Mayer’s “Encountering melodrama,” avoiding the monolithic definition of the genre, characterizes melodrama by its social function as a sort of secular ritual and its rhetoric of disguise. In the age wherein traditional sources of authority were lost, melodrama has provided the audience with an imaginary solution for social anxiety in place of the lost authority. With its Manichean structure of the hero vs. the villain and the final expulsion of the latter, melodrama makes the world emotionally legible, directing itself toward the restoration of the sense of community. At the same time, melodrama oftentimes represents the immediate social concerns in apparently escapist disguise, a “non-threatening metaphor which enables an audience to approach and contemplate at close range maters which are otherwise disturbing to discuss” (147). Like allegory, melodrama’s central rhetoric is metaphor/personification, in which the villain, a major driving force of the play, functions as a tangible metaphor for such “unresolvable contradictions and conspicuous incongruities,” (150) which is to be exorcised from the stage as the microcosms of the world.
Katy L. Chiles: Constructinos of American Whiteness
Chiles’ reading of The Octoroon echoes with Mayer’s formulation of melodrama, with its emphasis both on social function of the genre and on its central trope of disguise. According to Chiles, what The Octoroon restages under the guise of the traditional theme of tragic mulatto is anxiety over American whiteness, which in fact is leveraged by the presence and exclusion of racial Others other than black population—Native Americans, Irish, and Mexicans. With its sensational themes best exemplified by miscegenation between white (George) and black (Zoe), social disquietude over “other Others” is made invisible on the surface of the play. Yet, Boucicault’s palimpsestic character formation of M’Closly as Yankee/Irish and Wahnotee as Native American/Mexican enables the community of Terresbonne plantation as the microcosms of the U.S. to dispel those racially liminal characters, thereby ultimately establishing the normative American whiteness. Chiles further argues Boucicault’s strategy of international surrogation, in which the North/South binary itself becomes the disguise of the British/Irish conflict, showing the intricate metaphorical structure of The Octoroon.
How should we expand Chiles’ nuanced reading of the interlocked relationship between race and nation imbricated manifold in The Octoroon? Following are my questions, but I’m afraid they might be too specific. Please feel free to add discussion questions.
① Employment of racial stereotype: If an Irish playwright Boucicault, as Chiles argues, projects the stereotype of Stage Irish onto M’Closky the villain, what does this racial self-representation possibly mean? In The Wild Irish Girl, Owenson also avails herself of racial stereotypes formed by the English gaze in characterization of Irish characters (albeit positive one). How does Irish writers’ employment of racial stereotypes ascribed by English serve to Irish self-representation?
② Historical context: After over five decades from WIG and the Act of Union, how the relationship between Ireland and England has changed, and how the play reflects the change? Immediate historical situation we might have to take into consideration is Great Famine (1845-52). The famine, whose enormous damage is often ascribed to the mismanagement by England, caused the Irish mass emigration to the US, which provides a background of the social anxiety lurking under the play. Did the discursive relationship between Ireland and England change after introducing the United States as a third term?
③ Significance of surrogation: The Octoroon is based on the novel by an Irish-American novelist Thomas Mayne Reid, The Quadroon (1856). Neither Boucicault nor Reid actually resided in the South (though Reid stayed in New Orleans for six months, upon whose experience he is said to have written The Quadroon). Why both writers with Irish origin are attracted to the South as a source of their creation? If, as Chiles argues, Boucicault relocates Irish/British conflict onto the South, why did he need such relocation/surrogation? What is the significance of the form of melodrama for this surrogation?
④ George as an “European”: According to Chiles, George, as opposed to “illegitimate” American whiteness of M’Closky, represents normative American whiteness, which M’Closky desires. Yet, the play highlights George’s outsider position as a quasi-European, and his “European air” is associated specifically with France. What does this twist, in which George’s legitimacy as an American is leveraged by his European education, possibly mean? How does “Europe” (represented by France) function in this play?
⑤ Function of Law: “Law,” both literally and figuratively, is highlighted throughout the play in many ways. In particular, the dialogue between M’Closky and Scudder (167) seems to focus on the opposition between the law (whose judgment M’Closky cries out for), and Nature (by which Scudder condemn M’Closky). What does this contrast mean? How does the law function in this play?
⑥ Representation of race: How is race represented in this play? The scene in which Zoe confesses her racial origin (147), she uses physical signs (the color of the nails, eyes, the roots of her hair) as indication of the “one black drop” of her blood. In what other ways is race figured in the play?
