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Global Victorians - Coggle Diagram
Global Victorians
Violence of White Womanhood
"Progressives" and the New Woman
The History of Mary Prince
:
Editors edited the text to target white women who would support the abolitionist cause
“No fact of importance has been omitted, and not a single circumstance or sentiment has been added. It is essentially her own, without any material alteration farther than was requisite to exclude redundancies and gross grammatical errors, so as to render it clearly intelligible” (3)
Political tool -> violence of white people in the name of economics was meant to scandalize
White saviourism
"Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery in Britain," John Oldfield:
“For instance, many women across all classes subscribed to local antislavery committees or else made their presence felt through boycotting slave-produced goods, principally sugar”
Anti-Slavery Society -> many other female societies who were often more active
~70+ ‘ladies associations’ were active
Distributed books and pins
"Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
White saviourism
Anti-slavery, but supported reimbursement of slave owners by British government
“I have run through the night, my skin is as dark” (160)
“Our blackness shuts like prison bars” (161)
“We were black, we were black, We had no claim to love and bliss” (163)
Depended on racism to portray the main protagonist
"Victorian Writings on the New Woman:"
Goal: “...a strongly voiced desire for greater economic freedom and educational opportunities, and for a recognition politically and socially of women’s equality with men” (330)
They were also sexually active (33)
Characteristics:
Taking up traditionally “masculine” things
-
Moves beyond nurturing mother role
-
Freedom of movement
Less emphasis on purity
More independent, solitary**
Push back against the idea that “boys need education of the head, girls need education of the heart”
Nat Arling: “Women have been lumped together in one indistinguishable mass. In the midst of change women must be inert, in the progressions of the State, a fixture, if not an unconsidered nonentity; and this, no matter how keen her interest and intelligence, how active her sympathy, how great her capacity, how wide her interests. Was ever a bondage equal to this bondage?...” (335)
Sarah Grand: “Women were awaking from their long apathy, and, as they awoke, like healthy hungry children unable to articulate, they began to whimper for they knew not what.” (332)
"Post Darwin: Social Darwinism, Degeneration, Eugenics," Carolyn Burdett
Some saw eugenics as providing support for women's emancipation -> women must be well educated to make rational choices about marriage
New Woman embraced this in the 1890s
‘Positive eugenics’ = more children
'Negative eugenics’ = poor women
A Story of an African Farm
, Olive Schreiner
:
There is nothing helps in this world, said the child slowly, but to be very wise, and to know everything--to be clever (p. 11).
Eugenics way of thinking -> competition; no help
I do not want your sheep, said the girl slowly; I want things of my own (11)
Capitalist way of thinking
“I am not in so great a hurry to put my neck beneath any man's foot; and I do not so greatly admire the crying of babies, she said, as she closed her eyes half wearily and leaned back in the chair. There are other women glad of such work.” (95)
“Can you form an idea, Waldo, of what it must be to be shut up with cackling old women, who are without knowledge of life, without love of the beautiful, without strength, to have your soul cultured by them? It is suffocation only to breathe the air they breathe; but I made them give me room.” (96-97)
White feminism = individualistic
Antagonistic feminism of Lyndall -> need “bad women” (Em, poor women) to contrast with
Critique of the Colonial Woman
The History of Mary Prince:
“The next morning my mistress set about instructing me in my tasks. She taught me to do all sorts of household work; to wash and bake, pick cotton and wool, and wash floors, and cook. And she taught (how can I ever forget it!) more things than these; she caused me to know the exact differences between the smart of the rope, the cart-whip, and the cow-skin, when applied to my naked body by her own cruel hand.” (14)
“She did not lick me herself, but she got her husband to do it for her, whilst she fretted the flesh off my bones.” (30)
White women uphold white supremacy through enacting violence, even though some may try to distance themselves from the act
"Sultana's Dream," Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain:
“'Where are the men?' I asked her./'In their proper places, where they ought to be.'/'Pray let me know what you mean by "their proper places".'/'O, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.’”
“Some of the passers-by made jokes at me. Though I could not understand their language, yet I felt sure they were joking. I asked my friend, 'What do they say?' 'The women say that you look very mannish.''Mannish?' said I, 'What do they mean by that?''They mean that you are shy and timid like men.'"
White women's vision of utopia is limited in its carcerality and adherence to gender norms
"The Politics of Recovery," Antoinette Burton:
“Imperial culture at home provided the ground for feminism’s organizational resurgence after the decline of the anti-slavery movement” (4)
“There is little doubt that middle class British feminists of the period viewed feminism itself as an agent of imperial progress, and their capacity to represent Indian women in turn as a signifier of imperial progress” (11)
White feminism = tool of imperialism/colonialism
White Supremacy in the Nation-State
Expressions of Identity for the Colonial Subject
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands:
Must establish credibility and gain the respect/sympathy of white British readers
She is a “female and a widow” and part Scottish
Her womanhood and part whiteness is meant to make her credible
“The pomp, pride, and circumstances of glorious war” -> patriotic, in line with British foreign policy
Refutes the “lazy Creole” stereotype
The mention of Ulysses in her opening introduction is arguably meant to indicate her educated upbringing
Constantly seeks to emulate middle-class, British values and norms
She seeks to assert herself as a maternal figure to British soldiers -> this is meant to include herself within British national identity
To Seacole, British national identity must be expansive enough to include her (especially considering her efforts in the war)
Seacole is trying to reconcile her status as a colonial subject with the British nation-state and find her place within it
"Comic Acts of Belonging: Performing Englishness in 'Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands,'" Angelia Poon:
Comedy is a way to insinuate yourself into English society -> contradictions of identity are meant to be lighthearted rather than melancholy
Seacole acknowledges mimicry of Englishness before her readers do -> in that way she is trying to legitimate herself as one with the British nation-state
Maps of Englishness,
Simon Gikandi:
Colonialism also colonized identities of colonized people
becomes deeply embedded in culture, it persists over time
Mrs Seacole has to express herself through specifically white, British gender norms
When you are a colonial subject, you are at their mercy. You have to abide by their rules
The language they give you is the only cultural understanding you have
England is always the foreground, no matter what
Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century
, Manu Chander:
Brown Romantics struggled to achieve the status of legislators in their own right in order to challenge the dominance of English poets, mobilizing Romanticism against Romanticism
Unacknowledged legislators
The marginalization of the Brown Romantic is of course the consequence of an asymmetrical balance of power between center and periphery (3)
“The Brown Romantic, conversely, was exceptional in that, to be recognized as a poet, he had to subject himself to laws that stripped the poetic traditions native to his readership of the value that would, as colonial subjects, accord to English “taste.” In so doing, paradoxically, the Brown Romantic either had to place himself within an indigenous tradition peripheral to the dominant tradition and be read as a lesser poet who observed rather than laid down the laws of taste, or else he had to risk the charge of inauthenticity, mimeticism, or fraud” -> double bind (outsider status no matter what he chooses to do) (4)
Toru Dutt:
Example of a Brown Romantic -> an individual who sought to carve their own position as a poet within the boundaries established for colonial subjects
“The Lotus:"
Sonnet is a product of Western literature
Alludes to Roman mythology with the inclusion of Psyche
Producing poems within the status quo of the British nation-state’s idea of poetry -> any opposition, or adoption of themes, styles, etc in one’s native context, is not overt
"The Tower of London," Soseki Natsume:
Exemplifies
autoexoticism
-> Natsume is attempting to reconcile the Japanese nation-state within a power dynamic between them and the West
The protagonist’s encounters with characters from English literature speaks to the ways in which those who live under imperialism/colonialism must operate within a Western status quo
White Supremacy as Foundation and Reinforcement of the Nation State
"Diary in India," William Howard Russell
Criticized the Cawnpore massacre, which involved the killing of British men, women, and children
“We who suffered from it think that there never was such wickedness in the world, and the incessant efforts of a gang invented in the hope of adding to the indignation and burning desires for vengeance which the naked facts aroused” (1612) -> conveniently leaves out the violence wrought upon Indian people
Hindus and Muslims are the evil ones -> white Christians are more moral and therefore better
War of No Pity,
Christopher Herbert:
British opinion toward colonialism/imperialism shifted from support to criticism after the Sepoy Rebellion
For the first time, the empire was under question
Destroyed natural self-perception that empire was stable and morally sound
Support became more tacit
However, criticism of colonial empire was not a criticism of white supremacy -> the British still believed in their racial suepriority, however they did not think the violence of the Sepoy Mutiny was in accordance with [moral] superiority
Rudyard Kipling:
Shift from empire as primarily economic to primarily cultural
Believed in white racial superiority
"The White Man's Burden," Kipling:
Justified colonial and imperial rule
Necessary evil that is a burden on working class peoples from colonial state who are sent abroad to protect state interests
“Your new caught, sullen peoples,/Half devil and half-child” -> white men sent abroad are the “best” while black and brown subjects are both evil and childish -> must be ruled
“To veil the threat of terror” -> white settler states are the only barriers between terror and peace
“The savage wars of peace” -> recognizing the horrors of colonialism and war, yet it is necessary for peace
"If," Kipling
Manhood is linked to the colonial nation-state
“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,/And- which is more- you’ll be a Man, my son!” -> The extraction of resources and exploitation of native subjects are a birthright; a passage to Manhood
Establishes the virtues of manhood which are ultimately tied to upholding the state
The Beetle,
Richard Marsh:
“‘That his was one of those morbid organisations which are oftener found, thank goodness, in the east than in the west, and which are apt to exercise an uncanny influence over the weak and the foolish folk with whom they come in contact,—the kind of creature for whom it is always just as well to keep a seasoned rope close handy.’” (28)
“The fellow was oriental to the finger-tips,— that much was certain; yet in spite of a pretty wide personal knowledge of oriental people I could not make up my mind as to the exact part of the east from which he came.” (45)
Atavistic
: relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral, the reappearance of something thought to be lost through evolutionary change.
