same "hideousspectacle"(32), and her sexually ambiguous behavior is compounded by homoerotic insinuations. But instead of dying, she recoversafterrevealingthather indecorumis only an
act; her "naturalcharacter"is that of a "domestic woman" (105). This
cure allows Lady Delacour to reunite with her husband and child and
then to settle the domestic futures of colonial characters never introduced in the sketch. By the novel's end, Lady Delacourhas helped expel
Belinda's Creole suitor and rewardan English plantocrat,and the allusions to "home"and "abroad"broadento suggest the complex ways in
which late-eighteenth-centurynotions of sexual differencefurtheredEnglish colonial interestsby influencingthe definitionsof nationand race.
Typicallyrecognizedas the firstIrishnovelist,Edgeworthhas in recent
years become a visible subjectof feminist and colonial studies.'But few
SusanC. Greenfield
critics have noticed that although Belinda, Edgeworth's first "domestic" novel, takes place in England, it centrallyconcernsthe problemof the West
Indies. In the introductionto the recentOxfordUniversity Press edition of the novel, KathrynKirkpatrick calls attention to the West Indian characters.
Her approachis characteristicof emerging efforts
to integrate late-eighteenth-centurynovelists into
the discussion of women writers' relation to colonialism that sprang from essays by Laura Brown
("Romance")and MargaretFerguson ("Juggling")
on Oroonoko,EdwardSaid's analysis of Mansfield
Park,and GayatriSpivak'scritiqueof Jane Eyre.2
A number of critics suggest that in eighteenthand nineteenth-centuryEnglish literaturefemininity is portrayed as both similar to and different
from colonial othernessin ways thatdestabilizethe
English woman's relation to empire. When Jenny
SharpearguesthatJane Eyre's subjectivity"is constituted through a complex system of tropes ....
which cannot be reducedto the simple binarismof
colonizer and colonized"(29-30), she encapsulates
a developing theoretical consensus about the role
the English woman writer or character plays in
shaping-as well as defining resistance to-colonialism.3Presentingan obvious synchronizationof
"domesticwith internationalauthority"(Said 87), a
sustained attention to sexual, national, and racial
ambiguity, and a chaotic variety of charactersand
events that prohibits political fixity, Belinda can
serve both to enrichthe discussion of the vexed and
contradictoryrelations between gender and colonialism and to help define the particularityof lateeighteenth-centuryconcerns.
The novel breaksinto two overlappingnarratives
that evoke the two parts of the title of the original
sketch.In the firstnarrative(which occupies the initial two-thirdsof the novel), Lady Delacourreveals
her "natural"desire to supervise the home, recovers from her breast injury,and comes to represent
an essentialist notion of biologically determined
womanhood. If the domestic woman imagined in
eighteenth-century conduct books has "depths in
the self" beneath the materialsurface of her body,
as Nancy Armstrongargues (76), Belinda suggests
that such depths include what Judith Butler calls
"aninteriorand organizinggendercore" (136).
215
In the othernarrative(which begins in the second
third of the novel), the reformed Lady Delacour
helps to distinguishhome from abroadby rejecting
Belinda'sCreole suitor.The Creoleblursthe boundaries of nation and race much as the breast injury
blursgenderdifference,but Lady Delacourreduces
this confusion by positioninghim on the other side
of the line that defines England. Yet because she
supports the plantocratic class in Jamaica, which
profitsfromthe commodificationof Englishwomen
and African slaves, Lady Delacour collapses some
of the nationaland racialdistinctionsshe otherwise
promotes.In the end, the objectificationof women
she sanctions returns value to their material surface, undercuttingher earlieridealization of an inherentfemininity.
In additionto suggestingthe complexityof defining the relationbetweennationaland sexual identity
at the end of the eighteenthcentury,these tensions
may point to Edgeworth'sown ambivalenceand to
the ambiguityof her family's political alignments.
In 1782, when Edgeworthwas fourteen,her father,
RichardLovell Edgeworth,moved the family from
Englandto Irelandso thathe could presideover the
family's Irish estate. In Parliament,RichardEdgeworthwas considereda Protestantdefenderof Catholic interests, but as a landlord he was in enough
danger during the peasant uprising in 1798 to flee
with his family to a Protestantstronghold,where he
was nearlylynchedby a Protestantmob (M. Butler,
Edgeworth 137-38).4 Two years later,offended by
the briberyused to pass the Act of Union,joining the
Irish and English Parliaments,RichardEdgeworth
voted againstthe measureeven thoughhe supported
it (181-83; M. Butler,Introduction35). Just as it is
difficultto fix RichardEdgeworth'spoliticalbehavior,criticshavedebatedhis daughter'sbeliefs. While
some emphasize the "Colonial Office mentality"
Edgeworthdevelopedin Ireland(Hurst86-87), others, includingher biographer,MarilynButler,argue
that her conservativesympathieswere balancedby
"progressive, at times even radical,"critiques of
Anglo-Irishlandowners(M. Butler,Edgeworth125;
see also M. Butler,Introduction,and Dunne).
