Colonize me Happy: Redefining the English conception of felicity through land dispossession in The Female American by Unca Eliza Winkfield

Abstract

Historian Joanna Innes argues that the eighteenth-century marked the formation of a polite lexicon: words which could hold complex meanings but could still be used colloquially and were neither too formal nor too slangy (Innes, “Happiness Contested” 92). ‘Happiness,’ furthers Innes, is a part of the eighteenth-century European polite lexicon because the word could be used in a variety of contexts with variable meaning: “connoting a mundane conception of the good life, the goal of spiritual striving, or (by definition) what any good government must seek for the nation and its people” (Innes, “Happiness Contested” 88). Despite happiness being a major focus for Europeans in the period, historian Rebecca Earle notes that colonies were excluded from any attempt to measure a nation’s happiness, since colonies were seen merely as points of resource-extraction for the metropolis (Earle 185). Differing from this contemporarily agreed upon view of happiness is The Female American by Unca Eliza Winkfield which reserves happiness for descriptions of European ideals and identity within Indigenous land. Contrary to Innes and Earle, The Female American expands and intertwines happiness from individual, religious, and governmental levels, suggesting that the novel’s all-encompassing definition of felicity can only be achieved through the dispossession of Indigenous land. Despite framing happiness as attainable only outside of England, The Female American stresses only British people and culture are capable of achieving felicity. By denying that emotion to Indigenous people, The Female American ultimately attempts to homogenize the varied interests of different institutions and social values into happiness, wherein Indigenous land is a container into which European values and structures should be inserted for the primary benefit of English identity.