|
"Ourika" was published
posthumously in 1823, and instantly became a best-seller, being
the first novel set in Europe to have a black heroine and the
first French literary work narrated by a back female
protagonist. The year 1824 saw the performance of four plays
based on "Ourika". The court painter of Louis XVIII
used Duras's protagonist as the subject of a famous painting.
Goethe was overwhelmed by the novel. Stendhal who praised
Duras's work in the press, went on to write unsigned novels on
this theme and published "Armance" (1827) and
"Olivier" (1829) in a parallel format to palm off
their work as hers and thereby make the most of her fame. The
story had become a national fixation.
The little girl
Ourika imagines that she is no different from the French
aristocracy and continues to be surrounded by love, care and
affection. It was unalloyed pleasure with nothing to disturb her
sense of security, until one day she happens to overhear a
conversation between Mme de B, her benefactress and her friend,
a certain marquise, a bleakly practical lady with an incisive
mind, and frank to the point of dryness. The dialogue between
the two ladies turns to the future of Ourika; the visitor warns
:
"Soon
she'll be able to converse as well as you. She's talented,
unusual, has ease of manner. But what next? To come to the point
- what do you intend doing with her?" Mme de B. has no
solution to offer. She is worried and regards Ourika as a
"poor girl alone, always alone in the world".
These few words
break on Ourika like a calamity, changing her very existence.
She at last comprehends the meaning of being black, dependent,
despised, without fortune, without recourse, without a single
other being of her race to help her through life. She realises
that she has been a mere toy and an amusement for her mistress.
The next part
of the conversation moves to the impossibility of finding a
suitable groom for her, especially now that she is trained in
the aristocratic ways of life. She would never be happy with a
man of low birth, and no educated white would marry a "negress".
Is this a deliberate upsetting of natural order? Has Ourika not
flouted her natural destiny, having entered society without its
permission?
These are some
of the arguments used by the marquise to support her concern for
the future of this outsider in a system that is inherently
racist. The little girl begins to view herself hounded by
contempt, misplaced in society, destined to be a bride of some
venal "fellow" who might condescend to give her
half-breed mulattos. She stands absolutely disillusioned:
"I knew nothing of loneliness. I had never felt it. I
needed what I loved and it had never crossed my mind that what I
loved did not need me in return."
Her sees the
truth at last and her misfortune introduces mistrust into her
heart. She withdraws from her make believe world, imagining she
is cut off from the entire human race. Her own colour begins to
repel her. She wants to be sent back to her homeland, but
realises she would be a total misfit there too. She now belongs
nowhere. She nurses her secret wound in silence. The Revolution
is a healthy divergence for her but this too does not last long.
She sees through the false notions of fraternity, realising that
"people still found time, in all this adversity, to despise
her".
She gives up
hope. The Santo Domingo massacres give added sadness as she now
sees her race nothing less than "barbarous murderers".
In 1795
conditions in France began to return to normalcy, but the French
society remained merciless. The presence of a black girl in the
confidence of Mme de B. had to be explained and these
explanations almost tortured her to death. In their eyes she was
"guilty of a crime they alone had committed". Those
she had regarded her dear ones begin to get busy with their
routines. In her life she had only them, but they had no need
for her. She begins to get ill, destined to die without having
known any other relation except that of dependence and charity.
And then dying in a nunnery she begins to understand the ways of
God: " By a miracle of charity He stole me from the evils
of savagery and ignorance. By a miracle of charity He stole me
from the evils of slavery and taught me His law. It shows me
what I must do, my road - and I shall follow it now.. Never
again shall I use His gifts to offend Him. Never again shall He
be accused of my weaknesses."
She has come
into her knowledge of herself through a confrontation with her
"negritude", a confrontation that is rather
excruciating. She dies at the end of October, "with the
last of the autumn leaves".
From the start
of the French colonial enterprise, the state machinery had
instituted the most intricate official policy to close the
loopholes that gave some slaves rights and freedom. Laws banned
interracial marriages, thus putting an end to any chance of
gaining freedom by marrying a free white man. A slave brought to
France, like Ourika, was considered free until 1716 when this
code was also revised. In 1777, the king issued an ordinance
forbidding the entry of any black or mulatto into France so as
to control this "menace" of multiplying coloured
residents.
The massacre of
settlers in Santo Domingo in 1791 finally wiped out the
fledgling abolitionist movement. Against this history of French
harshness towards the slaves and the coloured stands this story
audaciously critiquing the very law of the land. It is rather
interesting that in spite of the French obsession with racial
purity, and the resultant legal codes prohibiting any settlement
of blacks in the country, Ourika was brought into France and
given an absolutely fair and equal treatment. What is even more
astonishing is that the political controversy did not in any way
deter the French public from making this anti-racial novel a
success.
It is amazing
how Duras, a member of the extreme Right, was daringly dexterous
to manipulate her audience, "the whitest of all white
worlds". Compared with the two-dimensional characters in
previous novels containing black characters, "Ourika"
stands a class apart where characters are studies and developed
with acute psychological indepth and originality. Duras,
according to John Fowles, was the first white novelist to
"enter a black mind". The experience of prejudice and
its endurance by a young black girl who is the victim of a
social system are visualised by the French for the first time.
Duras has located the action of the novel during and after the
Revolution showing how the aristocracy lived and debated the
reign of terror and other issues concerning the grant of freedom
to the slaves.
The racial
consciousness of Ourika is the filter through which extreme
violence is viewed. We see not only her suffering but the
suffering of the aristocracy. We see sympathy within the whites
for the blacks and Ourika's compassion and concern for all
humanity irrespective of colour. Perhaps the author wants to
represent the French benevolent and altruism as a counter to the
obvious harshness of keeping slaves in colonies. Duras's Mme de
B. is rather like Forster's Fielding, both of whom are created
as a foil to the illegitimacy of the colonial encounter.
Horrors of the bloody
Revolution, a heartless racial policy and a nation torn by rapid
changes at the centre are the chief concerns of this novel which
might have been forgotten to the world if John Fowles had not
discovered a tattered volume in a wayside second hand book shop.
Apparently only a few dozen copies survive of the original, and
Fowles masterly translation is an attempt to give it its
rightful place as a classic. Not many are aware that "Ourika"
was an inspiration for Fowles's acclaimed novel "The French
Lieutenant's Woman".
|
