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2 THE SPECTACLE OF THE BODY Corporeality in Lydia Maria Child's Antislavery Writing A fewyearshence, the opinion of the worldwill be a matter in which I have not even the most transient interest; but this book will be abroad on its mission of humanity, long after the hand that wrote it is mingling with the dust.—Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans I am well awarethat many will accuse me of indecorum for presenting these pages to the public; for the experiences of this intelligent and much-injured woman belong to a class which some call delicate subjects, and others indelicate. This peculiar phase of Slavery has generallybeen kept veiled; but the public ought to be madeacquainted with its monstrous features, and I willingly take the responsibility of presenting them with the veil withdrawn.—Lydia Maria Child, introduction to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself To those familiar with Lydia Maria Child's commitment to social progress,her claim in An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans that "the opinion of the world" will not be of interest to her as long as her writing can be "abroad on its mission of humanity" sounds sincere.1 Child was a woman who sensed early in her professional life, as Carolyn L.Karcherargues, that she was called to "reconsecrate her art to the service of her sisters and brothers in bonds," to create literature that would perform the cultural work she believed was necessary to help end slavery and promote racial justice.2 Yet even if she privileged the collective good over her individual literary reputation , Child might have thought it an odd twist of history that she "is most often reintroduced to the public these days not as an author in her own right," not as the prolific and talented woman whom William Lloyd Garrison once called "the first woman in the republic," but as the editor of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself.3 48 F L E S H I N G OUT A M E R I C A Speculating further, we could imagine that Child would be pleased with the current interest in Jacobs's text. Besidesoffering advice on the manuscript and expediting its publication by attesting to its veracity, Child continued to promote Incidents throughout the Civil War,printing selections from it in several publications.4 However, Child might be surprised at the subtle, yet consistent, suspicion expressed by contemporary scholars, who often frame her relationship with Jacobs as representative of "vexed alliances" between white and African American women. Despite the authentication of Jacobs's text by Jean Pagan Yellin and the examination of Child's role as an editor by Karcher, Child is accused of everything from "editorial colonization" to bypassing "Jacobs's authorship/75 For example, the editors of Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays believe that Incidents "will forever both unite and alienate the black andwhite academics who promote, interpret, and teach it" (emphasismine).6 As the coeditors' comments indicate, reasons for suspicion are many, and their comments reveal as much about our racial environment as they do about tensions in Child's era. At the root of nineteenth- and twentieth-century concerns is the relationship between spectatorship and corporeality. What causes the most misgiving is the appropriateness of a Caucasian woman taking "the responsibility ofpresenting . . . the veil withdrawn" to expose slavery's "monstrous features."7 Child's wording, which literally indicates an uncovering of slavery rather than the slave woman's body, nonetheless could be said to evoke figuratively a show, a public exhibition of the female slave's embodiedwrongs. This, in turn, could be interpreted as drawing upon what Hazel V.Carby has identified as the "dialectical relationship" of true womanhood, a dynamic that (as chapter i outlines) relied upon an "alternative sexual code associated with the black woman" to bolster white women's alleged passionless gentility.8 In this scenario, the delicate/nonsexual white woman, by disclosing the indelicate / sexual African American woman's story, manages to sustain her polite status—even when undertaking a socially transgressive act—by the implied juxtaposition of herself to the black woman's embodied, sexual nature. If this were the case, Child's unveiling ofJacobs's "face" would deflect attention from her own "face," Child's own...

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