PDF Ebook Female Body and Revolution: Creole Writing of Caribbean and North American Literature in The Eighteenth Century
In the revolutionary period of the eighteenth century, Britains transatlantic colonies resisted political, social, and religious control in order to establish a government controlled by the people, which allowed freedom and equality for all citizens. However, this ideal form of freedom did not extend to women and slaves within the newly formed American colonies. Until the middle of the twentieth century, critics often have overlooked, or ignored, the erasure of female history and the crucial position women, regardless of race, occupy within the colonial and republican societies. This project aims to (re)examine race and gender within the Caribbean and early American context, reinstating the role and struggle of women. Aphra Behn, in Oroonoko, and William Earle, in Obi, reveal the potential threat and rebellious spirit of female slaves within the Caribbean. In The Coquette, Hannah Foster questions the freedom and equality of women in the republican society, and she draws a comparison between the republican marriage contract and the institution of slavery. Leonora Sansay?s Secret History places two American women in the Caribbean to illustrate the importance of female community and collectivity in removing women from patriarchal control. Using the Haitian Revolution as her backdrop, Sansay uses the slaves? success to provide an example for women to follow. Americans, as former inhabitants of England, become Creoles in the American colonies, undergoing a process of creolization that resembles that experienced by Caribbean colonists. However, as the early United States formed its own independent nation, its citizens adopted British colonial ideology and, at the same time, distanced themselves from the perceived limitations of Creole subjectivity. This project attempts to illustrate this contradiction between the ideals of freedom and equality and the reality of the colonial and republican societies in the transatlantic colonies and to illustrate the influence and interconnection between Europe, America, and the Caribbean.
Peter Hulme?s description of postcolonial theory coincides with my own reading of race within the Caribbean and early United States. He regards the relevance of postcolonial theory to America as underdeveloped; since Hulme?s acknowledgement of this problem, critics have not only begun to reassess the eighteenth century in terms of postcolonial theory, but also to include the formation of the early United States within the context of the racial revolutions occurring within the transatlantic. With my thesis, I will contribute to this reassessment and also address the problem of overlooking the early United States in regards to race. Given the complexities attending the formation of the early United States, particularly those grounded in ambivalent and often contradictory ideas about race, I examine the literature produced during the eighteenth century in order to tease out the implications of race within the transatlantic. The concept of America as a colony of the European nations resembles the European Caribbean colonies; we can identify the inhabitants of America, like those in the Caribbean, as Creoles. The term Creole denotes various definitions in different contexts, and for my thesis, I will use Sean Goudie?s understanding of this term. Goudie sees “Creole” as more than the birth of a colonial subject outside of his or her national origins. In addition, he uses this term “to account for admixtures, or syncretisms, between Old and New World „races? and cultures” (8). Using Goudie?s understanding of “Creole,” I will expose the cultural influences of the revolutionary Atlantic and argue that this Creole position allowed certain subjects to form a collective community and distance themselves from the political control of England.
In this thesis, I will explore how ideas about women and slaves in early transatlantic writings informed and were shaped by notions of Creole identity at once contributing to the “collective community” described above and challenging its hegemonic status. Texts like Aphra Behn?s Oroonoko, William Earle?s Obi, Hannah Foster?s The Coquette, and Leonora Sansay?s Secret History demonstrate the significance of the transatlantic traffic not only in relation to the colonies and slaves but also in relation to the cultures attendant on such commerce. The transatlantic routes did more than transport slaves and Europeans to the American colonies; these routes brought along various cultures as well as various assumptions about race and gender. For example, the British, the group of Europeans I will focus on in my study, had pre-nscribed notions concerning the role of women in their country. And while the early American colonists laid claim to notions of equality, a defining characteristic of their “new world,” these gender biases remained intact. Also, the master-slave relationship, established in Britain?s Caribbean colonies, infiltrated the minds of American colonists and shaped their opinions on slavery. The ideas and people that both crossed over on various routes in the Atlantic Ocean left the American colonies in a contradictory state. On one hand, “America” promoted equality and freedom to all; however, women and the enslaved, stood outside of this equality. Neither group could participate in the political realm even though they both contributed to and were affected by the political decisions occurring within the colonies.
