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Ourika

duchesse de Claire de Durfort Duras

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .Galatea received the gift of happiness with that of life.

I was not told the early circumstances of my life until long after they happened. My first recollections always bring Madame de B.'s drawing-room to my mind. I used to pass my life there, doted on by herself, praised and caressed by her friends, who loaded me with presents, and exalted to the skies my wit and graces.

The tone of her society was animated gaiety; but gaiety from which good taste had excluded all exaggeration. What deserved praise always met with it, and what deserved blame was generally excused; nay, from excessive leniency erroneous notions were often suffered to pass for right ones. Success gives courage, and every one was sure of being estimated a little above their real worth, by Madame de B.; for, without knowing it, she lent them a part of her own, and after seeing or listening to her people, fancied themselves like her.

Dressed in the Eastern fashion, and. . . Read More

Community Reviews

To imagine that Ourika is a simply a tale about a woman who is distraught over a man is to severely misread the richness of this novel, which offers a complex regard of race, blackness, womanhood, identity, and intercultural acceptance. With its harsh criticisms of political fervor generated by the

Considering the time period the story was published (1820s), location (France), author (female), subject (Black Senegalese female raised in a white French household from age two, partially during the Reign of Terror, never realizing her "otherness" until an overheard conversation when she is 15), th

Rereread January 2023

It seems that I reread this book every two years: 2019, 2021, and now 2023

סיפורה של אוריקה, נזירה שחורה, שבילדותה ניצלה מספינת עבדים על ידי אישה מהאצולה עצמה ותולה את אי אושרה בעובדה שהוא נישא והיא איבדה ידיד נעורים. מצבה הבריאותי מתדרדר באופן קיצוני מחמת הסבל הנפשי שלה.

לבסוף היא מחליטה להימלט לדת ולהפך לנזירה. בחיק הדת היא מוצאת את השלווה שהיא מייחלת לה.

הפתרון של בריחה

Ourika is the name of this short novel's eponymous heroine, a young Senegalese slave woman who is rescued from s life of drudgery and brought up by a French noblewoman around the time of the Terror. For perhaps the first time in literary history, authorClaire de Duras writes about the life of a blac

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