Growing Up in Antebellum Philadelphia: Black Childhood in Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends
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Frank J. Webb’s 1857 novel, The Garies and Their Friends, has recently undergone revaluation thanks to scholarship in the past couple of decades on antebellum African American literature that has concentrated on uncovering overlooked works written by African American writers. This paper examines the significance of The Garies and Their Friends by first looking into its historical context, and second, by focusing on the child characters of the novel, Charlie Ellis and Clarence Garie. The temporal structure of ‘growing up’ helps Webb to situate the novel in the 1840s—an era that has competing and diverse conditions of people of color in the free North. Historically, it witnessed heightened racial tension between the immigrant Irish and free people of color, often resulting in actual urban unrest. The anti-Black riot that occurs in the novel shapes the contrasted outcomes of the respective childhoods of Charlie and Clarence. While both boys experience racial discrimination, exposing the racial hierarchy that structures Northern society, Clarence’s internalized sense of shame is further exacerbated when he chooses to pass as white, whereas Charlie matures into a working citizen whose racial pride is nurtured in a community built on racial solidarity. The narrative strategy of this juxtaposition presents a portrait of childhood that is placed in a racial economy, rewrites the notion of childhood as a state of innocence, and imagines the possibility of Black citizenship.
Abstract
Frank J. Webb’s 1857 novel, The Garies and Their Friends, has recently undergone revaluation thanks to scholarship in the past couple of decades on antebellum African American literature that has concentrated on uncovering overlooked works written by African American writers. This paper examines the significance of The Garies and Their Friends by first looking into its historical context, and second, by focusing on the child characters of the novel, Charlie Ellis and Clarence Garie. The temporal structure of ‘growing up’ helps Webb to situate the novel in the 1840s—an era that has competing and diverse conditions of people of color in the free North. Historically, it witnessed heightened racial tension between the immigrant Irish and free people of color, often resulting in actual urban unrest. The anti-Black riot that occurs in the novel shapes the contrasted outcomes of the respective childhoods of Charlie and Clarence. While both boys experience racial discrimination, exposing the racial hierarchy that structures Northern society, Clarence’s internalized sense of shame is further exacerbated when he chooses to pass as white, whereas Charlie matures into a working citizen whose racial pride is nurtured in a community built on racial solidarity. The narrative strategy of this juxtaposition presents a portrait of childhood that is placed in a racial economy, rewrites the notion of childhood as a state of innocence, and imagines the possibility of Black citizenship.
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