27 pages • 54 minutes read
Ourika
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
Alienation
The book’s central theme is revealed in the epigraph by Lord Byron: “This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!” (1). Ourika’s complex experience with alienation begins when she overhears Mme de B. and the marquise discussing her situation. Mme de B. says, “I see the poor girl alone, always alone in the world” (12). This refrain is repeated in Ourika’s narrative during moments of extreme emotional distress.
Ourika was raised to conform to the ideals of the French aristocracy; however, her dark skin prevents her from ever actualizing these ideals. Rather than benefitting her, her education separates Ourika from other black people typically denied education either by policy or circumstance. Therefore, it would be nearly impossible for Ourika to find an educated black man, a peer, to marry. And, due to the racist nature of society, she could neither hope to marry an educated white man. Ourika is a character divided between two equally untenable futures. The grief of alienation literally causes her to waste away.
Nature Versus Nurture
The ancient Greek philosophical notion of “tabula rasa,” or “the blank slate,” advocates the idea that nurture, not nature, is most influential in determining a person’s identity, capability, and value. The idea of man as a blank slate was foundational to Enlightenment philosophy. It underlies the fight against monarchy in the American and French Revolutions, as well as the fight to abolish slavery in Europe and America. The French Revolution expressed this concept through ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Revolutionaries criticized the monarchy as unnatural because no one man was fundamentally greater than another. Though these ideals did not extend to those enslaved by the French, they were the basis for the Haitian Revolution, the first successful slave revolt responsible for the emancipation of all French slaves.
Because Ourika was taken from slavers as an infant, she grows up knowing nothing about her parentage or of the culture and people of her native Senegal. She is very much the “blank slate” to be inscribed upon by her new society: the French aristocracy. It is Mme de B. who shapes the person Ourika becomes: She ensures that Ourika is educated in multiple languages, the arts, and poetry—and exposes her to intelligent conversation and ideas; the girl becomes a skillful illustrator, singer, and dancer.
Nevertheless, the triumph of nature is not a triumph for Ourika. Because she internalizes the ideals of French society, Ourika accepts that society’s racism toward people who look like her. Racism against black people was deemed as the “natural” order of things. After all, while the Revolution was founded upon ideals of equality, the subjugation and enslaving of blacks went unquestioned. To Ourika, her blackness is a marker of inferiority, alienating her from her white compatriots. Her upbringing and education alienate her from her fellow black people, rendering her alone in the world.
Orientalism
Edward Said’s concept of orientalism describes the European fetishization and obsession with “The Orient,” a catch-all term for any non-white place in the Old World. Orientalism is seen as patronizing of the East, treating “other” cultures as mere curiosities to be enjoyed by the European elite. Differences between Europe and the Eastern world were distorted and expanded in order to foster a sense of exoticism.
Part of Ourika’s appeal in Mme de B.’s salon is that she fulfills an orientalist curiosity. Her intimacy with Mme de B. and her friends is not predicated solely on her worth as a person or the vibrancy of her company, but also on the novelty of an educated, well-spoken, quasi-aristocratic black woman. Ourika’s exoticness is often put on display for the pleasure of her white, European audience. Despite the fact that she is educated in a European manner, she is still made to dress in the costume of a country that European intervention has denied her. She is even encouraged to dance “a comba—the national dance of my country.” (10). The dance is a success, which gives Ourika great pleasure, though looking back on the incident gives her shame. Her partner dresses in blackface in order to increase the perceived “authenticity” of the dance, though this widens the gap between the French and the Senegalese. Ourika is Senegalese by birth but is so divorced from her society that she partakes in the orientalist exploitation of a culture she has never known.
Unlock all 27 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: