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Post by avnia on Apr 6, 2011 11:34:05 GMT -5
I know this has been a touchy topic for ages, but how would society react to a mixed marriage. Alot of young men were stationed abroad (africa, india, orient), and I would guess that some of them fell in love and married local beauty's....but how would society react to the match?
Would the reaction be diffrent if she was wealthy, a daughter of a noble/local lord/merchent? And how would people react to their children?
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Post by artemisiajolie on Apr 7, 2011 0:30:22 GMT -5
Good question! I hope someone has come across accounts of this happening.
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Post by Miss Waterman on Apr 8, 2011 13:06:19 GMT -5
I have heard of it before, and it has been mentioned more than once in novels of the period; however direct routes as described above is a lot LESS common; the instances I have found are wealthy foreign families who have immigrated to England that are wealthy enough to move in circles of society, and THEIR children would be who the "true blooded Englander" would marry, for instance in Vanity Fair, George Osborne is pushed heavily by his father to marry a girl who is from a wealthy family born in Jamaica and who own a sugar cane plantation..I believe anyhow. She is not first generation immigrant, as is mentions she went to school as a young girl in England, but is still considered rather exotic and foreign.
It is probably a rare instance, but very possible for a man stationed overseas to marry a wealthy person of their culture, though at the time English were known for being highly xenophobic.
That was rather long winded and I hope sort of helped, I apologize, and hope someone more knowledgeable will clear the air a little more!
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Post by gentlemanjhim on Jul 28, 2011 6:44:12 GMT -5
I look to Alexandre Dumas . . . His Grandfather was Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and his Grandmother was Marie-Cesette Dumas, a Creole slave (mixed French/African). Their son, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, was a general in Napoleon I's Army . . . the family had the Marquis' distinguished reputation and aristocratic position despite the fact they were mixed race . . . so while unusual, I'd say it's all dependent on who the family is.
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Post by francesgrimble on Nov 4, 2011 16:44:52 GMT -5
Jane Austen actually has a "mulatto" girl in her unfinished novel The Sanditons. Miss Lamb is a West Indes heiress who has been sent back to England (without her parents) to be educated at a boarding school and probably, later to be introduced into society (just like Miss Schwartz in Vanity Fair). Probably Jane Austen intended to get Miss Lamb married to someone in England by the end of the novel.
I have an 1860s magazine with a very good serialized novel, which has since apparently been forgotten. I don't have the author and title at hand. The plot is: Denise is the daughter of a wealthy British man who earlier emigrated to the West Indes, made tons of money, and married a black woman. Both parents have died. Before Denise's father died, he arranged for her to go to London and be introduced into society there by a family he somehow connected with, and if she is in difficulties she is to consult his lawyer, now an old man. The only companion Denise brings from the West Indes is a faithful middle-aged servant woman (who btw is white).
It turns out the widow who is to introduce Denise into society is embezzling her money, and wants her to marry her worthless son to keep the money. This does not come off, because the son is physically repelled by Denise, who, although kept more or less a prisoner (this is a Gothic) manages to seek the help of the son of the lawyer (after finding out the lawyer has died). She and the son fall in love and get married, and of course he extricates her from the clutches of the family she has been living with.
Note, one potential suitor is racially prejudiced, the other is not.
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Post by dawnluckham on Nov 4, 2011 18:26:36 GMT -5
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Post by rennadarling on Nov 15, 2011 18:24:25 GMT -5
In The Last of the Mohicans, Colonel Munro's first marriage was with a woman of mixed parentage that he met while abroad in the West Indies. To quote from chapter 16:
She was the daughter of a gentleman of those isles, by a lady whose misfortune it was, if you will," said the old man, proudly, "to be descended, remotely, from that unfortunate class who are so basely enslaved to administer to the wants of a luxurious people. Ay, sir, that is a curse, entailed on Scotland by her unnatural union with a foreign and trading people. But could I find a man among them who would dare to reflect on my child, he should feel the weight of a father's anger! Ha! Major Heyward, you are yourself born at the south, where these unfortunate beings are considered of a race inferior to your own."
While the novel is set during the Seven Year's War, the book was actually published in 1826.
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