Browsing by Subject "Slavery in literature"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Exposing the Process of Erasing the Negro: Slavery, Romantic Racialism and Masochism in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'
    (2012) Altheimer, Silas; Heckart, Jennifer
    In this essay, I explore a rhetorical method, used in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that reflects white anti-slavery sentiments of Blacks. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, exhibits a strong ethos which I argue values Black spirituality above Black physicality. This was done to paint a soft, yet “humanizing” gloss which made Black slaves acceptable to the larger white public. In doing so, Stowe bonds her protagonist Tom, a black Christian slave, to embody what is the ideal Christian should be. While her writing of the novel is influenced by her family and upbringing, I explore the ways in which Stowe uses Tom as a metaphorical representation of Black humanity. More importantly, I examine her rhetorical method of romanticizing Tom’s pain in the novel and the extent to which it compromises the existence of Tom. Furthermore, Stowe’s appropriation of violence in the novel between Tom and his third slave master Simon raises questions on the appropriateness of Christianity motivating Tom to value the afterlife over life on Earth. With this concern, I examine how Tom’s humanity and behavior is romanticized and how it perpetuates Black stereotypes. Compared to that of renowned literary critic James Baldwin, who argues Tom’s religiosity allows him to develop an ethos that renders him to die on earth, I examine the extent to which Tom’s religiosity limits his existence while living. Yet, the implications of Stowe’s choice to link stereotypes with Tom, in a novel that sold over one-million copies in under a year, must be examined as well—just as the text attempts to examine and protest the brutality of slavery through painting Tom as a religious saint. Thus, I argue that Tom sacrifices his physical existence for the spiritual, which perpetuates the (white) view of blacks as especially religious, devaluing their physical humanity.
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    Long Live Life: A Biopolitical Examination of Aphra Behn’s Royalism in Oroonoko
    (2017) Shen, Jane; Parris, Benjamin
    With the work of Foucault and Aphra Behn’s critics in mind, I aim to construct a biopolitical analysis that clarifies Behn’s contradictory depictions of slavery in Oroonoko and shows how Behn’s Royalist views inflect her understanding of the power over biological life in connection to sovereignty. I hope to show that Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko does not protest against the institutions of slavery and colonialism per se, but rather critiques the brutal techniques that their English participants implemented in their increased distance from sovereign rule. While her view can be read as an implicit protest of Parliament’s seizure of power from the English monarchy during the Civil War, this point risks obscuring what is most insightful and disturbing about Behn’s work––namely, its reflection of her belief of the nobility’s biological superiority over the emerging bourgeoisie. This is evident in Oroonoko’s depictions of slavery and colonialism, through which Behn casts a critical eye on the emergence of biopolitical apparatuses that discipline and control life. By examining the titular character’s responses to slavery and colonialism amongst his fellow Coramantien people, the Surinam Natives, and the English colonists through a biopolitical lens, it is clear that Behn’s Oroonoko does not portray slavery and colonialism as inherently problematic institutions. Rather, these institutions become problematic for the rule of the British Empire precisely because they provide the bourgeoisie with an authority over populations and peoples that in Behn’s opinion can only be properly wielded by the sovereign.
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