Ireland'slegislative absorptioninto the English
Parliamentfollowed in the wake of the American
Revolution, the first great splintering of the empire. The formationof the United States produced
216
and ColonialBoundariesin Belinda
Sexual4Ambiguity,
Miscegenation,
enormous anxiety about the fate of the Caribbean
remainderof the "Americanempire,"anxiety that
was compoundedby the long war with Franceand
by slave agitationthatthe FrenchRevolutionroused
(especially in San Domingo). Jamaica, a crucial
source of the sugarthatfueled the Britisheconomy,
had begun to decline in prosperity by the end of
the eighteenth century in partbecause of business
interruptionsduringthe AmericanRevolution,devastatinghurricanesin the 1780s, andEngland'sraising of sugarimporttaxes to supportthe waragainst
France(Patterson27).5In addition,both the plantocracy and the slave populationin Jamaicawere notoriously rebellious. The plantocratssupportedthe
AmericanRevolution,resentedthe British government's demand that they help fund their own defense, and declaredthe sovereignrightto determine
theirlaws (Bums 511, 517-18, 538, 551-52, 558-59,
600), while the slaves instigated conspiracies, revolts, and near revolts at least ten times between
1776 and 1815(Bums 511, 599; Burt 141;Patterson
271-73). Withthe abolitionof slave tradingin 1807
andthe growthof competitivesugarmarketsin Brazil, the FrenchWest Indies, Cuba, and the East Indies (Patterson28), the value of the "first"empire,
in the West Indies, would decline as the importance
of the "second"one, in the Far East, began to rise
(Burt3-169; Fieldhouse55-83; Patterson15-51).
Published during this period of apprehension
about the West Indies, Belinda offers new perspectives on the nineteenth-centuryliteraryimage of the
domestic woman, whose moral influence over the
nativesin Indiadisguisescolonizationas civilization
(David, esp. 111-17; Poovey 194-97). Lady Delacour is interestednot in "civilizing"the West Indians but in defining the boundariesthat distinguish
them fromthe English.Herpreoccupationwith such
distinctions may reflect the concerns West Indian
colonialismgenerated,as Britishsettlementcomplicated efforts to separateEnglish citizens from English settlersandtheirCreoledescendantsandas the
West Indies became potentialeconomic and political liabilities at the end of the eighteenthcentury.
The novel also shows how ideas about sexual
normalcy underwrote constructions of national
identityand imperialambition.Lady Delacour,who
receives a breastinjurywhile engaging in ambiguous relationswith anotherwoman, turnsto colonial
concernsonly afterher homoeroticinclinationsare
dampened.Althoughno universalterm like lesbian
existed in the early modern period, a number of
scholarshave arguedthattherewas a culturalinterest in and anxiety about female homoerotic desire
(Greenfield,"Desire";Johnson,esp. 47-69; Moore;
Nussbaum 135-62) and that words such as amazon, sapphist, and tommy may have been used to
describe female homosexuals (Castle 9-10; Trumbach 112-13). Studies of the connections among
nation,sexuality,and race have paid some attention
to male homoeroticism but little to female homoeroticism in eighteenth-centuryEngland.6Though
unablealone to fill such a gap, a carefulanalysis of
Belinda suggests that female homoeroticism and
miscegenation may have been seen as analogous
dangersand that the need to demarcatethe boundaries of genderdifferenceon which heterosexuality
depends was linked to a need to imagine national
boundariesimperviousto racialmixing.7
Home: Sexual Ambiguity and the
Domestic Woman
Edgeworth's Belinda has the same name as the
mock heroine of Pope's The Rape of the Lock,8but
it is the fashionable and superficialLady Delacour
who actually resembles the poem's protagonist.
Preoccupiedwith materialappearancesand dependent on an elaboratedressingritual,Lady Delacour
describes her investmentin "the cosmetic powers"
that Pope's Belinda consumes (34; Pope 1.124).
Like Pope's heroine, Lady Delacour has avoided
the kind of humanintimacythat is supposedto accompanydomestic duty.Pope's Belinda may "die a
maid"(5.28), and the "hideous spectacle"of Lady
Delacour'sbreastcan be readas her punishmentfor
neglecting her family. When Lady Delacour's first
child is born dead, her aristocratic in-laws blame
her refusal to be confined during pregnancy.The
second child dies from her inadequatenursing(42),
and she sends the third to a wet nurse and then
straight to boarding school. Lady Delacour hates
herin-laws,who view heras a "monster"of a mother
(102), and her husband,a gamblerand an alcoholic,
who tries to exercise his spousalrightto rule her.
Disgusted with the domestic world, she subsequently decides to lead a sexually ambiguous life
SusanC. Greenfield
"abroad"(out and about), rejecting her family for
the aptly namedHarrietFreke, a womanknown for
compulsive cross-dressing.9As Lisa Moore contends, Harriet's"male-parodicbehavior"marks"the
possibility of a female [homo]eroticagency"(505).
Lady Delacour says that she turned to Harriet to
fill the "'aching void' in my heart"and calls her a
"bosom friend"(43), evoking that part of her own
body she withholdsfromherhusbandandchildren.10
It is in keeping with the challenges Harrietposes to
heterosexual domesticity that she persuadesLady
Delacourto dress as a man and engage in the pistol
duel thatproducesthe breastinjury.
AlthoughHarrietbecomes an enemy shortlyafter
the novelbegins,LadyDelacour,like Pope'sBelinda,
continues to reserve her bosom for women only,
forbidding her husbandor any male doctor to see
her undressed.Convincedthatthe breastis diseased
with cancer, she first depends for care on her masculine and sadomasochistic servantMarriott(note
the name's assonance with Harriet),who "rulesme
with a rod of iron"(20).11Later,Lady Delacouradmits Belinda to her boudoir to nurse the injured
breast as well. When Lady Delacour calls herself
an Amazon (34, 194), she thus may refer as much
to her homoeroticinclinationsas to the duelingthat
createdher imaginedneed for a mastectomy.12
According to JudithButler, the belief in sexual
differenceis based in parton an idea that genderis
intrinsic-that sex exists as part of the "'inner
world"' of the "coherentsubject,"marking"theinternal fixity of the self" (134). Transvestism is
threateningbecause it "subvertsthe distinctionbetween innerand outerpsychic space and... mocks
... the notion"that"truegenderidentity"is an "interioressence" (136-37; see also Epstein, "Either/
Or" 100). Homosexuality similarly challenges the
intractability of the binary distinctions on which
heterosexualitydepends.
