Ourika

“The miseries of my life must seem so peculiar that I’ve always been very reluctant to talk about them. No one can gauge how much another has suffered. You confide in people—then they tell you it was your own fault.” 

Ourika has come to terms with the circumstances of her existence: She is black in a society that severely limits her social freedoms and her future happiness. The doctor’s inquisitiveness about her situation feels like an intrusion. She does not need another person to minimize her suffering the way the marquise has.

“The privileges of knowledge have to be bought at cost of the consolations of ignorance.”

It is Ourika’s experience that knowledge brings suffering. Her education and grooming prove only to be ornamental: In reality, they separate her from other black people of her era and make her a point of intrigue and curiosity among her white associates. Becoming aware of her blackness brings great suffering.  

“I reached the age of twelve without its once occurring to me that there might be other ways of being happy besides mine. There was nothing to warn me that the color of my skin might be a disadvantage. I saw very few other children. I had only one friend of my own age and my dark skin never meant he did not like me.”

Because of the relative inclusivity of Mme de B.’s salon, Ourika spends her childhood shielded from the horrors of slavery and systemic racism. The people around her do not acknowledge her blackness, so she does not recognize it as anything that might separate her from her society.