Ties to Orientalism -> the East is displaced from time to cater to British perceptions
The Beetle, significance of it being an insect -> In Europe, the connotation is bad -> defying racial categories and hence intellectual superiority of the West, negotiability of race does not work for the Beetle
The Beetle as symbol of settler colonialism, Beetle as transformative figure = queer coded character
Queerness = bad -> threatens the heteronormativity + reproductive goals of the state
"Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness," Laurie Penny:
“Every nation-state is ninety percent fictional; there’s always a gap between the imaginary countries united by cultural coherence and collective destinies where most of us believe we live, and the actual countries where we’re born and eat breakfast and file taxes and die. The U.K. is unique among modern states in that we not only buy our own hype, we also sell it overseas at a markup.”
“The image of Britain that persists in the collective global unconsciousness was founded deliberately to make sense of the empire and romanticize it for ordinary British citizens, most of whom had neither a complete understanding of the atrocities nor the voting rights that would make their opinion relevant. Britain wrote and rewrote itself as the protagonist of its own legends, making its barbarism bearable and its cultural dominance natural”
"Autoexotic Literary Encounters between Meiji Japan and the West," Naomi Charlotte Fukuzawa:
“Natsume’s text depicted for the Japanese readership how the British nation remained embodied in the ghosts of its history; Hearn’s text transcribed old oral Japanese ghost tales into English for an American audience interested in an enigmatic civilization that had finally opened its borders to the West , as a mollusk deep in the sea creeps into a new shell.” (447)
“
Autoexoticism
, understood here as the internationalization of the aesthetic exoticization of Japan through the Western gaze, is constitutive of the reflected narration of modern Japan, a narration that is not explicitly postcolonial but still a product of the forced encounter with European modernity.” (448)
Perpetuity of Orientalism
Lafcadio Hearn ->
Orientalism
"Yuki-Onna, Hearn:"
“...he saw a woman in the room- a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku, and blowing her breath upon him; and her breath was like a bright white smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful-” (168)
Beautiful foreign woman who also poses a threat by asserting autonomy
"The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi, Hearn:"
Fukuzawa: “The way Shinto was restored as the Japanese state religion in Meiji ideology as an equivalent to monotheistic Christianity in the West finds a parallel in the process of Hearn’s transcription of Japanese medieval and ancient ghost tales into the genre of the Anglo-Irish ghost story” (452)
Plays into Oriental fantasies -> monks, punishments
Colonial Organization and Presentation of Knowledge
"The Victorian Age:"
Discussion of general facets of the Victorian era -> example of what we decide is important to share and what isn’t
"A Walk 'Round the Colonies,"
Pall Mall Gazette:
“The Exhibition is a microcosm of the Empire…” (1) -> indicative of the fact that this exhibit was seen as not only a way to view the empire, but the knowledge concerning native subjects and their histories that has been plundered and presented as a collection
“Well, it must be confessed, to save disappointment, that the collection there is very much of the nature of the museum- and, indeed, of South Kensington Museum next door. Thousands and thousands of objects on velvet backgrounds in glass cases, be they ticketed never so plainly and intelligently, are not food for the holiday-maker; and if he is fortunate enough before he gets tired to hit upon two or three things that interest him personally, their presence only serves to emphasize the vastness- and therefore the inaccesscility and bore- of the whole collection.” (3) -> settler-colonial organization and presentation of “knowledge” is dependent upon visual display that helps bolster the image of the nation-state as powerful
The cultivation of knowledge = power
"On the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition," Aviva Briefel:
“Authenticity” was important to museum displays, yet it isn’t authentic at all, but crafted to suit settler-colonial, racist perceptions of colonial subjects -> knowledge is not unbiased; its formation is impacted power dynamics and dominant narratives
"The Stories of an African Farm: Indigeneity, Orality, and Unsettling the Victorian," Ryan Fong:
Catalogued according to settler taxonomies rather than San understandings of their own traditions
