A Critical Turn Inwards in The Woman of Colour (1808): On Teaching Romanticism Now

This encounter with The Woman of Colour (1808) began with a 2019 call by Romantic Circles Pedagogies for essays on “Romantic” teaching. The COVID-19 pandemic intervened, as did a personal tragedy that was yet not my own. The essay I eventually wrote was reshaped by this tragedy, as were my reflections on the experimental assignment in life-writing that was to be the essay’s focus. My tone, while meditative and personal, compelled me to pose new questions about The Woman of Colour and to recognize limits in my prior readings of the novel (2019; 2020). The Woman of Colour is shown to push past the limits of what (white) readers can say or know about the protagonist, Olivia Fairfield, both because of and despite the author’s use of a strong epistolary “I.”