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2010

Ties that Bind: Hiram Powers' "Greek Slave" and Nineteenth- Century Marriage

Lauren K. Lessing Colby College, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Lessing, Lauren K., "Ties that Bind: Hiram Powers' "Greek Slave" and Nineteenth-Century Marriage" (2010). Faculty Scholarship. 65. https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/faculty_scholarship/65

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. 40 Spring 2010

This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ties That Bind Hiram Powers’s Greek Slave and Nineteenth-Century Marriage

Lauren Lessing On an April evening in 1859, Louise Jenkins wrote of the bride’s white silk Corcoran, the only child of fabulously and point lace gown, the handsome wealthy banker, philanthropist, and art groom, and the artfully grouped wedding collector William Wilson Corcoran, attendants before briefly describing the married George Eustis Jr., a United ceremony. States congressman from Louisiana, in her father’s Washington, D.C., mansion. [The Rev.] Dr. Pyne stopped a few paces in A “select circle” of more than one front of the couple about to be wedded, Mr. thousand guests witnessed the ceremony, Corcoran standing at his right hand, just which took place in Corcoran’s private in his rear, the attendants being on either art gallery. Writing of the wedding for side. . . . Never was the ritual of the church Harper’s Weekly, George Washington more impressively read. Mr. Corcoran gave Jenkins noted that one of the original the bride away; the wedded couple knelt versions of Hiram Powers’s celebrated upon two prayer cushions placed before marble statue The Greek Slave (frontis- them; and no sooner had the clergyman piece) stood at one end of the gallery, said “Amen!” than they sealed the rite with “in a bay window which forms a fitting a kiss.1 shrine.” He went on to describe the “impressive and beautiful tableau” that The gowns worn by Louise Corcoran greeted the wedding guests as they and her bridesmaids, the flowers, and entered the space: the arrangement of the wedding party followed, almost to the letter, the rec- At the far end of the gallery, as a presiding ommendations for a tasteful wedding divinity, was the exquisite chef d’oeuvre of proposed in Godey’s Lady’s Book the previ- Powers, surrounded by the rarest exotics, ous November. However, the Corcoran pure and white as the eloquent marble family substituted its private art gallery for itself. Before the pedestal, however, were a church and reversed the usual order of dense clusters of scarlet azelias, which the wedding procession, in that the guests formed an effective background for the and the minister, not Louise, entered with Hiram Powers, The Greek bride, who was, of course, the “observed Corcoran, the father of the bride. The Slave, 1846. Marble, 65 in. of all observers.” Never was there a more bride, the groom, and their attendants high. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of lovely victim at the altar of Hymen and stood posed and motionless—like works William Wilson Corcoran never did she appear more beautiful. of art themselves—before an ideal marble

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions statue, Powers’s Greek Slave, which took (fig. 1)—stand or kneel side by side, the place of a traditional Christian altar.2 their heads inclined toward each other, The Corcoran-Eustis wedding allows us to their wide-eyed faces suffused with reconsider The Greek Slave in the light of love and religious reverence. Newly mid-nineteenth-century views of marriage married husbands and wives—such as in the United States—in particular, debates those depicted in Currier & Ives’s print about the relation between marriage and The Young Housekeepers: The Day after slavery, reactions to the marriage practices Marriage (fig. 2)­—lean into one another, of the Latter-Day Saints and other utopian smiling and gazing into each other’s faces. movements that sought to redefine the In both these prints, the married pair are institution, and sentimental narratives that positioned and framed as if occupying stressed the painful separation of brides a world of their own, oblivious to the from their parents.3 gazes of others. This romantic image of marriage, which a flood of illustrated gift books and ladies’ magazines helped to American Marriage popularize for a broad American middle- and upper-class audience, is reflected in The Corcoran nuptials took place at a Jenkins’s description of the “rather petite” crucial juncture in the visual culture bride, “with a full face, expressive eyes, of American marriage. Through their and graceful carriage,” and the “slender, wedding Louise Corcoran and George gallant-looking young bridegroom,” who Eustis enacted a sentimental ideal of kneels with her, then leans in for a kiss. marriage that had been popular for It also can be seen in a portrait of Louise the past two decades. In innumerable Corcoran, by French-trained painter decorative prints, fashion plates, and Louis Mathieu Didier Guillaume, which other illustrations produced during the depicts the young woman in her wedding 1840s and ’50s, brides and grooms—like gown, gazing dewily upward and out those in Sarony & Major’s The Marriage of the picture, as if into the eyes of her

1 Sarony & Major, The Marriage, 1846. Hand-colored lithograph, 12 x 8 1/2 in. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

2 Currier & Ives, The Young House- keepers: The Day after Marriage, 1848. Hand-colored lithograph, 14 x 10 1/4 in. Prints and Pho- tographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions beloved (fig. 3). Against her breast, she comment in a letter to her husband presses a violet, symbolic of modesty and that the wedding was to be “a small calm submission. Rothschild’s affair” is equally telling. It could hardly be said, however, that She was no doubt referring to the 1857 3 Louis Mathieu Didier Guillaume, Louise Corcoran Eustis, ca. 1859. the bride and groom were, in this case, marriage of cousins Leonora and Baron Oil, 35 1/2 x 28 in. Lisner-Louise- oblivious to the gazes of others. Jenkins’s Alphonse de Rothschild, which was Dickson-Hurt Home, Washington, description of the carefully arranged described and depicted by a host of il- D.C. Photo, Amelia Goerlitz bridal party as a “tableau”—a word that lustrated magazines, including Harper’s 4 “Marriage Ceremonial of the recalls the popular parlor theatricals Weekly, Godey’s Lady’ s Book, and the Baron Alphonse de Rothschild known as tableaux vivants—shows his Illustrated London News (fig. 4). This and Miss Leonora Rothschild: awareness that the Corcoran-Eustis European, Jewish wedding—which, The Bridegroom Breaking the Wine-Cup,” Illustrated London wedding was an elaborately staged per- according to the reporter for Harper’s News, March 1857, 237 formance. Mrs. Jefferson Davis’s ironic Weekly, could only have escaped the notice of those “in Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands; every body else knows the Rothschilds by heart”—probably served as a model for the Corcoran ceremony.4 Like Leonora Rothschild, Louise Corcoran was a wealthy banker’s daughter, and, like the Rothschilds, Mr. and Mrs. Eustis were married in the spring before a large crowd in a splendid domestic interior decked out with chefs d’oeuvre including white marble statuary, with the press in attendance. As historian Karen Halttunen has argued, American

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions domestic culture in the 1850s witnessed sexual slavery. The short chain that binds a shift away from sentimental sincerity her wrists prevents her from covering toward self-conscious display.5 This shift both her genitals and her breasts at the is certainly evident in the Corcoran- same time. In any case, her languidly Eustis wedding, where the ceremony was lowered arms, like her expressionless, conceived from start to finish as a public averted face, convey her resignation in presentation of the prominent family’s front of the invasive gazes of the Turks. As wealth and social ideals. The central posi- cultural historian Joy Kasson has rightly tion of Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave noted, The Greek Slave tapped into a within this display is an index to the profound anxiety about the safety and sculpture’s importance at this historical integrity of the domestic sphere. In fact, moment. viewers conflated the slave’s body with the By 1859 The Greek Slave (see fron- fraught barrier between the private and tispiece, fig. 5) had achieved iconic public realms, contrasting the corruption, status in both the United States and exposure, and ruin that oppressed her Britain. Everyone at the Corcoran-Eustis from without with the comfort, faith, wedding would have been familiar with and love she sheltered within her heart.7 its subject.6 It depicts a young, Greek The drama of Powers’s narrative came Christian woman captured by Turks from the threat that her body—her last during the Greek War of Independence domestic barrier—might be violated. (1821–29). Stripped and chained at the As the sculptor’s friend and promoter wrists, she stands on the auction block Miner Kellogg noted, the slave’s discarded stoically awaiting her imminent sale into clothing, draped on a pillar behind her, offers crucial information about her life: “The cross and the locket, visible amid the drapery, indicate that she is Christian and beloved.”8 Sentimental writer Grace Greenwood also read in these items an indication of class:

By the embroidered cap and robe at her side, as well as by the exquisite delicacy of her hands, we may know that the maiden is noble, and that luxury and homage have waited upon her steps from infancy. Then how fearful this bondage, this exposure! Manacles on those soft, fair hands, and the gaze of vulgar eyes upon that unrobed, patrician form!9

