A Son of the Forest and “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” In 1829, Harriet Beecher, though still in her teens, was a teacher at her sister Catherine’s Hartford Female Seminary. She was also an enthusiastic participant in the school’s campaign of writing letters, petitions, and circulars on behalf of the Cherokee Indians. In President Andrew Jackson’s State of the Union address in 1829, he supported calls for the Cherokees’ forced relocation from their ancestral homeland in Georgia to federal territory west of the Mississippi. Harriet decried that policy. That same year, William Apess’s A Son of the Forest became the first extensive autobiography written and published by a Native American. With Native American, white, and possibly African American ancestry, Apess identified with the remnant of the Pequot people, a group his father had joined. Most Pequots had been massacred or dispersed by whites in the Pequot War of the 1630s. Son of the Forest traces Apess’s struggle with alcoholism, military service for the U.S. in the War of 1812, and conversion to evangelical Methodism. He became an ordained minister in the newly forming Protestant Methodist Church. In Apess’s autobiography and other works such as “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” (1833), Christianity serves as a standard by which to judge—and condemn—white treatment of Native Americans. (Apess preferred the term “Natives” to the more common “Indians,” which he considered “a slur upon an oppressed and scattered nation.”) One of Apess’s important strategies was to link the oppression of Native Americans with that of African Americans and other people of color around the world: “If black or red skin or any other skin of color is disgraceful to God, it appears he has disgraced himself a great deal—for he has made fifteen colored people to one white and placed them here upon this earth.” In addition to his writing, Apess became an activist for the rights of the Mashpee people in Massachusetts. He was jailed for civil disobedience, and the Mashpees’ nonviolent protest won some of their demands. Apess died in 1839 at the age of 41. We don’t know if Harriet read his work, but scholars think that Apess may have influenced Thoreau, Melville, and especially Frederick Douglass as he was writing “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”. You can read Son of the Forest and “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” on line for free. Just search by title. Let us know what connections you see between Apess’s work and Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”. Or what about connections to writing from our own time? About the author:
Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years. He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release soon by Fourth Wall Films.
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Herman Melville, Moby Dick and "Benito Cereno" Herman Melville was a New Yorker who went to sea, and Harriet Beecher Stowe was a New Englander who spent eighteen important years in Cincinnati. It’s unlikely that Harriet read Melville’s books, and Melville may have read Uncle Tom’s Cabin but only after writing Moby-Dick. Still, these two authors have more in common than you might think. Both were raised in Calvinist households, Melville in the Dutch Reformed Church and Harriet in her father’s Presbyterianism. Both also later switched to churches with more optimistic theologies, Melville to Unitarianism and Harriet to the Episcopal Church. Scholar David Reynolds suggests that the gloomy Calvinist background and the spiritual questioning that followed account for the surprising number of characters who question their faith in Uncle Tom’s Cabin: “Push Uncle Tom’s Cabin a bit more toward the dark side and we’re in the doubt-riddled world of Melville, Hawthorne, and Dickinson.” The year 1851 was central to the writing lives of both Harriet and Melville. She began serial publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and he published Moby-Dick. Both authors followed these works with important fictional treatments of slavery in the mid-1850s: Melville with his novella “Benito Cereno” in 1855 and Harriet with her novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp the next year. The two authors’ very different approaches to writing made both their critical and popular reputations as volatile as today’s stock market. Harriet’s direct condemnation of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin made it the bestselling book in the world other than the Bible in the nineteenth century, while Melville’s dense language, irony, and ambiguous symbolism in Moby-Dick attracted few readers in his lifetime. His contemporaries also were not ready for the close crosscultural friendship of Ishmael and Queequeg or Melville’s implicit critique of American white supremacy when Ishmael says: “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.” Even when Melville dealt explicitly with slavery in “Benito Cereno,” his irony and complex character development were too indirect to interest abolitionists or many other readers. When Melville and Harriet died in the 1890s, she was by far the more famous of the two. By the 1920s, literary tastes were changing. Critics began to celebrate Melville’s psychological analysis and thematic ambiguities and turned away from what they considered the propaganda and sentimentality of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Then, starting in the early 1980s, feminist criticism and cultural studies brought Uncle Tom’s Cabin back into the literary canon, where it stands today alongside Moby-Dick as one of the central works of mid-nineteenth century American literature. About the author:
Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years. He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release in 2020 by Fourth Wall Films. Visiting Harriet’s Literary Neighborhood #6: Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills5/8/2020 Dr. John Getz from Xavier University is leading us on a tour of Harriet's "Literary Neighborhood"--authors and work that interacted with her own life and work, even though they were often geographically far apart. CLICK HERE for the full series. Thanks to the amazing success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe was considered one of the major authors of the day. She was important enough to be one of the founders of a prestigious new magazine of literature and culture, The Atlantic Monthly, in 1857. Four years later that magazine published the novella Life in the Iron Mills, launching the writing career of young Rebecca Harding from Wheeling in what was then Virginia. In 1863, that young author, in the midst of a productive decade of novel writing, married and became Rebecca Harding Davis. Scholar David Reynolds lists Davis with Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, and others in what he calls the American Women’s Renaissance from 1855 to 1865. But as the 1860s drew to a close, a strong backlash against the success of women authors, including Davis and even Harriet herself, was starting. Harriet wrote letters protesting hostile reviews of both their works and invited Davis to write for Hearth and Home, a monthly magazine Harriet was co-editing. Davis accepted. The backlash against women authors continued, and Life in the Iron Mills fell into obscurity until fiction writer Tillie Olsen rediscovered it and convinced The Feminist Press to reprint it in 1972. More than a century had passed since its original publication. Life in the Iron Mills is written in the poetic, symbolic style of Davis’s day, and the benevolent Quaker woman and her community at the end may remind you of Rachel Halliday and her family in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But Davis’s subject—the plight of immigrants and the working class as the US industrialized—looks forward to the realism that would dominate American fiction after the Civil War and even to the naturalism that would appear in the 1890s. You can read this groundbreaking novella free online through Project Gutenberg. We welcome your questions and comments about your reading experience. About the author: Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years. He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release in spring 2020 by Fourth Wall Films. Visiting Harriet’s Literary Neighborhood #5: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl5/1/2020 Dr. John Getz from Xavier University is leading us on a tour of Harriet's "Literary Neighborhood"--authors and work that interacted with her own life and work, even though they were often geographically far apart. CLICK HERE for the full series. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s interaction with an aspiring African American woman writer didn’t go well. See what you think Harriet’s motives might have been. In 1852, the spectacular success of the book publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had made Harriet famous. That same year, another Harriet--Harriet Jacobs—who had fled slavery saw her freedom purchased by her Northern employer and friend Cornelia Grinnell Willis. A year later, Jacobs was urged to tell her life story, which would provide a woman’s perspective on the full-length freedom narratives written by men like Frederick Douglass. Jacobs’s abolitionist friend Amy Post wrote to Beecher Stowe asking for advice and support for Jacobs’s effort. Instead of responding to Jacobs or Post, Beecher Stowe sent the letter to Willis, asking for verification and permission to use Jacobs’s story in A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which Beecher Stowe was currently writing. A Key was her documentary defense of the picture of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Jacobs was offended that Beecher Stowe had shared embarrassing details of her experience in slavery with Willis, who had not previously known that part of Jacobs’s history. Jacobs responded to Beecher Stowe that she wanted to tell her own story but would provide her with “some facts for her book.” Beecher Stowe never answered Jacobs’s letters. Was Beecher Stowe just too busy to take on another project? Did she suspect that Jacobs’s account of hiding seven years in an attic was based on Cassy’s stratagem in Chapter XXXIX of Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Even if she did, shouldn’t she have responded directly to Amy Post and Jacobs rather than to Willis? Biographer Joan Hedrick attributes Beecher Stowe’s treatment of Jacobs to “insensitivity bred by class and skin privilege . . . probably exacerbated by her sense of literary ‘ownership ‘ of the tale of the fugitive slave.” Jacobs was right to insist on writing her own story, which she did admirably over the next few years. It took her three more years, until 1861, to find a publisher. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl powerfully reveals the double oppression faced by enslaved women while providing an inside look at the rich cultural network enslaved people nurtured to keep themselves alive. You can read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl free online through Project Gutenberg. Please share your comments and questions on any part of Jacobs’s story or this tale of two Harriets. We’d be delighted to hear from you. About the author: Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years. He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release in spring 2020 by Fourth Wall Films. Dr. John Getz from Xavier University is leading us on a tour of Harriet's "Literary Neighborhood"--authors and work that interacted with her own life and work, even though they were often geographically far apart. CLICK HERE for the full series. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain were friends, and he literally lived in her neighborhood, in fact, next door to her in Hartford, CT, from 1874 to 1891. They shared jokes and a passion for social justice. If you read Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn in grade school or high school, give it another try from your later perspective. You may find that the parts you laughed out loud at back then are less interesting and that some parts you skipped over speak to you more today. If Huckleberry Finn seems uneven, remember that its author struggled to write it in fits and starts from 1876 to 1885. Remember too that slavery had been abolished for over a decade when he began the project, so he never saw it as an abolitionist novel though it’s set in the 1840s. The targets of Twain’s satire are many, but see if you can find examples of his concern about postwar attempts to glamorize the antebellum South and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Try reading some of this book aloud. That will help if the dialogue seems confusing. You’ll also hear Huck’s voice, one of the most original and enduring of Twain’s creations.
Huckleberry Finn was controversial when published in 1885 and remains so today. Recent objections focus on the characters’ use of the N-word and on the characterization of Jim and his relationship with Huck. You can read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn free online through Project Gutenberg. If you read or reread even part of it, let us know your reactions. About the author: Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years. He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release in spring 2020 by Fourth Wall Films. Dr. John Getz from Xavier University is leading us on a tour of Harriet's "Literary Neighborhood"--authors and work that interacted with her own life and work, even though they were often geographically far apart. CLICK HERE for the full series. Henry David Thoreau—truly a 19th century expert on physical distancing! In his masterpiece, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (1845), he narrates his two-year experiment in simple living in the cabin he built on the shore of Walden Pond, near his native Concord, MA. Walden condenses Thoreau’s two years at the pond into one cycle of the seasons, thus showing his deep connection with ever-changing, always-alive nature. Thoreau wasn’t a misanthrope, but he was quirky and strongly individualistic. In the chapter “Visitors,” he celebrates (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) the power of physical distancing to enhance deep discussion and thought: “One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. . . . As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough.” It’s unlikely that Harriet Beecher Stowe read Walden, which wasn’t popular in its day. It’s even more unlikely that Thoreau read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, since he didn’t read modern novels. But in his journal Thoreau wrote that he owned a figurine of Uncle Tom and Little Eva, the gift of a freedom seeker he helped escape. Harriet and Henry were both New Englanders, but he didn’t benefit from 18 years in Cincinnati as she did. Nevertheless, they shared a hatred of slavery, an interest in civil disobedience, and a willingness to help freedom seekers on their way north. For a free download of Walden, go to www.gutenberg.org/walden Walden can be a challenging read. Please take a few minutes to share your experience, positive or negative, with some or even part of this book. Let us know what comes to your mind when someone mentions Henry David Thoreau. Does Thoreau deserve his reputation as a progenitor of the modern environmental movement? We welcome your questions and observations about Walden or its author. About the author: Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years. He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release in spring 2020 by Fourth Wall Films. |
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