Voyage In The Dark

The novel is set Britain around 1914, with the pride in noble bloodlines featured less, power over the colonies either weakened or broken, and the legacy of imperialism producing questions in terms of previously-held notions of identity and privilege. The privilege that exists in the novel stems from race, class and, especially, money, as characters struggle to maintain, strive or establish themselves within these categories. Among the three, money allows an individual the most autonomy and fluidity in changing their situation toward betterment and accessing increased privilege.

When Anna first receives money from Walter, her demeanor and her outlook change. She feels as if newfound access to material goods and nice meals is something “accustomed to […] so quickly” (24) and forgets about being ill. Yet, despite her confidence in selecting fur coats and dresses, she keeps a tally of the costs and expenditures in her mind. These serve as a source of guilt and fear—when the money runs low, she begins to feel “ill” (25) again; her physical health, then, becomes ties to how much money she has on how many goods and items she can afford. Whether Anna is well or not becomes attached to, if not governed by, her relationship to consumer capitalism. Without such access, she shall revert back to her powerlessness and a blank identity.

These items, however, only provide the appearance of privilege, a façade that she deeply desires to maintain. Unlike her unchangeable skin, she can alter her clothes for the happiness she hankers after and often. Her tendency to wear black exemplifies this desire: “She wore black. Men delighted in that sable colour, or lack of colour.” (19)

The color black also ties Anna to the racial identity she seeks most. She associates blackness as providing more contentment than a white woman could ever have. In this desire to be black, she has trouble seeing the privilege that being white offers her, including her plantation lineage that allowed her family to have slaves and later, black servants. She does not seem to understand these slaves’ own personal traumas that stem from their identities and instead imagines their prosperity as greater than her own.

For Anna, her whiteness is as bland to her as the identical English towns she visits, and she must accept being just another white person in England. There is nothing that may differentiate her except her gender and class, both of which are dependent on external factors, and, most specifically, men. Here, she is like any other white woman who must find livelihood or love in the form of marriage.

Ironically, and despite her longing for blackness, Anna corners Hester during her emotional outburst and defends her own mother’s race-based privilege: “‘You trying to make out that my mother was coloured’” (56). Anna goes on to say that her birth mother was indeed white. At the same time, she is aware of her mother’s whiteness as her own source of legitimacy and Hester’s attack on Anna and her family are an attempt to prove Hester’s own superiority and Englishness. In fact, although, Hester’s current financial comforts come from marrying Anna’s father, Gerald, who made his living in the West Indies, Hester has disdain for everything non-white and non-English.

Unlike most characters in the novel, Laurie embraces her roots as these roots do not matter for her, in regard to her long-term existence:“‘I’ve got good strong peasant blood in me’” (103).This causes mild surprise in her companion, Joe. For Laurie, her privilege comes from being able to charm men and “bank half of everything” (100) she receives as she knows financial sustenance, and not her bloodline, will be key to her survival.

Ethel boasts of her abilities as a masseuse and yet talks about how “respectable” (115) she is to hold onto her sense of superiority while understanding the chase after money may affect her sense of self and image to others. However, in the end, it is money that is more important than respectability, as illustrated when Ethel asks Anna: “‘If I can’t get hold of some money in the next few years, what’s going to become of me?’” (125).