1) I found Boucicault's use of the "Stage Irish" trope absolutely fascinating. When an "Other" uses a racial trope that has been applied to their group, the potential for subversion is incredibly lucrative, I think. In the case of 'The Octaroon,' Boucicault deploys multiple racial "types" in order to highlight their essentially performative nature--we see B., the Irish playwright, playing Wahnotee who is representative of Mexico, appearing on stage beside M'Closky, who embodies all the negative stereotypes of Irishness but who is actually the creation of the Irishman who wrote the play--the end result highlights the layers of performance and identity that saturate the play--and open up a space of performance and subversion a la Judith Butler's concept of drag.
ReplyDelete3.) My (perhaps obvious) answer here is that the South offers a useful parallel for Ireland. The antebellum South is an aristocracy in which a few landholders wield power over a large group of workers who are held into their position by racial category--a lot like the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy who control Ireland (and their Irish tenants). Other parallels are the overseer and the steward--both figures who, as proxies for plantation owners and British aristocrats) exert power and control over oppressed peoples.
Fastforwarding to the 20th century, Irish Catholic Civil Rights movements were modeled after American Civil Rights--I would say this is an example of the continued parallels between the two countries.
4) I interpret the presence/function of Europe as speaking to America's problematic notion of selfhood--are we defined in contrast to Europe or alongside it? How do we define ourselves without looking to Europe--or CAN we do that? To what extent is "nomitive American whiteness" European?
Critical input from Chiles
ReplyDeleteI read The Octoroon first, then Chiles’s critical article on the play. Chiles is able to make credible connections between many of the play’s characters and their respective racial and/or cultural representations. For example, M’Closky is a villain from the North, but Chiles asserts that his character “closely resembles the stereotype of the Stage Irish” (32). She discusses the simianization and “blackness” of the Irish, and how, as a means to divorce themselves from this association, they would assert their whiteness. M’Closky may claim to love Zoe, but he says they cannot marry due to her heritage.
Chiles makes some very interesting points regarding Zoe:
Zoe herself creates another situation where whites can conveniently remove themselves as one racial group kills off another. She tricks George into adding poison to her waterglass and then ends her life by drinking it herself. Zoe’s body then ‘turns white’ as it metaphorically ascends into an unsegregated heaven. (45)
Why does Zoe get George to add the poison to her glass? I wonder if it has something to with his saying (as told to the audience via Zoe): “‘I’d rather see her dead than his!’” (166). While Chiles makes a plausible explanation for Zoe’s “turning white,” I think this could be expanded upon.
Mayer’s “Encountering Melodrama”
Having read Chiles’s article prior to Mayer’s chapter, I was surprised how the examination of Boucicault’s work differed between the two scholars. Mayers discusses melodrama in a broad sense and provides some examples of melodrama of the Victorian period. He spends a scant four paragraphs discussing Boucicault and his work, and one of the more substantial morsels he provides in the matter the playwright’s innovative creation of the “‘she-melodramas’” (158). I’m not critical of Mayer’s discussion—frankly, it’s beyond the scope of his chapter to get as in-depth with Boucicault as Chiles does—but it did make me more aware of how differently the same material can be approached. In this case, Chiles provides an in-depth look at one play, The Octoroon, while Mayers provides a sweeping history of Bocuciault’s work in about one page of text.
Sexuality
Several of us are in the Faulkner class, and I think the chapter we are reading this week, Anne Goodwyn Jones’s “A Loving Gentleman and the Corncob Man: Faulkner, Gender, Sexuality, and The Reivers” is relevant here. In particular, Jones discusses Congress’s passing of an anti-obscenity law in 1873. She discusses the social differences between North and South and notes that in the South:
White women, languishing untouchable on imaginary pedestals, lost their association with sexual desire, whether as object or subject, while black women were culturally assumed to be forever desirable and desiring. (np—galley proof?)
I think this could be discussed in the context of Boucicault’s play.
Chiles touches on sexuality in the play, but it is not the focus of her article. She does have this to say, however:
In other words, the male homosocial desire operating between M’Closky and Peyton and triangulated through Zoe reveals the ways in which M’Closky’s racial status is structured with and through formations of class, gender, and sexuality. (34)
Chiles’s focus is very different from Jones’s, but then, Chiles is not claiming to focus as much as sexuality as Jones does.
