The Woman of Colour: A Tale

Letitia is the novel’s main antagonist: Her principal motivation throughout the narrative is to destroy Augustus and Olivia. She comes from a wealthy family, although they only recently acquired their fortune. The novel emphasizes her parents’ regressive beliefs and total lack of interest in education or self-improvement. They raise Letitia to value only money and physical appearances, and when she attends boarding school, the headmistress encourages this. By bringing Angelina to live with the family at Letitia’s demand, they teach her that she can use and manipulate people for her own ends. Her belief that she can use other people as pawns informs her elaborate plan to destroy Augustus after he does not do what she wants him to do. While it appears at the end of the novel that Letitia might have experienced personal growth—thinking she is on her deathbed, she confesses to having dismantled both of Augustus’s marriages—the novel ends before revealing whether Letitia truly changed.

The text emphasizes Letitia’s superficiality, both in her relationships and in terms of how she presents herself physically. The first time Olivia meets her, she describes Letitia as “very fashionable and showy looking” and later says Letitia would “be thought pretty by any person who looks for features only” (71, 73). Importantly, the novel also sets Letitia up as Olivia’s complete opposite. She has “dazzlingly” white skin, blond hair, and wears heavy makeup; she also does not like physical activity, preferring to lounge on comfortable furniture. This contrast speaks to the theme of Movement, Stillness, and Femininity that runs throughout the novel. In addition, Letitia prefers magazines and romance novels to serious books, does not attend church, and refuses to participate in conversations about practical issues, including the family business. In addition to being Olivia’s opposite in terms of appearance and behavior, Letitia expresses openly racist views and is entirely unbothered by the fact that this upsets Olivia.

The younger son of the prosperous Merton family, Augustus is sensitive, compassionate, and thoughtful. Unlike his older brother, George, he is not interested in the family business. As a young man, he is handsomer than George, and Letitia compares him to the heroes from her romance novels. When Olivia meets him, she calls him “a model of manly grace and beauty” and says that his expression of “tender melancholy” is “irresistibly interesting” (72). In addition to being attentive and kind to Olivia, Augustus does not try to hide his hatred of Letitia, a hatred that becomes particularly noticeable when Letitia is cruel to Olivia. Olivia points this out, saying that the “respectful attention” Augustus pays her in Letitia’s company is clearly due to Letitia’s “uniform negligence or insolence” (82). In addition to being unable or unwilling to hide negative emotions, Augustus struggles to hide positive ones. Upon being suddenly reunited with Angelina, for example, he instantly reveals all of his feelings: “Astonishment and surprise were the expressions which momentarily overspread his features—but to these appeared to succeed, fear, apprehension, anxiety, love!” (140).

However, at several points in the novel, Augustus skillfully hides certain parts of his life from those around him. In his letter to Lionel Monkland, for example, he reveals that when he met Olivia for the first time, he was horrified by her skin color: “I started back with a momentary feeling nearly allied to disgust; for I beheld a skin approaching to the hue of a negro’s” (102). Olivia does not seem to realize this, writing throughout the text that Augustus respects her despite the fact that she is biracial. She also points out that he defends her to others who are openly bigoted or hateful. By the end of the novel, Olivia still respects Augustus enormously, and the two of them—having been through an enormously traumatic revelation together—remain close friends.

Dido is a Black enslaved woman who accompanies Olivia to England. Olivia and Dido appear to have a loving relationship defined by mutual respect and admiration, although the question of how mutual their relationship could be is a complicated one because of the vast differences in their socioeconomic stations. Dido is loyal, energetic, and talkative; indeed, in an early letter, Olivia says that Dido “will be heard on all occasions when she deems it right to speak” (57). She takes her duties very seriously, no matter how small they may be, and she is always happy when doing any kind of task that helps Olivia. Dido is distinctly aware of social status, and one of the things she looks forward to about living in a large country estate is being in charge of the English servants: At New Park, she “[bears] about the insignia of her office, in the bunch of keys at her side, and the important expression on her face” (105). In the same vein, one of her motivations for reconnecting Olivia and Charles is her hope that she and Olivia will be able to move to a similarly large home and Dido will be able to feel that she plays an important role once again.

Scholars have pointed out that Dido, as a character, illuminates how vastly different the experiences of an enslaved Black person and a free biracial person were in the early 19th century. While Olivia certainly faces anti-Black discrimination, Dido has absolutely no legal rights; moreover, many of the text’s white characters treat her as subhuman, mocking the way she speaks, calling her dirty, or ignoring her existence completely. The two women thus experience racism in very disparate ways, and the difference reveals how closely characteristics such as skin color and social class are intertwined with race.