As such reactions indicate, The Greek Slave could be read as a young woman not unlike Louise Corcoran herself, but one who—through a twist of fate—will become a concubine rather than a bride. In light of its subject matter, The Greek Slave might seem a bizarre choice for a wedding altar. Nevertheless, at a time 5 Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave when a growing number of Americans (detail) were protesting the legal, political,

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and economic disenfranchisement of slavery’s deleterious effects on the mar- married women, it created a vision of riages of white slave owners. Proslavery domesticity that many of the wedding apologists, by contrast, presented white guests in Washington must have found wives and black slaves as occupying compelling. The Greek Slave embodied separate, subordinate rungs within a the mid-nineteenth-century ideal of “true divinely ordained patriarchy. Slavery womanhood,” which meant, according protected marriage, they argued, by to Barbara Welter, that women should shielding white women from the lust of be passive, pious, pure, and domestic. dark-skinned men. Finally, defenders of a As one American observer noted, the conservative definition of marriage (some statue combined “all that is beautiful in of whom supported slavery, while others the ideal—that glows in the fancy—and did not) compared the various utopian all that is cheerful and home-like in the and reformist communities seeking to fair beings who cluster around our own redefine marriage at this time to Turkish firesides and live in our hearts.”10 Even harems, which they imagined as alluring in the less emotionally and symbolically but dangerous places, where the boundar- charged settings of public exhibition ies between slave and wife melted away halls, nineteenth-century viewers often entirely.13 With The Greek Slave, Powers contrasted the slave’s “distant, happy created a figure that could stand calmly in cottage home in Greece,” where she the eye of this rhetorical storm, eliciting had been cherished and adored, with viewers’ sympathy while seeming to affirm the polygamous, lustful, and pecuniary their various, contradictory, and overlap- union about to be imposed on her. From ping ideas about slavery and marriage. this comparison emerged a vision of Christian domestic life characterized by “love, trust, hope and joy,” an ideal that The Crisis in Marriage obscured the actual second-class status of married women throughout the Western During the years surrounding Powers’s world at this time.11 In the context of the creation of The Greek Slave, many Corcoran-Eustis wedding, the placement Americans perceived a crisis in the of Powers’s sculpture so close to the happy, legal and social definitions of marriage willing bride celebrated the Western that threatened, in their minds, the model of marriage by contrasting it with a foundations of Western civilization. As fantasy of the dissolute East. early as 1836, a writer for the New York Many scholars have discussed the Evangelist published “A Plea for the complex connections between Powers’s Institution of Marriage,” in which he Greek Slave and the fraught, contempora- defended, against “every attack of infidel neous dialogues about gender, race, and philosophy, licentious taste, reckless leg- slavery. Overlooked has been the fact that islation, and thoughtless levity,” a defini- the sculpture and its reception are also tion of marriage as the monogamous, deeply enmeshed in nineteenth-century permanent union of one dominant American debates about marriage, in man and one submissive woman. For which gender, race, and slavery were the writer, not only was this form of intricately intertwined.12 Women’s rights marriage natural, unchanging, and God- advocates compared a wife’s position given, it was also essential for “the safety within a traditional marriage to slavery. of individuals and communities, nations Abolitionists (some of whom supported and the church.”14 Nor was he alone in women’s rights and some of whom did his fears about the state of marriage in not) decried the fact that slaves were the United States. In 1841 Rev. Robert denied legal marriages and pointed to Hall extolled “The Advantages of the

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6 J. Maze Burbank, A Camp Meeting, or Religious Revival in America, from a Sketch Taken on the Spot, 1839. Watercolor on paper, 27 x 37 in. Old Dartmouth Historical Society–New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts, Gift of William F. Havemeyer. Photo, New Bedford Whaling Museum

Marriage Institution to Communities.” century, this period of intense Christian Describing “traditional Christian mar- evangelism afforded thousands of young riage” as “the great civilizer of nations,” men and women the opportunity to he condemned “the advocates of infidelity participate in tent revivals like the one [who] invert this eternal order of nature.” depicted in a watercolor of 1839 (fig. 6). The same year, an author for the Religious Not only did such gatherings allow Monitor and Evangelical Repository decried participants to experience ecstatic revela- the evils of polygamy in particular as tions, but they also brought young people the cause of the “voluptuousness . . . together in new communities outside the indolence, and imbecility both of mind normal boundaries of families, villages, and body, which have long characterized and conventional churches—institutions the nations of the East” and which now whose authority many began to question. also threatened the United States. In 1845 Large numbers of men and women who former President John Quincy Adams took part in revivals during their youth argued, “Of all human institutions, the remained receptive to new ideas about most indispensable to the social happiness the organization of the family and society of man is the unity and permanence of as they settled down, married, and raised the marriage contract.”15 families of their own. This outpouring of support for a single, One of the earliest utopian communi- supposedly eternal and divinely ordained ties to be founded during this period was definition of marriage was, in part, a reac- Nashoba plantation, established in 1825 tion to the many groups seeking to rede- by Scottish immigrant and freethinker fine American marriage in the wake of the Frances Wright, who purchased a tract Second Great Awakening. Caused in part of land near Nashville, Tennessee, where by a swell in the numbers of American she hoped to promote equality in terms children born in the early nineteenth of both race and gender. Her community

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 7 “Oneida Community Beastliness! from the 1830s through the 1850s. The Obscene Orgies and Perni- When Robert Dale Owen married cious Teachings of the Patriarch Mary Jane Robinson in 1832, the Noyes among the Novices of His Saintly Sect,” National Police couple signed (then published) a Gazette, February 4, 1882, 9 marriage contract in which the groom renounced his legal but “bar- barous . . . feudal, despotic” claim to his wife’s property and person. As a member of the Indiana state legisla- ture in the late 1830s, Owen cham- pioned birth control and worked to liberalize the state’s divorce laws, prompting Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, to describe Indiana as a “paradise for free lovers.”17 In 1848 one of the longest-lived attempts to redefine the American family began in Oneida, New York, under the guidance of ec- centric visionary John Humphrey Noyes. The Oneida Community announced its presence to the public in 1850 with a manifesto titled Slavery and Marriage: A consisted of a group of white, liberal men Dialogue. In it Noyes declared, “The and women and fifteen freed slaves. While truth is Marriage gives man the power of Wright was in England recovering from ownership over woman, and such power an illness in the late 1820s, rumors of free is as wrong and prolific of wrong in the love at Nashoba eroded support for her case of Marriage, as in that of Slavery.”18 project—rumors made all the more explo- Noyes’s solution was to do away with sive by the racial heterogeneity within the marriage entirely and encourage sexual community. Although Nashoba dissolved relations between all willing, adult, in 1830, criticisms of Wright continued to heterosexual couples within his social- fly for decades. As late as 1855, an article ist community—with the use of birth in the New York Times listed Wright as one control a strict requirement. Although of many “infidels” who sought “the over- their neighbors tolerated members of throw of the Marriage institution.”16 The the Oneida Community, the word author of this article likewise condemned “Oneida” became synonymous with Wright’s friend Robert Owen, who had sexual depravity and antimarriage senti- founded the utopian community of New ment in nineteenth-century American Harmony in Indiana, also in 1825. Like parlance. As late as 1882 an illustration Wright, Owen sought to erase social in the tabloid National Police Gazette inequalities based on race and gender as (fig. 7) depicts Noyes whipping naked well as on class. Although Owen’s original captive girls as he forces them to join plan for New Harmony lasted no longer his community at the lower left, while than Nashoba, Owen and his son, Robert a large, central vignette shows their Dale Owen, remained powerful presences fate—to become a harem of nude water in American life, arguing eloquently nymphs surrounding the satanic Noyes for both abolition and women’s rights in a mysterious woodland pool. Like

