Published in 1923 as part of “Cane”, Jean Toomer’s “Blood-Burning Moon” provides a Harlem Renaissance adaptation of the Gothic that depicts a nightmarish South still fraught with the ghosts of antebellum racial and economic principles. Toomer adapts an Anglo-American Gothic narrative in order to intensify and dramatize the more ostensible themes of racial violence and miscegenation in “Cane”. “Blood-Burning Moon” depicts a love triangle, ominous blood-red moon, and violent lynching that are truly uncanny: familiar Gothic conventions appearing unexpectedly in an avant-garde Modernist text.
Given this predictable determinism, the Gothic form of “Blood-Burning Moon” makes for an awkward if not improbable fit with the political and aesthetic avant-gardism
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of “Cane”. While the beginning makes a point to reiterate that the wellspring of cultural, racial, and sexual themes in “Blood-Burning Moon” are the capitalist antagonisms specific to the history of the American South. Furthermore, the Gothic is about the will to transcend. “Blood-Burning Moon” performs crucial historical-political work by deploying these Gothic possibilities while working through the constraints and limitations of convention. Toomer’s story does not displace Modernism with the Gothic, but deploys its Modernist aesthetic and political concerns through Gothic forms. “Blood-Burning Moon” is a story about the battle for historical authority between two parallel yet conflicting experiences of the past and present. Because the Gothic imagines a history beyond limits, Toomer can create an African-American Modernism that generates a biting historical-materialist critique from within Anglo-American literary and political tradition. By dramatizing a series of dialectical social and cultural problems concerning race and class, “Blood-Burning Moon” ultimately engages the master-slave dialectic that haunts the employer-employee capitalism of the post-Reconstruction American South. By aligning aesthetic structure with material history, Toomer demonstrates how the Gothic love triangle provides a congruent social hierarchy with the identity politics of the Southern past.
As a plantation Gothic, “Blood-Burning Moon” transplants the evil count, the maiden, and the ineffectual suitor of a feudal Gothic into the American South. Louisa, a black housekeeper and servant, shares her love and sexual affections with both Bob Stone, the son of her white employers, and Tom Burwell, a black field hand on the Stones’ sugarcane farm. Stone and Burwell’s inevitable discovery of the other’s relationship with Louisa culminates in a violent showdown in which Burwell slashes Stone’s throat only to be captured by an ensuing lynch mob and burned at the stake. Even though the Gothic form and American Southern history anticipate this ending, ‘Blood-Burning Moon’ remains a Modernist experiment that attempts to break open the overdetermined politics of identity. This unstable union of the Gothic and Modernism bears traces of Toomer’s personal pursuit of a new identity and race that transcends the dilemmas of difference. Initially, the story allegorizes this quest through the female Gothic heroine. “Blood-Burning Moon” thematically extends these female perspectives on sexuality and identity, racial mixing, and Southern economic frustration by opening with a female Gothic narrative. But instead of giving Louisa the enduring introspection consistent with the preceding prose, …show more content…
“Blood-Burning Moon” quickly shifts its focus away from Louisa. When the patriarchal, homosocial feud between Stone and Burwell subsumes Louisa’s voice, the aesthetic form fails to create new forms of political identity. Hence, the story only alludes to the female Gothic form and, in so doing, eclipses what appears to be one possible source of remedy: Louisa’s consciousness. She embodies a conflict of stereotypical female Gothic features: sometimes femme fatale, sometimes passive-innocent. In contrast, Louisa’s most enlightening thoughts tend to romanticize the racial dialectic between Stone and Burwell. Her unique, perhaps Modernist, sensibility allows her to imagine the love triangle as both relatively satisfying in its complexity and also in a state of possible equanimity. She thinks to herself that Burwell’s blackness “balanced, and pulled against, the white of Stone” (28). If not naïve, Louisa seems to be an extraordinarily optimistic, teleological dialectician, offering a reconstruction of the Gothic feminine ideal. In breaking from traditional patterns of externalized conflict, Louisa’s internalization of racial tension and attempt to reconcile it produce new narrative and subjective possibilities. Louisa’s durability as a complex heroine, however, quickly dissolves and is overshadowed by the blood-red moon.
