Physiognomy
Study of faces to try and identify a criminal look
Bildungsroman
Coming of age novel with a young character that progresses to a grown adult
Homogenous
Treatment of a group as a singular - no individualism
Protean figure
An adaptable, constantly changing figure
Discourse, narrative
Typical dialogue or belief of the time
Prelapsarian
Paradise before the fall
Race context
- Alexander Stephens’ cornerstone speech: black people are ‘the granite’ society is built on, ‘subordination is his place’, ‘it is best for both races’
- Josiah Nott (pseudoscientist) - black people are ‘biologically inferior’
- John C Calhoun said it was for the ‘positive good’
- birth of a nation movie: black men portrayed as rapist, primitive animals. Women in the film kill themselves to avoid being raped by them
- 13th Amendment: caused mass incarceration of black people. The Black Codes were later created and Jim Crow Laws as a way of keeping black people oppressed.
Religion context
- the curse of Canaan used to justify slavery ‘suffering and slavery of the negro race was the consequence of the curse’
- Fredrick Douglass said he ‘hated the corrupt, slave holding, women whipping and hypocritical Christianity of this land’
American exceptionalism
The belief that America was the land ‘chosen by god’ and had a ‘divine purpose’ to influence and lead the rest of the world
The Declaration of Independence
- a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
-all men are created equal - unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it (the government)
- it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government
Masterless men context
‘Excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor.’
‘Need for white labourers in the American south drastically reduced’
‘’Racial capitalism’’
Made the white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself
‘’Second degree slavery’’
1/3 men had land and jobs taken away by the slave economy
Dual Emancipation thesis by Merritt on how the 13th Amendment freed both black people and poor southerners
Critics / initial opinion
‘’Immoral’’ novel full of ‘’rough’’ language
Louisa May Alcott
Librarians in concord deemed it ‘’trash’’ and ‘’suitable only for the slums’’
Women
- Twain quote ‘I don’t know much about women. It would be impossible to find someone who knew less about women than I do’
- the novel was written on the cusp of the ‘new woman’ movement: women broke away from Victorian domesticity to pursue careers and independence
