grandson. However, he does not realize she is in love with him, and ends up marrying a young heiress, Anaïs de Thèmines, whose family have been killed by the French Revolutionaries. This drives her into depression, or "melancholy," that is so deep that she almost dies. She finally ends up retreating to the convent, where the doctor meets her. Principal characters The doctor, also the narrator Ourika Madame de B., Ourika's adopted mother Charles, the grandson of Madame de B. La marquise de..., a friend of Madame de B. Anaïs de Thémines, Charles' wife Key themes Race Ourika provides a contemporary, literary account of race as a lived experience in the turn of the 19th century in colonial France. Race is perceived as an independent factor in identity. Despite her education and privileges bestowed by Madame de B., others cannot look beyond Ourika's skin color. Ourika grapples with her racial identity and looks for acceptance throughout the majority of the novella. She cannot marry a white man in a similar class as her own and joins a convent in the hopes to find acceptance in God before her untimely death. While Madame de B. may have saved Ourika from slavery, she did not save Ourika from another pernicious adversity: that of being Black in France during this period. French colonial society could not accept or integrate a Black woman into its highest positions. Black skin is viewed as antithetical to beauty in the novel which reflects de Duras' and society's own perceptions at the time. Ourika tries to hide the color of her skin as much as possible, viewing her Black hands as resembling those of “monkeys” and believing the color of her skin made her so ugly that she could barely be considered human, as a last attempt to be accepted in elite society. Paradoxically, Ourika, the first complex, Black figure in Western literature, was written by Claire de Duras, a noble White woman. While Madame de Duras could not have known what it was like to be a Black woman at the time, Claire de Duras lived in exile during the Revolution and is often thought to have felt profoundly ugly and ostracized. Madame de Duras might have used Ourika as an example of a mask she felt she was wearing. Ourika was ostracized and painted as ugly for her race, de Duras for her class. The ugliness