The Early Republic, the Haitian Revolution, and the Horrors of Slavery in Brown’s Ormond
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Contrary to what many people believe, the revolutionary era of the 1790s was not solely defined by its political radicalism. This was particularly true in post-Revolutionary America, in which Americans exhibited shifting attitudes towards the Haitian Revolution. Despite their initial empathy with the Haitian slaves in their shared struggle for liberty, they soon became apprehensive of what they felt to be excessive Jacobinism. In my examination of Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond, I discuss how the novel is mimetic of this process in which the United States first embraced and then renounced the Haitian Revolution on the ground that it was too violent. By focusing on the dramatic shift in the female protagonist Constantia Dudley’s behavior towards Martinette de Beauvais, a figure closely associated with the black revolutionary slaves in St. Domingue, I argue that Brown ultimately brings to light the problems that plague the early Republic, namely its unfulfilled promises of egalitarianism, which were made more apparent by the continued practices of slavery in post-Revolutionary America. In the latter half of the paper, I demonstrate that Brown’s disillusionment finds expression in the novel’s Gothic conclusion, in which we are transported to an American version of the gothic castle that bears sinister relations to the West Indies. It is here that we are confronted with the narrative and psychological fragmentations resulting from America’s suppression of the slave rebellion through the disjointed form of the novel and the psychological horrors that threaten to destroy the female protagonist. By suggesting that the violence and disorder in the novel’s Gothic conclusion result from Constantia’s (and America’s) involvement in transatlantic slavery, I argue Brown issues a subtle warning about the horrors that will ensue if America does not abolish slavery, a warning he later explicitly makes in his 1805 pamphlet about the West Indies.
Abstract
Contrary to what many people believe, the revolutionary era of the 1790s was not solely defined by its political radicalism. This was particularly true in post-Revolutionary America, in which Americans exhibited shifting attitudes towards the Haitian Revolution. Despite their initial empathy with the Haitian slaves in their shared struggle for liberty, they soon became apprehensive of what they felt to be excessive Jacobinism. In my examination of Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond, I discuss how the novel is mimetic of this process in which the United States first embraced and then renounced the Haitian Revolution on the ground that it was too violent. By focusing on the dramatic shift in the female protagonist Constantia Dudley’s behavior towards Martinette de Beauvais, a figure closely associated with the black revolutionary slaves in St. Domingue, I argue that Brown ultimately brings to light the problems that plague the early Republic, namely its unfulfilled promises of egalitarianism, which were made more apparent by the continued practices of slavery in post-Revolutionary America. In the latter half of the paper, I demonstrate that Brown’s disillusionment finds expression in the novel’s Gothic conclusion, in which we are transported to an American version of the gothic castle that bears sinister relations to the West Indies. It is here that we are confronted with the narrative and psychological fragmentations resulting from America’s suppression of the slave rebellion through the disjointed form of the novel and the psychological horrors that threaten to destroy the female protagonist. By suggesting that the violence and disorder in the novel’s Gothic conclusion result from Constantia’s (and America’s) involvement in transatlantic slavery, I argue Brown issues a subtle warning about the horrors that will ensue if America does not abolish slavery, a warning he later explicitly makes in his 1805 pamphlet about the West Indies.
참고문헌 (28)
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