Contemporary Ownership: The Master, the Slave, and the Self in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World
p. 129-154
Résumé
In the past, slave narratives served to critique and reconstruct a given identity; contemporary applications of this genre demonstrates the growth of this identity as it grapples with questions of silence and authority. The question of silence is multi-layered in that it addresses many of the following: the silence of critics concerning certain aspects of the slave narrative, the silence of characters on the institution of slavery, and the silence of African American writers on the contemporary incorporation of this literary inheritance. The question of authority is also one that can be examined from different angles: authority of the African American character, authority of the African American individual, and ultimately, the authority of the African American artist/writer. Edward Jones’s The Known World offer examples of how these elements function to inform and deform not only characters, but the African American literary community. The texts also reflect the critical shift of the slave narrative genre from a largely descriptive perspective of slavery to one that is more prescriptive in nature. Contemporary authors, like Jones, seem to view some of the silences incurred by slavery as ones that cannot and will not ever be articulated by anyone. However, this position is juxtaposed by another argument that of all writers, it is the African American who is best authorized to probe and communicate these silences.
Texte intégral
1The social and political turmoil wrought by the institution of slavery gave birth to one of America’s most powerful literary genres: the slave narrative. Given its origins, the slave narrative is defined by critics as one of the few literary forms indigenous to the Americas. This literary form is one which by necessity evokes the spirits of perseverance and survival. According to Marion Starling, over 6,000 slave narratives are known to exist, including more than 200 book-length slave narratives published between 1760-1947 in the United States and Western Europe. As with other literary genres, there are many variations or sub-genres of the slave narrative, adapted by writers to different artistic styles and needs. This literary form originated from the experiences of enslaved individuals—namely Africans enslaved in the Americas or Caribbean. Slaves and ex-slaves wrote accounts of their experiences in slavery, and these accounts, usually auto-biographical in nature, created the framework for the broader characteristics used to classify examples of the slave narrative genre today.
2One of the most recent manifestations of how the slave narrative has evolved began during the post-war era of 1950-1980, during which African Americans were making more visible and vocal demands for equality. It was also during this time that there was a strong push for ethnocentricity in the African American community, as African Americans sought to establish a clearly defined cultural (Black) appeal and aesthetic. It is no surprise that writers of this time found that both the historical and cultural origins of the slave narrative form to hold limitless potential. The slave narrative genre expanded to include another variation: the neo-slave narrative. In novels such as Jubilee (1966) by Margaret Walker, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) by Ernest Gaines, Flight to Canada (1976) by Ishmael Reed, Roots (1977) by Alex Haley, and Kindred (1979) by Octavia Butler, the authors took the slave narrative and manipulated it into sweeping historical novels or detailed individual portraits that chronicled both the history of slavery as an institution and the history of the African American community. Whether or not these writers took the history of slavery at historical value and used it as a plot within their novels, their work shows a very keen awareness of the characteristics of the slave narrative genre.
3Not only did the genre allow a “telling” of history through the eyes of another generation, it provided the further justification for the equality struggles that these authors faced themselves. In revisiting the stories of struggle and survival, the African American community established cultural value for themselves and for the larger community. The penning of these narratives allowed African American writers to incorporate their voices into the historical fabric of the nation, while at the same time giving them the opportunity to create cultural identity markers for future generations; consequently, this genre empowered both the writer and the African American community, just as it did during the pre-and immediate post-Civil War era.
4Despite the various probes into the historical aspects of the U.S. institution of slavery, through both autobiographical slave narratives and other types of nonfiction commentary, an increasing amount of critical attention has been placed on how this form has been manipulated in fiction. One cannot ignore the accolades or body of criticism that exists for Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prizewinning novel, Beloved, as a testament to contemporary interest in this literary genre. Most recently, a New York Times survey of the Best Work of American Fiction in the last 25 years identifies Beloved as the most compelling piece of contemporary American fiction. According to A.O. Scott, the novel’s win highlights a characteristic of American writing:
the recovery of the past—especially the more recent past—turns out to be the dominant concern of American writing, at least as reflected in this survey, over the past quarter-century. Our age is retrospective (para. 14).
5On a large scale, Beloved is the most renowned neo-slave narrative to date, receiving ample scholarly attention as well as mass popularity, and solidifying its place in the canon of American literature. Morrison molds the slave narrative into the heart-wrenching story of a mother’s sacrifice and a family’s penance, at once individualizing and globalizing the painful complexity of slave history.
