African American Childhood and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1850S-1900)
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BREWINGTON, PAULETTE YVONNE, Ph.D. Wild, Willful, and Wicked: African American Childhood and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1850s-1900). (2013) Directed by Dr. Karen A. Weyler. 249 pp. This dissertation examines nineteenth-century depictions of African American children in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends (1857), and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig (1859). It explores Stowe’s characters as wild, willful, and unruly minstrel-inspired comic figures further exaggerated with nineteenth-century stereotypes such as: shiftlessness, ignorance heathenism, and demonism. Both novels of Webb and Wilson serve as respondents to Stowe’s creations. Frank J. Webb presents industrious, educated children whose pranks are born out of self-possession. Wilson, on the other hand, illustrates that for the African American child in servitude in the free North, hardship and violence can rival that of the slave-holding South. WILD, WILLFUL, AND WICKED: AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERARY IMAGINATION (1850S-1900) by Paulette Yvonne Brewington A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2013 Approved by ____________________________ Committee Chair © 2013 Paulette Yvonne Brewington APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair ______________________________________ Committee Members ______________________________________ ______________________________________ ______________________________________ ___________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................1 II. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN ......................................................................................19 Introduction ...............................................................................................19 Harry Harris: Stowe’s “Pig in a Poke” .....................................................26 Mose and Pete: Come Ye Sinners .............................................................39 Aint’ Misbehavin’ .....................................................................................52 Topsy: Something Wicked ........................................................................71 Conclusion ..............................................................................................106 III. CHARLIE AND KINCH: FREEDOM AND CHILDHOOD IN THE GARIES AND THEIR FRIENDS .........................................................110 Introduction. ............................................................................................110 Publication Background ..........................................................................111 Structural Background ............................................................................113 Caricature Dismissed ..............................................................................115 Charlie by Other Names ..........................................................................124 “Train Up a Child” ..................................................................................128 “As Bad as I Can Be.” .............................................................................131 Servitude Revisited at Warmouth ...........................................................141 “A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” .................................................145 Minstrel Redux.........................................................................................154 Conclusion ..............................................................................................157 IV. SERVITUDE’S CRUELTIES IN HARRIET WILSON’S OUR NIG .............162 Introduction and Background .................................................................162 Abandonment ..........................................................................................166 Frado’s Adoption Narrative .....................................................................169 “I’s Mighty Wicked.” (UTC 213) ...........................................................176 The Mule of the World ............................................................................181 A Monstrous Mistress .............................................................................185 “This Little Light of Mine”: Childhood ..................................................189 The “Closet of the Soul” (Walker 78) .....................................................194 iii Conversion ..............................................................................................202 Seduction? ...............................................................................................204 Conclusion: Liberation and Redemption ................................................207 V. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................210 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................................................213 APPENDIX A. LIST OF FIGURES ...............................................................................231 iv LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. “Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom that he is sold and that she is running away to save her child.” ................................................231 Figure 2. “Valuing the Human Article.” .........................................................................232 Figure 3. “George and Eliza.” ........................................................................................233 Figure 4. An Untitled Illustration of Chloe, Uncle Tom, Mose, Pete, Polly, and George Shelby ........................................................234 Figure 5. “Mose and Pete with the Baby.”......................................................................235 Figure 6. “Young Niggers on the Verandah.”.................................................................236 Figure 7. “Haley and Nigger Boys.” ..............................................................................237 Figure 8. “Topsy’s Mischief.” .......................................................................................238 Figure 9. “Eva and Topsy.” ............................................................................................239 Figure 10. “Coon Dat Carried De Razor.” .....................................................................240 Figure 11. “Daniel Lambert” .........................................................................................241 Figure 12. “Miss Dinah Crow” .......................................................................................242 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This dissertation examines representations of nineteenth-century African American children and childhood in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends (1857) and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig (1859) as responses to depictions in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Stowe’s characterizations of black children, rich in valences of black-faced minstrelsy, appear as “wild and uncontrollable pickaninnies” (Haywood 419) with wooly heads, beady eyes, and glistening teeth set against jet-black complexions. Black-faced minstrelsy’s popularity heightened in the U. S. during the 1830s with Thomas D. Rice and continued through the 1840s with minstrel companies. Eric Lott claims: “For a time in the late 1840s minstrelsy came to seen as the most representative national art” (8). Stowe’s representations of black children emulated minstrelsy’s “principal cultural forms: dance, music, and verbal play” (Lott 101). The children dance, sing, perform antics, and speak in heavy dialect associated with the minstrel stage. They thrive in Stowe’s mythic, antebellum world of patriarchal benevolence – a world absent of laboring slaves and abuse. Her depictions of children, however, erode along a slope of blissful ignorance into the iconic character of Topsy, a loathsome, heathenish creature “incapable of intellectual or spiritual action” (419), and 1 significantly, one insensible to physical cruelty. Such depiction promotes the enslaved black child as an ignorant, wicked, Other who, by virtue of his or her difference, while sanctioning and encouraging abuse. The Garies and Our Nig reject such ideology through irony and satire. As the term “child” is implicit in childhood, my research begins, in part, by way of historical inquiry into nineteenth-century perceptions of the black child. Overall, childhood was considered the stage of human growth and development between infancy and adulthood. For this project, I follow Wilma King’s delineations from the 1850 Census of the United States where children ages five to twenty-one years were categorized under the heading of “Youth” (King xx). The age distinction has particular relevance with Stowe’s characters, Sam and Andy, who are little more than teenagers (Yarbrough 47), mask subterfuge with childlike Sambo antics. The “Sambo” character was a creation of Southern lore (Elkins 82). This character was a