Stony Brook University
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Specters of Haiti: Race, Fear, and the American Gothic, 1789-1855 A Dissertation Presented By Gretchen Judith Woertendyke To The Graduate School In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In English Stony Brook University August 2007 Copyright by Gretchen Judith Woertendyke 2007 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Gretchen Judith Woertendyke We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend Acceptance of this dissertation. Susan Scheckel—Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor of English Eric Haralson—Chairperson of Defense Associate Professor of English Helen Cooper Professor of English Robert S. Levine Professor of English, University of Maryland This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Specters of Haiti: Race, Fear, and the American Gothic, 1789-1855 By Gretchen Judith Woertendyke Doctor of Philosophy In English Stony Brook University 2007 This dissertation argues that the early American gothic is different from that of the British gothic and that the specter of slave violence in Saint-Domingue accounts for this difference. Unlike the British gothic, which overwrote a despotic, Catholic past onto a revolutionary, “terror”-filled present, American writers wrote a French and American Revolutionary present onto a future in which the worst fears of the early Republic were realized: French Revolutionary philosophy, itself related to the American Revolutionary experience, in the hands of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the slaves in Saint-Domingue. In an atmosphere of nascent national consciousness, the gothic tale in particular became the ideal literary form for grappling with the fear which accompanied the Haitian Revolution. A fundamentally ambivalent form, the gothic could at once highlight the contradictions implicit in the American Constitution, while also rendering the most terrifying scenes of violence practiced upon that constitution. The uprisings that resulted in the first black nation state of Haiti in 1804—and especially the reports of these events circulated in American popular media— supply the material examples on which such scenes become imagined. The frequency and flexibility of the Haitian Revolution as a symbol of widespread anxiety about possible slave iii violence in the early republic make it indelible in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century American writing and constitutive of its most enduring form, the gothic tale. Aiming to contribute to the emerging field of Transatlantic Romanticism, my dissertation surveys tales and criticism on both sides of the Atlantic, from British romanticists such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Mathew Lewis, and William Godwin, to the pamphlets and journalism of William Cobbett, novels and essays of Charles Brockden Brown, trial reports and newspaper notices on the slave conspiracies of Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner, transatlantic writer for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine John Howison, and finally to modern American romanticists Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. iv For my daughter, Isabelle Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………......vii Introduction………………………………………………………………...1 New Gothic Nationalism and Transatlantic Exchange Chapter I.………………………………………………………………......25 British Pasts, Haitian Futures: The Time of American Gothicism Chapter II: Introduction……………………………………………….........64 Transatlantic Translations—William Cobbett and Charles Brockden Brown William Cobbett’s ‘Cant of the Pickpockets’………………………..66 Transatlantic Underworlds and Romanticism………………………81 Charles Brockden Brown and the Development of Form…………..90 Traces of Futurity…………………………………………………..99 Chapter III: Introduction………………………………………………… 114 Insurrection Narratives and the Rise of the Gothic: Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner Gabriel’s Rebellion………………………………………………...125 Denmark Vesey’s Conspiracy……………………………………...144 The Confessions of Nat Turner…………………………………...177 Chapter IV.………………………………………………………………..201 ‘Temporal Accumulation’: John Howison, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville’s Gothic Modernity Bibliography……………………………………………………………….244 Appendix A………………………………………………………………..256 Appendix B………………………………………………………………..259 vi Acknowledgments First and foremost, I want to thank my committee, who for almost a decade, offered shrewd comments, patience, and support. In particular, I thank Helen Cooper for introducing me to Caribbean literature and postcolonial theory without which my project could never have been conceived. Her warmth and friendship too in the early years of my graduate study provided a much needed model of integrity and decency. Eric Haralson always offered the most impressive combination of zoomed out theoretical questioning with precise line by line response. His insight into the direction of the project toward trans- atlanticsm and British romanticism was subtly suggested years before it finally took hold for me and I found myself returning again and again to questions he raised in the earliest moments of my writing. And finally, I thank Susan Scheckel, whose enthusiasm for my project was immediate and enduring. Susan’s scholarship and incredibly smart feedback has shaped this dissertation in too many ways to list here; more than anything else, perhaps, is the uncanny sense of timing she so often illustrated in her praise and encouragement, which several times helped me to believe it was not only possible to finish but imperative. Robert Levine’s scholarship, from his first book to his most recent article, continues to shape the questions I ask about print culture in the early republic. I am grateful to him for his expertise and generosity in being an outside reader. I want to also thank Katherine Suggs for her willingness to read for me in the latest stages of the project and for being one of the many phantom readers for whom I have always written and admired. I completed this dissertation at the University of South Carolina where I have received unbelievable personal warmth and intellectual motivation. In particular, I want to thank David Shields for reading chapters of this project and whose immense knowledge of the period, of all periods really, introduced important revisions. Shevaun Watson shared her thoughts and research on Denmark Vesey and I am grateful for our discussions which generated revisions in that chapter. For the friendship and vibrant intellectual community, I thank David Bajo, Elise Blackwell, Susan Courtney, Tommy and Holly Crocker, Mindy Fenske, Greg Forter, Tim Johns, Sarah Lincoln, and Rebecca Stern. To my parents, Robert Woertendyke and Kathryn Gallagher, for fostering my deep regard for art, literature, and education. To my children, Isabelle, Owen, and Gabriel, who have put up with a distracted mom for too long. And finally, I want to thank Tony Jarrells for his intellectual creativity, rigorous scholarship, professional integrity, love—he has for many years inspired me to be a better scholar. This dissertation could not have been written without his friendship and support. Introduction: New Gothic Nationalism and Transatlantic Exchange This dissertation argues that the form of the early American Gothic is different from the British Gothic, and that the specter of slave violence in Saint-Domingue accounts for this difference. Unlike the British gothic, which overwrote a despotic, Catholic past onto a revolutionary, “terror”-filled present, American writers wrote a French and American Revolutionary present onto a future in which the worst fears of the early Republic were realized: French Revolutionary philosophy—itself related to the American Revolutionary experience—in the hands of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the slaves in Saint-Domingue. In an atmosphere of nascent national consciousness, the gothic tale in particular became the ideal literary form for grappling with the fear which accompanied the Haitian revolution. A fundamentally ambivalent form, the gothic could at once highlight the contradictions implicit in the American Constitution, while also rendering the most terrifying scenes of violence practiced upon that constitution. The uprisings that resulted in the first black nation state of Haiti in 1804—and especially reports of these events circulated in American popular media— supply the material examples on which such scenes become imagined. The frequency and flexibility of the Haitian Revolution as a symbol of widespread anxiety about possible slave violence in the early republic are indelible to late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century American writing and constitutive of its most enduring form, the gothic tale. At the conclusion of the slave revolution in Saint-Domingue in April 1804, as the last vestiges of colonial rule were eliminated, the head of state Jean Jacques Dessalines’ announced that no European would ever again rule the island and its inhabitants. He then declared: “I have avenged America” (qtd. in Geggus 207).1 Geggus refers to Dessalines’ 1 David Patrick Geggus, in the epilogue “The Naming of Haiti.” Haitian Revolutionary Studies. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2002. 207-220. Geggus cites the Archives