Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Backgrounds
- Part III The Dynamics of Race and Literary Dynamics
- Part IV Rethinking American Literature
- Chapter 12 Race, Revision, and William Wells Brown’s Miralda
- Chapter 13 “Here’s to Chicanos in the Middle Class!”
- Chapter 14 Pulping the Racial Imagination
- Chapter 15 Recognition, Urban NDN Style
- Part V Case Studies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To Literature
Chapter 12 - Race, Revision, and William Wells Brown’s Miralda
from Part IV - Rethinking American Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2024
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Backgrounds
- Part III The Dynamics of Race and Literary Dynamics
- Part IV Rethinking American Literature
- Chapter 12 Race, Revision, and William Wells Brown’s Miralda
- Chapter 13 “Here’s to Chicanos in the Middle Class!”
- Chapter 14 Pulping the Racial Imagination
- Chapter 15 Recognition, Urban NDN Style
- Part V Case Studies
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To Literature
Summary
Nineteenth-century mixed-race heroine fiction reflected and contributed to US racial constructions. In its antislavery iterations, it critiqued slavery by revealing the slipperiness of racial categories. Because children inherited the condition of their mothers – regardless of their fathers’ race – enslavers profited from the sexual assault of Black women. Enslavers targeted Black women for sexual violence and hypersexualized them, imagining them as always sexually available to white men. Depictions of mixed-race Black heroines in antislavery fiction addressed these problems. Scholars have discussed these concerns in William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or the President’s Daughter, but less attention has been given to his three subsequent revisions of this text. This chapter reads Brown’s serialized novel, Miralda; or, the Beautiful Quadroon as an revealing revision of Brown’s theorization of race in the USA. This revision makes important shifts in both audience and focus and anticipates further development in mixed-race heroine fiction, including writing by Black women whose work has been given less attention than Brown’s or white antislavery authors, skewing perceptions of this genre.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Race and American Literature , pp. 177 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024