Race

The novel is cautious in its depiction of racial discrimination, drawing our attention not to the injustices or insults that Eliza faces, so much as her internal torment as the “odd one out” (18). Although her white British father was wealthy and respectable, Eliza is in a “peculiar position,” as Miss Hargrave needlessly points out, since her “complexion” will always mark her out as an outsider (282). Amongst her friends – and indeed as an heiress in polite society – Eliza has some degree of protection from overt racism, but she can never forget how people bullied and sneered at her when she first arrived in London. This means that she is constantly reading between the lines of any innocuous comment or circumstance, alert to the possibility of mockery and hostility; “Bias rarely declares itself, after all; you have to peer through a veil, strain to hear the faint note...