Ourika

Written in 1823 by Claire de Duras, Ourika is a French novella based on real events about a Senegalese woman taken as a slave from her native country and raised in French high society. Ourika is one of the first European texts to feature a black protagonist, the psychological depth of whom promotes empathy with the racial “Other” and highlights the importance of nurture (versus nature) in human psychological development. 

In the Introduction, a young doctor is summoned to an Ursuline convent to examine the grievously ill nun, Ourika, and is surprised that she is black. Ourika narrates the bulk of the novella, sharing her life story and explaining the circumstances that led to her wasting illness.

Ourika is taken from Senegal as an infant and given to Madame la Maréchale de Beauvau who grooms her to be a perfect aristocratic woman, beloved by Mme de B.’s social circle. Ourika is raised in France alongside Mme de B.’s favorite grandson, Charles, who becomes Ourika’s closest childhood friend.

Ourika’s blackness hardly factors into her life until she turns 15 and overhears a conversation between Mme de B. and the Marquise de ___. The marquise believes Mme de B. has doomed Ourika to a life of solitude: Because Ourika was raised as an aristocrat, she will not be satisfied with an uneducated black man, but no white Frenchman equal of her prowess will marry a black woman.