Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T17:12:21.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Passing Over: Setting the Record Straight in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Michael Borgstrom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay considers one of the most underexamined characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: Augustine St. Clare's effeminate manservant, Adolph. I evaluate Adolph's critical elision to illustrate how the success of critiques centered on race and gender unintentionally permits other minority identities (and stereotypes) in the book to continue unremarked. While revisionist readings of Stowe's novel complicate racial and gender stereotypes, they nevertheless accept stable (even conventional) categories to describe minority identity. Such formulations foreclose the possibility of seeing other minority identities in the book that intertwine race and gender in ways different from normative standards. In examining Adolph's character, this essay considers how intersectional analysis reveals important representations of social difference—including differences not always acknowledged in present-day culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 5 , October 2003 , pp. 1290 - 1304
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Lindon, Barrett. “Identities and Identity Studies: Reading Toni Cade Bambara's ‘The Hammer Man.‘” Cultural Critique 39 (1998): 5–29.Google Scholar
Beecher, Catharine E. An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with Reference to the Duty of American Females, Addressed to A. E. Grimké. Philadelphia: Henry Perkins; Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1837.Google Scholar
Beecher, Catharine E., and Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The American Woman's Home; or, Principles of Domestic Science. New York: J. B. Ford, 1869. Rpt. of A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School. Boston: T. H. Webb, 1841.Google Scholar
Harry, Birdoff. The World's Greatest Hit: Uncle Tom's Cabin. New York: Vanni, 1947.Google Scholar
Donald, Bogle. To ms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking, 1973.Google Scholar
Gillian, Brown. “Getting in the Kitchen with Dinah: Domestic Politics in Uncle Tom's Cabin.” American Quarterly 36 (1984): 503–23.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Buell. “Circling the Spheres: A Dialogue.” American Literature 70 (1998): 465–90.Google Scholar
Judith, Butler. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Judith, Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Critical Race Theory. Ed. Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Peller, Gary, and Thomas, Kendall. New York: New, 1995. 357–83.Google Scholar
Davidson, Cathy N. “No More Separate Spheres!” Preface. American Literature 70 (1998): 443–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Duberman. “In Defense of Identity Politics.” In These Times 9 July 2001. 5 June 2003 <http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/16/duberman2516.html>..>Google Scholar
Duberman, Martin, Vicinus, Martha, and Chauncey, George Jr., eds. Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. New York: Penguin, 1989.Google Scholar
P., Foreman Gabrielle. “‘This Promiscuous Housekeeping’: Death, Transgression, and Homoeroticism in Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Representations 43 (1993): 51–72.Google Scholar
Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Beyond White and Other: Relationality and Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse.” Signs 21 (1995): 1–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furnas, J. C. Goodbye to UncleTom. New York: Sloane, 1956.Google Scholar
Susan, Gillman. “The Mulatto, Tragic or Triumphant? The Nineteenth-Century American Race Melodrama.” Samuels 221–43.Google Scholar
Grimké, Angelina. “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.” Anti-slavery Examiner Sept. 1836: 1–36.Google Scholar
Grimké, Angelina. Letters to Catharine E. Beecher, in Reply to An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, Addressed to A. E. Grimké. Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838.Google Scholar
Halperin, David M. “Is There a History of Sexuality?” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Abelove, Henry, Barale, Michèle Aina, and Halperin, . New York: Routledge, 1993. 416–31.Google Scholar
Hedrick, Joan D. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Stephen A. “UncleTomitudes: The Popular Reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Studies in the American Renaissance. Ed.Joel Meyerson. Boston: Twayne, 1978. 303–30.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. 1861. Ed. and introd. Yellin, Jean Fagan. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Myra, Jehlen. “The Family Militant: Domesticity versus Slavery in UncleTom's Cabin.” Criticism 31 (1989): 383–400.Google Scholar
Samira, Kawash. Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in African-American Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Lang, Amy Schrager. “Slavery and Sentimentalism: The Strange Career of Augustine St. Clare.” Women's Studies 12 (1986): 31–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eric, Lott. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Wahneema, Lubiano. “Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor: Multiculturalism and State Narratives.” Mapping Multiculturalism. Ed. Gordon, Avery F. and Newfield, Christopher. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. 64–75.Google Scholar
McDowell, Deborah E., and Rampersad, Arnold, eds. Slavery and the Literary Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Kobena, Mercer. Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Toni, Morrison. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage, 1992.Google Scholar
Powell, Timothy B., ed. Beyond the Binary: Reconstructing Cultural Identity in a Multicultural Context. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Lora, Romero. Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum United States. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Shirley, Samuels, ed. The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Sánchez-Eppler, Karen. “Bodily Bonds: The Intersecting Rhetorics of Feminism and Abolition.” Samuels 92–114.Google Scholar
Valerie, Smith. “‘Circling the Subject’: History and Narrative in Beloved.” Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Ed. Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and Appiah, Kwame Anthony. New York: Amistad, 1993. 342–55.Google Scholar
Valerie, Smith. Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings. New York: Routledge, 1998.Google Scholar
Siobhan, Somerville. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “In a Word.” Differences 1.2 (1989): 124–56.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Strategy, Identity, Writing.” The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Harasym, Sarah. New York: Routledge, 1990. 35–49.Google Scholar
Julia, Stern. “Spanish Masquerade and the Drama of Racial Identity in Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Passing and the Fictions of Identity. Ed. Ginsberg, Elaine. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. 103–30.Google Scholar
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly. 1852. Ed. and introd. Douglas, Ann. New York: Penguin, 1981.Google Scholar
Eric, Sundquist. Introduction. Sundquist, New Essays 1– 44.Google Scholar
Eric, Sundquist, ed. New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Jane, Tompkins. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Van Leer, David. The Queening of America: Gay Culture in Straight Society. New York: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Robyn, Wiegman. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Durham: Duke UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Wonham, Henry B., ed. Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American Literary Studies. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Richard, Yarborough. “Strategies of Black Characterization in Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Early Afro-American Novel.” Sundquist, New Essays 45–84.Google Scholar
Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Doing It Herself: Uncle Tom's Cabin and Woman's Role in the Slavery Crisis.” Sundquist, New Essays 85–105.Google Scholar
Robert, Young. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. New York: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar