Writing Ambivalence: Imperialism and Race in Dorothy Richardson's Deadlock

Abstract

<p>Recent scholarship has emphasized the predominant influence of imperialist race ideology on the literary establishment of nineteenth-century Britain. Almost no significant criticism of imperialism or its assumptions about race may be observed in Victorian literature. During the early twentieth century, however, this situation altered as imperialist ideology began to unravel rapidly. Thus, most authors of the modernist period reproduced imperialism's assumptions about race, but, unlike their immediate predecessors, they also contested the validity of these assumptions. This project will explore the ambivalent treatment of issues of race in Dorothy Richardson's novel Deadlock (1921). The novel challenges the imperialist assumption that cultural differences are manifestations of underlying racial differences, especially when this assumption establishes the racial superiority of Europeans. And yet, the novel naively exhibits racial stereotypes and also defends imperialist strategies for governing the racial Other.</p>