Cover not available
Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Madeleine Dobie, Mads Anders Baggesgaard and Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVI] 2024
► pp. 207–224

Chapter 11
Haunting slavery

The Traumatic Gaze in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Romance of the Republic

This chapter considers the disruptive power of two nineteenth-century literary scenes, one from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and one from Lydia Maria Child’s A Romance of the Republic (1867), in which portrayals of enslaved women activate the emotions of readers while challenging the usual workings of sympathy. Drawing on the work of film theorist Todd McGowan, it locates in these scenes a Lacanian gaze that unsettles readers by looking back at them, creating an opportunity for them to see ideology as ideology. Through this approach, the chapter identifies a textual strategy that challenges slavery and racism while pushing back against the racial objectifications inherent in the dynamics of sympathy: a strategy that could ultimately intervene in the cultural construction of whiteness and blackness.
Keywords: object-gaze, sympathy, desire, fantasy, Lacan, Todd McGowan, traumatic gaze, ideology
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (19)
References
Castiglia, Christopher. 2008. Interior States: Institutional Consciousness and the Inner Life of Democracy in the Antebellum United States. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Chesnutt, Charles. (1899) 1995. “The Dumb Witness.” In The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, edited by Richard Broadhead, 158–171. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Child, Lydia Maria. (1867) 1997. A Romance of the Republic. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Denby, David. 1994. Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1750–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dewaard, Jeanne Elders. 2006. “‘The Shadow of Law’: Sentimental Interiority, Gothic Terror, and the Legal Subject.” Arizona Quarterly 62 (4): 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddu, Teresa. 1997. Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hinton, Laura. 1999. The Perverse Gaze of Sympathy: Sadomasochistic Sentiments from Clarissa to Rescue 911. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, Lynn. 2007. Inventing Human Rights. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Karcher, Carolyn L. 1994. The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lant, Kathleen Margaret. 1987. “The Unsung Hero of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” American Studies 28 (1): 47–71.Google Scholar
McGowan, Todd. 2007. The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan. Albany: State University of New York Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Toni. (1987) 2004. Beloved. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura. 1989. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures, 14–26. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Dana. 1997. “Introduction.” In A Romance of the Republic by Lydia Maria Child, v–xxii. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Roberts, Diane. 1994. The Myth of Aunt Jemima: Representations of Race and Region. London: Routledge University Press.Google Scholar
Robison, Lori and Eric A. Wolfe. 2008. “Charles Chesnutt’s ‘The Dumb Witness’ and the Culture of Segregation.” African American Review 42 (1): 61–73.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Eppler, Karen. 1993. Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana. 2000. Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. (1852) 2018. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, edited by Elizabeth Ammons, 3rd edition. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar