Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912In the late nineteenth century, the stereotype of the black male as sexual beast functioned for white supremacists as an externalized symbol of social chaos against which all whites would unite for the purpose of national renewal. The emergence of this stereotype in American culture and literature during and after Reconstruction was related to the growth of white-on-black violence, as white lynch mobs acted in "defense" of white womanhood, the white family, and white nationalism. In Writing a Red Record Sandra Gunning investigates American literary encounters with the conditions, processes, and consequences of such violence through the representation of not just the black rapist stereotype, but of other crucial stereotypes in mediating moments of white social crisis: "lascivious" black womanhood; avenging white masculinity; and passive white femininity. Gunning argues that these figures together signify the tangle of race and gender representation emerging from turn-of-the-century American literature. The book brings together Charles W. Chestnutt, Kate Chopin, Thomas Dixon, David Bryant Fulton, Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, and Ida B. Wells: famous, infamous, or long-neglected figures who produced novels, essays, stories, and pamphlets in the volatile period of the 1890s through the early 1900s, and who contributed to the continual renegotiation and redefinition of the terms and boundaries of a national dialogue on racial violence. |
Contents
On Literary Records and Discursive Possibilities | 3 |
ReMembering Blackness After Reconstruction Race Rape and Political Desire in the Work of Thomas Dixon Jr | 19 |
Mark Twain Charles Chesnutt and the Politics of Literary AntiRacism | 48 |
Black Women and White Terrorism Ida B Wells David Bryant Fulton Pauline E Hopkins and the Politics of Representation | 77 |
Rethinking White Female Silences Kate Chopins Local Color Fiction and the Politics of White Supremacy | 108 |
Other editions - View all
Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912 Sandra Gunning Limited preview - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
African American Afro-American American literary American literature argue black and white black female black rape black rapist black women century characters Charles Charles Chesnutt Chesnutt Civil Clansman color Contending Forces context creole critical culture David Bryant Fulton desire discourse discussion domestic Emancipation female body feminism feminist fiction figure Frances E. W. Harper gender Grégoire Grégoire's Hanover Hopkins Hopkins's interracial Joçint Kate Chopin Ku Klux Klan Leopard's Spots Louisiana Madame Delisle Marrow of Tradition Mézor middle-class miscegenation moral mulatto murder narrative Negro nineteenth-century novel Ochiltree Oxford Univ political post-Reconstruction post-Reconstruction era Press Pudd'nhead Wilson race racial violence rape Reconstruction Roxy Roxy's Sappho sexual slave slavery social South Southern Horrors stereotype story struggle suggests supremacy Thérèse Thomas Dixon tion turn-of-the-century Uncle Tom's Cabin victim Wells's white female white male white supremacist white violence white womanhood white women woman writers York Zoraïde