Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin : Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe

Joy Jordan-lake Examines The Ways In Which Antebellum Women Novelists Tried To Counter Harriet Beecher Stowe's Enormously Popular Uncle Tom's Cabin By Preaching A 'theology Of Whiteness' From Within The Pages Of The Books - But Were Ultimately Undermined By Their Own Proslavery Agendas. Including A Discussion Of Twentieth- And Twenty-first-century Novels That Revisit Plantation Mythology, Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin Casts New Light On The Ethical And Moral Disaster Of Securing One Group's Economic Strength At The Expense Of Other Groups' Access To Dignity, Compassion, And Justice. -- Publisher's Description. In The Beginning, A Photograph -- Introduction: The Personal Become The Project -- 1. To Woman ... I Say Depart! ; The Plantation Literary Tradition, The Emergent Anti-uncle Tom Novel, And Gender -- 2. Sanctified By Wealth And Whiteness ; Mother-saviors--and Not-- In The Urban North -- 3. Justified By Mother's Milk ; Mammies And Mistress Figures In Proslavery Fiction's Plantation South -- 4. The Background That Belies The Myth ; The Historical Record That Helps Explain The Preponderance Of Nonslaveholding Proslavery Women Authors -- 5. Mothering The Other; Othering The Mother ; An African American Woman Novelist Battles Slavery And Uncle Tom -- 6. Still Playing With Fire ; Perpetuation And Refutation Of The Plantation Romance In Twentieth- And Twenty-first-century Novels By Women. Joy Jordan-lake. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 183-195) And Index. Few books have had greater impact on U.S. history than Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The first American novel to sell more than a million copies, it provoked an entire reading public to extol it, debate it, weep over it, excoriate it. Fighting fire with fire, slavery apologists from North and South responded with their own fiction, producing over three dozen novels in direct response to Stowe's work. Interestingly, a key portion of that fiction was written by women. In Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin, Joy Jordan-Lake examines those women-authored novels to produce compelling insights into both antebellum American culture and a proslavery ideology rife with internal tensions.Including a discussion of twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels that revisit plantation mythology, Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin casts new light on the ethical and moral disaster of securing one group's economic strength at the expense of other groups' access to dignity, compassion, and justice. Joy Jordan-Lake examines the ways in which antebellum women novelists tried to counter Harriet Beecher Stoweís enormously popular Uncle Tom's Cabin by preaching a ìtheology of whitenessî from within the pages of the books - but were ultimately undermined by their own proslavery agendas. Including a discussion of twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels that revisit plantation mythology, Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin casts new light on the ethical and moral disaster of securing one groupís economic strength at the expense of other groupsí access to dignity, compassion, and justice. 9780826591890-1......Page 1 9780826591890-2......Page 8 9780826591890-3......Page 10 9780826591890-4......Page 12 9780826591890-5......Page 16 9780826591890-6......Page 30 9780826591890-7......Page 54 9780826591890-8......Page 92 9780826591890-9......Page 126 9780826591890-10......Page 155 9780826591890-11......Page 165 9780826591890-12......Page 190 9780826591890-13......Page 212 9780826591890-14......Page 226 How women novelists tried to counter Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic indictment of slavery - by preaching a "theology of whiteness" from the pages of their books