Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Juba’S “Black Face” / Lady Delacour’S “Mask”: Plotting Domesticity In Maria Edgeworth’S Belinda, Sharon Smith

English Faculty Publications

In Belinda (1801), Maria Edgeworth forges parallel subplots between Juba, a former African slave residing in England, and Lady Delacour, a wealthy and dissipated London socialite, both of whom undergo a process of domestication during the course of the novel. The connection Edgeworth creates between these characters allows her to explore a version of womanhood that promotes domesticity by negotiating the boundary between domestic and public life; at the same time, however, it reveals the anxieties surrounding this understanding of womanhood. Edgeworth’s novel configures Lady Delacour as a plotting woman who bridges the public/private divide, revealing domesticity to be as …