I would like to consider Butler's discussion of
"the illusion of an interior and organizing gender
core" (136) in tandem with Nancy Armstrong's
suggestionthatthe domestic womanpopularizedin
eighteenth-centuryconduct books appearsto have
"depthsfar more valuable than her surface" (76).
For Armstrong,the image of the domestic woman
functions as a critique of the materialself-display
associated with the aristocracy and characterizes
217
ThecelebratedtransvestiteandfemalewarriorHannah
Snell.Fromthe Dutchtranslation
(1750)of herbiograThe
Female
Soldier.
phy
Courtesyof the Amsterdam
UniversityLibrary.
the early moder creationof an interiorizedself (in
which Butler is interested). I would add that "by
implying that the essence of the woman [lies] inside or underneathher surface,the inventionof the
depths in the self" (76) is an invention of internal
genderdifferenceas well.
In Belinda, Lady Delacour's interioressence is
inaccessiblebothbecauseshe is sexuallyambiguous
and because she is preoccupied with the material
appearancesagainst which the eighteenth-century
domestic woman was defined. This preoccupation involves Lady Delacour in a ritualized selfobjectification that masks her "naturalcharacter"
218
and ColonialBoundaries
in Belinda
Sexual/Ambiguit,Miscegenation,
(105). Like Belinda in The Rape of the Lock, Lady
Delacour requiresthat her face be "completely repaired"every morning(Belinda 34; cf. Pope 1.141).
Pope's protagonistartfully"[n]ourish[es]"her lock
(2.20) and teasingly withholdsit from the man who
would cut it, while Lady Delacour cosmetically
hides the signs of her injury to prevent male surgeons from cuttingoff her breast.'3
The novel blames Lady Delacourfor her superficiality,but it also establishesthe groundsfor linking
her obsession with appearancesto women's problematic role in an increasinglycommercial society
where cosmetics were aggressively advertisedand
widely consumed along with a host of other fashionable items to which the novel refers, including
plants, pets, drugs, and razorblades (McKendrick,
Brewer, and Plumb 146-94, 316-27). When Lady
Delacourrecountsthather husbandmarriedher because "theheiress lozenge is a specific in some consumptions"(36), she suggests that she was reduced
to one of "the welter of proprietarybrand medicines"advertisedat the time (McKendrick,Brewer,
and Plumb 185-86). After the marriage,LordDelacour and his relatives presume the right to keep
her "prisoner"duringher pregnancy(42), as if she
were simply a breederof new heirs. It is in partbecause she resents this heterosexual objectification
that Lady Delacour takes "a prodigious fancy to
Mrs. Freke"(43). The injurythatresultsis arguably
caused as much by society's commodification of
women as by Lady Delacour'ssexual proclivities.
Once the novel plots the stages of Lady Delacour's physical cure, the gender confusion that the
injuryhad provokedis erased, and her essential female desire to serve her family is established. The
cure constructsher as a domesticwoman,whose internalfemininityprovesher fitnessto servethe interiorspace of the home. Ironically,though,the means
by which the cure occurs reinforces Lady Delacour's statusas a materialobject. Her motivationin
initially resisting a mastectomy is to avoid being
treatedas a possession by the surgeons,who would
performit only with "the knowledge, privity,consent, &c. &c. &c. of her husband"(179). But, after insisting that Lord Delacour "has the strongest
claim to be consulted," Belinda persuades her patroness to welcome him to her dressing room and
expose herself (179, 267). No sooner does he wit-
ness his wife's injurythanLordDelacour'slove revives "in full force"(269). Once his authorityis reestablished, there is no longer cause to preventthe
surgeons from operating. When they undress her,
however, the doctors discover that Lady Delacour
has no fatal disease afterall, just a festeringbruise,
exacerbatedby the drugs she takes (313-14). Thus
when Lady Delacour finally allows her body to
be circulated among men, the revelation that her
breast is normal beneath the surface injury, that
the organ is internallypure, rectifies the system of
sexual difference the wound had challenged and
proves that unfeminine behavior cannot change a
woman'sessence.
The emergence of the "real state"of the breast
beneath the wound establishes Lady Delacour's
abilityto overseehouseholdorder(314). By the time
MarriottannouncesthatLadyDelacouris cured,the
servanthas been replaced in the dressing room by
Belinda and has learned"never[to] be disrespectful
[to hermistress]again"(161). Meanwhile,LadyDelacour acknowledges her long-standing affection
for her daughter and husband and is preparedto
uncoverher "realcharacter"in a worldin which all
have found their proper places (292).'1 This includes HarrietFreke,who, on the nightbefore Lady
Delacour'scure, is caughtin a "mantrap"(311) that
mangles her leg so badly "she would nevermore be
able to appearto advantagein man's apparel."In a
symbolic substitution, Harriet's leg is "cut" moments before readers learn that the breast will not
have to be removed.Whereasthe "bruised"leg can
not heal (312), perhapsbecause HarrietFrekenever
had a biological right to wear pants, the breast
"bruise" is reparable since the breast stands for
woman's naturaldifference (314). This would help
explain why the breast remains whole while Harriet's leg (as well as the hairthat"locks"Pope's Belinda out of heterosexual circulation)must be cut.
But if Harriethas to be painfullymaimedto become
a woman, how essential can her femalenessbe?