Telltale signs of uncertainty subvert Louisa’s optimism: “As she sang softly at the evil face of the full moon. A strange stir was in her” (28). The moon simultaneously pathologizes and externalizes Louisa’s conflict, stripping her of any heroic agency. Under the moon’s gaze, she relinquishes her Modernist willingness to cope with complexity for the passive hope that Burwell’s marriage proposal will be delayed and major disorder avoided. Though she guards herself against the moon with song, she ultimately possesses no power to alter the story’s outcome. Stone and Burwell’s narrative sections quickly overrun Louisa’s female Gothic narrative. Her power to internalize the lovers’ problem proves inadequate. She is reduced to an object of desire and becomes the psychical, physical and narrative link between Stone and Burwell. The narrative of homosocial desire, which silences Louisa’s voice, ultimately disables the possibility of achieving the reconstructed female Gothic consciousness that was expected. But even supplanted, Louisa’s ability to imagine and possibly embody a reconciliation of multiracial desire evokes the progressive reconfiguration of race that Toomer imagined for himself. Toomer boldly confesses his desire for such political and philosophical reconciliation. As Louisa shows, this new racial possibility can only be fantasized about by using the familiar
Gothic terms. The Gothic form and its insistence on conquering transgression placate such monstrous threats to the status quo in favor of tradition and homogeneity. Because the Gothic triangle provides an aesthetic form that mirrors the material history that Toomer wants to critique, the Gothic resolution is too closely allied with bourgeois social control, a problem that “Blood-Burning Moon” emphasizes through failure. The Modernism in Toomer’s Gothic produces important aesthetic and political work on racial identity and history, but the Gothic triangle itself collapses and falls far short of aestheticizing a Modernist utopian project. However, the tripartite social structure remains seductive for Toomer as he looks beyond aesthetics for a logic of identity that transcends difference.
Pauline Hopkins’ novel “Of One Blood” was originally published serially in a magazine called Colored American, from 1902-03. Within this novel Hopkins discusses some of the prominent racial and gender oppressions suffered by African Americans during this time. Following the Emancipation Proclamation of 1849 which resulted in African American freedom from slavery, but unfortunately not freedom from oppression and suffering. One of the minor characters, and the only dominant female role, within the novel is Dianthe Lusk. Within the novel Dianthe has many identifiers, which limits not only the readers but Dianthe’s understanding of her identity. Some of these identifiers include: women or ghost, black or white, sister or wife, princess or slave, and African or American. However, the most prominent of these juxtapositions in the novel is the racial identity. This paper will argue that the suffrage of Dianthe through her experiences with racial identity and rape serve to locate racial identity as an agent of politics, rather than of one’s color.
Wexler, Laura. 2003. Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America. Scribner; 2004. Print
In Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, personal accounts that detail the ins-and-outs of the system of slavery show readers truly how monstrous and oppressive slavery is. Families are torn apart, lives are ruined, and slaves are tortured both physically and mentally. The white slaveholders of the South manipulate and take advantage of their slaves at every possible occasion. Nothing is left untouched by the gnarled claws of slavery: even God and religion become tainted. As Jacobs’ account reveals, whites control the religious institutions of the South, and in doing so, forge religion as a tool used to perpetuate slavery, the very system it ought to condemn. The irony exposed in Jacobs’ writings serves to show
Southern gothic is a type of literature that focuses on the harsh conflicts of violence and racism, which is observed in the perspective of black and white individuals. Some of the most familiar southern authors are William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. One author in particular, Flannery O’Connor, is a remarkable author, who directly reflects upon southern grotesque within her two short stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation.” These two short stories are very similar to each other, which is why I believe that O’Connor often writes with violent characters to expose real violence in the world while tying them in with a particular spiritual insight. The first short story that O’Connor refers to with southern grotesque and violence is in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
There are two real conflicts in Jean Toomer's "Blood-Burning Moon." The first is racial, which can be referenced in the very first sentence, and the second is a gender conflict, that subtly unfolds with the main characters' development. In this essay, I will show how Toomer uses vivid descriptions and comparisons of nature to establish these conflicts, and also to offer an explanation of their origin. He writes to argue that these roles, like the earth, are natural and therefore irrefutable. A close reading of the opening paragraph will reveal the sharp contrast between white and black, as it is described in a metaphor of wood and stone.
Valerie Martin’s Novel Property is an engrossing story of the wife of a slave owner and a slave, whom a mistress of the slave owner, during the late 18th century in New Orleans. Martin guides you through both, Manon Guadet and her servant Sarah’s lives, as Ms. Gaudet unhappily lives married on a plantation and Sarah unhappily lives on the plantation. Ms. Gaudet’s misserableness is derived from the misfortune of being married to a man that she despises and does not love. Sarah, the slave, is solely unhappy due to the fact that she is a slave, and has unwillingly conceived to children by Ms. Gaudiest husband, which rightfully makes Sarah a mistress. Throughout the book, Martin captivates the reader and enables you to place yourself in the characters shoes and it is almost as you can relate to how the characters are feeling.
