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Servitude, Sexual Abuse, Lynching and the (Un)Making of the Black Maternal Subject University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Violating Maternity: Servitude, Sexual Abuse, Lynching and the (Un)making of the Black Maternal Subject Michele Sharon Frank University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Frank, Michele Sharon, "Violating Maternity: Servitude, Sexual Abuse, Lynching and the (Un)making of the Black Maternal Subject" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1724. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1724 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1724 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Violating Maternity: Servitude, Sexual Abuse, Lynching and the (Un)making of the Black Maternal Subject Abstract VIOLATING MATERNITY: SERVITUDE, SEXUAL ABUSE, LYNCHING AND THE (UN)MAKING OF THE BLACK MATERNAL SUBJECT Michele Sharon Frank Herman Beavers This dissertation argues that African American women writers have identified the black maternal figure as a primary symbol of black cultural trauma. Through an examination of selected texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, I isolate writers’ and dramatists’ explorations of servitude, sexual abuse and lynching as systemic, historical violations of blackness and womanhood that have shaped black women’s maternal experiences. African American women writers’ depictions of black women’s experience of and resistance to such systemic violations of themselves, their children, and their communities reveal how their traumatized subjectivities defy facile understandings of maternal connection, love and protection. This dissertation argues that the writers’ construction of this maternal aesthetic signals an enduring concern with the intergenerational effects of compounded trauma and of black people’s sometimes self- wounding efforts simultaneously to contest their violation and affirm their humanity. My dissertation explicates the texts’ meanings within the socio-historical contexts of their creation and publication as well as on emphasizing attention to the periods of their representations. From its beginnings, African American literature has engaged both dominant and resistant ideologies of being in, first, the American Colonies and, later, the United States. Authors who have grown out of a markedly marginalized population have negotiated and participated in an artistically expressive tradition—literature—to which they routinely had been denied access and to which it was assumed they had little to contribute. African American literary and cultural criticism and Feminist Studies inform my methodology. While conversing with the theoretical constructs of Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction and New Historicism, Feminist and African American critical studies have insisted on modes of inquiry which foreground analyses of class, gender, race and, increasingly, sexuality as interconnected, systemic structures of identity that shape African American lives. These tropes of traumatic violation recur in other African American-authored texts, thereby corroborating my premise that a sustained explication of their representational significance contributes to the scholarly examination of the ways in which the symbolic work of cultural producers shapes our understanding of the formation of black subjectivities. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Herman Beavers Keywords Lynching, Motherhood, Sexual Abuse, Slavery, Trauma, Violence Subject Categories African American Studies | American Literature | Literature in English, North America | Women's Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1724 VIOLATING MATERNITY: SERVITUDE, SEXUAL ABUSE, LYNCHING AND THE (UN)MAKING OF THE BLACK MATERNAL SUBJECT Michele Sharon Frank A DISSERTATION in English Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation _____________________ Herman Beavers, Associate Professor of English and Graduate and Undergraduate Chair, Department of Africana Studies Graduate Group Chairperson ______________________ Melissa Sanchez, Associate Professor of English Dissertation committee Nancy Bentley, Professor of English Salamishah Tillet, Associate Professor of English Farah Jasmine Griffin, William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African-American Studies, Columbia University Crystal J. Lucky, Associate Professor of English and Director of Africana Studies Program, Villanova University VIOLATING MATERNITY: SERVITUDE, SEXUAL ABUSE, LYNCHING AND THE (UN)MAKING OF THE BLACK MATERNAL SUBJECT COPYRIGHT 2015 Michele Sharon Frank This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ iii For my children, Chloe Grace and Asher Vincent: completing this journey with you and having you express pride in me has been the sweetest thing. You are my joy. And For Craig, my husband and partner: who knew there would be another miracle on 34th Street? Through it all, you believed. Always. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to express my gratitude to a number of people who have been encouraging friends and supporters: Carol Jones Neuman, Gerry Neuman, Clara Whaley Perkins, Tony Harley, Ilda Ficher, and Laura Hawley. The members of my dissertation committee, Nancy Bentley, Salamishah Tillet, Farah Jasmine Griffin and Crystal Lucky, extended their generosity at the most crucial moments. My dissertation advisor, Herman Beavers, was a wonderfully steadfast advocate and mentor to me throughout this project. In moments of doubt, Herman’s model of guidance, questioning and conviction revived my own belief in my ability to complete this dissertation. I was truly fortunate to have him on my side. v ABSTRACT VIOLATING MATERNITY: SERVITUDE, SEXUAL ABUSE, LYNCHING AND THE (UN)MAKING OF THE BLACK MATERNAL SUBJECT Michele Sharon Frank Herman Beavers This dissertation argues that African American women writers have identified the black maternal figure as a primary symbol of black cultural trauma. Through an examination of selected texts from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, I isolate writers’ and dramatists’ explorations of servitude, sexual abuse and lynching as systemic, historical violations of blackness and womanhood that have shaped black women’s maternal experiences. African American women writers’ depictions of black women’s experience of and resistance to such systemic violations of themselves, their children, and their communities reveal how their traumatized subjectivities defy facile understandings of maternal connection, love and protection. This dissertation argues that the writers’ construction of this maternal aesthetic signals an enduring concern with the intergenerational effects of compounded trauma and of black people’s sometimes self- wounding efforts simultaneously to contest their violation and affirm their humanity. My dissertation explicates the texts’ meanings within the socio-historical contexts of their creation and publication as well as on emphasizing attention to the periods of their representations. From its beginnings, African American literature has engaged both dominant and resistant ideologies of being in, first, the American Colonies and, later, the United States. Authors who have grown out of a markedly marginalized population have vi negotiated and participated in an artistically expressive tradition—literature—to which they routinely had been denied access and to which it was assumed they had little to contribute. African American literary and cultural criticism and Feminist Studies inform my methodology. While conversing with the theoretical constructs of Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction and New Historicism, Feminist and African American critical studies have insisted on modes of inquiry which foreground analyses of class, gender, race and, increasingly, sexuality as interconnected, systemic structures of identity that shape African American lives. These tropes of traumatic violation recur in other African American-authored texts, thereby corroborating my premise that a sustained explication of their representational significance contributes to the scholarly examination of the ways in which the symbolic work of cultural producers shapes our understanding of the formation of black subjectivities. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………...III ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………….............................IV ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………V TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………….............................................VII PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………...VIII CHAPTER 1………………………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2……………………………………………………………………………..52 CHAPTER 3……………………………………………………………………………103 CHAPTER 4……………………………………………………………………………160 APPENDIX……………………………………………………......................................215 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………231 viii PREFACE My family stood on the other side, having been cleared. I confidently stepped into and out of the rectangular box. No beeping, of course, because I carried no weapons;
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