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Crossing Boundaries: Transatlantic Readings Of CROSSING BOUNDARIES: TRANSATLANTIC READINGS OF SENTIMENTAL STRATEGIES IN SELECTED ANTISLAVERY TEXTS by NICHOLYN HUTCHINSON (Under the Direction of Tricia Lootens) ABSTRACT This dissertation study examines the sentimental tradition in Maria Edgeworth’s The Grateful Negro, Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself, and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The introductory chapter lays the foundation of my argument. As a rhetoric and convention, sentimentalism provides a public forum for each author’s political agenda as well as a “private” one that is revealed as a subtext in their narratives. Also, in the transatlantic nature of my choice of authors, I argue that their texts should be read as complements of each other, not just thematically speaking but also in terms of the sentimental strategies and techniques they use to address slavery, race and gender. Chapter One offers a discussion of Maria Edgeworth, in which I challenge the reading of her novella as an antislavery text. Because of her ambivalence towards abolition, I argue that sentimentality serves to mask an apologist agenda. Consequently, her tale is rendered suspect. The next chapter addresses Herman Melville’s novella as a critique of sentimentality and sentimental abolitionist literature. My analysis examines how Melville exploits nineteenth-century racial attitudes and stereotypes of blackness in order to expose the dangers of sentimental discourse and to destabilize the sentimental reader’s faith in it. Chapters Three and Four examines the slave narratives of Mary Prince and Harriet Jacobs, respectively. The Prince chapter explores how her narrative can be read within the sentimental tradition and the way she challenges it through her use of language and the addressesing of her physical and sexual abuse. The Jacobs chapter examines the sentimental strategies she employs simultaneously to reveal and to conceal the delicate details of the female slave experience. Focusing on the silences and whispers surrounding her sexual victimization and transgressions, I explore how her reticence as a technique allowed her to access the sentimental identities of sentimental heroine and the good mother. In the Afterword, I demonstrate the intertextual relationship between all four works by highlighting the connections between them. INDEX WORDS: Antislavery Literature, Benito Cereno, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Maria Edgeworth, Mary Prince, Sentimentalism, The Grateful Negro, The History of Mary Prince CROSSING BOUNDARIES: TRANSATLANTIC READINGS OF SENTIMENTAL STRATEGIES IN SELECTED ANTISLAVERY TEXTS by NICHOLYN HUTCHINSON B.A., Georgia Southern University, 1993 M.A., The University of Georgia, 1995 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2002 © 2002 Nicholyn Hutchinson All Rights Reserved CROSSING BOUNDARIES: TRANSATLANTIC READINGS OF SENTIMENTAL STRATEGIES IN SELECTED ANTISLAVERY TEXTS by NICHOLYN HUTCHINSON Major Professor: Tricia Lootens Committee: Barbara McCaskill Valerie Babb Diane Morrow Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2002 iv DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Sheila Elizabeth Sapp. Without my mother’s unconditional, loving support and unshakeable confidence in me, I would not be who I am or where I am today. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Tricia Lootens, my dissertation director, for giving me the nurturing, support, and mentoring that I needed to complete the dissertation and program. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with her. Because of her, I have become a stronger reader, thinker, and writer. I also wish to thank Barbara McCaskill. Throughout my academic career, her support and advice has been invaluable to me. She has been there since the beginning, and she has seen me through to the end. Special thanks also go to Valerie Babb, Diane Morrow, and Sonja Lanehart. The faith and confidence they expressed in me and in my project pushed me forward. Timothy Powell also deserves special thanks for his help with the early draft of the Melville chapter. To my mother, I am not sure a “Thank you” is enough. To my grandmother, Eva Henry, your motto helped me persevere through this project. To Everette, I am glad you told me to keep going when I most wanted to give up. I also need to acknowledge others who each helped me in his and her own unique way: Marlene Allen, Elizabete Vasconcelos, Errol Boddy, Ann Glauser, Sharon Jones, Holly Wilson, and Sara Shepherd. There is no such thing as doing it alone. I would also like to thank my nieces, Natosha and Frances, and my nephew, Marcus. You have understood and loved your aunt, even when I could not be there for birthdays and holidays because I had to write. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 THE SENTIMENTAL MASK OF ANTISLAVERY IN MARIA EDGEWORTH’S “THE GRATEFUL NEGRO” ..................................... 27 2 HERMAN MELVILLE AND THE CRITIQUE OF SENTIMENTAL ABOLITION IN “BENITO CERENO” ..................................................... 71 3 READING THE SENTIMENTAL TRADITION IN MARY PRINCE’S THE HISTORY OF MARY PRINCE: A WEST INDIAN SLAVE, RELATED BY HERSELF.......................................................................... 119 4 WHISPERS, SILENCES, AND SENTIMENTAL STRATEGIES IN HARRIET JACOBS’S INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL............................................................................................. 166 AFTERWORD................................................................................................................ 197 WORKS CITED.............................................................................................................. 201 1 INTRODUCTION Sensibility [or sentimentality] can use discourse but cannot be enclosed by it; one could say, as a corollary to this, that sensibility has no certain boundaries or limitations. It adds a new dynamic to whatever forces, good or bad, happen to inspire each individual. The consequence is that sensibility apparently cannot be depended upon as a stable moral concept. Stephen Cox1 In this dissertation study, entitled “Crossing Boundaries: Transatlantic Readings of the Politics of Sentimentalism in Selected Antislavery Texts,” my goal is to examine the use of sentimentalism in a critical context in which it has not been done before. The use of “transatlantic” to describe the readings is not only meant to reflect the geographical and cultural origins of the authors and the texts I analyze in the following chapters, British author Maria Edgeworth’s “The Grateful Negro” (1802), American author Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” (1856), African British author Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831), and African American author Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (1861), but also to suggest the crossing of borders in another sense, the notion of cross- cultural exchange and influences of sentimentalism in antislavery writing. While critical studies on sentimentalism in British literary scholarship are more extensive and farther along than those in American literature, there is nothing overtly distinctive between “British” and “American” sentimentality other than the implied difference those labels impose. Though this labeling serves its purpose in canonizing texts and identifying literary traditions, it can prevent us from exploring possible similarities and shared 2 influences between works and authors that we assume to be dissimilar because of cultural and national difference. In the case of how I examine the rhetoric and conventions of sentimentalism in the works by Edgeworth, Melville, Prince, and Jacobs, all somewhat unlikely chaptermates, I was interested in how the contradictions between the authors made them complements of one another, not just thematically speaking in terms of their subjects but also in terms of strategies and techniques. The fact that the authors are each either British or American, white or black, male or female, privileged or oppressed is not limiting, but rather it allows for a unique and more complex look at the sentimental tradition. The transatlantic nature of this critical discussion is particularly significant, because the boundary crossing reflects a major point of my argument, which is the fluidity of sentimentalism as a convention. Edgeworth, Melville, Prince, and Jacobs all appropriate sentimentality in addressing the slavery issue, manipulating the rhetoric and conventions to make their own distinct political statements. The discourse Harriet Jacobs draws upon to publicize the plight of the sexually victimized female slave is the same discourse Herman Melville draws upon to challenge romanticized perceptions about blackness and slavery. The discourse Maria Edgeworth draws upon to illustrate the goodness of slaves and the benevolence of slave masters is the same discourse Mary Prince draws upon to detail her rebelliousness and the immense cruelty of slave owners. This adaptability and malleability
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