6 As a specific textual reference, the criticism surrounding Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, is a perfect illustration of the turn current criticism has taken in an effort to see slavery and the slave narrative not only as a historical representation, but as an opportunity to discuss and challenge the depictions and consequences of this representation. Although not much criticism has surfaced on Edward Jones’s The Known World1, it is clearly another example of the ways in which contemporary novels appropriate the genre’s crippling and enabling questions of silence and authority. Many analyses of Beloved seek to explore how the story of slavery, told in such a narrowly focused genre, resonates with so many readers. Using the critical attention this novel has received as a springboard, I will examine how Edward P. Jones’s novel, The Known World, appropriates the slave narrative’s ever evolving form to explore the literal and figurative manners in which the African American community continually emancipates itself from social bonds. Neo-slave narratives (also called contemporary slave narratives) in particular, show the ways in which this genre has helped to redefine African American cultural identity and authority. Like Morrison’s novel, The Known World provides glimpses of unutterable silences, but most of these depictions are inextricably linked to the question of authority that runs through the novel. Jones picks up where Morrison left off on the question of authority. He uses a three pronged exploration of ownership to addresses the role authority plays in contemporary slave narratives. The Known World problematizes the authority of African American slave owners, the authority of the individual African American identity and the authority of the African American artist.
7 In the past, slave narratives served to critique and reconstruct a given identity; contemporary applications of this genre demonstrates the growth of this identity as it grapples with questions of silence and authority. The question of silence is multi-layered in that it addresses many of the following: the silence of critics concerning certain aspects of the slave narrative, the silence of characters on the institution of slavery, and the silence of African American writers on the contemporary incorporation of this literary inheritance. The question of authority is also one that can be examined from different angles: authority of the African American character, authority of the African American individual, and ultimately, the authority of the African American artist/writer.
8Edward Jones’s The Known World offers examples of how these elements function to inform and deform not only characters, but the African American literary community. The text also reflects the critical shift of the slave narrative genre from a largely descriptive perspective of slavery to one that is more prescriptive in nature. Contemporary authors, like Jones, seem to view some of the silences incurred by slavery as ones that cannot and will not ever be articulated by anyone. However, this position is juxtaposed by another argument that of all writers, it is the African American who is best authorized to probe and communicate these silences.
9In the first world of authority, that of slave ownership, silence is evident both inside and outside of the text itself. The very subject of Jones’s narrative, African American slave owners, speaks to a historical and literary silence. Although historical records document the existence of African American slave owners, when the institution of slavery is discussed in school textbooks or lectures, this existence is not usually explored. Likewise, despite the proliferation of fictional and autobiographical slave narratives, African American slave owners are rarely the subject of this genre. In speaking about this issue Jones grants himself the authority to probe the possibilities for this silence. It is also interesting to note that although Jones received the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for this novel, it has been greeted by critical silence. (This silence could also be attributed to the relative “newness” of the novel—published in 2003.) To own a slave was to own power and prestige in the world of slavery. As Maude, a black slave owner in Jones’s novel, puts it, “the legacy is your future [...]. The legacy meant slaves and land, the foundation of wealth” (180). Placing African Americans in this position is complicated. Could an African American slave owner ever own slavery? Jones seems to suggest that African Americans could never possess slavery from the role of master. It was not an institution they created, and therefore, they could not effectively embrace ownership, morally, physically or mentally.
10One of the first silences indicating the authority struggle that surfaced with African American slave owners occurs when Henry Townsend buys his first slave, Moses. Although he had proudly spent a day at his parents’ house detailing his intentions to build a two-story house, “the day he bought [...] his first slave, [...] he did not go to their house and he did not go to them for a long time” (Jones 2003: 122). Instead, Henry Townsend spends his first day as slave owner with his white father-figure, William Robbins (his former owner). Robbins functions to grant Henry the instructions he needs to be a successful slave owner.
11For example, Robbins later reprimands Henry for “‘rollin’ around with property you have a slip of paper on [and asks...] What will you do when you have ten slips of paper [...] How will you act when you have a hundred slips of paper?’” (123). Through this lecture, he clarifies the new position of authority that Henry has as master to a slave. His knowledgeable authority as a slave owner informs Henry’s understanding of his new world. It does not seem to bother Henry that as a master, part of Robbins’ knowledge derives from his previous slave-master relationship with him. Robbins explains to Henry that slaves are not family and friends, they are property. This idea is one that surfaces repeatedly in slave narrative criticism.
12Dara Byrne2 presents the relationship of black slaves and their white masters as an economic one. This relationship is characterized by the perception of the slave (by himself and others) as a commodity. According to Byrne, the slave’s perception of his role is sometimes clarified or realized by an event that “took” something he believed was his property—his wife’s milk, her children, his life (34). Byrne uses an analysis of Beloved characters Sixo and Sethe (Baby Suggs briefly) to present this aspect of ownership. However, this also applies as Henry goes to reinstate Moses as property (after Robbins’ instruction) by slapping him twice across the face. He strips Moses of any thoughts of equality:
Moses felt himself beginning to sink in the dirt. He lifted one foot and placed it elsewhere, hoping that would be better, but it wasn’t. He wanted to move the other foot, but that would have been too much—as it was, moving the first foot was done without permission. (124)
13According to Robbins, the authority of the law will not readily protect a man’s property if the man fails in his role as master. As part of this world, Henry becomes a sort of equal and is therefore superior to Moses. He is a lawful slave owner and must abide within the established boundaries of that world.
