{"id":1851,"date":"2009-10-12T23:07:39","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T23:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=1851"},"modified":"2013-02-25T03:46:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T03:46:40","slug":"impossible-purities-blackness-femininity-and-victorian-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=1851","title":{"rendered":"Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Duke University Press<\/a>
\n1998
\n272 pages
\n13 b&w photographs
\nCloth ISBN: 0-8223-2105-X, ISBN13: 978-0-8223-2105-7
\nPaperback ISBN: 0-8223-2120-3, ISBN13 978-0-8223-2120-0<\/p>\n

Jennifer DeVere Brody<\/a><\/strong>, Professor, African and African American Studies
\nDuke University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Using black feminist theory and African American studies to read Victorian culture, Impossible Purities<\/em> looks at the construction of \u201cEnglishness\u201d as white, masculine, and pure and \u201cAmericanness\u201d as black, feminine, and impure. Brody\u2019s readings of Victorian novels, plays, paintings, and science fiction reveal the impossibility of purity and the inevitability of hybridity in representations of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and race. She amasses a considerable amount of evidence to show that Victorian culture was bound inextricably to various forms and figures of blackness.<\/p>\n

Opening with a reading of Daniel Defoe<\/a>\u2019s \u201cA True-Born Englishman,\u201d which posits the mixed origins of English identity, Brody goes on to analyze mulattas<\/a> typified by Rhoda Swartz in William Thackeray<\/a>\u2019s Vanity Fair<\/a><\/em>, whose mixed-race status reveals the \u201cunseemly origins of English imperial power.\u201d Examining Victorian stage productions from blackface minstrel shows to performances of The Octoroon<\/a><\/em> and Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/a><\/em>, she explains how such productions depended upon feminized, \u201cblack\u201d figures in order to reproduce Englishmen as masculine white subjects. She also discusses H. G. Wells<\/a>\u2019s The Island of Dr. Moreau<\/a><\/em> in the context of debates about the \u201cnew woman,\u201d slavery, and fears of the monstrous degeneration of English gentleman. Impossible Purities<\/em> concludes with a discussion of Bram Stoker<\/a>\u2019s novella, \u201cThe Lair of the White Worm<\/a>,\u201d which brings together the book\u2019s concerns with changing racial representations on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

This book will be of interest to scholars in Victorian studies, literary theory, African American studies, and cultural criticism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture Duke University Press 1998 272 pages 13 b&w photographs Cloth ISBN: 0-8223-2105-X, ISBN13: 978-0-8223-2105-7 Paperback ISBN: 0-8223-2120-3, ISBN13 978-0-8223-2120-0 Jennifer DeVere Brody, Professor, African and African American Studies Duke University Using black feminist theory and African American studies to read Victorian culture, Impossible Purities looks at the construction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,459,1196,8,17,6940,10,25],"tags":[523,522,302,526,524,374,303,213,304,305,306,525],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-slavery","category-uk","category-women","tag-bram-stoker","tag-daniel-defoe","tag-duke-university-press","tag-feminism","tag-h-g-wells","tag-jennifer-d-brody","tag-jennifer-devere-brody","tag-mulatta","tag-the-octoroon","tag-uncle-toms-cabin","tag-vanity-fair","tag-william-thackeray"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}