Searching for the New Black Man: Black Masculinity and Women's Bodies

Chapter One: Dominant versus Subordinate Masculinities and the Gendered Oppositions between Slavery and Freedom

21 Chapter One Dominant versus Subordinate Masculinities and the Gendered Oppositions between Slavery and Freedom as฀i฀begin฀My฀stUdy฀with฀“a฀rePresentative฀historical฀ePisode฀that฀helPs฀render black masculinity evolutionary, frame by frame” (Wallace 9), there can be no more representative literary historical episode than the period during which the influence of slave narratives reached its zenith. Within the literary productions of black men during the nineteenth century, one man’s text stands as a beacon of ideal black manhood, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Douglass’s narrative is a touchstone for the establishment and consolidation of black masculine ideality within the slave narrative genre, serving as template and yardstick not only for slave narrators to come, but for later writers and critics as they articulate Douglass’s importance as a model of how a lowly slave might transform into a powerful and heroic man. This chapter will discuss the specific case of Douglass’s narrative (1845) and Henry Bibb’s The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave (1849). Although not as well known, Bibb’s narrative is just as significant for critical study as Douglass’s for he reconceptualizes Douglass’s constructions of the black masculine ideal, in call-and-response fashion, to move beyond the boundaries of the exclusively masculinist,“rugged individualist ” who is able to neatly free himself from the bonds of slavery. Bibb reconfigures the reductivist terms of the masculine ideal that Douglass was forced to adhere to. Yet the importance of Bibb’s narrative to the history and significance of slave narrative and the possibilities for reconfigurations of black male 22฀ ฀ doMinant฀versUs฀sUbordinate฀MascUlinities identities are obscured by the ways in which it has been interpreted as subordinate to or “feminized” in comparison to Douglass. Critics such as Robert Stepto and James Olney have proposed that this supposed feminization rests in the ways Bibb reveals his private relations through his sustained use of the sentimental, romantic, and domestic elements of nineteenth-century literary conventions, aspects Douglass and other male slave narrators used but played down because of their potential unseemliness and close associations with women’s literatures.1 However, Bibb’s expansion of the boundaries and terms of black male ideality is not without its own problematic. As we study his narrative, we cannot ignore that his expansion of the black masculine ideal is funded by and constructed simultaneous to his textual subordination and exploitation of his slave wife and child—whom he must abandon in slavery. Yet the public performance needed to justify his final abandonment of his slave family costs Bibb dearly. Thus, this chapter explores the complexly layered ways in which the processes and terms used to further black masculine ideality both subordinate and empower Henry Bibb’s textual identity. BIBB’s LIFe aNd adveNtureS฀helPs฀Us฀gain฀a฀soMewhat฀different฀PersPective฀on฀ the rhetorical strategies and weapons available to male writers during a formative period in African American literature as black men confronted the specific ways in which “gendered racism” oppressed and subordinated them.2 Bibb’s text explicitly dramatizes the nexus of race and gender within constructions of African American masculinity in ways that cannot be fully considered by only examining Douglass’s 1845 Narrative or other narratives patterned more strictly after his that elide romantic relationships and entanglements . Like Douglass, Bibb discusses origins, Christian hypocrisy, the horrors and violence of slavery, and his road to freedom. However, Bibb also reveals in some detail his romantic relationships and marriage in slavery and how much more difficult these domestic and communal relations made his journey to freedom. Bibb brings together the rugged individualist and American democratic ideals emphasized in texts patterned after Douglass’s with the domestic concerns usually found in the “scribblings” of nineteenth-century women’s popular literature.3 Bibb’s inclusion of these details troubles the neat ideological hierarchy of race over gender maintained by most black male writers of the time. doMinant฀versUs฀sUbordinate฀MascUlinities฀ ฀ 23 To date, the implications of Bibb’s text for discussions of the development of strong or heroic black manhood have been largely ignored. Critics, including Robert Stepto and James Olney during the late 1970s and ’80s, even suggest that Bibb’s text is not as well written or as important as Douglass ’s, a critique that doesn’t seem to have been addressed...