14As a matter of fact, in this regard, black slave owners seem to have no distinction from white slave owners. However, reading Henry’s silence with his parents about his purchase suggests otherwise. The Townsends were a family of slaves owned by the Robbins family. To Henry’s father, Augustus, a man who had worked for years to purchase himself, his wife and son from Robbins, the only foreseeable reason to purchase a slave is to set him free. Despite the lawful existence of slavery all around him, Henry’s silence indicates his question of authority. Did he have the right to purchase another human life, especially in light of his own past as a slave? Apparently not. Or else he wouldn’t have felt the need to defend or hide his actions by whimpering “I ain’t done nothin no white man wouldn’t do” (138). Henry’s assertion and then pathetic, childlike justification echoes parts of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. In parts of this work, Hegel suggests that the dialectic is primitive and defective, mainly in that it creates a pseudo-consciousness that is based in self-absorption. Henry desires to see himself as master, but in true existence is still a slave, or slave like in the social structure of black/white. His enabling realization is an aspect of Hegel’s dialectic reworked in Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic. Henry understands that there are socio-economic systems set in place to favor the consciousness of the master over the slave. He realizes that there is a working exchange of submission and cooperation between the master and slave, despite the inequality of relationships. In much the same way Gilroy identifies the exchange, transmission and revision of ideas and cultures that occurred as a result of slave trade and slavery. The key in Henry’s statement is that he isn’t a white man, and as a black man, owning slaves isn’t something he is expected to do (at least by some black people, including his parents). Upon assuming this authority, Henry’s relationship with his parents disintegrates; his announcement of ownership to his parents ends as his father beats him out of the house with a walking stick and cries “thas how a slave feel” (138). As he leaves, Henry takes the walking stick and after two tries, breaks it while declaring “thas how a master feels” (138).
15The significance of this moment is two-fold. Augustus purchased his family from slavery by selling his woodwork, namely pieces of furniture and walking sticks. He beats a new slave master, his son, with the very art that helped him escape from slavery. He could represent an artist figure just outside of the world of slavery. Augustus is still tied to the world of slavery as a former slave. His initial ties existed because although he and his wife were free, his son wasn’t. He would make daily trips back to the Robbins plantation to see Henry, working hard and hoping to establish family bonds that slavery would not destroy. His desire to complete his family, signified by these trips back into slavery ensured that Augustus would never truly be a free artist. His authority as artist was limited because he never examined his work through the eyes of an artist. To him, the chairs and walking sticks were tools to help him buy freedom, but they were not freedom itself. The fact that even at his son’s illness, he prefers to sleep in the slave quarters instead of in his son’s house is further evidence of Augustus’ unwillingness to truly free himself from slavery. It could also be that he knew the reality of his situation, that slavery itself had not completely freed him; for like the other “free men in Manchester [he] knew the tenuousness of [his life...]; they know they were slaves with just another title” (252).
16Contrary to Mildred, his wife, who believes “that the bigger Henry could make the world he lived in, the freer he would be,” he resists many of the changes brought by freedom and wants to shield his son from its evils (113). Although he refuses to live in the town that supported slavery, locating his house of freedom on the edge of this world proves not to be far enough. Augustus’ ties to slavery prove to be too close, and he is eventually kidnapped and sold back into slavery. He dies a slave, leaving behind no evidence of his skilled artistry. However, the destruction of his slavery based art occurs before his physical re-enslavement or death. It happens when his own son resists his painful lesson in morality and turns his descriptive triumph into a defeat. In beating Henry, Augustus hopes to show him, to provide a description of, slavery. Neither he nor Mildred can put words to what their son has become and, silently, both sort through their memories to see where their teaching had failed.
17What they don’t realize is that Henry’s desire for authority in the master-slave relationship of his world overrides his desire to be a morally informed son of a slave father. He severs his former ties with slavery as a slave (including his family), and creates new ones with the slave world he knew by becoming its master. Henry’s breaking of the walking stick is reflective of both his desire for authority and his breaking of family ties. Despite the determination with which he completes this action, notice that he struggles in his attempt to break the walking stick. This difficulty may symbolize the strength of the walking stick itself, imbued with power of family and history. It may also reflect how Henry, as a black slave owner, would encounter problems not typical of those encountered by white slave owners.
18The problem most prevalent in the relationship of black slave owners with their slaves is the recurring inability to see slaves solely as property. It is a question that arises not only in black communities themselves, but also in the white. When Anderson Frazier, a historian of sorts, comes to visit Fern Elston on the issue of black slave owners, he thinks of how odd it would be, “owning his own family, the people in my family” (108). And although Fern defiantly reassures him that it is “not the same as owning people in your own family” because it is an activity sanctioned by both God and the law, she does not clarify the distinction for Frazier. Fern’s justification, the civil and divine sanctioning of slavery, implies that owning one’s family is not something sanctioned by either. Here, the definition of “family” is critical. In Fern’s eyes, family probably represents a group of people who share blood ties. However, her experience as a teacher would have necessarily exposed her to another definition: a group of people who share similar characteristics, similar respect and more importantly, similar experiences.