Abroad: Miscegenation and Colonial Boundaries
In the secondnarrative,the need to defineandsecure
internalintegrityreemergeson a nationalscale with
the entranceof two WestIndiancharacterswho seek
sexual control over English women. Mr.Vincent,
SusanC. Greenfield
a Creole from Jamaica, comes to England to be
educatedand falls in love with Belinda, who is enamored of Clarence Hervey. Mr. Vincent's fate is
intertwinedwith thatof Mr.Hartley,a middle-class
Englishman who made a fortune in Jamaica and,
having narrowlysurviveda slave rebellion, has returnedhome to marryoff the daughterhe deserted.
As Mr.Vincent'sand Mr. Hartley'sstories develop,
the problems of homoeroticism and gender are
graduallyreplacedby questions about heterosexuality, nation,and race. Does the Creole bornabroad
have as much right to Belinda as does her countryman, Clarence Hervey? And should Mr. Hartley,
who abandonedhis family in Englandto become a
slave owner in Jamaica,be allowed to returnto bequeathhis daughter-tellingly named Virginia-to
the man of his choice? Publishedsoon afterthe Act
of Union, during a period when England was both
anxious about how to preserve the remains of the
American empire and concerned about the empire's economic instability, Belinda raises questions about how the boundaries between England
and the West Indiancolonies should be drawn.15
Ultimately, Lady Delacour helps resolve these
problemsby ensuringthat Belinda's and Virginia's
marriagesserve England'scolonial interests in Jamaica but protect against the development of a
Jamaicanpresence in England.By the novel's end,
the distinctionthat she drawsbetween Englishness
and othernessjustifies both the pursuitof colonial
advantageand the maintenanceof national difference. Ratified by gender boundaries that fix her
own identity, Lady Delacour becomes the center
around which the space of homeland can be defined. Having abandoned her life abroad in one
sense, she now helps create a space abroadin another.She thus supportswhat she calls the "national
economy" (39). If Lady Delacour does not assume
the role of "civilizing" the natives associated with
domestic women in nineteenth-centuryliterature,
she does reflect the eighteenth-century need for
English mothers to "populate the empire" (Nussbaum 29).16After reunitingwith her daughter,Lady
Delacour arrangesfor Belinda and Virginia to reproduceto imperialadvantage.
At the same time, however,the threatof rebellion
and confusion Lady Delacour once representedis
displaced onto colonial problems-the danger of
219
slave revolts in Jamaica and the blurringof racial
and nationalboundariesat home. The commodification of women, which provokedLady Delacour's
initial subversion,also remainsa centralconcernin
this portion of the novel, as English women are
linked with African slaves.17Although the trope of
the English woman as slave capitalizes on an emotionally chargedhistory while erasing the specific
cruelty of slavery,the analogy simultaneouslydisruptsthe national and racial distinctions on which
justificationsof slaverydepend.
As a Creole from Jamaicawith the name of anotherrebelliousEnglishcolony,18Mr.Vincentbears
a double mark of subversiveness. His Creoleness
disruptsdistinctionsof nationalityandrace muchas
Lady Delacour's breast injury and Harriet'stransvestism confuse sexual difference.Indeed,Mr.Vincent might be said to replace Harriet Freke, for
anxieties abouthis identityand powerbecome centralaftershe exits the text. The continualblurringof
boundariesthroughoutthe novel suggests that the
divisionsfundamentalto the narrative(female/male,
inside self/outside self, English/foreign,white/black,
home/abroad)are fictions at risk of disintegration.
In the eighteenth century, the term Creole was
ambiguous, referringto persons born in the colonies whose parentswere of Europeanor of African
descent, including island-bornslaves (Richardson
57). Even a Creole who was a wealthy landowner
of pure European roots presented "a historically
unique political"challenge to the process of imagining a national homeland, according to Benedict
Anderson, for the Creoles "constitutedsimultaneously a colonial community and [a Europeanized]
upper class" (58). Rich West Indian Creoles (like
Mr.Vincent)who came to Englandandpushed"upwardinto the ranksof the landedgentry"were seen
as threats to English social order (Sypher 504).
Boundaries were erected, Anderson suggests, by
"theconvenient,vulgardeductionthatcreoles, born
in a savage hemisphere, were by nature different
from, .... inferior to," and implicitly racially other
than"themetropolitans"(60). EdwardLong's influential History of Jamaica (1774) identifies Creoles
as an alternativespecies, "descendedfrom British
ancestors" but "stamped with ... characteristic de-
viations"(262), some of which, accordingto other
authors,were the effect of their "contaminationof
220
and ColonialBoundaries
in Belinda
Miscegenation,
SexualAmbiguity,
[i.e., by] the negroes"(qtd.in Sypher515). Mr.Vincent's arrivingfor an English educationguarantees
nothing about his racial purity, for, as Long complains, "many Mulatto, Quateron, and other illegitimate children [are] sent over to England for
education... where ... they pass underthe general
name of West-Indians" (274). Accordingly, Mr.
Percival asks Mr.Vincent if he plans to "turnsavage," and Lady Delacour likens him to "Caliban"
(234, 339).19
To complicate matters,Mr. Vincent has "a black
servant,"Juba,who has journeyed with him to England because "thepoor fellow begged so earnestly
to go with young massa" (219).20Perhaps named
after the African prince in Joseph Addison's popular play Cato, Jubais a selfless, willing, and happy
assistant,describedby Lady Anne Percival as "the
most grateful, affectionate creature I ever saw"
(239).21But according to EdwardLong, Juba was
also a popularAfricannamefor a woman(427), and
it is in keeping with the troubles cross-gendering
raises earlier in the novel that the servantis easily
influenced by HarrietFreke. After she convinces
him that he is hauntedby an obeah woman, Juba,
like Lady Delacour before, becomes ill and recovers only with Belinda's help (221-22).22The reference to the religious practice of obeah, a widely
feared source of slave resistance,is a reminderthat
slaves throughoutthe West Indies, and especially
in Jamaica,are engaging in deadly rebellions, like
the one alluded to in the novel.23Indeed, if Juba's
eagernessto follow Mr.Vincentprovesthe reciprocal value of the master-slaverelationship,the place
Juba insists on going to, England, is one where in
theory,if not in fact, he can be legally free.24
AlthoughJubafunctionsin partas a foil to make
his masterappearmore Europeanand civilized, the
novel draws increasingattentionto the kinship between Mr. Vincent and "negroes."Mr.Vincent acquired his fatal addiction to gambling in the West
Indies when "day afterday"he played "witheagerness, at games of chance, with his negroes" (422).
