Abstract
This article offers a comparative reading of two neo-historical novels: Rose Tremain’s The Colour and Maxine Alterio’s Ribbons of Grace, both set in 19th century New Zealand and portraying interracial love stories between British and Chinese characters in the context of the gold rush. I read these neo-historical novels in relation to the romantic conventions they simultaneously employ and subvert. My contention is that their manipulation of certain romantic narrative and thematic conventions demonstrates the porosity between the literary and the popular ends of the historical spectrum. My analysis concentrates on how each author employs the romantic material to articulate their respective political agendas. Whereas Tremain’s novel prioritises a feminist perspective and emphasises the individual dimension of the love story, Alterio’s work is more concerned with the postcolonial revision of New Zealand’s past and highlights the social consequences of the interracial liaison.
Highlights
The proliferation and success of women’s historical novels in the last decades, as part of what has come to be defined as the “historical turn” in contemporary fiction (Keen 2006), has invigorated the academic revision of the genre in its multiple forms
Suzanne Keen establishes a division between traditional historical novels, often associated with male writers, popular historical romances, generally produced and consumed by women, and what she calls “new historical fiction” (2006: 171), written in agreement with postmodern and often postcolonial concerns
Tremain’s novel employs many of the recurrent “exoticising strategies” that Rousselot ascribes to neo-historical novels in their attempt to recreate the past through the aesthetisation of the historical Other (2014: 8) in a way that “comes perilously close to reproducing the same problematic cultural readings as those found in traditional travel narratives” (2014: 7) as well as in colonial romances
Summary
The proliferation and success of women’s historical novels in the last decades, as part of what has come to be defined as the “historical turn” in contemporary fiction (Keen 2006), has invigorated the academic revision of the genre in its multiple forms. Contrary to Kohlke’s argument that actual Oriental settings are hardly given prominence (2008: 68) The Colour articulates this “sexation” both temporally and geographically by resorting to a range of iconic oriental elements to construct Harriet and Pao Yi’s romance In this sense, Tremain’s novel employs many of the recurrent “exoticising strategies” that Rousselot ascribes to neo-historical novels in their attempt to recreate the past through the aesthetisation of the historical Other (2014: 8) in a way that “comes perilously close to reproducing the same problematic cultural readings as those found in traditional travel narratives” (2014: 7) as well as in colonial romances. Harriet’s triumph as a white woman can be read as metonymic of the hegemonic imposition of British settlers both over indigenous Maori people and non-Anglo-Saxon migrants, clearly marginalised in the process of colonial and national construction.5 This in my view shows that both the specific historical context and the choice of an interracial love story are secondary to the novel’s feminist message. While The Colour breaks free from a number of the ideological constraints employed in colonial romances and reverses some of its motifs, the postcolonial potential of the love story is, in my view, clearly minimised by its orientalist slant and the prioritisation of the white feminist message
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