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the illustrator of this scene, critics of the Oneida Community in the 1840s and ’50s flipped Noyes’s conflation of conventional marriage with chattel slavery on its head, arguing that it was Noyes—an “infidel”—who enslaved women in his personal seraglio through a combination of coercion and trickery.19 As threatening as these various utopian movements may have seemed to American defenders of conventional marriage, the anxieties they created paled beside the fear and loathing in- spired by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which was founded by Joseph Smith in upstate New York in 1830. By the early 1840s the church’s adherents—commonly known as Mormons—numbered nearly eighteen thousand. From early on, the Latter- Day Saints were dogged by rumors of polygamy.20 In 1832 Smith had received a divine revelation that “plural marriage” When tensions with their anti-Mormon was necessary for the highest form of sal- neighbors flared into violence yet again, vation, and when he personally put this leading to Smith’s assassination in doctrine into practice in the mid-1830s, 1844 and their forcible expulsion from he aroused the ire of foes and followers Nauvoo two years later, the church’s alike. Nevertheless, Smith and his closest members followed the retreating western disciples—including Brigham Young— frontier and settled in the territory sur- persisted in marrying numerous wives. rounding the Great Salt Lake, in what After being ousted from the site of their would become Utah. There, beyond first temple in Kirtland, Ohio, and the easy reach of federal authority, they being driven violently from their second grew rapidly in numbers and practiced temple near Independence, Missouri, polygamy openly until nearly the turn of in 1838, the church’s members settled the century. in Nauvoo, Illinois. There they pros- In 1840, when Hiram Powers first pered, and the unconventional marriage conceived of sculpting a captive Greek practices of the church’s leaders began girl forced into a Turkish harem, he was to draw more attention. Though the probably aware of the rumors concern- Saints themselves did not acknowledge ing irregular marriage practices by the their polygamous marriages to outsid- Latter-Day Saints. Until 1836 he had ers before 1852, several tawdry exposés lived in Cincinnati, Ohio—a thorough- published in the early 1840s sparked a fare for Mormon missionaries traveling public outcry. As a writer for the Quincy between Kirtland, Ohio, and Jackson Whig declared in 1842: “The holy city County, Missouri—and he remained in of Nauvoo . . . is no better than an close contact with family and friends extended seraglio, where [Joseph] Smith, there after moving to Italy.22 By the time like Solomon of old, or the Grand Turk Powers was modeling The Greek Slave in himself, can roam up and down, and clay, preparatory to its being carved in satisfy his lustful desires at pleasure.”21 marble, the polygamy of the Saints had

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions displayed [by Brigham Young]. Let any such system become established and prevalent, and woman will soon be con- fined to the harem.”23 The Mormons’ challenge to the mainstream, mid-nineteenth-century American definition of marriage was a serious one. While seemingly defying both God’s will and the natural order of existence, they nevertheless prospered. In fact, their difficult but ultimately triumphant journey from New York through the westernmost states of the union and finally to the far edges of the frontier seemed to affirm the popular doctrine of Manifest Destiny—the belief that white Americans, as God’s favored people, had a divine mandate to settle all the lands separating the eastern states from the Pacific Ocean. Why, many Americans wondered, would God so 8 Increase McGee Van Dusen and become common knowledge. In the favor a sinful and heretical sect? And Maria Van Dusen, Startling Disclo- late 1840s and early 1850s, when more what would become of the institution sures of the Wonderful Ceremonies of the Mormon Spiritual-Wife System, than one hundred thousand Americans of marriage in the United States if the Being the Celebrated “Endowment” viewed two versions of The Greek Slave territory settled by the Latter-Day Saints (privately published pamphlet, in various exhibition venues across the were admitted into the union as a state, 1852), cover United States, a veritable firestorm was as Mormon settlers petitioned in 1849? 9 Frontispiece, Orvilla S. Belisle, The raging over Mormon polygamy that Public fear and frustration over the Prophets; or Mormonism Unveiled continued to burn for decades. In a Latter-Day Saints reached a high point (W. W. Smith, 1855) lascivious critique of Mormon marriage in the years surrounding the disastrous published in 1852, Increase and Maria Utah War of 1857–58, when the federal Van Dusen claimed that virginal girls government—led by Democratic were coercively prepared for “the harem” President James Buchanan—deployed by the Mormon Temple Ceremony. nearly one-third of its armed forces in a The cover illustration of their pamphlet failed attempt to quell Mormon control depicts a properly dressed man point- over Utah territory. Delegates of the ing, like a buyer, at a seminude young new Republican Party also sought to woman, standing mournfully on a eradicate Mormon polygamy. At their pedestal in an attitude reminiscent of an 1856 convention in Philadelphia, they ideal sculpture (fig. 8). Orvilla S. Belisle’s adopted as the key plank of their plat- 1855 book, The Prophets; or Mormonism form “to prohibit in the territories those Unveiled, is a veritable catalogue of tales twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and describing the kidnapings and rapes slavery.” In July 1862, six months before of Mormon “brides,” illustrated with signing the Emancipation Proclamation, scenes of pitiful, captive women at- President Abraham Lincoln signed into tempting to fend off the sexual assaults law the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, which of the church’s leaders (fig. 9). Greeley created the first federally mandated defi- declared in 1859, “The spirit with regard nition of marriage and aimed “to punish to woman, of the entire Mormon, as and prevent the practice of polygamy in of all other polygamic systems, is fairly the Territories of the United States.”24

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 10 Unidentified artist, Slave Market, ca. 1850–60. Oil, 29 3/4 x 39 1/2 in. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Gift of Mrs. W. Firch Ingersoll. Photo © 2010 Carnegie Museum of Art

The “twin relics of barbarism” were Their intentions are clear. Like Powers’s conflated in innumerable nineteenth- Greek Slave, this woman is destined to ­century abolitionist sermons, tracts, become a concubine rather than a bride. and images, reminding readers that Similarly, in his Slave Auction of 1859, polygamy was not a practice confined popular sculptor John Rogers turned the to the Latter-Day Saints but an integral sentimental imagery of a wedding on its part of the American slave system, a head (fig. 11). The man and woman of system that constituted yet another his young couple are turned outward, threat to marriage in the United States. toward the viewer, rather than inward, Artists often presented slave auctions toward an altar or one another. Rogers as un-weddings, where young men and replaced the minister at his lectern with women were separated forever rather an auctioneer who leans forward over his than being joined in matrimony. In a podium, hammer (rather than Bible) in painting of a slave sale by an unknown hand. The baby the slave woman caresses artist dating from the 1850s, a beautiful, and the child who hides behind her fair-skinned slave woman in a pale pink skirt make it clear that this couple are gown stands at the center of a turbulent husband and wife in fact if not in name, sea of human misery (fig. 10). A mother and their forced separation is a crass, at the lower left is being whipped as unholy violation of their matrimonial she is separated from her children, but bond. Like all Rogers’s sculptures, The it is the calm young woman who is Slave Auction was scaled to tabletop size. the center of attention. As her lover, In the parlors of middle-class abolitionist who sits helplessly in the lower right families, it was a constant reminder of foreground, gazes longingly at her, what was denied less fortunate families she is ogled by lascivious white men. enslaved in the South.

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 11 John Rogers, The Slave Auction, anachronistic short, pink frock), Martha 1859. Painted plaster, 13 3/8 x 8 x stands demurely, looking modestly down 8 3/4 in. The New-York Historical and away from her future husband Society as she places her hand in his. A print version of the painting was published as the frontispiece to “The Odd-Fellows’ Offering for 1851,” where, according to a reviewer, it “appeals forcibly to the national sentiment” by celebrating “our free institutions.”26 In The Marriage of Pocahontas, Henry Brueckner portrayed a bride whose body language similarly conveys love, modesty, and submission. An engraving after the painting by John C. McRae (fig. 13) was accompanied by a text describing the wedding as taking place “in charming April,” in “the new and pretty chapel at Jamestown.” Standing in a seventeenth-century Puritan church bizarrely decked with garlands of flowers, the bride blushes as she voluntarily places both hands in the left hand of her handsome young groom, while he points upward to heaven with The creators of abolitionist images his right. Like Martha Custis in Stearns’s such as these evoked a sentimental ideal painting, Pocahontas looks down and of companionate marriage for political away. Her white veil and chemise are ends. This notion, with its emphasis on supplemented by a bright red scarf and fidelity, free choice, and the centrality of blue underskirt, making the nationalist romantic love, had emerged only in the ideology in the image explicit. Not only late eighteenth century.25 Nevertheless, is this form of marriage divinely ordained, responding to the cultural anxieties sur- Brueckner implies, it is also a cornerstone rounding marriage, American history of American culture. painters in the 1840s and ’50s ham- The subject of Powers’s Greek Slave—a mered home the point that consensual, helpless female victim of sexual profli- companionate marriage was natural gacy and polygamy—is a less fortunate and unchanging by projecting it onto sister to the brides in Stearns’s and foundational narratives. For instance, Brueckner’s paintings. Like them, she in The Marriage of Washington (fig. 12), stands demurely, looking down and Junius Brutus Stearns depicted the 1759 away—a paragon of modesty and sub- wedding of Washington and the wealthy mission. Yet, unlike a bride, she has no widow Martha Custis. Although the strong man to love her, protect her, or wedding actually took place in the Custis support her in her tribulation. Viewers home and the bride wore yellow silk, often noted this absence. As one critic Stearns placed the couple in an elegant mused, “she is recalling the struggling Episcopal church and painted Martha in country she has left behind her, the a white gown—a Victorian convention friends she has lost, the blackened and signifying purity. Framed by the gallant desecrated home she may never see groom and a group of pretty bridesmaids again, the lover of whose fate on the (including her young daughter in an battlefield she is still ignorant.”27 Henry