19In light of the latter definition, Fern’s ownership of slaves would be the ownership of her family, thereby violating the laws of God and of man. But technically, even ex-slaves, like Augustus Townsend, who purchased their families from slavery, owned them. Like a family unit, Fern’s slave quarters were situated very close to her house. Even members of the black community questioned her authority as a slave owner: “those Elstons didn’t have slaves, [...] they had neighbors who happened to be slaves” (134). Throughout the novel, Fern’s relationship with her slaves is characterized as familial. She labors alongside her loyal, aging house servant in the garden, and bears an emotional guilt after a runaway slave’s right foot is amputated. The emotion, sorrow she feels towards the crippled slave moves her to set him free. His anguish forces her to see him as more than property, or even family.
20The problem of family in particular further complicates the question of authority in the lives of black slave owners. The line between master, family, friend and slave is one that becomes blurred on several occasions. This is exemplified not only in Henry’s first lesson from Robbins, but it also surfaces in the lives of the novel’s other black slave owners. For example, Robbins’ black mistress, Philomena demands first that he purchase her mother, brother, and friend Sophie, and then later, that he give them to her as gifts. Although both Sophie and her brother run away to freedom, Philomena “didn’t seem to mind that she had lost two pieces of property” (115). It could stand to reason that she didn’t understand the power of slave owning, the authority of a master, or the economic value of a slave. Or it could be that she simply saw her slaves for what they were, members of her family. The role that her remaining slave, her mother, plays is one that is common of most maternal figures; her mother helped her with her children and cleaned up after her. So, the question remains whether Philomena asked these things of her mother because she was her mother or because she was her slave.
21 Although Henry lives a prosperous, respectable life as a slave owner, he dies an untimely death, leaving all of his worldly possessions to his wife, Caldonia. Unlike Henry, who buys his seat of authority, Caldonia is a free black woman who had “been brought up to believe that they [Caldonia and Calvin] were rulers waiting in the wings” (287). Caldonia had been raised by a mother who considered slave ownership a legacy, an inheritance. Throughout the novel, Maude tells her daughter and son that to lose their slaves would be worse than death. As a matter of fact, she even poisons her husband when he speaks of freeing the family’s slaves. As much as Maude tries to impress her children with the importance of maintaining their legacy, the legacy crumbles. The possibility is that this inheritance was not truly theirs for the taking. Calvin (the son) has abolitionist desires and subtly works to thwart his mother’s influence over Caldonia.
22As it stands, Calvin’s efforts were not entirely necessary. Although she initially seeks to recover and reassert her authority as a slave owner by having Moses retell stories of her husband, Caldonia sabotages her own authority as an African American slave owner by sleeping with the slave overseer. As most critical analyses of slave narratives reflect, the act of story-telling (or retelling) is an act of empowerment; it is also reflective of oral tradition inherent in the African and African American literary community. It appears that Caldonia wishes to absorb some of this power by having Moses tell her the story of her husband’s beginnings. Such an instance underwrites what many critics have identified the African American woman’s struggle both with established male and female dichotomies, and judgment by standards of white femininity. In her article, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” Hortense Spillers argues that when viewed in context of historical oppression, gender roles take on nuanced meaning and differentiation3. The generalized act of enslavement, and subsequent specific acts (rape, whippings, familial separation), not only dehumanized, it necessarily “ungendered” the female body for African American women. The collapsed gender boundaries experienced by the enslaved African American female seem to carry over to Caldonia’s choices as she “inherits” the male position of Master Townsend. However, it appears that she still needs the power of her husband’s story. Through Moses, she becomes a part of Henry’s story and Henry’s authority. Her mere ability to both call and dismiss Moses as the story teller is a reflection of this power. For in this, she not only controls Moses as a slave, she controls the system of time in which he has to tell the story (both time of day and amount of time [length]).
23Even though Moses realizes the authority he gains as the storyteller, he knows that Caldonia’s authority as owner is greater. It is only by breaking the barrier of ownership that he will be “able to walk through that back door again without knocking” (321). If the overseer is able to walk into the owner’s house without acknowledgement of his slave inferiority, he knows his quest for authority is complete. So, unconsciously, he begins to destroy the barriers of ownership, first by speaking, then by glancing, and finally, by touching Caldonia. Although it begins with an anti-silence, Moses’ speaking of Henry’s authority, the latter moves (looking and touching) are initially done in silence. In touching his owner, Moses is able to assist in deforming her position of authority. However, the ultimate destruction occurs when the silence of their lovemaking is broken and Caldonia admits her desire/need for Moses. After he leaves she solidifies her emotion by whispering to herself, “I love Moses. I love Moses with his one name” (292). She undermines her authority not because she sleeps with Moses (white slave owners slept with slaves all of the time), but because she allows herself to see Moses as a human being instead of property.
