"First published in London, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853) subsequently underwent three title changes and substantial revisions for later editions, all released during the 1860s. Interestingly, Brown opens the novel with a shortened version of his narrative entitled, "Narrative of the Life and Escape of William Wells Brown"; however, he presents this account using third-person narration. In his distinct style, Brown readily blends elements from this narrative as well as various anecdotes, poetry, folk songs and ditties, vignettes of slave life, and even newspaper accounts into the novel. In promoting an abolitionist agenda, he also emphasizes the deleterious effects of slavery on the family. Drawing heavily upon the conventions of sentimental fiction, Clotel also is considered one of the earliest novels of passing—that is, a novel in which a character with African American heritage passes as white in order to escape slavery and/or enjoy greater opportunities. Brown's text includes a number of tragic mulatta (or mixed-race female) figures, although Currer, Althesa, and Clotel are the most prominent." (Partridge and Oakey)
The annotation about the novel above helps put into perspective the themes of misogyny, racism, and class-ism all themes that revolve around American literature. With the completion of the semester in near sight, I think that it is important to understand the correlation of the material we have read over the semester. Keeping in mind the annotation above, and past posts I will try to correlate a rough idea of what American literature has done for the world.
The Scarlet Letter- Misogyny
Charlotte Temple- Misogyny: Warning tale for Women
Wieland- Hides narrators sex from the reader
Ben Franklin Biography- Constructs of American values
Benito Cerna- Delves into race relations of the 19th Century
Zitkala Sa- American Indian stories display the mistreatment of the original inhabitants of the United States
Clotel- Racism, Misogyny, and Class-ism
After going through this class up to this point, I believe the class has been directed for us to see multiple perspectives. Multiple perspectives in the American canon of literature is difficult to from the original canon, and Amy did a wonderful job presenting novels that complicated the original canon and forced it to become larger. The way of mixing classics and popular stories helped display the difference between narrators, gender, content, genre, settings, and historical context. With these separate readings and exemplified differences between these novels they are all American novels which means they do have something in common they are from the same country. Each novel has its own distinct actions of discrimination as labeled above, but what does these different discrimination do for the American literature canon? I believe in the United States there has always been a group discriminated against throughout every stage of our history. We are considered the melting pot and these different groups of people represented in each novel help to show how we are doomed to repeat history, and how the issues above labeled are not different from the issues we see in present day United States. I find this so interesting that we literally have blueprints about how to deal with sexism, racism, differing religions, and class and still cannot figure out how to treat people with the decency that everyone is a person and human with the same emotional response and feelings as the next person. My biggest example that I see today is the current treatment of Muslim people as a religion and culture of people put on blast by the government using threatening terms like terrorist, extremist, and jihad. It is the same story that Zitkala-Sa displays in American Indian Stories, the treatment of their culture ripped apart by the government calling them savages, cherry niggers, and feather heads. I feel as though as a country we are doomed to repeat history at an alarmingly quick rate of time, if we can't learn from our past mistakes, then what will become of the United States? And how does that effect the image we portray around the world as being American.