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 Junius Brutus Stearns, The Tuckerman wrote, as if addressing and anti-Mormon images, the Greek Marriage of Washington, 1849. himself to the slave: slave has been reduced from an object of Oil, 40 x 55 in. The Butler Institute of American Art, veneration to an object for sale, and— Youngstown, Ohio, Museum Earnest words I hear thee breathing bereft of proper male protection—she purchase To thy distant lover now;— is vulnerable to insult and attack. For Words of comfort, not of wailing, conservative viewers, Powers’s sculpture For the cheer of hope is thine, of a young woman deprived of her lover, And, immortal in thy beauty, and thus her chance to become a wife, Sorrow grows with thee divine.28 also offered a rebuke to those “infidels” like Fanny Wright, Robert Owen, John Grace Greenwood imagined the slave’s Humphrey Noyes, and Joseph Smith, “thoughts with him, the best beloved; who sought to redefine the sacred insti- who, with his young life darkened by tution of marriage. despair, his heart riven by grief and Yet The Greek Slave could also be maddened by wrong, yet battles for read as a critique of the unequal power his lost Greece, or sighs his soul out relations within American marriage. in weary captivity.”29 Like the helpless Take, for example, the experience of young women depicted in abolitionist Lucy Stone. Raised in a strict patriarchal

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 13 John C. McRae, The Marriage of Pocahontas, 1855. Hand-colored engraving after an oil painting by Henry Brueckner. From Benson John Lossing, Descrip- tion of the Marriage of Pocahontas (with Key Plate) at Jamestown, Va., April 1613 (Joseph Laing, n.d.), frontispiece

household, Stone supported herself right, but the “Greek Slave” took hold of by teaching and cleaning houses in me like Samson upon the gates of Gaza. order to attend Mount Holyoke After thinking a little, I said, “Well, Mr. Female Seminary, in South Hadley, May, I was a woman before I was an Massachusetts, and, later, Oberlin abolitionist. I must speak for the women. College, in Oberlin, Ohio. When she I will not lecture anymore for the Anti- left Oberlin, she threw herself into the Slavery Society, but will work wholly for abolitionist cause. An eloquent and woman’s rights.”30 sought-after speaker, in 1848 she was asked to lecture at a meeting of the Anti- Stone’s response to The Greek Slave Slavery Society in Boston. While in the was typically sentimental. That is, like city, she went to see The Greek Slave at most nineteenth-century viewers, she the Horticultural Hall. lost herself in empathy for the young woman depicted and shed “hot tears” No other person was present. There it over her tragic predicament. A reporter stood in the silence, with fettered hands for the National Era observed many and half-averted face—so emblematic of such reactions to the sculpture in a women. I remember how the hot tears Washington, D.C., exhibition hall in came to my eyes at the thought of the mil- 1847, but lamented: “There were fair lions of women who must be freed. At the breasts, that heaved with genuine sym- evening meeting I poured all my heart out pathy beneath the magic power of the about it. At the close, Reverend Samuel great artist, that have never yet breathed May, General Agent of the Anti-Slavery a sigh for the sable sisterhood of the Society, came to me and, with kind words South!”31 Stone’s emotional reaction to for what I had said, he admonished me the work, by contrast, galvanized her that, however true, it was out of place at political beliefs and spurred her to take an anti-slavery meeting; of course he was action. However, while the writer for

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the abolitionist National Era hoped the Stone saw a metaphor for conventional sculpture would arouse empathy for American marriage. American slaves, Stone’s epiphany before Stone’s fellow women’s rights advocate it led her to work instead for the rights Robert Dale Owen must have had a of free married women in the United similarly affecting experience in front States. of The Greek Slave, which he saw in In the middle decades of the nine­ New York in the summer of 1847. In a teenth century, fierce debates were description written six months later, he raging about married women’s rights called it “one of the finest statues that to own property and to sue for legal has ever been produced in ancient or divorce. Until the 1850s (and in most modern times.”33 Powers’s figure made parts of the country much later) all such a deep impression on Owen that American wives were defined under he subsequently worked for more than common law as “covered” by their a year to create a permanent, public husbands’ identities. They thus lacked home for it in the new Smithsonian any legal control of their own property, Institution, which he served as one of income, or persons. Nor, in most cases, twelve organizing regents. Unlike his could they legally end their marriages conservative counterparts on the Board by any means short of committing of Regents, who wanted the Smithsonian adultery—a crime that stripped them of to be a university for the nation’s elites, children, home, and status. Not surpris- Owen hoped that the institution could ingly, defenders of women’s rights were be a democratic educational body quick to seize on the parallels between to further the social and intellectual the trapped and disenfranchised posi- progress of the nation as a whole. His tions of American wives and black slaves plan for The Greek Slave is revealed in a in the United States as well as the deni- letter he wrote to Powers’s agent, Miner zens of Eastern harems. In 1840 a writer Kellogg, in December 1847: for the conservative Christian Review protested: “The public ear has been filled I hope the proposal will meet [with] with declamation upon the wrongs of your appreciation, and Mr. Powers’. This woman,—her political and legal non- beautiful statue could not, anywhere, existence,—her natural equality,—her attain a more honorable place, nor, I inalienable rights, and her degrading imagine, one more in accordance with servitude; as though the sex, at some Powers’ wishes, than in our Institution. early period, had been conquered and Placed in a separate tribune in what will subjugated by man, and were still held be one of the most beautiful—if not the in a state of bondage.” Despite this most beautiful—building in the United author’s assertion that American wives States; at the seat of government; guarded were neither slaves nor concubines but, from accident by fire; and forever open rather, willing participants in the free in- freely, not to artists only but to the entire stitution of Christian marriage, women’s public; everything desirable in its location rights advocates like Stone continued to is consulted. make such comparisons. “Marriage is to woman a state of slavery,” she declared Owen ended his letter with a plea for in 1854, “It takes from her the right to Powers’s speedy reply, noting that the her own property, and makes her sub- foundation for the fireproof “special missive in all things to her husband.”32 tower” that would house The Greek In The Greek Slave, the subject of which Slave would have to be laid the fol- stands stripped of her possessions and lowing summer.34 Owen likely hoped helplessly awaiting sexual violation, that, in such a prominent setting, the

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Slave would exert a powerful moral home as guests.36 In public halls, many influence on “the entire public” of the of which also served as meeting places nation, making people conscious of the for abolitionists and women’s rights plight of both enslaved and free married advocates, The Greek Slave could easily women. be read polemically as a protest against In his proposal, Owen suggested that slavery or against married women’s the Smithsonian rent the sculpture for disenfranchised position. In a private a period of time. Kellogg was initially home, the figure was far more likely to favorably disposed to Owen’s proposal be viewed in ways that bolstered and that the public be charged a modest ad- sentimentalized the conventions of mission to see it. These proceeds would genteel marriage. be sent to Powers for three years, after which time the sculpture would become the institution’s property. Powers, “Parlor Statues” however, rejected this plan in favor of simply selling the artwork to James Although published sources generally Robb of New Orleans, who paid the describe ideal sculptures in public set- sculptor a lump sum of cash.35 When tings, the vast majority of such objects Corcoran acquired this same version produced during the nineteenth century of The Greek Slave three years later, were destined for private homes, leading in 1851, he changed the way viewers American art critic James Jackson Jarves interpreted the sculpture by placing it to refer to them in his 1869 book Art in a domestic setting—his private art Thoughts as “ordinary parlor statues, gallery—which was accessible only to Eves, Greek Slaves, Judiths and their 14 “The Florentine Studio of his family and those members of the like.”37 As Jarves’s comment suggests, the American Phidias,” from “La Sculpture en Amérique,” public whose “genteel and respectable most buyers of Powers’s sculptures were L’Illustration, June 25, 1853, 405 appearance” gained them entry into his wealthy Americans seeking works of art to decorate their parlors, libraries, conservatories, or front halls. An 1853 illustration in the French magazine L’Illustration depicts a fashionably dressed young couple—presumably a married pair—visiting Powers in his Florence studio, which was by then a standard stop for Americans making a grand tour of Europe (fig. 14). Wearing a velvet robe and cap, the sculptor proudly presents a new statue, America, to his prospective buyers while The Greek Slave seems to look on enviously from the background. Significantly, it is the woman who steps forward to ask Powers a question while her husband hangs back. As this engraving implies, women played an important role in selecting ideal sculptures for their homes. In 1882, looking back on the middle decades of the nineteenth century, F. Marion Crawford, son of American sculptor Thomas Crawford,