24Examining Caldonia’s failed authority on slave ownership presents a question of individual authority. Moses was the slave overseer of Henry Townsend’s workers. He had been with Henry from the beginning and later testifies of his dead master’s fairness to his mistress. However, in his moments of silence, away from his master and mistress, Moses sits alone in the rain. He eats the dirt, drinks the rain and masturbates. The act of “eating dirt” harkens back to the geophagy associated with African women. It is noted that pregnant women would eat dirt during pregnancy to provide themselves with supplemental nutrients and minerals. This act transfers from Africa to the Americas through slave trade. Only in the forest, away from even his slave family, does Moses feel free enough to return to his natural state. His actions “tied him to the only thing in his small world that meant almost as much as his life” (2). The silences that Moses encounters in the forest inform his emotional and mental health. He is at peace with himself and his person, or so it seems.
25Another reading of Moses’ trips to the forest would identify his antics a suppressed desire for authority; not the authority of ownership of another human being, but simply the ownership of himself as an individual. The act of “eating dirt” or any type of geophagy is associated with malnourishment, or the idea that something is missing from the diet. One may read that personal authority is absent in Moses life and his actions are ones of substitution, a desperate attempt to address a deficiency he subconsciously knows exists. The private, personal act of masturbation is the one point of freedom that Moses has. His pleasure is not for his wife or his master, it is a gesture of ownership. Likewise, his eating of the dirt serves no purpose other than to inform his mind of the season. As an overseer, he has a pseudo-authority, one handed down by his master. So, although he can tell other slaves what to do in certain situations, he cannot even command his own life. Moses is a man who has spent thirty plus years as someone else’s property; it would stand to reason that he would, consciously or unconsciously, search for ways to assert his individual authority—the right to do what he himself wanted.
26More evidence to support this reading occurs first during his storytelling episodes with Caldonia. At first he was humble and uncomfortable in his owner’s house. He feels powerless and inadequate; his speeches about the labor conditions were short and non-elaborative. However, as time progresses, he begins to feel the liberty of an artist. His reports get longer and more detailed, and eventually he “began to leave off from talking about the work of the day and create stories out of nothing about the slaves” (208). Later, at Caldonia’s request, Moses begins to retell the stories of his master, and consequently, of himself—a mini-slave narrative of his own. Eventually, as Gilroy notes in his reading of Frederick Douglass’ narrative, “[it] is the slave rather than the master who emerges from [the] account possessed of ‘consciousness that exists for itself, ’ while the master becomes representative of a ‘consciousness that is repressed within itself’” (60). At this point, he realizes the power of a creative act. He finally acquires enough confidence to
create the history of his master, starting with the boy who had enough in his head for two boys. He was present at Henry’s birth, he was there the day he was freed, he gave testimony of how all the best white people stretched out their feet and bid Henry to make them shoes and boots that the could walk to heaven in. (273)
27He has the power to recreate Henry Townsend’s life for his grieving wife. Her acceptance of his creation empowers Moses. He begins to make demands and requests (ordering a new pair of pants and a shirt for himself), and, as noticed by Alice, begins to mimic the authority of an owner. Moses slaps his wife for insolence and Alice sings “Little Marse be slappin,” implying that Moses’ quest for individual authority has shifted to another desire—to have authority over others.
28Moses’ story telling also functions as an act of un- and renaming, an act Kimberly Benston4 places as central to the reformation of the Afro-American self. She argues that the revision that accompanies the self-naming speaks to restructuring and recapturing a fragmented past shared by the black community. The un-naming process seeks to destroy dysfunctional, untruthful images of the historical black self and to resituate the freed slave in American society. Although not yet free, Moses envisions himself as a free man, and he begins his act of un- and renaming by trying to rid himself of slavery’s stench. Before going for his visit with Caldonia, he “stood at the well and poured water over himself and scrubbed with his hands”; although his wife Pricilla laughs, “just gonna get all that dirt all over you again tomorrow” (263). Moses wants Caldonia to see him not as a dirty slave, but as an individual, a man. Benston’s discussion of how un-naming and re-naming plays a developmental role in the separation and unification of Afro-American identity to the historical past definitely applies to Moses’ final acts towards his family. After he begins having sex with Caldonia, he realizes the potential authority within his grasp, first as an individual and later as her husband, and he asks Caldonia “When you gonna free me?” (Jones 2003: 324).
29By this point, Moses’ dreams of authority had begun to both inform and deform his character. As mentioned, he now understood the manifold meanings of freedom and authority. It is only after sleeping with Caldonia that he even contemplates breaching the boundaries of ownership, thinking “had he not been her slave, he might have gotten up and went [...] just on the authority of last night” (286); he starts to live his life with freedom in mind. At first these thoughts had a positive impact; he was happier, easier to get along with. However, these same thoughts turned to deform him, both emotionally and physically. Emotionally, he severs the ties he has with his slave wife, Pricilla and their son, eventually “freeing” them, along with a crazy woman, Alice, so that he would be relieved of slave ties. According to Trudier Harris5, this kind of action violates the rules of true authority, for the ultimate key to true possession of one’s future and one’s self is not through ownership or possession of another; it is through recognized levels of accountability within relationships. Upon ultimate rejection by Caldonia, Moses realizes that his dreams of authority had cost him his family. Moses does not seem to understand the importance his slave family has in the formation of his individual identity. In dismissing them, he dismisses part of himself.
