Test 1 Flashcards
My Contraband
Louisa May Alcott, published 1863
- makes attraction justified by pointing out lighter features
- blackness seen as an imperfection
- references to women power (her tongue, he took last name)
Daisy Miller
Henry James, 1879
- understanding Americans through European viewpoint
- new money (seen as common)
- aristocratic Europe short on money, look at american money with new $
- idea of fake innocence and true innocence
- nice girl = sexual purity
- daisy is symbolizing sexual promiscuity by moving about freely
- realist text
Uncle Reamus: His Songs and Sayings
Joel Chandler Harris, 1880
- seen as a wise old man (stereotype)
- friendly, cheerful, simple
- “uncle Tom” figure
- happily submissive servants
- Harris picked up stories from plantations
- today issue of cultural appropriation (writing about black people from white viewpoint - chooses which of the stories he wants to write )
The White Heron
Sarah Orne Jewett, 1886
- Regionalist Writers
- Focus on women and independence
- domesticity
- environmental movement emerges
- idealized rural image
- Sylvia never alive before came to woods
- human male presence makes her feel unsafe
- coming of age story
- chooses wilderness over man
Chicamauga
Ambrose Bierce, 1889
- set further back
- child is seen as naive and innocent
- trick ending (deaf)
- awakening to reality (playing -> house burns, mom dies)
- normalizing war: wasn’t scared by facelss people
- Alagorchy?
- nostalgia of war, written long after
The Revolt of Mother
Mary E Wilkins Freeman, 1891
-women and independence
-domesticity
-
Desiree’s Baby
Kate Chopin, 1892
- color line can lead to suicide
- internalized feelings of this racial structure
The Little Convent Girl
Grace King, 1893
- Focus on embodied movement
- restraint of movement, clothing
- never spoke first
- hair has been contained, made to be straight
- social constraints on her due to mix race
- sending her to catholic school to restrain her
When Brer Deer and Brer Terrapin Runned a race
Emma Backus, 1898
- story of trickery
- oral stories (adaptable and variable)
What is a white man & Goophered Grapevine
Charles Chestnutt, 1899
- what is a white man: all arbitrary, societal line
- Goophered Grapevine: manufactured
The School Days of an Indian Girl
Gertrude Bonnin, 1900
- cutting of the hair
- assimilation
Why I am Pagan
Gertrude Bonnin, 1902
-her beliefs are in every living thing
-while the native preachers are based on fear
-
The Soul of the Indian
Charles Alexander Eastman, 1911
- different cultures
- comparison between Christianity and American Indian Culture
Old Boss Wants Into Heaven
John Blackamore, 1957
- purpose: gives slaves hope: they go to heaven and white oppressors go to hell
- portrays the boss as the one who lies and is lazy
The Passing of Grandison
Charles Chestnutt, 1899
- plantation tradition writing
- black man going along with power rather than resisting
- Uncle Tom figure
- telling stories to white boys
- romanticized american south