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions recalled that American men “soon found aura that buyers demanded. As a bust, out . . . as it became easier to cross the The Greek Slave could also be paired with ocean, that what they wanted was art, one of two roughly contemporaneous, or, to speak accurately, the sensations similarly themed ideal busts by Powers: produced by objects of art; and with Ginevra and Proserpine (figs. 16, 17). scant time but unlimited money at Both of these works associate the theme their command, they handed over to of marriage with bondage, isolation, wives and daughters, by tacit and very and death. willing consent, the task of supplying Ginevra was a character in English­ the deficiency.”38 Sculptors like Powers man Samuel Rogers’s popular 1823 were well aware that their success rested poem Italy, in which she is a playful on pleasing the tastes and addressing the young woman who accidentally interests of wealthy American women, locks herself in an empty chest on many of whom were drawn to tragic her wedding night, only to be found melodramas surrounding the central there—a skeleton still wearing her events of domestic life—marriage, birth, wedding clothes—many years later. and death. Not only did ideal sculptures Powers’s first version of the bust depicts help viewers extract meaning from such a plump-cheeked girl gazing down and events, they also—as the Corcoran- to one side with a wistful expression. Eustis wedding attests—played active His patron Nicholas Longworth, who roles in the rituals surrounding them. received the first marble version in No nineteenth-century American 1842, noted with disappointment that sculptor was more successful at meeting Ginevra’s classical hairstyle and drapery the needs of his buyers than Hiram seemed ill suited for Rogers’s quattro- Powers. He never modeled a heroic cento heroine. In addition, the Ginevra male nude. He never bothered with a in the poem was a laughing, merry recumbent figure or a sculptural group. girl, whereas Powers’s bust was solemn He knew where his sculptures were to the point of appearing morose. going—into private homes—and he Nevertheless, Powers sold at least six made sure that they would fit those copies of the sculpture before reworking spaces both physically and thematically. it in 1863.40 Powers drew his subject for For the most part, his marble women Proserpine from the first-century B.C.E. celebrated the family values of the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, mid-nineteenth century: self-restraint, in which the daughter of the harvest modesty, deference, compassion, filial goddess, Ceres, is abducted by Pluto, love, and Christian faith. As slender, the lustful god of the underworld. solitary figures, they could be fitted After Ceres desperately searches for into even the cramped front parlors Proserpine, neglecting her agricultural of urban row houses. However, buyers duties and thereby rendering the earth who lacked the space or the means barren, Jupiter—the ruler of the gods to purchase a full-length statue could and Proserpine’s father—decrees that purchase one of Powers’s many ideal Proserpine may return to her mother busts, including a version of The Greek periodically but must remain in the un- Slave, of which Powers sold forty-eight derworld as Pluto’s wife for six months copies (fig. 15).39 Although lacking the of every year. Numerous sentimental many narrative details of the full figure, retellings of this myth published in the pretty, averted face and downcast England and the United States between head—together with the well-known 1820 and 1870 stress the anguish of narrative of the slave’s predicament— mother and daughter in the wake of were sufficient to create the sentimental their forced separation.41

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 15 Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, 1858. Marble, 20 1/16 x 15 3/16 x 8 1/4 in. (including base). Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of W. G. Hosea

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 16 Hiram Powers, Ginevra, modeled Although Powers is today best known ized Proserpine’s face as “tremulous with 1838. Plaster, 24 x 16 1/2 x 12 in. for The Greek Slave, during his lifetime emotion.” Sentimental poet Margaret Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in he sold more copies of Proserpine—at Preston described “the smile that lingers memory of Ralph Cross Johnson least 105—than any other sculpture. round the curving mouth, with mourn- Indeed, it was probably the most ful meaning filled; the pensive brow, so 17 Hiram Powers, Proserpine, 1844. Marble, 25 x 20 x 11 in. Smithso- popular ideal sculpture anywhere in the beautifully calm and passionless,” and nian American Art Museum, Gift Western world in the middle decades “the chasten’d woman’s look of tender- of Mrs. George Cabot Lodge of the nineteenth century. Whereas ness, that pleads in every line, and longs other painters and sculptors typically to break the trembling silence of those depicted the moment of Proserpine’s breathing lips!” Greenwood noted that abduction, Powers rendered the myth the bust “weighs on the heart, and fills in a more ambiguous fashion. Only the eyes with tears.”42 Significantly, Proserpine’s crown of wheat sheaves and Powers depicted at least two newly (in the original version) her floral base married young women in portrait busts allude to her identity. Her face, like that in the guise of Proserpine.43 of The Greek Slave, is expressionless. In light of the mournful views of Nevertheless, Proserpine elicited strong marriage presented by Ginevra and emotional responses from viewers. A re- Proserpine, it is tempting to see Powers as viewer for Godey’s Lady’s Book character- one of the many mid-nineteenth-century

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions critics of married American women’s dis- have not as many legal rights as men have enfranchised position. In Cincinnati in is most true, but they manage the hardest the 1820s and ’30s, Powers had been im- heads among us with wonderful power. . . . mersed in a culture where radical ideas How would it do to elect a young, married were openly and avidly debated—and lady to a judgeship?—being far advanced frequently embraced. One of his earliest in a family way and weighing evidence in supporters was Englishwoman Frances a trial for rape. Her sensibilities might be Trollope, who had come to the United so shocked as to bring on a crisis in open States with her children in 1828 to join court. Think of a judge being taken in Fanny Wright’s Nashoba community. labor upon the bench! After deserting Nashoba for Cincinnati— where she met and befriended On a conciliatory note, Powers added, Powers—Trollope enrolled her son Henry “Much can be done and ought to be in school at the utopian community of done no doubt, and I hope it will be New Harmony in nearby Indiana. done to place womankind upon proper Though she concluded a few years later footing with us.”45 Nevertheless, his that Nashoba was an utter failure and letter makes clear his view that a married that the elder Robert Owen was “so woman’s maternal role made her unsuit- utterly benighted in the mists of his own able for public life, and that her true theories” that he could not “get a peep at and rightful power was the influence the world as it really exists around him,” she wielded over father, husband, and Trollope clearly admired both Owen and sons within the domestic sphere. This Wright during her time in Cincinnati. In is borne out by Powers’s own marriage. her published account of her years in the Elizabeth Gibson Powers, mother of his United States, Trollope praised Wright’s nine children, accompanied her husband “splendour,” “brilliance,” and “over- to Florence in 1837 and remained whelming eloquence” and applauded her there—essentially trapped and separated for daring to speak publicly in a society from her natal family and friends in where “women are guarded by a seven- Cincinnati—until her husband’s death fold shield of habitual insignificance.”44 in 1873. Mrs. Powers’s letters to her Powers may have attended Wright’s mother, written over a span of many lecture at the Cincinnati courthouse in years, are filled with expressions of 1828 or seen Robert Owen debate evan- homesickness and longing for reunion. gelical preacher Alexander Campbell “How often I dream of walking along there the following year. However, this street or that and wake up to find despite Powers’s exposure to radical ideas myself still in this plagued place,” she about marriage, his views on the subject wrote in 1848. “Give me a comfortable remained moderate and conventional. log cabin in Cincinnati with you all In an 1853 letter to his cousin about me in preference to their finest and childhood teacher John Powers palace here.”46 Richardson, Powers responded to both In her discussion of Powers’s sculp- Richardson’s fervent abolitionism and tures in Cincinnati, art historian Wendy his critique of marriage laws in the Katz notes that his ideal busts, including United States. Before noting defensively, Proserpine, Ginevra, and the truncated “I know several slave owners, and better version of The Greek Slave, were some- men I do not know,” Powers dealt with times given as gifts to young married the topic of women’s rights, saying: women. As part of a system of domestic exchange, such gifts strengthened I hardly know what to say about the social and familial bonds. Katz further women’s rights movement. That women contends that, by virtue of their display