Within the eighteenth-century, revolutionary Atlantic, the term nationalism and nation emerged as people with common language and cultures fought against each other in hopes of finding freedom and creating their own national identity. This concept of national identity formed a strong connection between the recognized members of the nation, who were willing to die fighting for their sense of nation identity. Benedict Anderson defines the nation as “an imagined political community,” one that is both limited and sovereign—limited because a “nation” never knows all of the members of its “imagined” community, and sovereign because despite the inequalities within this imagined community, the members perceive the nation as an equal comradeship, and they are willing to die to protect it (Anderson 6-7). Rather than complications forming between two different nations, separate nations began within a group of people who shared a common sovereignty and language. Within a nation, or community, people fought against each other, resulting in the creation of their own separate national identity. In fact, many Creole communities developed a sense of nationalism before their mother countries of Europe. Anderson notes that the improvements in transatlantic communication coupled with the shared languages and cultures of the Creole communities with the metropoles led to an easy transmission of the new economies and political doctrines being produced in Western Europe (51). Surrounding my thesis is the sense of comradeship that united the Creole colonists during this revolutionary time period. The Creole colonists used this strong sense of comradeship to separate themselves from the injustices they felt they suffered under their current nation. The strong bond of friendship led to the Creole?s own distinct national identity. In addition to examining the inequalities between the one nation and its former colonies, in my thesis, I focus on the inequality that existed within the newly formed nations, which were forming across the Atlantic. Even though a sense of friendship and national identity united the Creole colonists, their newly formed community also contained inequalities and injustices for some of the members, especially woman and slaves.
Notions of freedom, equality, and revolution traveled across the Atlantic; the mercantile and slave trade routes and the colonization of the Caribbean and North America increased the communication between the transatlantic colonies and Europe. The circular exchange of cultures and ideologies resulted in what Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker refer to as the “many-headed hydra,” alluding to the Hercules myth; when one of the heads of the hydra, the monster Hercules was trying to defeat, was severed, it reproduced two more heads (2). Linebaugh and Rediker (re)write the history of the revolutionary Atlantic to include the “motley crew,” a term South Carolina Governor William Bull applied to the mixed group of sailors and slaves; however, Linebaugh and Rediker also include the laborers, religious radicals, pirates, and felons within the many heads of this crew (212). The ruling class used this derogatory description of a “motley crew” to describe the early proletariats who participated in revolutionary activities. This crew stood in opposition to the leaders of the Atlantic nations, yet their rebellious actions against the governments that restricted their freedom inspired the political leaders of the American
colonies to follow their example and rebel against England in an attempt to gain their own political and social freedom. Samuel Adams, Jr., one of thepolitical leaders, observed the rebellious spirit of the motley crew and adopted their motivations into his own political discourse, creating a new ideology of resistance in which the natural rights of man justified rebellious actions against governmental control (216). Therefore, slave and labor revolts set the stage for the American Revolution, providing inspiration much in the same way the American Revolution would later influence the French and Haitian Revolutions. Moreover, sailors occupied a unique position of literally transporting these revolutionary ideas of the natural rights of man and freedom between all the Atlantic nations. The revolutionary atmosphere of the Atlantic, like the “many-headed hydra,” can be attributed to several groups, and even though colonial leaders attempted to remove the authority of the various groups, they only produced more groups and complications that strengthened the revolutionary atmosphere and weakened the colonial system?s authority. In the following chapters, I reveal two heads of the hydra: female slaves and white women. These two heads of the hydra represent two sites of difference to consider when analyzing identity formation, in this case gender and race. Although other sites of difference like class continue to operate in the formation of subjects, I will be focusing on these two.
ONTENTS
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE:
EVOKING NANNY?S GHOST: THE DOMESTIC AND
REBELLIOUS SPIRIT OF WOMEN IN APHRA BEHN?S
OROONOKO AND WILLIAM EARLE?S OBI
CHAPTER TWO:
RECREATING SOCIAL STRUCTURES
IN THE EARLY UNITED STATES: FAILED
MATERNITY AND COMMUNITY IN HANNAH
FOSTER?S THE COQUETTE
CHAPTER THREE:
SECRET COMMUNITIES: REBEL WOMEN IN
LEONORA SANSAY?S SECRET HISTORY
EPILOGUE
NOTES
WORKS CITED
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
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