Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin: Nineteenth-Century Women Novelists Respond to Stowe - Softcover

Jordan-Lake, Joy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826514766 ISBN 13: 9780826514769

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Joy Jordan-Lake examines the ways in which antebellum women novelists tried to counter Harriet Beecher Stoweís enormously popular Uncle Tom's Cabin by preaching a ìtheology of whitenessî from within the pages of the books - but were ultimately undermined by their own proslavery agendas. Including a discussion of twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels that revisit plantation mythology, Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin casts new light on the ethical and moral disaster of securing one groupís economic strength at the expense of other groupsí access to dignity, compassion, and justice.

About this title

From the Publisher

"An extremely valuable book. Trained as both a literary critic and a theologian, Jordan-Lake exposes the racist ‘theology of whiteness’ embedded in the white Southern plantation myth embraced by women writers countering _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ from Stowe’s day to our own. She shows how their novels self-destruct intellectually -- how the writers participate, unwittingly, in their own disempowerment. This is an excellent, clear, jargon-free book, with important things to say about both the past and the future." -- Elizabeth Ammons, Tufts University

About the Author

Joy Jordan-Lake holds graduate degrees in theology and literature. She formerly taught English at Baylor University and is currently writing and teaching part time at Belmont University in Nashville.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0826514766
• ISBN 13: 9780826514769
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232