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 18 Hiram Powers, Martha Endicott (fig. 18), they made a concrete Peabody Rogers, 1845. Marble, connection between their 24 in. high. Peabody Essex daughter and the daughter Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. Photo, Peabody Essex Museum of the grief-stricken Roman goddess, and thereby expressed their feelings of loss when she left their home for her husband’s. The Greek Slave’s embedded sentimental nar- rative of ruptured domestic bonds similarly addressed a bride’s painful separation from her home and family. Even in the undomestic setting of a public exhibition hall, viewers sometimes imagined them- selves as the slave’s lost mother or as the slave herself longing for her distant family.48 When given as a marriage gift or displayed at a wedding, the sculpture would have con- veyed this sentimental message still more powerfully.

in private homes, they acted as stand- Harem Imagery ins for the women who “arranged the moral order of the home,” modeling the It is not hard to see why the Corcoran restraint and polite submission to others family chose to use Powers’s Greek Slave required of genteel women. The Greek as an altarpiece for Louise Corcoran’s Slave, in particular, models the bodily wedding. The sculpture not only ideal- and emotional self-control that was an ized traditional Christian marriage by essential component of genteel behavior. contrasting it with infidel decadence, but Writing for Godey’s in 1853, one woman it also expressed the pain felt by William recommended that every young lady Corcoran—a widowed father—and his desirous of making a good impression only child contemplating their separa- in society have a small parian copy of tion. Furthermore, the sculpture encour- The Greek Slave on her dressing table to aged proper domestic behavior among serve as an example.47 Beyond cement- its viewers. A reporter for the Courier ing social ties and modeling correct and Enquirer noted, feminine behavior, though, Powers’s images of young, captive women also It is extremely interesting to watch the expressed the distress felt by parents effect which the statue has upon all who and daughters separated by marriage— come before it. Its presence is a magic a pain intimately familiar to Powers circle within whose precincts all are held from his wife’s experience. Thus, when spell-bound and almost speechless. The Martha Peabody’s parents gave her a grey-headed man, the youth, the matron, portrait bust of herself in the guise of and the maid alike, yield themselves to the Proserpine on the eve of her wedding magic of its power, and gaze upon it in

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions reverential admiration, and so pure an at- assure you that (whatever may be his pro- mosphere breathes round it, that the eye of fessions) I envy not the man who can look man beams only with reverent delight, and upon this lovely creation and have excited the cheek of woman glows with the fullness in his mind a single unholy thought.51 of emotion.49 Unlike contemporary images of harem According to this and many other ac- girls produced in Europe (fig. 19), which counts, the Slave created a religious are generally fantasies of enticing plea- space around itself, subduing its audi- sure, The Greek Slave appealed to more ence and evoking emotional, gendered prudish audiences in the United States responses. The assembled wedding and England by pairing sexual desire guests in Corcoran’s gallery might well with shame.52 have found the sculpture’s spectacle of Like other ideal sculptures displayed exposed (and commercially available) in innumerable American domestic female flesh erotic—an eroticism that interiors in the mid-nineteenth century, was surely heightened by its proximity The Greek Slave cemented social bonds, to the blushing young bride; thus, unless elicited love and sympathy, and encour- women responded with sympathetic aged genteel behavior. As William modesty and men with flawless gal- Corcoran was no doubt aware, however, lantry, they risked identifying themselves Powers’s statue was more than merely with the barbarous Turks in the slave’s an object of private devotion. Other fictional audience.50 As one visitor to American sculptors modeled similar William Corcoran’s art gallery later white marble figures that toured the reflected: United States and drew large audiences, but none garnered as much reverence or 19 Félix Bracquemond, Odalisque I have never witnessed anything so perfectly attention. The Slave owed its political couchée dans un harem (La plainte de la captive), 1857. Etching, unexceptionable—though standing before and emotional charge to its combina- 4 1/2 x 6 3/4 in. Print Collection, you in all the simplicity of primitive tion of a young, white, erotically and Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Divi- nature—as this piece of statuary. I am no sentimentally engaging female subject sion of Art, Prints and Pho- stoic, no anchorite,—my imagination is with the imagery of the Turkish harem. tographs, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden probably no more pure than that of thou- In the American public imagination, the Foundations sands of my fellow-men around me, but I harem had emerged by the 1840s as a site where fervent debates about race, gender, slavery, and marriage intertwined. In 1857 widespread fear of the threat posed to public morals by polygamous groups like the Latter-Day Saints prompted writer and orator George William Curtis to exclaim, “It seems hard that we must have pashas and harems among us because we believe religious liberty to be Christian. Is having two wives Christian? Are the proceedings in Utah Christian?” Exasperated and fearful Americans like Curtis could not have viewed The Greek Slave without thinking of “pashas and harems” within the borders of their own country. Abolitionists also deployed the imagery of the harem in support of their cause, frequently conjuring images

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions of young, female slaves—particularly tradictory understandings of the harem. fair-skinned octoroons—sold into the It seems almost certain that the Corcoran seraglios of libidinous Southern masters. family viewed The Greek Slave conser- As early as 1837, Presbyterian minister vatively as an apology for conventional George Bourne referred to the South as a marriage rather than as an abolitionist or “vast harem,” where “domestic relations feminist symbol. William Corcoran had [are] abolished at the impulse of lascivi- himself been a slave owner, and—just two ous desires and pecuniary demands.”53 years after his daughter’s wedding—he Many such activists also supported the actively supported the Confederacy.55 liberalization of marriage laws and giving Although his views on slavery were ap- married women in the United States parently ambivalent by the late 1850s, more power over their lives and property. he rejected any comparison between Through the image of the harem, they the subject of The Greek Slave and the not only condemned the institution of plight of American slaves. In his personal slavery, they also criticized the patriarchal scrapbooks, he interspersed humorous culture that supported it. jabs at those who presumed to make such On the other side of the debate, for connections with glowing reviews of the supporters of conventional marriage, the sculpture and newspaper articles describ- harem provided a ready symbol for the ing Louise’s various social engagements sexual chaos resulting from polygamy, and her wedding. One clipping, titled amalgamation (as interracial marriage “Slave Case Extraordinary,” pillories abo- was then termed), and legal divorce. litionist minister Henry Ward Beecher for In an 1853 debate with women’s rights supposedly mistaking Corcoran’s version advocate Stephen Pearl Andrews, Horace of The Greek Slave, which had been Greeley linked the growing prevalence distributed in the lottery of the Western of divorce in the United States with Art Union in Cincinnati in 1850, for a both Mormon and Muslim polygamy. beautiful octoroon on the auction block. Polygamy, he said, “is not an experiment Another, from the Southern Literary to be first tried in our day; it is some Gazette, tells a tale of an old black woman thousands of years old; its condemnation who, when seeing The Greek Slave for is inscribed on the tablets of Oriental the first time, exclaims disappointedly history; it is manifest in the com- to her daughter, “La, Jemima, it ain’t a parative debasement of Asia and Africa.” nigger after all.”56 Eustis, who served as Continued Greeley, “The sentiment a diplomatic envoy of the Confederacy, of chastity becomes ridiculous where recorded his views on slavery before his a woman is transferred from husband death in 1872. The institution of slavery to husband, as caprice or satiety may might have been preserved, he wistfully dictate.” Furthermore, as Timothy Marr reflected, if a more “humane system of has argued, for Christians who supported servitude” had been legislated. “And here slavery, the image of a white woman in it may be noted,” Eustis added, “that a Turkish seraglio masked—through a the actual practice and mode of treating fantasy of racially reversed positions—the and dealing with the slaves was much in sexual bondage suffered by thousands advance of the legislation. In fact, the of American slaves at the hands of their harsh and odious features therein were white owners.54 much softened and modified—and in The choice made by William and many instances never enforced.”57 Louise Corcoran and George Eustis Jr. to The two men who most loved Louise employ Hiram Powers’s image of a nude Corcoran were clearly not abolitionists. prisoner of the seraglio as a wedding altar Both William Corcoran and George must be considered in light of these con- Eustis were enmeshed in a Southern

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions culture that sanctioned slavery and that opinion, Louise sealed her allegiance to was both hierarchical and patriarchal—a Southern ideals of womanhood by adopt- culture that Louise Corcoran herself ing the very sweetness and passivity in apparently embraced. “Have you seen the face of adversity that The Greek Slave Loulou Eustis since she spent a winter also displays. Indeed, as an integral part with the Eustises in New Orleans?” one of Louise Corcoran’s genteel wedding, family friend, Mrs. Smith Lee, remarked Powers’s sculpture was a model of “true in 1861. “She is as soft and sweet and womanhood” and—by extension—a faint-voiced and languid as any Eustis call for chivalrous male behavior. It did of them all.” Even her father’s arrest not function there as a universal image and imprisonment by Union forces in of human bondage but, rather, as a fear- August 1861 failed to rouse her, for (as some warning of what might befall a Lee noted) “fine ladies don’t fret or make beautiful white female unprotected by a any disturbance.”58 In this observer’s strong, loving man.