Knowing and understanding social, political, and cultural history is extremely important when reading many novels, especially Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Linda Brent and any short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both of these authors had many extinuating circumstances surrounding their writings that should be noted before reading their works. Without knowing what was happening both in the outside world and in the respected author's life, one cannot truly grasp what the author is trying to say or what the author truly means by what he or she is saying. In this paper, I will show how important it is for the reader to understand the social, political, and cultural happenings in the writer's lives and in the world surrounding them during the times that their works were written.
Word by word, gothic literature is bound to be an immaculate read. Examining this genre for what it is could be essential to understanding it. “Gothic” is relating to the extinct East Germanic language, people of which known as the Goths. “Literature” is defined as a written work, usually with lasting “artistic merit.” Together, gothic literature combines the use of horror, death, and sometimes romance. Edgar Allan Poe, often honored with being called the king of horror and gothic poetry, published “The Fall of House Usher” in September of 1839. This story, along with many other works produced by Poe, is a classic in gothic literature. In paragraph nine in this story, one of our main characters by the name of Roderick Usher,
In Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the author subjects the reader to a dystopian slave narrative based on a true story of a woman’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation and freedom. This non-fictional personal account chronicles the journey of Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) life of servitude and degradation in the state of North Carolina to the shackle-free promise land of liberty in the North. The reoccurring theme throughout that I strive to exploit is how the women’s sphere, known as the Cult of True Womanhood (Domesticity), is a corrupt concept that is full of white bias and privilege that has been compromised by the harsh oppression of slavery’s racial barrier. Women and the female race are falling for man’s
Whereas it may at first be overlooked, the description of different types of kitchens in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is in fact a recurring theme in the novel and not to be trivialized. On the contrary, Harriet Beecher Stowe uses the image of the kitchen to encompass one of the most pertinent aspects of her argument against slavery: that of the importance of the home and domestic life in the fight against oppression and injustice. An indoctrinated member of the infamous “Cult of True Womanhood,” an unofficial sisterhood designed to combat women’s lack of physical and political power by encouraging them to develop the power of influence, Stowe uses representations of the ideology of this alliance – whose central tenets are piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity – as weapons in her narrative battle against slavery’s evils. She aims these weapons straight at the heart of female readers belonging to the same sisterhood, especially mothers; and with what territory should her feminine readership be more closely acquainted...
Ringe, Donald A. American Gothic: Imagination and Reason in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Lexington KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982.
Southern Gothic literature is a group of words bonded together to set a mood, message, plot, etc. Overall Southern Gothic Literature can be interesting and creepy at the same time, its style has been practiced for many years by southern writers which are located in the American South. Its popular writings have grew from generation to generation and is now a world wide genre. Works Cited Alice, Petry. A Rose for Emily.’
Walker brought most of the horrific and even sickening scenes of the book to life, with the help and influence of society in history. One of the greatest influences to have an effect on Walker's style of writing and especially The Color Purple, were instances from slavery and prejudice. The whites owned and empowered America during the time of slavery. They had no respect for any other race, which they thought of as substandard. As Lean'tin Bracks stated, blacks were considered to be racially inferior, and they were used for the exploitation of the white culture. The whites used the black people as animals, and made them do their every bidding. Blacks and whites were separated form each other and this segregation of the two races barred blacks from legal and economic access, and they were put to punishment by the white culture. Interaction between the two races rarely occurred other than specific affairs or whites intruding on blacks. There were no penalties to pay by whites, therefore intrusions were common, and they took advantage of the African-Americans. The intrusions varied from breaking and entering to rape and murder for no apparent reason (84). Walker used this basis of racism to grip the reader and take them through a story of a women, who survives physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, everyday.
The Black woman struggles against oppression not only as a result of her race, but also because of her gender. Slavery created the perception of Black inferiority; sexism traces back to the beginning of Western tradition. White men have shaped nearly every aspect of culture, especially literature. Alice Walker infuses her experiences as a Black woman who grew up in Georgia during the Civil Rights era into the themes and characters of her contemporary novels. Walker’s novels communicate the psychology of a Black woman under the Western social order, touch on the “exoticism of Black women” and challenge stereotypes molded by the white men in power (Bobo par. 24). In The Color Purple Walker illustrates the life of a woman in an ordinary Black family in the rural South; in his article “Matriarchal Themes in Black Family Literature”, Rubin critiques that Walker emphasizes not only that the Black female is oppressed within society, but also that external oppression causes her to internalize her inferiority. Every theme in Walker’s writings is given through the eyes of a Black woman; by using her personal experiences to develop her short stories and novels, Walker gives the Black woman a voice in literature. Walker demonstrates through her writings that the oppression of Black women is both internal and external.