Indeed,he identifieshimself with Africanmen when
he reads Belinda The Dying Negro (347), the enormouslypopularantislaverypoem writtenby Thomas
Day, RichardEdgeworth'sgood friend. The poem
describes how "a Black, who a few days before,
ran away from his master ... with intent to marry
... a white woman, being taken, and sent on board
the Captain'sship, in the Thames;took an opportunity of shooting himself throughthe head"(Day).
Mr.Vincent apparentlysympathizeswith the African speaker in the poem, who, like him, discovers
the supposedsuperiorityof Europeanfemalebeauty.
LaterMr.Vincent too attemptsto shoot himself in
the head,when he realizes thathis relationshipwith
Belinda is doomed (431).25
To the extent that Mr. Vincent is identified with
the dying Negro, his desire to marryBelinda presents the threat of miscegenation, which repeats
some of the problems raised by homoeroticism
in the first portion of the novel.26Both are sexual
dangers that confuse binary categories of difference, and both threatenmaternity:homoeroticism
becauseit is not reproductiveandmiscegenationbecause when it is reproductive the maternal body
becomes the site of a racial and national blending that rendersthe differences between home and
abroad indistinct. Long's complaint is representative of late-eighteenth-century concerns about
the effect relations between black men and white
women would have on the national population:
"Englishblood will become so contaminatedwith
this mixture ... till the whole nation resembles the
Portuguese and Moriscos in complexion of skin
and baseness of mind. This is a venomousand dangerous ulcer, that threatens to disperse its malignancy far and wide, until every family catches
infection from it" (Shyllon 104-05).27 From this
perspective,the threatof miscegenationin Belinda
complementsLady Delacour'sbreastdisease.
Tellingly,Belinda ultimatelyrejects Mr.Vincent
when she discovers that he has been borrowing
money from a Jew to supporthis enduring"negro"
habit of gambling. Produced at a time when "to
judge from their public complaints most [WestIndians] were well on the way to bankruptcy"(Ward
45), the representation of Mr. Vincent's gaming
may reflect fears about the Jamaicandrain on the
English economy.28
For Lady Delacour,Mr. Vincent's money marks
a nationaldifferencethat makes him undesirableas
a husband for Belinda. Lady Delacour tells the
heroine that Clarence Hervey, the other suitor,
"mightdo as well ... considering, that an English
member of parliamentis, in the eyes of the world
SusanC. Greenfield
221
222
and ColonialBoundaries
in Belinda
SexualAmbiguiy,Miscegenation,
... a betterconnexion, thanthe son of a West India
planter" (358). She reinforces the insinuations
about Mr. Vincent's unfamiliar race when she reminds Belinda that it was a fight between the Jew
and (the homonymic) Juba that revealed the Creole's gamblinglosses: "withoutthatwrestlingmatch
of theirs, the truthmight never have been dragged
to light, and Mr. Vincent would have been this day
your lord and master"(451). Drawing on an image
of interiorexposure reminiscent of the unmasking
of her own feminine difference, she implies that
Mr. Vincent is too much like Juba and the Jew to
possess the heroine.29The domestic role she assumes in securing Belinda's sexual borders (and
internal purity) represents a form of national and
racialborderpatrolas well.
Lady Delacour's greatergoal is to have Belinda
marry Clarence Hervey, the "English member of
parliament,"even though he is pledged to Virginia,
the abandoneddaughterof the rich Jamaicanplantocrat Mr. Hartley.In orchestratingClarence's release from Virginia, Lady Delacour supports an
exchange of the women at home that furthersEnglish colonial interestsin Jamaica.
Just as the lost American colony Virginia had
ranked with Jamaica as one of the most valuable
propertiesof the Americanempire before the Revolution (Fieldhouse 58), in the novel a variety of
English men seek possession of Mr. Hartley's
daughter. The worst offender is Clarence, who
changes the orphan'sname to Virginia,aftera character in J. H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et
Virginie, a novel set in Mauritius (then a French
colony), and decides to follow Rousseau's Emile
by educatingher in seclusion to be his futurewife.
Evoking Saint-Pierre's comparisons between his
heroineand a slave woman,ClarencetreatsVirginia
as property.30Not only does he sport a lock of her
hair (139) like the Baron in Pope's poem, but Virginia is also constantly worried that she does not
feel sufficientgratitudetowardhim (382, 383, 386,
388, 389, 399,400,466). Gratitudemay be expected
of the ideal slave, but even Clarence knows that it
is inappropriatefor a potential wife, and he urges
her "not [to] considerme ... your master"(399).
