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.