Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American NationRomances of the Republic contributes to the lively field of scholarship on the interconnection of ideology and history in early American literature. Shirley Samuels illustrates the relations of sexual, political, and familial rhetoric in American writing from 1790 to the 1850s. With special focus on depictions of the American Revolution and on the use of the family as a model and instrument of political forces, she examines how the historical novel formalizes the more extravagant features of the gothic novel--incest, murder, the horror of family--while incorporating a sentimental vision of the family. Samuels's analysis deals with writers like Charles Brockden Brown, Catherine Sedgwick, James Fenimore Cooper, and Mason Weems, and argues that their novels formulated a family structure that, unlike earlier models, was neither patriarchal nor a revolt against patriarchy. In emphasizing sibling rivalry and inter-generational quarrels about marriage, the novel of this period attempted to unite disparate political, national, class, and even racial positions. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... female agent of nation formation is thus portrayed as the natural enemy of that enterprise . The female body operates as a shifter term in this merging of colonizer and colonized , victor and victims . Yet if the male enterprise is ...
... female agent of nation formation is thus portrayed as the natural enemy of that enterprise . The female body operates as a shifter term in this merging of colonizer and colonized , victor and victims . Yet if the male enterprise is ...
Page 5
... victims ) . Between seduction and violence , or incorporating violence as seduction , the image of the simul- taneously alluring and devouring female centers cultural figurations of na-. The Family , the State , and the Novel 5.
... victims ) . Between seduction and violence , or incorporating violence as seduction , the image of the simul- taneously alluring and devouring female centers cultural figurations of na-. The Family , the State , and the Novel 5.
Page 6
... female centers cultural figurations of na- tional conflict . The paradoxical logic of this pictorial lesson , and the intimacy of its identi- fication of national values , continues to structure accounts of American na- tional identity ...
... female centers cultural figurations of na- tional conflict . The paradoxical logic of this pictorial lesson , and the intimacy of its identi- fication of national values , continues to structure accounts of American na- tional identity ...
Page 9
... female sexuality with " dangerous " political or revolutionary license ; it contains the rebel justification that England's abdica- tion of parental responsibility could explain or excuse such revolt ; and it introduces the anxious ...
... female sexuality with " dangerous " political or revolutionary license ; it contains the rebel justification that England's abdica- tion of parental responsibility could explain or excuse such revolt ; and it introduces the anxious ...
Page 10
... female body ; now the focus has shifted from a land of women to the land as woman . Fallen off the globe and forced to beg , the mutilated Britania finds her spear and shield useless . Yet an ambiguity of conflated bodies appears here ...
... female body ; now the focus has shifted from a land of women to the land as woman . Fallen off the globe and forced to beg , the mutilated Britania finds her spear and shield useless . Yet an ambiguity of conflated bodies appears here ...
Contents
3 | |
Arthur Mervyn | 23 |
Alien and Infidel | 44 |
Cooper and the Domestic Revolution | 57 |
4 Monuments and Hearths | 76 |
The Making of Americans | 96 |
6 The Identity of Slavery | 113 |
Notes | 129 |
Bibliography | 173 |
Index | 191 |
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Common terms and phrases
abolition abolitionists alien American Revolution animal anti-slavery appears argues Arthur Mervyn attempt battle become blood body British brother cartoons Carwin Cathy Davidson Charles Brockden Brown claims Clara colonies conflation Cooper cultural death deism democracy Democratic desire discourse domestic Dunwoodie Early American early republic effect England father female fiction figure Frances French French Revolution gender George George Forgie Hawthorne Hawthorne's Heckewelder historical novels human ideology incest Indian infidelity institutions James Fenimore Cooper John killed Lionel Lincoln literature marriage miscegenation Mohicans mother murder narrative narrator national identity Natty Bumppo natural neutral ground nineteenth-century once parents patriotism Philadelphia plague political presents profit Province House question racial reader reading relation religious repeatedly republican revolutionary Richard Slotkin romance scene seems sentimental sexual slave Slave's Friend slavery social story suggests Thomas Paine threat tion violence Washington Weems Wharton Wieland woman women
Popular passages
Page 111 - reappear in the novel as a problem of language, and specifically as the problematic involvement of women with reading and writing. Natty Bumppo resentfully notes that "a man who is too conscientious to spend his days among the women, in learning the names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his fathers
Page 110 - suggests also an uneasy relation between such a maternal personification of the forest and the threat its dense shadows pose. The threat behind the veil appears dramatically when the travelers initially enter the woods and the "forest at length appeared to swallow up the living mass which had slowly entered its bosom
Page 161 - Natty tells Duncan to wash off his Indian disguise before he sees Alice: "young women of white blood give the preference to their own colour." After he "availed himself of the water," "every frightful or offensive mark was obliterated, and the youth appeared again in the lineaments with which he had been gifted by nature
Page 110 - concealing her identity, Cora's veil, like her blush, reveals her gender and her race. Her veil arouses attention in the forest, enabling Uncas and the others to track her from the massacre scene when they notice she has dropped "the rag she wore to hide a face that all did love to look upon
Page 99 - emphasized again when he rides into the forest: his body unsurprisingly "possessed the power to arrest any wandering eye," since it appears as an "optical illusion"; "the undue elongation of his legs" produces "such sudden growths and diminishings of his stature as baffled every conjecture that might be made as to his dimensions