Eventually Clarence decides to dispose of the
girl. On learning that her fatherhas returnedhome
from Jamaicato find the daughterhe deserted,Clar-
ence searchesfor him, hopingthatVirginia'swealth
will attracta host of admirers.Positioning the girl
to become an "heiresslozenge" like Lady Delacour
earlier,Clarencenow wants"thefashionableworld
in all its glory . . . [to] be before" Virginia (395),
even though he had previously insisted on secluding her from materialcorruption.He inserts"proper
advertisements in all the papers" (393) and then
publicly exhibitsher portrait,a processof commodificationthat succeeds in reunitingparentand child
when a jeweler recognizes the likeness betweenthe
portraitand a miniaturethe fatherhad given him to
set. The details about advertisingevoke a moment
at the beginningof the novel when Clarencehearsa
gentlemandescribeBelinda as havingbeen brought
to marketby her auntand been "as well advertised,
as Packwood's razor strops"(25). Alluding to the
"strops" used to beat West Indian slaves, Packwood's famous advertisementssometimes featured
black charactersas promoters.31
When Clarence'scampaignsucceeds in locating
Virginia's father, Mr. Hartley is so overwhelmed
with"gratitudefor the kindness,which Clarencehad
shown to her,he protestedthathe shouldlook upon
her as a monster,if she did not love him"(407). Mr.
Hartley's investment in a system of exchange and
entitlementbased on gratitudemay springfrom his
sentimentalizationof his desert as slave owner,but
the fact that he barely survived "a rebellion of the
negroeson [his] plantation"indicatesthathis slaves
hardlyfelt thankfultowardhim (476).32
Nevertheless, Lady Delacour arranges for Mr.
Hartley to exchange his daughterto greatest colonial advantage.Discovering that Virginia secretly
loves Captain Sunderland, the man who rescued
her father during the slave revolt, Lady Delacour
bringsthe couple together.The unionfrees Clarence
Herveyto marryBelinda and securesMr.Vincent's
permanentremoval, Lady Delacour's overt goals.
But, more ominously, it also ensures that Virginia
will serve as "payment"of her "father's debt of
gratitude"to Sunderland(476), as Lady Delacour
cheerfullyexplains.
Lady Delacour first meets Captain Sunderland
when he rescues Jubain a scene reminiscentof the
one in which Harriet cuts her leg. Juba's head is
"terriblycut"and his ankle sprainedin a battlewith
a baronetand his dog (437), and Sunderlandbrings
SusanC. Greenfield
In this illustrationfrom an antislaverypublication(c. 1830), a West Indianslave epitomizesthe differencebetween home and abroad.The inscriptionis adaptedfrom William Cowper's The Task(1785). Photo: Mary
Evans PictureLibrary.
223
224
and ColonialBoundaries
in Belinda
Miscegenation,
SexualAmbiguity,
"the disabled negro" to the Delacour home to be
treatedwith a "quack"balsam (474) discoveredby
a slave namedQuassi (75). Sunderland'sinterestin
the "bleedingnegro"may suggest his sympathyfor
slaves (438). But the name Quassi or Quashee(historically associated with the "stereotypeof the lying, lazy, thieving male slave" [Bush 53]) signals
slave subversion,which Sunderlandhad contested
when he rescuedMr.Hartley.33
Lady Delacour manipulatesthe coincidences to
ensure that, like the cut lock that forces Pope's Belinda into the heterosexualeconomy, the "cut"Negro will remain available for circulation. For after
ascertainingthatJuba'ssavioris also Virginia'shero
andbringingthe two lovers together,she guarantees
that Sunderlandwill inherit some of the Negroes
he suppressed on behalf of Virginia's father. The
marriage affirms that the English male rights to
own a virgin body and to possess a colonized land
worked by slaves are parts of the same privilege.
Indeed,if Virginiacan be read as the sunderedland
of a former colony, Sunderland, who has already
proved his ability to contain rebellion in a remaining colony, enacts a myth of reclamation.
Lady Delacourcompletes this pictureof national
success by inductingBelindainto the colonial economy. Momentsbefore announcingClarence's"right
to Belinda's hand" (478), she suggests that their
marriagebe delayed so thatthe herocan accompany
CaptainSunderlandon another"cruise"(477), most
likely to Jamaica.There Clarence will presumably
follow his predecessorin "makinga fortune ... to
render the object of his affections independent"
(475). This likelihood raises multiple ironies, one
being thatthe statusof woman as both "object"and
consumer(with a fortuneto dispose of) reproduces
the terms of commodificationthat once oppressed
Lady Delacour. Anotheris that by this point in the
novel, the process of commodification has been
linkedto the slave trade,which the domesticwoman
endorses but which her own exchange resembles.
As this resemblancegrows, the nationaland racial
differences Lady Delacour constructsin condemning Mr. Vincent and supporting Captain Sunderland's slave inheritancebecome meaningless.
Her vision of heterosexual stability in the final
pages seems equally precarious. In a theatrical
scene that she directs, Lady Delacour petitions the
remainingcharactersto
let meplaceyouall in properattitudes
forstageeffect.
... CaptainSunderland-kneeling withVirginia,if you
please,sir,at herfather'sfeet.Youin theactof giving
them your blessing, Mr. Hartley.... Clarence, you
havea rightto Belinda'shand,andmaykissit too.Nay,
missPortman,it is theruleof the stage ... My Lord
Delacour... shouldbe embracing
me,to showthatwe
arereconciled.... Helena,mylove,do notlet go your
father'shand.There!quiteprettyandnatural! (478)
Arrangingthe three virgins (including Helena, her
daughter)to greatestpatriarchaleffect, Lady Delacour appearsto have become a good motherat last.
She preparesthe girls to reproduceaccordingto an
idea of nationalpurityshe has helped definein support of a "national economy" that devalues them
(39). And yet the final line of the passage highlights the artificiality of the moment, which must
be staged to seem "natural."Concernedonly with
appearances,Lady Delacourmockingly proclaims,
"What signifies being happy, unless we appear
so?" (478). EarlierLady Delacour was cured when
her heterosexualitywas interiorized,but now heterosexualitybecomes a surfaceimage, and the internal
integrityof the final pose she directs is challenged.