I find the question about law interesting because it is the death of the I find the question about law interesting because it is the death of the Judge Peyton that is a part of the catalyst for the events of the play. The other part of the catalyst is the recent appearance of George, who has just returned from Europe, where he was educated. The possibility of any real sense of democratic justice continues to be compromised by an obstinate, perhaps ironic reverence for Europe, including an Old World sense of class and race. Perhaps that is a foreshadowing that justice in the sense of the Law will remain absent in the play. Scudder rationalizes the lynching of M’Closky once the evidence points his way. Wahnotee exacts his own retribution on M’Closky. It’s not difficult to see, in fact, that the world in which The Octoroon plays out is full of injustices. What I find tricky in this matter of law and justice is the way Scudder shifts in his stance when the subject of suspicion changes from Wahnotee to M’Closky: from “I appeal against your usurped authority” to “you are convened under a higher power than the law” (163). How might that be framed in our discussion of race or class? Is it explained by Scudder’s later expression of a sort of racial noblesse oblige (167), which M’Closky violated? Peyton that is a part of the catalyst for the events of the play. The other part of the catalyst is the recent appearance of George, who has just returned from Europe, where he was educated. The possibility of any real sense of democratic justice continues to be compromised by an obstinate, perhaps ironic reverence for Europe, including an Old World sense of class and race. Perhaps that is a foreshadowing that justice in the sense of the Law will remain absent in the play. Scudder rationalizes the lynching of M’Closky once the evidence points his way. Wahnotee exacts his own retribution on M’Closky. It’s not difficult to see, in fact, that the world in which The Octoroon plays out is full of injustices. What I find tricky in this matter of law and justice is the way Scudder shifts in his stance when the subject of suspicion changes from Wahnotee to M’Closky: from “I appeal against your usurped authority” to “you are convened under a higher power than the law” (163). How might that be framed in our discussion of race or class? Is it explained by Scudder’s later expression of a sort of racial noblesse oblige (167), which M’Closky violated?
ReplyDeleteAs Juliette mentioned, the depiction of the Southern white woman as off-limits, chaste, asexual, delicate and languid is pervasive throughout Southern literature. This is why I found it interesting that in the non-Southerner-Boucicault’s, The Octoroon, Dora, Zoe’s counterpart, does not really fall into this type. While definitely delicate, she is neither languid nor asexual, as she aggressively pursues George and coerces her father into buying Terrebonne. In contrast, Boucicault clearly renders Zoe as an object of sexual desire. Furthermore, the ideas surrounding black women not only depict black women as available objects of sexual desire, but also as subjects of sexual desire. This stereotype enabled lascivious white men to make black women the scape-goat of their immorality by blaming their fall on the trickery of the bewitching black female body. This belief is manifest in The Octoroon, and expressed through Zoe herself, when speaking to Dora about George’s love for her: “Forgive him Dora…he is incapable of any but sincere and pure feelings…he loves me…if he caught the fever, were stung by a snake, or possessed of any other poisonous or unclean thing, you pity, tend, love him through it…well is he not thus afflicted now?” Zoe is the poisonous snake and she has bitten and charmed George with irresistible, primal urges that belong to the species of human supposedly more body than mind. He did not come to love her volitionally; he is afflicted, feverish, without his senses, presumably because of the insidious draw of black blood and sexuality.
ReplyDeleteWhile the plot does show anxiety over miscegenation, this reading is complicated by the role of incest in this proposed and denied union; but this fact seems to be glossed over. George and Zoe are first cousins, or half-first cousins, and a societal aversion to this fact does not overtly appear in the text because of the bigger question of racial mixing, but it remains present: the very appearance that draws George to Zoe comes from his uncle. What I found strange about this scenario is that many of the characters imply awareness of Zoe’s parentage—references to Mrs. Peyton loving her even though she should have despised her—but George does not know. Also, in contradiction to the tension of the main plot device, the fact that Zoe is “part black” actually weakens the blood tie between her and George, and making the union more possible in that regard.
I found the use of race in depicting Wahnotee intriguing, not because of the pejorative stereotypes of alcoholism and savagery, but because in many ways, he assumes the position and stereotypical role of black slaves. He is loyal to Paul over his own people, and in a subservient and docile way. He is rendered more ignorant than any of the black characters, and more prone to stereotypical behavior. Paul condescends to him in paternalistic way similar to the behavior between slave-owners and slaves—a behavior one could suppose Paul learned from his masters. And in the end, society is outraged that Wahnotee would dare kill one of their own—there is a personal outrage as well as proprietary considerations. This depiction implies that he is below even the slaves of an upstanding family. Of course, this social hierarchy only heightens the complex symbolism and social anxiety highlighted by Wahnotee killing M’Closky and standing over his body—the final image of the play. What can we read from this in relation to social anxiety and hierarchy? What are the implications of this in relation to Scudder’s versions of natural and man-made law?
Continued...
