“Ameliorating the Situation” of Empire: Slavery and Abolition in The Woman of Colour

Abstract

In this essay, I examine how The Woman of Colour (1808) extends from the ameliorative context of the British slavery debates that were about reforming imperial rule overseas in the wake of the 1807 British abolition of the slave trade. By thinking alongside the work of Lisa Lowe’s The Intimacies of Four Continents, I argue that The Woman of Colour abstracts plantation slavery while positioning the protagonist Olivia Fairfield, a mixed-race heiress of a Jamaican plantation, as a figure of British imperial tutelage. The abstraction manifests through Dido, a secondary character whose relationship to Olivia is ambiguously presented to readers. Although the representation of Dido is akin to the grateful slave trope, the novel represents her as a dedicated servant to Olivia, implying that their relationship is benign and harmonious. By turning to Dido’s characterization and the pedagogical objectives of the novel, I identify a liberal imperial project in The Woman of Colour: the novel envisions a paternalistic notion of emancipation in Jamaica while remaining heavily invested in colonial governance of Black people.