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C H A P T E R SEVEN The Negro as Ultimate Orphan You are the children of Abraham Lincoln.We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstance and necessity. FREDERICK DOUGLASS Ne I egroes, like immigrants, were left out of sentimental fiction just as they were left out of the family of the republic. At best, they appear briefly in novels as slaves or servants, and their function tends to be either decorative or comic. In general, they are portrayed as stereotypes rather than fully developed characters. There are, however, a fewinstances in which Negroes appear as orphans, and these illustrate how the separation of slaves not only from their own families but from the human family reflects the insidious relationship between race and class. For example, Lydia Maria Child, who is even better known for her abolitionist efforts than for her appeals on behalf of the Indians, wrote short stories during the antebellum period that express in fictional form the ideas set forth in An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833).Two of these stories feature orphans as their protagonists. One, "The Quadroons" (1842), sends a clear anticapitalist as well as antislavery message about the sexual exploitation of slavewomen. It focuseson "a handsome and wealthyyoungGeorgian " who falls deeply in love with a quadroon, Rosalie,and "marries" her in a token rather than a legal sense since marriage between the races is not recognized by the law (62). They have a beautiful daughter, Xarifa, whom Edward adores, but despite his personal happiness he falls prey to political ambition and legally marries a well-connected white woman to further his career. The N The Negro as Ultimate Orphan rejected Rosaliedies of grief shortly thereafter, and Edward, filled with remorse, tries to provide for Xarifa, but he dies, and Xarifa, now an orphan, is sold into slavery. Her master, who at first woos her, eventually rapes her, and Xarifa succumbs to madness and dies. The story very clearly reflects Child's understanding of power, its temptations and its inequities as they affect relations not only between the races but between the sexes. The quadroons are portrayed as undeserving victims of the slave system, and Edward, who represents the white male capitalist oppressor , is punished for his mercenary values. Orphanhood in this story is a symbol of the powerlessness that results from the objectification of slavery and capitalism. In a children's story, "Jumbo and Zairee," that Child wrote for The Juvenile Miscellany in 1831, orphanhood is the central subject and serves as a metaphor for the dehumanizing effects of slavery. Child wrote the story, based on an actual case history, as an indictment of the slave trade. Jumbo and Zairee, the son and daughter of an African prince, are kidnapped by American slave traders and sold into slavery. The implication is that even though they are of royal blood, they are not immune to the degradation of slavery.Child uses this separation trauma to engage the sympathy and identification of her young readers and laces the story with didactic asides about the betrayal of Negroes' political rights, which in her view are inseparable from their human rights. Of the hard-hearted slave trader she writes: "You will ask me if this man was an American? One of our own countrymen, who make it their boast that men are born free and equal? I am sorry to say that he was an American. Let us hope there are but few such" (291). Later, when Zairee is threatened with a whipping if she doesn't eat, Child exclaims,"This was in the United States of America, which boasts of being the only true republic in the world! the asylum of the distressed! the only land of perfect freedom and equality! 'Shame on my country—ever lasting shame.' History blushes as she writes the page of American slavery, and Europe points her finger at it in derision" (294-295). The children are miraculously reunited with their father, and all of them are rescued from slavery by "a good white man," an Englishman they helped in Africa many years before. The irony is bitter and unmistakable: America has failed to live up to the promise of the Revolution, and it takes an Englishman to restore the slave children to freedom and their family. The most striking example of a fictional narrative in which Negroes figure as fully developed characters is Harriet BeecherStowe...

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