Announcements Warwick Thursdays
Thurs. 9th Oct.
1:15-2:30 Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (US poet: I Love Artists:
New and Selected Poems, U of California, 2006; Hello the
Roses, New Directions, 2013)
Thurs 27th Nov.
1:15-2”30 Catherine Taylor (author of a well-reviewed
experimental memoir on South Africa, Apart, Ugly Ducking
Presse, 2013) and Stephen Cope (poet, editor of George
Oppen's Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers, U of CA,
2008)
*both at 1:15 Thursday in Writer’s room
Sentimentalism
“I’m sure I shall be your Beth
still, to love you more than ever.
You must take my place, Jo,
and be everything to Father
and Mother when I’m gone.
They will turn to you, don’t fail
them; and if it’s hard to work
alone, remember that I don’t
forget you, and you’ll be
happier doing that than writing
splendid books or seeing all the
world” (Alcott, Little Women)
Cult of True Womanhood 1.
2.
3.
4.
A woman is pious, pure,
submissive, and domestic.
A woman helps, she
doesn’t work.
A woman is the angel of
the house – providing
safety and security from
the outside world.
A woman is other-focused,
self-denying, nurturing
“My objective is not to prove that
stereotypes contradict plantation realities
[… Instead] I will argue that the objective
of stereotypes is not to reflect or
represent a reality, but to function as a
disguise, or mystification, of objective
social relations. The texts I will refer to,
therefore, will not be presented as
reflections of ‘real life’ as it ‘was,’ but as
representing and reconstructing history for
us from particular viewpoints under
specific historical conditions.”
“Ideologies of white womanhood coalesced and became
more rigid at the same historical moment that the
miscegenation laws were extended, laws which, in practice,
were primarily directed toward relationships between
black men and white women. At the same historical
juncture it became illegal to import more slaves, so that
internal breeding through slave women became a more
crucial addition to plantation capital. That the slave
followed the condition of his or her mother necessitated
the raising of protective barriers, ideological and
institutional, around the form of the white mother, whose
progeny were heirs to the economic, social, and political
interest in the maintenance of the slave system” (31)
The solution:
“The ideology of true womanhood [thus] allowed
the white mistress to live her contradictory
position. It offered a way of making sense of the
role that the white woman had to play, of resolving
the contradictions that could otherwise shatter the
pedestal on which she stood, a stool supported by
the institution of slavery” (31)
Harriet Jacobs 1813-­‐1897 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 1861 Fugi:ve Slave Act, 1850 A
ny person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or
prevent such claimant, his agent or attorney, or any person or persons
lawfully assisting him, her, or them, from arresting such a fugitive from
service or labor, either with or without process as aforesaid, or shall rescue,
or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor, from the custody of
such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, or other person or persons
lawfully assisting as aforesaid, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority
herein given and declared; or shall aid, abet, or assist such person so owing
service or labor as aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from such
claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person or persons legally
authorized as aforesaid; or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to
prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice or knowledge
of the fact that such person was a fugitive from service or labor as
aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not
exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six
months”
“The slave Hamlin , the first fugitive that
came under the new law, was given up by
the bloodhounds of the north to the
bloodhounds of the south”
-Jacobs, 155
How does Jacobs “address, use, transform, and,
on subvert these dominant ideological codes”?
Things to think about
•  How does Jacobs use North/South divides we discussed last week?
•  How does Jacobs represent white and black models of femininity (i.e. how is the
mistress represented versus how the grandmother is represented versus how she
represents herself)?
•  How does she deploy the genre of sentimentalism?
•  How does she portray slavery and her and her family’s relationship to it?
•  How does she discuss religion?
Key passages to look at
•  Intro
•  A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life
•  The Loophole of Retreat
•  Aunt Nancy
•  The Fugitive Slave Law
•  Free at Last
“There is something akin to freedom . . . ” (48)
“Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condi:on. The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own. I s:ll long for a hearthstone of my own, however humble. I wish it for my children’s sake far more than my own” (164)