“Through them, it becomes possible to register the cultural worlds that existed beyond the walls of Bleek and Grey’s libraries, even if it might not be called an accurate record, at least in the ways in which settler scholars understand it” (426)
Knowledge is organized within settler-colonial frameworks thus prioritizing accessibility for settlers over everyone else (Indigenous populations and other marginalized groups)
"Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition by the Queen," Lord Tennyson:
“Welcome, welcome with one voice!” (1626)
“Sharers of our glorious past…” (1626)
These two quotes demonstrate the ways in which the British empire was seen as a unifying force where everyone could reap the benefits
-> everyone can reap the benefits of this exhibit’s knowledge
Presentation of empire, and the exhibit that this poem was written for, is skewed
A Visit to Europe,
T.N. Mukharji:
Discussing observations of the British -> in a way Mukharji is presenting his collected knowledge
This subverts the settler-colonial narrative about colonial subjects as it arguably quips about the British’s sense of “novelty”
"Empire," Nathan Hensley:
Empire was arguably the most important social fact of the Victorian era, every facet of life quite literally depended on its existence, though there are issues pertaining to its definition
Various approaches:
Partisan:
Marxist/anti-colonial: focused on exploitation, white supremacy
Reparative
: Great Britain made the Global South better
Ones that straddle the middle
: core and periphery, Victorian imperial system
Important in regards to the way knowledge is approached and subsequently organized:
History determine certain narratives that are propagated -> contribute to stereotypes of Global South and speaker’s benefit
"The Slave Ship," John Ruskin:
Response to J.M.W. Turner’s painting, The Slave Ship, which was a response to the Zong massacre which involved throwing slaves overboard so the company could collect insurance
Romanticizes the piece and only focuses on the natural elements of it -> makes no mention of the drowning slaves -> in this way, the slaves are excluded from the narrative of this event
"Fallacies of Hope: Contesting Narratives of Abolition in Turner's
Slave Ship,
" Laura Brace:
“The slave ship emerges as a site of ‘black subjectivity and human terror’ that contains, regulates and hides black humanity.” (451)
Turner has “vandalized” the past of slavery “‘in searching for his own fables of black powerlessness and victimhood’” (451) -> Turner’s presentation of the Zong massacre perpetuates a narrative that Black people are victims in need of help from the white savior
Must recognize the past as “‘aftermath and continuity’” (454) -> connects to Betenksy’s speaker’s benefit: we have to acknowledge that racism is not a phenomenon of the past, but continues to be a real tool for settler states to maintain power
"Casual Racism in Victorian Literature," Carolyn Betensky:
“The speaker’s benefit:”
“When we tell our students that Victorian culture was deeply racist and provide historical context for the racism without acknowledging our continuity with this culture, we reap a collective speaker’s benefit” (733)
Investment in labeling the past as “bad” -> able to label ourselves as “good”
We only aid settler-colonialism’s existence by regarding it as something of the past, when it is very much alive and hurting marginalized communities, both on a domestic and international scale -> by refusing to engage in settler colonialism’s perpetuity, our knowledge becomes limited in its scope
“Strategic presentism:”
Presentism in historical studies = judging the past by the standards of the present
Another example of limiting our approach to knowledge and its formation
"Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness," Laurie Penny:
The stories that are told about Britishness to uphold the nation-state and its receding power leave out key elements -> presentation knowledge is not accurate
What is left out? -> Violence, genocide, exploitation, stealing, extraction, etc
"Race and the Dramatic Dialogue," Melissa Valiska Gregory:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning centers the white reader -> Gregory is skeptical
Example of white people they can write on behalf of others and do it successfully
Not only is it appropriation, it is akin to minstrelsy (exaggeration, caricature)
Relying on racial stereotypes to give herself more freedom
Ultimately, knowledge that caters to purely white audiences preserves white supremacy
"The Margins of the Dramatic Monologue, Melissa Shaub:"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning centers the white reader -> Shaub does not think it is bad; argues it creates sympathy
Browning’s repeated mentioning of Christ makes it so the audience cannot judge the “sinner” -> Victorians have lapse of moral judgement
Sin becomes sympathy
Still perpetuates racism