30The physical deformation that Moses suffers occurs after his pursuit of individual authority. He escapes from the Townsend plantation, but unlike his biblical name suggests, does not make it to the “promised land”. Moses is captured and has his Achilles tendon cut (in one ankle) as punishment for his escape; he is crippled for life. This situation may suggest, like elements in Morrison’s work, that the African American individual will never fully escape the history of slavery, and that despite brushes with ownership authority, the African American as “slave” is an aspect of slavery which will forever complicate African American writing. As Steinberg6 notes in his references to Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, the historical baggage attached to the slave narrative is difficult to shake—areas of social and political influence and intention accost any black writer who tackles the subject of slavery. Steinberg posits that re-appropriative power is the contemporary focus of slave narratives.
31Through writing a text (both literary and figuratively) the African American writer is able to assume a certain personal power over history; he can revise, overwrite, and rewrite history by providing fictional truths that mimic/incorporate traditional slave narratives and historical writing. The acquisition of this power and what Johnson (and his character Calhoun) does with this power speaks to slavery as more than a physically or socially destructive component of black and white society. It transcends the tangible to the philosophical realm of “history” as it is defined and relived through the mechanisms of a particular culture. Steinberg argues that Johnson through his appropriation and manipulation of language and the concept of writing attempts to expose readers to historical possibilities—retellings that are both fictional and plausible.
32One of the most interesting explorations of authority occurs in light of Jones’s role as author. He presents his perspectives on this position through the life of the novel’s artist figure. Throughout The Known World, a crazy woman creeps at night, peeping out from behind trees, singing songs about death, life and authority figures. Alice wanders the borders of the Townsend plantation, presumably “crazy” as result of a mule kick to the head. Alice functions as an anti-silence similar to Beloved in that she brings news of the past so that characters can move into the future. For example, in her wanderings, she stumbles upon Moses in the forest, frightening him. It is at this point that Moses begins to realize the power that Alice has as an artist. Through her singing and crazy antics, she garners the respectful fear of all she comes in contact with, including the slave patrollers. Moses assumes that her art is the art of trickery and deceit. He believes that she is not as crazy as she appears to be and thus employs her services in his scheme to “free” his wife and child. As in Linda Krumholz’s7 analysis of Morrison’s Beloved, it could be argued that Jones too, is confusing and complicating traditional novel reading and processing of narrative for readers. Alice, as an illegitimate, crazy, slave artist is reflective of how history itself has a trickster spirit— something that can never be recovered by one or two interpretations.
33By the novel’s end, however, it is clear that Alice is indeed a true artist figure. She resurfaces, seemingly sane, as a painter whose work Calvin encounters in a Washington hotel. Her paintings are maps of Manchester County Virginia, some more specifically map paintings that detail the Townsend plantation. Her paintings depict the people (living and dead), the land, and the animals—no one is forgotten, but some are absent—Alice and the other two escapees. Those captured in the painting are all part of a known world. Alice’s painting does not seem to offer commentary. It just exists. However, Alice’s absence from the picture and her presence outside of the picture, her real existence as a now free woman, contradicts the objectivity of the painting. It would be safe to say that the paintings and maps are pictures of the world as she “knew it”—a representation of her memory. She does not produce the art until she had left the plantation itself. This provides a statement on the condition of the enslaved artist. As long as Alice lives as a slave, she cannot produce. She is limited by others’ perceptions of her as a piece of “crazy”, almost worthless property. She is misunderstood and overlooked.
34Alice signs her name “Alice Night” and Calvin refers to her works as Creations (first letter capitalized), made from “every kind of art man has ever thought to represent himself. Yes, clay. Yes, paint. Yes, cloth” (Jones 384). Alice and Pricilla did escape from slavery. Alice was living a successful life as an artist, an African American artist who depicts her own experiences in slavery. Her work was made from various materials, signifying her boundless ability to recreate from any medium. The perspective her paintings offer is Godlike, showing every thing in her memory, all encompassing. Calvin writes that “it is what God sees when he looks down” (385). Alice has become a Creator. Like contemporary writers of the slave narrative, Alice seeks to recover, through her acts of creativity, the fluid heritage of a shared black experience. Timothy Parrish8 declares that such writing (artistry) forces a different interpretation from those of past slave narratives—in that the purpose and social contexts are different. Current slave narratives are designed to be more than a responsive or reactive measure against white oppression: it is a reestablishment of identity, one inseparable from, but interpreted differently than, a historical past.
