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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. 210–227

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, I find 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, I identify 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
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