Notes 1 George Washington Jenkins, “The 5 See Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men Slave,’” International Magazine of Lit- Corcoran Wedding,” Harper’s Weekly 3 and Painted Women: A Study of Middle- erature, Science, and Art 2 (December 1, (April 16, 1859): 241–42. Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 1850): 88. This poem was first printed in (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1982). the October 26, 1850, issue of Charles 2 “Centre-Table Gossip, Bridal Etiquette,” Dickens’s journal Household Words. Godey’s Lady’s Book 57 (November 1858): 6 In 1847–49 Corcoran’s version of the 475. I have taken my definition of sculpture was publicly exhibited, with 8 Quoted in the promotional pamphlet “ideal” sculpture from Joy Kasson, who much fanfare, in New York, Washington, Powers’ Statue of the Greek Slave (Boston: described these works as “three-dimen- D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New Eastburn’s Press, 1848). sional, figurative works, usually marble, Orleans. Another, identical, version life-sized or slightly smaller, portraying was exhibited during the same years in 9 Grace Greenwood, letter, July 4, 1848, in (usually female) subjects drawn from lit- Boston, Cincinnati, Louisville, New Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches erature, history, the Bible or mythology.” Orleans, and New York. More than one and Letters (Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives: hundred thousand Americans saw the Fields, 1853), 346. Women in Nineteenth-Century American sculpture. Richard P. Wunder, Hiram Sculpture (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, Powers: Vermont Sculptor, 1805–1873, 10 “The Genius and Sculptures of Powers,” American Whig Review 1990), 24–25. 2 vols. (Newark: Univ. of Delaware 2 (August 1845): Press, 1989–91), 2:158–67. On The 202. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Greek Slave’s tour of the United States, Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American 3 Powers ostensibly chose his subject see ibid., 1:217–21; Kasson, Marble Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1966): 151–74. In because “the history of [the Greek Rev- Queens and Captives, 46–72; Nancie the last thirty years, a number of schol- olution] is familiar to all.” C. Edwards Clow Farrell, “The Slave that Captivated ars have questioned the degree to which Lester, The Artist, the Merchant, and the America,” Cincinnati Historical Society women actually conformed to the ideal Statesman (New York: Paine and Burgess, Bulletin 22, no. 4 (1969): 221–39; and Welter described. However, it is pre- 1845), 1:88. As Amilia Buturović and Samuel A. Robertson and William H. cisely because there was no consensus Irvin Cemil Schick have observed, the Gerdts, “Greek Slave,” Newark Museum about women’s nature and proper role sculpture’s popularity attests to the Quarterly 17 (Winter–Spring 1965): that the ideal of “true womanhood” was lasting impression the war made on 1–30. a powerful cultural tool: it presented the sympathetic Americans. Buturović and viewpoint of the white bourgeois elite as Schick, Women in the Ottoman Balkans: 7 Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives, 65. natural and universal. Gender, Culture and History (New York: In her celebrated poem about Powers’s I. B. Tauris and Co., 2007), 285. sculpture, Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 11 W. H. Coyle, “Powers’ Greek Slave,” ing located the figure in the liminal undated excerpt from the Detroit Adver- 4 Varina Anne Banks Howell Davis to space between the interior and the exte- tiser, and James Freeman Clarke, “The Jefferson Finis Davis, April 3, 1859, in rior of a metaphoric house: “They say Greek Slave,” quoted in Powers’ Statue of Jefferson Davis, Private Letters, 1823– that ideal beauty cannot enter / The the Greek Slave. The rhetorical use of the 1889, ed. Hudson Strode (New York: house of anguish. On the threshold Orient as a foil against which Westerners Harcourt Brace World, 1966), 580. stands / an alien image, with enshack- define themselves and their culture has “Miss Rothschild’s Wedding,” Harper’s led hands, called the Greek Slave!” been discussed at length by Edward Said Weekly, April 18, 1857, 252–53. Browning, “Hiram Powers’ ‘Greek in his seminal book Orientalism (New

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Recently, Harmony Gazette, April 2, 1832, quoted Mormonism as “an American Islam,” Timothy Marr has considered The Greek in Against the Tide: Pro-feminist Men see Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Slave as an orientalist (or Islamicist) in the United States, 1776–1990, ed. Islamicism, 185–218. image in The Cultural Roots of American Michael S. Kimmel and Thomas E. Mos- Islamicism (New York: Cambridge Univ. miller (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 22 According to David Bitton, “Kirtland as Press, 2006), 273–79. 75. Greeley quoted in Norma Basch, a Center of Missionary Activity, 1830– Framing American Divorce: From the 1838,” Brigham Young University Studies 12 See, for example, Lynne D. Ambrosini, Revolutionary Generation to the Victori- 11 (Summer 1971): 499, “From 1831 “‘Pure White Radiance’: The Ideology of ans (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, to 1837 no state received the ‘satura- Marble in the Nineteenth Century,” in 2001), 91–92. tion’ treatment Ohio did. Over and over Ambrosini and Rebecca A. G. Reynolds, again, it was crisscrossed by Mormon Hiram Powers: Genius in Marble (Cincin- 18 [John Humphrey Noyes], Slavery and elders on their way to or returning from nati: Taft Museum of Art, 2007), 10–27; Marriage: A Dialogue (Oneida, N.Y.: pri- other states.” Charmaine Nelson, “Hiram Powers’s vately published, 1850). America: Shackles, Slaves, and the Racial 23 Horace Greeley, “An Interview with Limits of Nineteenth-Century Identity,” 19 See Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A Brigham Young, Salt Lake City, Utah, Canadian Review of American Studies History of Marriage and the Nation July 13, 1859,” New York Tribune, August 34, no. 2 (2004): 167–83; Wendy Jean (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 20, 1859. Katz, Regionalism and Reform: Art and 2000), 72, 128–30; and Rev. Hubbard Class Formation in Antebellum Cincin- Eastman, Noyesism Unveiled: A History 24 “Party Platforms in 1856,” The Tribune nati (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, of the Self-Styled Perfectionists, with a Almanac and Political Register for 1856 2004), 137–71; and Kasson, Marble Summary View of Their Leading Doctrines (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1856), Queens and Captives, 46–72. For the (Brattleboro, Vt.: published by the 42. “Thirty-Seventh Congress, Second “rhetorical crossings” of woman and author, 1849). Session, 1862,” in The Statutes at Large, slave, slavery and marriage, see Karen Treaties, and Proclamations of the United Sanchez-Eppler, “Bodily Bonds: The 20 For a discussion of the history of mar- States of America from December 5, 1859 Intersecting Rhetorics of Feminism riage among adherents of the Latter- to March 3, 1863 (Washington, D.C.: and Abolition,” in The Culture of Senti- Day Saints, see Kathryn M. Daynes, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1863), ment: Race, Gender and Sentimentality More Wives than One: The Transforma- 501–2. in Nineteenth-Century American Culture, tion of the Mormon Marriage System, ed. Shirley Samuels (New York: Oxford 1840–1910 (Urbana-Champaign: 25 See Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Univ. Press, 1992), 92–114. Univ. of Illinois Press, 2001). As the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender wealth of primary sources uncovered and Power in the Age of Revolution, Phila- 13 For American visions of harems, see recently by Mormon historian Dale R. delphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: Univ. “The Crescent and the Cross,” Living Broadhurst shows, Daynes underesti- of North Carolina Press, 2006). Age 33 (December 28, 1844): 565–68; mated public awareness of, and anger John Quincy Adams, “Society and Civi- over, Mormon polygamy before 1852. lization,” American Whig Review 2 (July See Broadhurst’s website, www.sidney- 26 “The Odd-Fellows’ Offering for 1851,” 1845): 85–86; and “Adventures in a rigdon.com/dbroadhu/artindex.htm. In Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Sep- Turkish Harem,” Harper’s New Monthly response to early rumors of polygamy, tember 1850, 571. Magazine, August 1850, 321–24. the church published an official denial of this practice in its Doctrines and Cov- 27 “The Greek Slave,” New York Daily 14 N. E. J., “A Plea for the Institution of enants in 1835. Doctrines and Covenants Tribune, September 15, 1847. Marriage,” New York Evangelist, July 2, of the Church of the Latter-day Saints: 1836, 1. Carefully Selected from the Revelations of 28 Henry T. Tuckerman, “The Greek Slave,” God and Compiled by Joseph Smith Junior, New York Daily Tribune, September 9, 15 Rev. Robert Hall, “The Advantages of Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, Frederick 1847. the Marriage Institution to Communi- G. Williams (Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. ties,” Western Christian Advocate, July Williams, & Co., 1835), section 101, 29 Greenwood, Greenwood Leaves, 346. 23, 1841, 53. T., “On Polygamy,” Reli- verse 4. Joseph Smith reversed this gious Monitor and Evangelical Reposi- denial in the Doctrines and Covenants 30 Quoted in Alice Stone Blackwell’s biog- tory, November 1841, 246. John Quincy of 1843. raphy of her mother, first published in Adams, “Society and Civilization,” Amer- 1930 and reissued as Lucy Stone: Pioneer ican Whig Review, July 1845, 88. Adams 21 “The Difficulties at Nauvoo,” Quincy of Woman’s Rights (Charlottesville: Univ. served in the House of Representatives (Ill.) Whig, July 16, 1842. See also of Virginia Press, 2001), 89. from 1830 to 1848. John C. Bennett, The History of the Saints: An Exposé (Boston: Leland and 31 “Powers’ Statue of the Greek Slave,” 16 “The Free Love System: Origin, Progress Whiting, 1842), which was excerpted National Era (Washington, D.C.), Sep- and Position of the Anti-Marriage Move- and reprinted in newspapers across tember 2, 1847. ment,” New York Times, September 8, the nation. In his pamphlet, Bennett 1855, 2. cites the experiences of several young 32 “Article VIII: On the Legal Rights of girls whom Brigham Young purport- Woman,” Christian Review, June 1, 1840, 17 Robert Dale Owen, “Marriage Con- edly attempted to coerce into polyga- 5, 9–10. Stone quoted in Cott, Public tract with Mary Jane Robinson,” New mous marriages. On constructions of Vows, 64.

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This content downloaded from 137.146.206.234 on Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:17:04 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 33 Robert Dale Owen, Report to the Build- Headley, “English Literary and Aesthetic domestic education. See Mrs. H. C. ing Committee, Smithsonian Institu- Influences on American Sculptors in Gardner, “The Ill-Bred Girl,” Ladies’ tion, November 26, 1847, reprinted in Italy” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Maryland, Repository 15 (April 1855): 205–6. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 1988), 190–97. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institu- 51 Clipping, “From Our Washington Cor- tion, 1880), 18:695. 42 “Notices of the Fine Arts,” Godey’s Lady’s respondent,” dated March 13, 1853, Book 39 (September 1849): 219. For the Corcoran Scrapbooks, 1:7. 34 Robert Dale Owen to Miner Kellogg, known versions of Powers’s Proserpine, December 20, 1847, Owen Family see Wunder, Powers, 1:383 and 2:187– 52 For a discussion of harem imagery in Papers, Indiana Historical Society. See 202. M. J. [Margaret Junkin Preston], nineteenth-century European art, see also Owen’s second letter to Kellogg, “Thoughts, Suggested by Powers’ Joan DelPlato, Multiple Wives, Multiple May 17, 1848, in the same collection. Proserpine,” Southern Literary Messenger Pleasures: Representing the Harem, 1800– As Richard William Leopold has argued 15 (February 1849): 100. Greenwood, 1875 (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickin- (Robert Dale Owen: A Biography [Cam- Greenwood Leaves, 263. son Univ. Press, 2002). bridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1940], 219), Owen used his position on 43 Wunder, Powers, 2:88–89, 106. 53 [George William Curtis], “Editor’s Easy the Smithsonian’s board to create poli- Chair,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, cies that furthered his social ideals during 44 Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of June 1857, 129. George Bourne, Slavery his years serving as a U.S. representative the Americans (1832; New York: Penguin, Illustrated in its Effects Upon Woman and from Indiana. 1997), 56, 115. Domestic Society (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1837), 24. 35 See Miner Kellogg to W. W. Seaton, July 45 Hiram Powers to John Powers 17, 1848, reprinted in Smithsonian Mis- Richardson, December 14, 1853, Powers 54 Greeley quote from Stephen Pearle cellaneous Collections, 18:461. Wunder, Family Papers, Archives of American Art, Andrews, ed., Love, Marriage and Divorce Powers, 2:161. Powers’s decision was reel 1136. (1853; reprint, Providence, R.I.: M & S doubtless affected by the fact that he had Press, 1975), 35. Marr, The Cultural Roots promised the sculpture to Robb in July 46 Elizabeth Gibson Powers to Anna Riley of American Islamicism, 280–81. 1847. Gibson, September 4, 1848, quoted in Wunder, Powers, 1:159–60. 55 Corcoran manumitted five slaves— 36 Undated clipping, “From Washington, a woman and her four children—in a Special Correspondent of the Phila- 47 Katz, Regionalism and Reform, 167–71. 1845. Records of Manumissions, vol. 3, delphia Inquirer,” in William Wilson Mrs. Merrifield, “Dress as a Fine Art,” Records of the U.S. Circuit Court for the Corcoran’s scrapbooks, 1:13, Corcoran Godey’s Lady’s Book 47 (1853): 20. District of Columbia, Record Group 60, Museum of Art. National Archives Building, Washington, 48 One viewer imagined herself as the slave’s D.C. I am grateful to Marisa Bourgoin, 37 James Jackson Jarves, Art Thoughts: The mother, confronting a vision of her Richard Manoogian Chief of Reference Experience and Observation of an Ameri- child, “naked, forlorn, gazed at by pitiless Services, Archives of American Art, for can Amateur in Europe (New York: Hurd eyes—a thing of scorn!” “Powers’ Greek providing this information. Sources of & Houghton; Cambridge, Mass.: River- Slave,” Putnam’s Monthly 4 (December biographical information about William side Press, 1869), 306. 1854): 666. Wilson Corcoran include Henry Cohen, Business and Politics in America from the 38 F. M. Crawford, “False Taste in Art,” 49 “Powers’ Greek Slave,” New York Age of Jackson to the Civil War: The Career North American Review 135 (July Courier and Enquirer, August 31, 1847, Biography of W. W. Corcoran (Westport, 1882): 95. quoted in Powers’ Statue of the Greek Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Corp., Slave. Powers and his promoters used 1971); Corcoran (Washington, D.C.: 39 Wunder, Powers, 1:383, 169–77 and such descriptions of viewer behavior Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1976); and 2:168–76. For middle-class consumers, to counter any accusation of lewdness Holly Tank, “William Wilson Corcoran: affordable parian figurines of The Greek inherent in the work. Washington Philanthropist,” Washington Slave were also available. History 17 (Fall–Winter 2005): 52–65. 50 As Timothy Marr has argued (The Cul- 40 Nicholas Longworth to Hiram Powers, tural Roots of American Islamicism, 274), 56 Corcoran scrapbooks, 1:7, 21. May 21, 1842, Cincinnati Histori- Powers’s sculpture “gave viewers the cal Society, cited in ibid., 1:132. For means of containing the challenge of ori- 57 Quoted in Joseph G. Tregle Jr., “George the number of Ginevras, see ibid., ental libidinousness” through “the sen- Eustis Jr., Non-Mythic Southerner,” 2:154–55. Samuel Rogers, Italy, a Poem timentalism of virtuous indignation.” Louisiana History 16 (Fall 1975): 387. (London: J. Murray, 1823). At least one nineteenth-century author attributed a (fictional) young woman’s 58 Quoted in C. Van Woodward, ed., Mary 41 For the many iterations of this myth in failure to show reverence for The Greek Chestnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale nineteenth-century literature, see Janet Slave to a lack of proper religious and Univ. Press, 1981), 165.

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