Blackness and Identity in Sarah Harriet Burney’s Geraldine Fauconberg (1808) and Traits of Nature (1812)

Abstract

One of the latest rediscoveries within the field of the Burney Studies is the oeuvre of Frances Burney’s half-sister, Sarah Harriet Burney, who also was a famous novelist during her lifetime. This paper focuses on two black characters in Geraldine Fauconberg (1808) and Traits of Nature (1812). By using a gender and postcolonial criticism, I analyze Sarah Harriet’s portrait of blackness and how this author approached the marginalization of the blacks in early nineteenth-century Britain, which is closely related to the oppression suffered by the heroines in her works.