Conclusion Not Included: Martin Delany’s Blake or The Huts of America

After reading Blake, or The Huts of America, I was unsure what I wanted to write about, so as per usual, I read the secondary sources (closely paying attention to yours, of course, Dr. Doolen), but I found myself still struggling to decide what I wanted to say.  How can I contribute to this conversation?  This question annoyingly kept on popping into my head as I was reading the excellent observations of Rowe and Doolen (Nwankwo’s points I was already familiar with, so they weren’t as new to me though still relevant).  I considered jumping aboard the transnational ship and sailing my way across borders, looking at how Delany both rejects and appropriates the nationalism and empire-building terminology of the U.S. and its references to the Revolutionary War.  I thought of building upon this by referring to Rowe’s point: “Writing back and otherwise resisting such imperial uses of transnationality, many Native American intellectuals and political activists recognized the need to employ the rhetoric of nationalism if they were to gain any sort of voice in United States society” (Rowe 81).  However, I decided against it.  What actually stayed with me and captured my interest was Doolen’s claim that “We will probably never learn what Delany had planned in those missing chapters, but I view the absence as an invitation for readers to collaborate with Delany in imagining a possible conclusion” (Doolen 174).  “Here!” I thought.  “Here is where I as a reader may contribute some small point or observation that may be of interest to my fellow my colleagues!”  So, it is in acceptance of Dr. Doolen’s invitation to collaborate with Delany and envision a conclusion to Blake that I have decided to devote the rest of my blog.

In order to not ignore the theoretical applications and observations to Delany’s elusive ending, I would like to explain my reasons for how I think Delany could have ended his novel before I actually share the ingredients of what, in my opinion, Delany would have cooked up for his conclusion.  The common theoretical theme I saw in Doolen, Rowe, and Nwankwo was their heightened awareness that Delany’s text was transnational (and I use this term realizing the many complexities that go with it) in the sense that it not only crossed borders but also linked together oppressed people no matter where they were located.  I was taken with the fact that Rowe points out how “Too often in nineteenth-century United States culture, Canada figures primarily as an imagined place of ultimate freedom and its border a sort of psychic double for the internal border dividing South from North” (85).  However, Delany seems aware of this trend and points out how Canada is not the ideal place for African Americans to achieve their goals of true equality and freedom.  Instead, as Nwankwo discusses, Delany desired for African Americans to create their own community.  Throughout the text, Delany’s protagonist Blake attempts to bring together an African American community and he begins to accumulate a strong community in Cuba of which he is elected their leader.  With this background in mind, I’d like to share what I think would correspond with the many interesting interpretations of Delany’s incomplete novel.

Since the theme of Delany’s novel is a combination of the desire for both freedom and equality for all, I like to think that Blake (who kind of disappears in this second part of the novel) becomes a prominent figure in the rebellion and that a war does take place.  However, I feel as though Blake would have given the Captain General a chance to have accepted the blacks as equal citizens and would have threatened rebellion if their demands were not fulfilled.  Of course, the General would have rejected this and probably gathered his forces together.  Ironically, I am still unsure who would actually win.  I wonder if Delany might allow Blake to create a separate community that lives in peace and prosperity or if Blake must die a martyr.  I see Placido of course dying poetically (pun semi-intentional).  In fact, I see Blake using Placido’s name (especially since Blake adopts multiple names throughout the text; his fluidity of identity would in itself be an interesting blog) as a way of challenging the Captain General and rallying his troops.  Perhaps, by not having an actual conclusion, Delany’s novel is even stronger.  After all, I’m unsure whether there is a way to write a truly satisfying conclusion.  Perhaps, the ever looming threat of rebellion and the desire for equality are in themselves a powerful way to end the novel.  Thus, I view Delany’s novel as not only a critique of U. S. empire but also as a way of dealing with the complexities of creating an identity for blacks that frees them from the restrictions of an imperialistic mindset whether in Cuba, Canada, or the United States.         

