Dividing lines class anxiety and postbellum black fiction Andreá N. Williams

Object Details

Notes

Elecresource

Purchased with funds from the S. Dillon Ripley Endowment

Contents

Introduction : Contending classes, dividing lines -- The language of class : taxonomy and respectability in Frances E.W. Harper's Trial and triumph and Iola Leroy -- Working through class : the Black body, labor, and leisure in Sutton Griggs's Overshadowed -- Mapping class difference : space and social mobility in Paul L. Dunbar's short fiction -- Blood and the mark of class : Pauline Hopkins's genealogies of status -- Classing the color line : class-passing, antiracism, and Charles W. Chesnutt -- Epilogue : beyond the talented tenth

Summary

The author explores how African American literature in the late 19th century represents class divisions among Black Americans. By portraying complex, highly stratified communities with a growing Black middle class, authors dispelled popular notions that Black Americans were uniformly poor or uncivilized. But even as the writers highlighted middle-class achievement, they worried over whether class distinctions would help or sabotage collective Black protest against racial prejudice. The author argues that the signs of class anxiety are embedded in postbellum fiction: from the verbal stammer or prim speech of class-conscious characters to fissures in the fiction's form. In these telling moments, authors innovatively dared to address the sensitive topic of class differences - a topic inextricably related to American civil rights and social opportunity

Data Source

Smithsonian Libraries

Date

2012

Author

Williams, Andreá N

Type

Electronic resources

Electronic books

Criticism, interpretation, etc

Physical description

1 online resource

Topic

American fiction--African American authors--History and criticism

Social classes in literature

Social status in literature

Roman américain--Auteurs noirs américains--Histoire et critique

Classes sociales dans la littérature

Statut social dans la littérature

LITERARY CRITICISM--American--General

SOCIAL SCIENCE--Social Classes

American fiction--African American authors

Record ID

siris_sil_1156999

Usage

CC0