If Belinda is forced to let Clarencekiss her by "the
rule of the stage," what are her real desires and
how legitimateare the colonialist maneuversbased
on her compliance? JudithButler suggests that in
situationsin which the "performative"
basis of sexual difference and desire is revealed, the notion of
"a true genderidentity"is exposed as a "regulatory
fiction"(141). When Lady Delacourclaims to "finish the novel" (477), characterand authormerge in
a play on performanceimplying that perhapsneitherof them truststhe final "pretty"picture.
"Ourtale contains a moral, and, no doubt,/You
all have wit enough to find it out,"Lady Delacour
declaresat the end (478). If readersare supposedto
conclude that "happinessat Home"is preferableto
that"Abroad,"
as Edgeworthsuggests in the original
sketch,the problemsevokedby the need to establish
and maintainthis division may invite a question in
return:"Whatsignifiesbeing happy"in eitherplace?
SusanC. Greenfield
Notes
I would like to thank the many colleagues who commented on
earlierdraftsof this essay or offered bibliographicinformation:
Allyson Booth, Robin Bower, FrankBoyle, DeirdreDavid, Luis
Gamez, JudithGreenfield, Kim Hall, KathrynHeleniak, Claudia L. Johnson, Fawzia Mustafa, Felicity Nussbaum, Philip
Sicker, RandolphTrumbach,and MatthewWeissman.I am especially indebtedto ChristopherGoGwilt and Eve Keller.
'Atkinson and Atkinson; Gallagher 257-327; KowaleskiWallace;Mellor 40-46, 78-80; Moore; and Perry231-32 offer
feminist readingsof Edgeworth'swork. Colgan; Dunne; Flanagan 53-106; Hurst;Mc Cormack97-168; and Sloan 6-7, 22-35,
73 relate it to colonialism. Butler, Introduction; Gallagher;
Kowaleski-Wallace; and Mellor combine feminist theory and
colonial analysis of Ireland.
2Nussbaum'sTorridZones is an importantrecent example of
these efforts. For other discussions of the importance of the
West Indiancharactersin Belinda, see Moore; Perera.
3Brown ("Romance") and MargaretFerguson ("Juggling")
point out this tension in Oroonoko.Similartheoreticalformulations can be found in Brown, Ends, esp. 29-35, 199-200;
Chaudhuriand Strobel;David, esp. 5, 77-117; Donaldson 1-31;
Grewal and Kaplan 17-28; Hall 207; and Nussbaum, esp. 1-7.
For specific readings of the colonial complications in Austen,
see Stewart;MoiraFerguson,"MansfieldPark."
4The peasantuprising,which began in May, was initiallyconfined to Wexford,but in August a small groupof Frenchinvaders
incited the peasantsin CountyLongford,where the Edgeworths
lived. The invasion and rebellion were quickly suppressed,but
RichardEdgeworthwas subsequentlyaccused of being a French
spy (M. Butler,Edgeworth137-38).
5England'swar against France began in 1793 and continued
with little intermissionto 1815.
6For general discussions of the connections among nation,
sexuality, and race, see Yuval-Davisand Anthias;Williams and
Chrisman17; Chrisman193. For discussions of homosexuality,
see Parker,Russo, Sommer,and Yaeger6-7; Mosse. Nussbaum
examines the colonial implications of female homoeroticism
(135-62).
7The term miscegenation was not current in the eighteenth
century, but the concept had been established. See Margaret
Ferguson,"News" 166-67.
8Throughout,my reading of Pope's poem is influenced by
Brown, Pope, esp. 13-14, and "Amazons" 126, and by Pollak
77-107.
9Atkinsonand Atkinson point to the OED to argue thatfreak
does not refer to monstrosity or abnormality until the midnineteenthcentury(100). The many referencesto monstersand
deformityin Belinda, however,suggest that the text may be one
of the firstto allude tofreak in the modem sense.
l?Lady Delacour flirts with men, including the novel's hero,
Clarence Hervey, but she is more emotionally involved with
women. Clarencehimself is describedas "allthings to all menand to all women"(14), and in one scene he cross-dresses(75).
225
"In addition to the genital connotations of rod, the term
was commonly associated with sexual flagellationby the mideighteenthcentury(Gibson 16).
'2Castlediscusses the homoeroticimplicationsof amazon(9).
Lady Delacour describes herself as an Amazon after quoting
The Rape of the Lock (34), in which the Queen of the Amazons
urges Belinda to rejectmen. See Dugaw on the popularityof the
female-warriormotif from the seventeenthto nineteenthcentury.
The image of the warriorwomanis also associatedwith colonialism; travelaccountsrecurrentlydescribethe discovery of a race
of Amazons (Brown, "Amazons"130). Moving from a subversive role in the first narrativeto a hegemonic one in the second,
Lady Delacour exemplifies what Brown characterizes as the
Amazon'scapacityto figureboth nativeresistanceand imperialist ideology (131-32).
'3Her drug abuse and theatrical attitudes similarly obscure
the realityof her sufferingsby maskingher pain and depression.
Eleven years after the first edition of Belinda, Frances Burey
gave a horrifyingaccountof the invasive male doctorswho performed her mastectomy and of the pain she endured. See Epstein, Pen 53-83.
'4Kowaleski-Wallaceoffers a good interpretationof the domestic significanceof Lady Delacour'scure (110-11, 125-29).
'5Hall describes England'smid-nineteenth-centurytendency
to root an English identity in assumptions about Jamaicandifference (208, 209).