 

 

   

Masquerade in Ned Buntline’s Magdalena, the Beautiful Mexican Maid

I’m a bit obsessed with masquerades at the moment since I’m writing and presenting on masquerades for my British literature course, so when I saw that one of our options of inquiry was to look at racial transvestism/masquerade, I jumped on it pretty quickly.  With that said, I like how Streeby and Alemán in their introduction discuss the masquerade’s use within an American context.  Although this may seem like an obvious point, I’m used to thinking and reading about masquerade in a much more British context, so re-reading their discussion on “Transnational Transvestism and Racial Masquerade” helped me with my analysis of Ned Buntline’s Magdalena, the Beautiful Mexican Maid.  Streeby and Alemán point out that understanding “how international conflicts and imperial encounters reshaped gender, sexuality, and race can help us to understand the ubiquitous scenes of gender and racial masquerade in the sensational literature of empire, which registers anxieties about slavery, the incorporation of nonwhites into the nation, the changing boundaries of home, and challenges to traditional gender roles in times of war” (xxiv).  When reading Magdalena, I noticed not only both racial masquerades going on (Charles Brackett disguised as a Mexican and Magdalena dressed up as an Indian boy) but also, as Streeby and Alemán aptly phrase it “the incorporation of nonwhites into the nation” (xxiv).  I’d like to first briefly discuss the racial masquerades occurring in Buntline’s story, and then, I want to explore what I consider an important “hot spot” in the text that I believe may help us to see the complexities of Buntline’s heroine and cross-dresser Magdalena.

Streeby and Alemán briefly discuss Brackett’s racial masquerade as a Mexican and point out that the fatal fight between Brackett and Alfrede—with each one killing the other one with the weapon typically used by their respective enemies’—is a reversal that “is slight but significant because it is the culmination of the racial and national confusion first signaled by Brackett’s racial cross-dressing and border-crossing” (xxvi).  I think this “racial and national confusion” that Streeby and Alemán pick up on can also be seen in Magdalena’s decision to dress as an Indian boy.  Buntline describes both the boy and Magdalena as follows: “Both were nearly of a size, both dressed similarly, both nearly of the same hue, being fully as dark as a New Orleans quadroon, or a Seminole Indian” (79).  The two major differences Buntline argues are in their eyes, hands, and feet.  I think it is worth pointing out that it is only after she has disguised herself as an Indian that she offers Zalupah his freedom.  Perhaps, this suggests that she must physically identify with him before she realizes that she should free him.  After all, he has already saved her and Brackett once; it’s not until she is dressed like him that she identifies enough to consider freeing him.  Of course, we find out that he does not wish for freedom but to serve Magdalena for the rest of his life (which ironically, and this is my morbid sense of humor coming through, is not that long).  What I find particularly interesting about Magdalena’s disguise is that she does not only transgress the racial barrier (she must dye her skin) but also she transgresses gender.  She must not look like an Indian woman since she would still be easily discovered if she stays within her gender, which is what happens when her hair falls out and General Vasquez is then easily able to see “the beautiful female (for the hair of Donna Magdalena had burst from its fastenings, and her dress but feebly concealed her form so perfect)” (84).  Thus, her long hair and womanly figure give her away, but this discovery may well have helped save her since she was unconscious so could not scream or ask for help, but by seeing a helpless woman, General Vasquez asks, “Who is that lady? [. . .] Speak villain?” (84).  Automatically, Vasquez is able to see that this lady is in trouble.  Hence, when her gender becomes recognizable, she is placed in the subordinate position of needing help from men, but when she dresses as a boy or man, then she has the power to leave the “protection” of Buena Vista and go in rescue of her husband. 

Finally, my “hot spot” for the day or more specifically for this blog is as follows:

`A strange transformation has love worked in your heart, my daughter! [. . .] A few days since and on bended knees you would have prayed for the success of the Mexican arms, now you seem only to fear for the defeat of the Americans!’  `It is true my father; but when I wedded him, I became an American.  We are not Mexicans.  Spain alone has a right to our allegiance.  Why should we hope for the Mexicans to conquer in this battle?  That this now quiet city should be filled with troops of rude and licentious men, who respect no law, and are governed by no principles?” (96-97).

Magdalena explains her “transformation” from a supporter of the Mexicans to an advocate for the Americans as being tied to her marriage (though not consummated) with Brackett.  I find her words though a bit at war with the text though.  It is true that I think Buntline’s pro-American stance comes through in this passage, especially its anti-Mexican sentiment; however, her claim that “I became an American” makes me want to refer back to Streeby and Alemán’s point mentioned earlier about “the incorporation of nonwhites into the nation” (xxiv).  Magdalena sees herself as being incorporated into the American nation, but Buntline continually points out that she is a virgin bride, and she must die that way.  By only allowing a legal marriage contract to bind Magdalena and Brackett and refusing to allow them to consummate the marriage, Buntline seems to be ambiguous about how far he is willing to incorporate “nonwhites into the nation” (97) and question exactly how American Magdalena actually is.  As the last lines make pointedly clear, she dies “the noble `Magdalena, The Beautiful Maiden of Mexico” (106, my emphasis).  She does not die the American wife of Bracket but a maiden of Mexico.  Therefore, Buntline seems to romanticize Mexico but cannot bring himself to consummate Mexico with America.

The “Uncanny” and “Doubling” in George Lippard’s ‘Bel of Prairie Eden

When I finished reading George Lippard’s ‘Bel of Prairie Eden, there was one aspect of the novel in particular that stood out to me: the extremely similar depictions of the two female protagonists.  My readings of the secondary texts helped me to analyze this aspect more closely.  I’d like to focus in on both Jesse Alemán’s article “The Other Country: Mexico, the United States, and the Gothic History” and the chapter from Shelley Streeby’s American Sensations: Empire, Amnesia, and the US-Mexican War in order to see the “uncanny” and “doubling” of Lippard’s depictions of Isabel and Isora. 

First, Alemán discusses the “uncanny” and explains his terminology with the following:

Mexico more appropriately stands in as the US’s uncanny imperial other because the continental proximity of the two countries and their shared revolutionary histories make them estranged national neighbors.3 The ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar,” writes Freud (369–70). I maintain that Mexico is a strangely familiar place that troubles the US’s trans-American imaginary. Freud’s definition of the uncanny as unheimlich—the “unhomely”—is especially apt here because the fluidity of national borders collapses the otherwise clear distinctions between native and foreigner, domestic and international, and America and América. (409)

This idea of the “uncanny” as both something “familiar” and “terrifying” may just be the key to understanding Lippard’s gothic text.  Streeby points out that “U. S. empire becomes [. . .] an uncanny double of the Spanish empire” (58) and that in ‘Bel Prairie of Eden, specifically, “Lippard uncovers uncanny resemblances and traces connections between the capitalist U. S. city and scene of empire building in Texas and Mexico” (74).  This idea of the uncanny seems linked with “doubling.”  In fact, though discussing two different texts (Calavar and Conquest), Alemán discusses this “doubling” as follows:

Estranged from itself, the western hemisphere is doubled—European but not Europe, native but not indigenous. The doubling itself is uncanny, but what I have been emphasizing with Calavar and Conquest is how this doubling becomes especially haunting when it manifests itself in sameness rather than difference, to reverse Mignolo’s phrase. That is, difference maintains the borders across the Americas that distinguish one nation from the other, but sameness produces an inter-American gothic hemisphere that emerges when native nationalist writings uncover as their origin the history of another country. (419)

This passage reminded me of Bhabha’s concept of colonial mimicry: “a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (126, italics in original).  Isabel and Isora are almost the same: their names, their physical appearance, and their earlier innocence.  However, they are not quite the same.  Isabel is from America and Isora from América.  Isabel is blackmailed and drugged into sleeping with Don Antonio Marin, while Isora runs away with John Grywin and is seduced and drugged.  Though both women die young, Isabel is abandoned by Don Antonio but John marries Isora, protecting her from the truth about her brother.  The “uncanny” similarities of both Isabel and Isora seem to suggest that America and América are not that dissimilar, yet both women are wronged.  I agree with Streeby that Mexico is feminized and the U. S. is masculinized and that it may seem like an attempt to “turn force into consent and conquest into international romance” (65).  However, both Don Antonio and John victimize the women; in fact, Don Antonio is more forceful than John, so if both Don Antonio and Isora are symbolic of Mexico then there seems to be a complication.  Also, Isabel is just as revengeful as her brother and obviously approved the plan for him to seduce Isora; thus, the Americans are just as violent.  Though Don Antonio, the Mexican, may have started the fight, the Americans were certainly going to finish it even if they did feel “remorse.”  It seems to me that Lippard is working through the complexities of American expansionism like Streeby and Alemán discuss but that he does seem aware (though how consciously aware I’m not sure) of the problem of crossing boundaries and claiming property (i.e. symbolic through Isabel and Isora’s bodies) with force (e.g. blackmail, seduction, drugs, etc.) instead of peaceful legality (i.e. marriage).  The reader is still to sympathize with John (i.e. the Americans), yet the reader is also to see John’s serious faults as well.  However, though the ending does seem to end on a rather depressing note, there does still seem to be “hope” for John (and thereby America as well) since he not only feels remorse but also has mercy on Ewen McGregor’s orphaned son.  Thus, Lippard seems to suggest that America maybe should feel remorseful about its expansion, but overall, good may eventually come out of it.