35 This character brings the novel full circle in answer to the question of artist authority. It appears that Jones, like Morrison, feels that although retelling the silences found in slavery is a complicated, interpretive task, it is one that African American writers are best able to tell. Madhu Dubey9 cites Morrison’s feelings of exclusion from American democracy have informed her position as African American artist. The slave narrative (novel), for both Morrison and Jones, is a genre/form that is distinctly identified by and with the black community; there is an undeniable emphasis on oral tradition, historical story-telling as a creative act, and in the case of Beloved, a blending of the supernatural and the real. Such emphasis serves to define new, distinctly “black” characteristics of the novel genre. These new aspects of the genre challenge the traditional presentations of narrative, and at the same time address the silences (about black history) that occur as a result of the traditional novel’s limited form. Dubey cites Beloved’s return from the dead as Morrison’s attempt to bring to life the generic possibilities that conflict with the traditional. Beyond an obvious conflict with the novel’s prescribed characteristics, the character of Beloved brings an immediate confrontation of the black community to African roots—both in belief systems and in narrative traditions.
36The subject matter of Jones’ novel brings a different type of confrontation to forefront. The confrontation of a told history and an aspect of untold history calls into question the African American’s holistic concept of American slavery. His work does indeed qualify as a neo-slave narrative, as defined by Bernard Bell10: a form that revisits the “historical era of slavery [...] the origins of the African-American literary tradition and reassesses, from a contemporary vantage point, the political promise of literacy that fueled this tradition” (187). Jones’ novel does not address “the silences in slave narratives due to authorial compromises to white audiences and to self-masking from a painful past,” he gives voice to what some critics might call a necessary silence (Bell 8). In this instance, critics like Ryan McDermott11 feel that silence, through criticism, has taken on negative connotations. He examines the effects of these connotations on slave narratives like Beloved.
37 However, Pierre Macherey’s theoretical position that silence within a literary text is a positive endowment of form, can also be used to explore The Known World. In it, the absences or silences are necessary; they create a part of the text itself. McDermott uses the “unspeakable scene” in Beloved as an example of a silence that remains throughout the text, despite the narrators’ attempts to give it voice or to recreate it. Readers and writers cannot speak of the scene precisely because they did not witness it (77). So, between its recreation through text and the absence of its reality, readers can only visualize pieces of the unspeakable. Likewise, the silence that exists concerning black slave owners, the authority of the individual, and the authority of the artist is one that exists to move Jones’ novel. As Mc Dermott notes, considering the necessary silence of the text on some issues, reading or writing slave narratives as an attempt to break the silence is a futile activity. So, ultimately, although the authors can tell of silences (what it does and how it affects) through slave narratives, no one has the authority to tell these silences (what it is).
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
Format
- APA
- Chicago
- MLA
Works Cited
10.2307/3042072 :Bell, Bernard. “Beloved: A Womanist Neo-slave Narrative; or Multivocal Remembrances of Things Past”. African American Review 26.1 (1992): 7-17.
Benston, Kimberly. “I Yam What I am: the Topos of (Un) Naming in Afro-American Literature”. Black Literature and Literary Theory, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. New York: Methuen, 1984; 151-172.
Byrne, Dara. “‘Yonder They Do Not Love Your Flesh.’ Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: The Limitations of Citizenship and Property in the American Public Sphere”. Canadian Review of American Studies 29.2 (1999): 25-60.
Dubey, Madhu. “The Politics of Genre in Beloved”. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32.2 (1999): 187-207.
Harris, Trudier. “Escaping Slavery but Not Its Images”. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives, Past and Present, Henry L. Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah, eds. New York: Amistad Press, 1993; 330-41.
Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: Amistad, 2003.
10.2307/3041912 :Krumholz, Linda. “The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. African American Review 26.3 (1992): 395-409.
McDermott, Ryan. “Silence, Visuality, and the Staying Image: the ‘unspeakable scene’ of Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 8.1 (2003): 75-89.
10.1353/saf.1997.0003 :Parrish, Timothy. “Imagining Slavery: Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson”. Studies in American Fiction 25.1 (1997): 81-99.
Scott, A.O. “In Search of the Best”. New York Times. 21 May 2006.
Starling, Marion. The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History. Washington, D. C.: Howard UP, 1988.
10.1353/tsl.2003.0022 :Steinberg, Marc. “Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage: Fictionalizing History and Historicizing Fiction”. Texas Studies in Literature and Languages 454 (2003): 375-390.
Notes de bas de page
1 Jones, Edward P., The Known World (New York: Amistad, 2003).
2 Byrne, Dara, “‘Yonder They Do Not Love Your Flesh.’ Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: The Limitations of Citizenship and Property in the American Public Sphere”, Canadian Review of American Studies 29.2 (1999): 25-60. Presents the relationship of black slaves and their white masters. This relationship is characterized by the perception of the slave (by himself and others) as a commodity. One of the consequences of this realization was an embracing of death as a safe haven. Through the act of death, slaves could become possessors of their own lives. Byrne uses an analysis of Sixo and Sethe (Baby Suggs briefly) to present this aspect of ownership.
