Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T01:29:04.440Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE TRAGIC MULATTA PLAYS THE TRAGIC MUSE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Kimberly Snyder Manganelli
Kimberly Snyder Manganelli*
Affiliation:
Clemson University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Marie Lavington, the runaway octoroon slave in Charles Kingsley's little-read novel Two Years Ago (1857), makes this declaration of independence in a letter to Tom Thurnall, the novel's hero. Though Tom helped her escape to a Canadian Quaker community, Marie has tired of the “staid and sober” (122; vol. 1, ch. 5) lifestyle of a Quakeress. She reenters the public marketplace by refashioning herself into the Italian diva, La Cordifiamma. Marie's ascent to the stage as La Cordifiamma marks the construction of a new female body in the mid-nineteenth century: the Tragic Mulatta who becomes a Tragic Muse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , September 2009 , pp. 501 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Adams, James Eli. Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Masculinity. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alliot, Paul. Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France, and the United States, 1785–1807. 2 vols. Trans. Alexander Robertson, James. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1911.Google Scholar
Anderson, Amanda. Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Asleson, Robyn, ed. Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture 1776–1812. New Haven: Yale UP 2003.Google Scholar
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. Johnson, Claudia L.. New York: Norton, 1998.Google Scholar
Badeau, Adam. The Vagabond. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1859.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Trans. Jephcott, Edmund. New York: Shocken, 1986.Google Scholar
Boucicault, Dion. The Octoroon. Selected Plays of Dion Boucicault. Ed. Parkin, Andrew. Washington: Catholic U of America P, 1987.Google Scholar
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. The Octoroon; or, The Lily of Louisiana. Ed. Carnell, Jennifer. Hastings: Sensation, 1999.Google Scholar
Brody, Jennifer DeVere. Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Brontë, Charlotte. Villette. New York: Bantam Books, 1986.Google Scholar
Brownstein, Rachel M.Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comédie-Française. Durham: Duke UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Child, Lydia Maria. “The Quadroons.” The Liberty Bell. Jan. 1842: 115–42. American Periodicals Series: 1839–1858. <http://proquest.umi.com/pdqweb>. Web. 26 May 2006..+Web.+26+May+2006.>Google Scholar
Child, Lydia Maria. A Romance of the Republic. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1997.Google Scholar
Chitty, Susan. The Beast and the Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974.Google Scholar
Clifford, Deborah Pickman. Crusader for Freedom: A Life of Lydia Maria Child. Boston: Beacon, 1992.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Catherine. “George Eliot and Daniel Deronda: The Prostitute and the Jewish Question.” Sex, Politics, and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. Ed. Bernard Yeazell, Ruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. 39–62.Google Scholar
Glenn, Susan A.Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hood, Thomas. “The Bridge of Sighs.” Selected 1Poems of Thomas Hood. Ed. Clubbe, John. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Johnson, Walter. Soul by Soul: Life inside the Antebellum Slave Market. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Karcher, Carolyn L.The First Woman of the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingsley, Charles. Two Years Ago. 2 vols. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1857.Google Scholar
Lewes, George Henry. On Actors and the Art of Acting. London: Smith, Elder, 1875.Google Scholar
Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer. England and the English. Ed. Meacham, Standish. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1970.Google Scholar
Martin, Robert Bernard. The Dust of Combat: A Life of Charles Kingsley. London: Faber & Faber, 1959.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. Society in America. 2 vols. New York: Saunders and Otley, 1837.Google Scholar
More, Hannah. Selected Writings of Hannah More. Ed. Hole, Robert. London: William Pickering, 1996.Google Scholar
Mowatt, Anna Cora. Mimic Life, or, Before and Behind the Curtain. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1856.Google Scholar
Olmsted, Frederick. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States. New York: Mason Brothers, 1859.Google Scholar
Powell, Kerry. Women and Victorian Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, Mayne. The Quadroon; or, A Lover's Adventures in Louisiana. 3 vols. London: George W. Hyde, 1856.Google Scholar
Ribeiro, Aileen. “Costuming the Part: A Discourse of Fashion and Fiction in the Images of the Actress in England, 1776–1812.” Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture 1776–1812. Ed. Asleson, Robyn. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003.Google Scholar
Samuels, Shirley. Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Shawn Michelle. American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Stanley, Amy Dru. From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine's Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Tracey, Karen. Plots and Proposals: American Women's Fiction, 1850–90. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2000.Google Scholar
Trollope, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans. London: Century, 1984.Google Scholar
Yellin, Jean Fagan. Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.Google Scholar