'6See Perry206-07 on motherhood.
'7This connectionbetween English women and slaves anticipates the one Moira Fergusonnotes in MansfieldPark ("Mansfield Park"). I make a similar argumentabout Mansfield Park
in "Fanny's Misreading" 318-19. For a general approach to
the joint commodification of English women and slaves, see
Brown, Ends 20-21.
'8Acquired from the French in 1763 and declared a separate
colony the year thatAmericabegan its revolution,Saint Vincent
was subject to bouts of unrest, the most serious of which occurred when the French inspired the Caribs to revolt in 1795
(Bums 505-06, 570-72; Ward38, 91).
19Perera(31) and Kirkpatrick (Edgeworth, Belinda 495n;
"'Gentlemen'" 334, 344-45) also discuss the problem of Mr.
Vincent'srace.
20Thedepiction of Juba might be read in relation to that of
Caesar,the slave hero featuredin "TheGratefulNegro"(1804),
a story EdgeworthpublishedshortlyafterBelinda that contrasts
two Jamaican slave owners. The brutalMr. Jefferies is distinguished from the good Mr. Edwards,who disapprovesof slavery but believes "thatthe sudden emancipation of the negroes
would ... increase ... their miseries." Mr. Edwards adopts a
benevolent plan for his slaves' "amelioration"(195) consistent
with the one Edgeworth'sfatherappliedto his Irishtenants(see
M. Butler,Edgeworth85-87, and Hurst30-31 on Edgeworthstown). Caesar is so grateful to Mr. Edwardsthat he ultimately
risks his life to save the planterfrom a slave revolt. "TheGrateful Negro"was producedduringa periodwhen abolitionistlegislationwas defeatedin Englandand therewas a lull in antislavery
activities (Blackburn 150; Moira Ferguson, Subject 249-50).
Even William Wilberforce,the leading advocate of abolition in
226
and ColonialBoundariesin Belinda
Sexual/Ambiguity,
Miscegenation,
Parliament,abandonedthe annual abolition bill between 1799
and 1804 (Blackburn150). The narrativecriticizes both slavery
and sudden abolition and suggests that benevolent paternalism
reapsits own rewards.
21InCato, Jubais an apologist for Roman imperialismand is
rewardedwith the love of Cato's daughter.In the originaledition
of Belinda,Jubamarriesa white woman(discussedbelow,in n26).
22In"curing"Jubaof his belief in obeah,Belindacould be said
to help "civilize"the colonial other,the role typically associated
with the nineteenth-centurydomestic woman.
23Forgood discussions of obeah, see Bush 74-77 and Patterson 265. Obeahis associatedwith slave resistancein "TheGrateful Negro."
24The 1772 Mansfield Decision, which some believed outlawed the owning of slaves in England,was notoriouslyconfusing and ineffective.
25Perera(30-32) and Campbell discuss the importance of
this poem.
26Edgeworthwas mindfulof miscegenation.She allowedJuba
to marrya white countrygirl in the firsteditionof Belinda (1801)
but omitted this development when she revised the text for inclusion in Anna Barbauld'sBritish Novelists Series (1810), explaining, "My fathersays thatgentlemenhave horrorsupon this
subject,and would draw conclusions very unfavourableto a female writerwho appearedto recommendsuch unions"(M. Butler, Edgeworth 495). As Kirkpatrickpoints out (Introduction
xxviii-xxxii), Edgeworthmay have worriedthat Belinda's relationship with the Creole posed a similarchallenge (and perhaps
underminedEdgeworth'snationalstatusas a "Britishnovelist"),
for she also dampened the romance between Belinda and Mr.
Vincentand deleted the proposalscene.
27See also Shyllon 100. For discussions of the threatof miscegenation in Belinda, see Kirkpatrick,Introductionxxii-xxiii,
xxxi-xxxii, and "'Gentlemen.'"
28Seealso Long 265-66; Burns551; and Stewart92. Kirkpatrick discusses the relationbetween miscegenationand the managementof colonial wealthin Belinda ("'Gentlemen"'345-47).
Lord Delacouris also a gambler,but his behaviordoes not raise
colonial concerns,and it is broughtundercontrol as Lady Delacour recovers.
29In Castle Rackrent,Thady describes the Jewish bride as
"little better than a blackamoor"(76; see also 77). Felsenstein
documentsthe widespreadeighteenth-centuryEnglish representationof the Jew as "theultimateparadigmof the eternalOther,"
"whose unsettlingpresence serves to define the boundsthat separatethe native Englishmanfrom the alien"(247, 3).
30InPaul et Virginie,the heroine's sympathyfor a brutalized
slave collapses their differences; thus Paul wants to fight the
slave's master on Virginie's behalf (Saint-Pierre 36-55, 91).
Thomas Day, the authorof The Dying Negro, tried and failed to
raise a countrybride.Edgeworthhad personalreasonsto be critical of Day, who had told her father not to allow her to publish
her work (M. Butler,Edgeworth 149). Othershave noted Edgeworth'sdisapprovalof Clarence(Kowaleski-Wallace100; Mellor 43-44; Shaffer61-62; Spencer 161-62).
31Inone ad, for instance, slaves named "CommonStrop"and
"Superior Strop" debate the product's merits (McKendrick,
Brewer,and Plumb 157). The "rodof iron"with which Marriott
controls Lady Delacouris relevantin this context. On Belinda's
resistanceto commodification,see MacFadyen(430).
32In"The GratefulNegro," Jamaicanslaves revolt when the
masteris brutal.
33Pattersonoffers a detailed analysis of the Quashee stereotype (174-81). In Long's text, Jubais the female name for Monday, Quasheethe male name for Sunday(427).
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