3 Spillers, Hortense, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book”, Diacritics, (Summer 1987): 65-81; 68-69.
4 Benston, Kimberly, “I Yam What I am: the Topos of (Un) Naming in Afro-American Literature”, in Black Literature and Literary Theory, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. (New York: Methuen, 1984): 151-172. Un-naming and re-naming are central to the reformation of the Afro-American self. The revision that accompanies the self-naming speaks to restructuring and recapturing a fragmented past shared by the black community. The un-naming process seeks to destroy dysfunctional, untruthful images of the historical black self and to resituate the freed slave in American society.
5 Harris, Trudier, “Escaping Slavery but Not Its Images”, in Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives, Past and Present. Henry L. Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, eds. (New York: Amistad Press, 1993): 330-41. Harris makes the distinction between ownership and possession. She illustrates this point with a discussion of Stamp Paid’s story (a character in Beloved). According to Harris, although physically enslaved, this man possesses himself psychologically—demonstrated by his concept of purchasing his freedom by allowing the sacrificial rape of his wife. Ultimately the key to true possession of one’s future and one’s self is not through ownership or possession of another; it is through recognizing levels of accountability within relationships that guarantees freedom.
6 Steinberg, Marc, “Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage: Fictionalizing History and Historicizing Fiction”, Texas Studies in Literature and Languages 45. 4 (2003): 375-390.
7 Krumholz, Linda, “The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved”, African American Review 26.3 (1992): 395-409. Looks at the entirety of Morrison’s text as a “trickster” reference, or as incorporating folk tradition. Not only examines specific characters as exemplifying trickster behavior, Krumholz argues that the author is confusing and complicating traditional novel reading and processing of narrative for readers.
8 Parrish, Timothy, “Imagining Slavery: Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson”, Studies in American Fiction 25.1 (1997): 81-99. A comparative analysis of Beloved and Oxherding Tale. Parrish disagrees with previous readings that place these two novels in opposition to one another. He claims that both works display the futility of trying to recapture the meaning or experience of slavery. Beloved and Oxherding Tale are authorial efforts (reflective of the black community) to explore the slave self. This self has been an elusive, but ever present component of black literature from the time of slave narratives. Contemporary writers recover, through their acts of creativity, the fluid heritage of a shared black experience.
9 Dubey, Madhu, “The Politics of Genre in Beloved”, Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32.2 (1999): 187-207.
10 The neo-slave narrative is by general definition a contemporary novel written about slavery. These accounts are not written by those who have first-hand experience of slavery, but are written instead by those who have lived in the socio-political aftermath of slavery. Neo-slave narratives use the history of slavery as a framework, incorporating oral histories of slavery, already existing slave narratives, and creative imagination as tools to shape characters and events. This subgenre of the slave narrative, by nature of its authorship, shifts from the larger genre of historical non-fiction over into historical fiction.
Bernard Bell is credited with coining the term “neo-slave narrative” in his 1987 work The Afro-American Novel and its Tradition. In the process of analyzing Margaret Walker ’s 1966 Jubilee and Ernest Gaines’s 1971 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, he defines neo-slave narratives as “residually oral, modern narratives of escape from bondage to freedom” (289).
For further study on the neo-slave narrative see Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, Neo-Slave Narratives: Studies in the Social Logic of a Literary Form, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu, Black Women Writers and the American Neo-Slave Narrative: Femininity Unfettered (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999).
11 McDermott, Ryan, “Silence, Visuality, and the Staying Image: the ‘unspeakable scene’ of Toni Morrison’s Beloved”. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 8.1 (2003): 75-89. Uses Pierre Macherey’s theoretical position that silence within a literary text is a positive endowment of form. The absences are necessary; they create a part of the text itself. Chooses not to focus on Beloved as a novel of representation, but as a novel of constructed silence.
Auteur
Texas A & M University-Commerce
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
À la rencontre de la différence
Traces diasporiques et espaces de créolisation
Robin Cohen et Olivia Sheringham Elise Trogrlic (trad.)
2020
L’androgyne dans la littérature britannique contemporaine
Métamorphose d’une figure
Justine Gonneaud
2020
Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean
Cultural and Literary Perspectives
Markus Arnold, Corinne Duboin et Judith Misrahi-Barak (dir.)
2020
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 1
Diasporas and Cultures of Migrations
Judith Misrahi-Barak et Claudine Raynaud (dir.)
2014
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 2
Diaspora, Memory and Intimacy
Sarah Barbour, David Howard, Thomas Lacroix et al. (dir.)
2015
Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, ‘Race’ 3
African Americans and the Black Diaspora
Corinne Duboin et Claudine Raynaud (dir.)
2016
Ethics of Alterity, Confrontation and Responsibility in 19th- to 21st-Century British literature
Jean-Michel Ganteau et Christine Reynier (dir.)
2013