Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine's Text at the Turn of the Century

313 Pages·1992·20.78 MB·English

by  Claudia Tate

DOMESTIC ALLEGORIES
OF POLITICAL DESIRE
True understanding in literature and in literary studies is always historical
and personal.
TZVETAN TODOROV, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical
Principle (1984)
Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy
to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for
a shift of characters in the same weary drama.
AUDRE LORDE, "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power" (1978)
"You haven't learned our language yet. We don't just blurt into the Negro
Problem; that's voted bad form. We leave that to our white friends. We
saunter to it sideways, touch it delicately because"— her face became a lit-
tle graver— "because, you see, it hurts."
WILLIAM E. B. Du BOIS, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911)
Domestic Allegories
of Political Desire
The Black Heroine's Text
at the Turn of the Century
CLAUDIA TATE
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1992
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo
Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town
Melbourne Auckland Madrid
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1992 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tate, Claudia.
Domestic allegories of political desire : the Black heroine's text
at the turn of the century / Claudia Tate.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-507389-4
1. Domestic fiction, American —History and criticism.
2. American fiction—Afro-American authors —History and criticism.
3. American fiction —Women authors —History and criticism.
4. Politics and literature —United States.
5. Afro-American women —Intellectual life.
6. Afro-American women in literature.
7. Heroines in literature. 8. Marriage in literature.
9. Desire in literature. 10. Allegory. I. Title.
PS374.D57T38 1992
813.009'352042-dc20 91-46931
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Ma, Daddy, Gramps
Read, Jay, and Harold
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been greatly enriched by the support of many people. I extend
a special thanks to Skip Gates; the Staff of the Moorland-Spingarn Research
Center of Howard University, especially Esme Bhan, Karen Jefferson, and
Janet Sims-Woods; E. Ethelbert Miller of the Afro-American Studies Resource
Center of Howard University; Betty Culpepper of the Library of Congress;
and Elizabeth Maguire and Susan Chang of Oxford University Press.
I am especially grateful to the following scholars who critiqued chapters of
my manuscript at various stages and/or wrote letters to funding agencies in
support of my work: Vicki Arana, Don Bacon, Carolyn Brown, Hazel Carby,
Eve Hawthorne, Sue Houchins, Barbara Johnson, Jennifer Jordan, Ann Kelly,
Debbie McDowell, Nellie McKay, Marilyn Mobley, Judith Plotz, Hortense
Spillers, Chris Sten, Cheryl Wall, Tara Wallace, and my anonymous readers.
I thank David Levering Lewis for his consultation on William E. B. Du Bois.
Their assistance, comments, and criticism greatly enhanced this book. How-
ever, all excesses of critical zeal, speculation, and overdetermined reading are
mine.
My expression of gratitude would be incomplete were I not to mention my
parents Harold and Mary Tate, my grandmother Mozella Austin, my sons
Read Hubbard and Jerome (Jay) Lindsey, III, and my brother Harold Tate.
This project was supported, in part, by George Washington University, the
American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, and Howard
University, with which I was professionally affiliated 1977-89.
Portions of this book appeared in my essay "Allegories of Black Female
Desire; or, Rereading Nineteenth-Century Sentimental Narratives of Black
Female Authority" in Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, The-
ory, and Writing by Black Women edited by Cheryl A. Wall. Copyright ©
1989 by Rutgers, The State University. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers
University Press. I am grateful to Oxford University Press for permission to
reprint the photograph of Gertrude B. Mossell that appears as the frontispiece
to The Work of the Afro-American Woman.
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Introduction: A Highway through the Wilderness of
Post-Reconstruction 3
1. Maternal Discourses as Antebellum Social Protest 23
The Kitchen Politics of Abolitionism 23
Politicizing the Black Mother's Voice 26
2. Legacies of Intersecting Cultural Conventions 51
Antebellum Gender Constructions of the Black Female 52
Gentility, Color, and Social Mobility 59
The Pedagogy of Sentimental Literature 64
Male and Female Generic Narratives of Racial Protest 67
3. To Vote and to Marry: Locating a Gendered and Historicized
Model of Interpretation 70
A Modern Paradigm: Antagonistic Discourses of Marriage and
Freedom 71
Twentieth-Century Critical Imperatives 78
The Aesthetic of Race Literature 83
Interpretative Model: Domestic Desire as Political Discourse 87
4. Allegories of Gender and Class as Discourses of Political
Desire 97
The Intended Readers of Black Women's Post-Reconstruction
Domestic Novels 102
The Politics of Desire 104