ReplyDeleteFinally, to expand on Stephanie’s comments about the South as a setting, I see the setting and the presence of Europe intertwined. In addition to what Stephanie noted, the South also serves as a parallel and representational binary to Ireland in its relation to the North. The English believed that the Irish, and the Northerners believed that the Southerners, were by nature and environment, corporeal, passionate, lazy, and not rational. Moreover, at this point, the South had aslo begun to construe the North as tyrannous. Also, with the presence of Europe through George, Boucicault shows that the prototypical “white European male” that had long been in power, treated all “others,”—Irish, black or Native American—similarly, no matter the setting. George, and all the other planters who are duplicates of him, no matter how beneficent or magnanimous, still believe that they are the rightful rulers and owners of society and men—a belief grounded in their notions of “the gentlemen” and the implications of a higher species—the very notions that underpin Scudder’s justification for leaving M’Closky to die.
5. Chiles’s description of Wahnotee’s role in the U.S. production is very provocative: “Wahnotee begins to dissipate, transforming from embodied red Indian to abstract white justice.” I am not convinced that Bouicault is describing Wahnotee as disembodied within the written play; he might be describing McClosky’s own state of mind in the passages Chiles quotes in reference to the U.S. production’s adaption: McClosky mistakes Wahnotee’s footsteps for “one of them darned alligators,” “wind over the canes,” and “the ghost of that murdered boy” (41). The first two attributions are natural, and the Native American is in this way associated with nature, and so perhaps natural law. But as we all know, Injuns are awful quiet. As Jordan points out, the play ends with Wahnotee standing over McClosky’s dead body. Wahnotee doesn’t dissipate into abstraction, but maybe the production Chiles describes would cater to American audiences. Scudder is narrowing the sense of natural rights when he states, “put your hands on your naked breasts, and let every man as don’t feel a real American heart there, bustin’ up with freedom, truth, and right, let that man step out.” These are problematic, and interesting words from an Irishman, but if he is not being sarcastic, or if he is and is also paying homage, the U.S. serves as an ideal model for upholding Lockean natural rights.
ReplyDelete3. George as returning from France would be not such a strange thing in Louisiana, of course. There is not such a sense of being in a different country in Baton Rouge, but New Orleans is different. Also, as you might know, Louisiana still uses a French modeled civil code, a different legal system from the rest of the country.
What is perhaps interesting in Chiles’ article is her emphasis on the interdependence of racial and national identity formations that are I believe fore-grounded in the play. The presence of racially liminal characters such as Wahnotee and most notably Zoe of course draw attention to the intricacies of nation-building for a country that strives to construct a stable national narrative to ground its expansion and expropriation.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Mayer’s emphasis on the importance of Melodrama as an intervention to either critique or uphold (melodramatically resolve) major social realities and contradictions that in the end is directed toward a mass audience that seeks entertainment. What I find important in the discussion about melodrama is how it somehow exaggeratedly illustrates the questions that we usually pose on the relationship between literature and society. Melodrama has been dismissed as escapist but elements of melodrama find their way into innumerous (high-culture) works of literature and drama.
About the alteration of ending that reportedly took place when the play was re-produced in England, I just wanted to argue how England like perhaps other nations had to look westward to define itself against the US. If blacks are condemned to slavery in the US, the English must display their civilizational distinction through their refusal to uphold slavery.
I did not find the argument about the surrogation of English/Irish conflict or its displacement onto the US-produced melodrama very convincing, so I cannot comment on that.
I'm interested in the way melodrama works for and against the subversive political message of "The Octoroon." Madoka has already drawn our attention to the early passage in Mayer's piece in which he claims that melodrama as a genre offered "a brief, palatable, non-threatening metaphor which enables an audience to approach and contemplate at close range matters which are otherwise disturbing to discuss" (147). I think humor is doing something here, too. The entire play is framed within the boundaries of humor/satire and also melodrama. Such a move allows Boucicault to approach miscegenation delicately; it affords him a wall to hide behind. I'm reminded of Early Modern dramas, many of which used statements like "only in jest!" early in plays before attacking the king or socioeconomic structures, for example. Boucicault makes a similar move, I think, by leaning heavily on Pete in Act I. Our description of Pete is this: "an 'Ole Uncle', once the late Judge's body servant, but now 'too ole to work, sa'" (Boucicault 133). Pete is all but called 'Uncle Remus,' which was a emasculated male slave used to relay frame stories in 19th Century Southern lit. In other words, Pete's presence in the first act and his humor throughout allow Boucicault to defang what might be seen as extremely subversive subject matter.
ReplyDelete