ONE Black Matters am moved by fancies that are curled ‘Around these images, nd cling “The notion of some infinitely gene Infinitely suffering thing 1S. Ble om “Preade, V eee eee eeerr rFrrr————— ‘These chapters put forth an argument for extending the study of American literature into what I hope will be a wider land- scape, I want to draw a map, s0 to speak, ofa critical geog raphy and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and dose exploration as did the orig inal charting of the New World—without the mandate for conquest. I intend to outline an attractive, fruitful, and pro- ‘vocative critical project, unencumbered by dreams of subver- sion or rallying gestures at fortress walls. 1 would like it to be clear at che outset tha I do not bring to these matters solely of even principally the tools of a literary critic. As a reader (before becoming a writer) I read as T had been taught to do. But books revealed themselves rather differently to me as a weiter. In tha capacity I have t0 place enormous trust in my ability ro imagine others and my willingness to project consciously into the danger zones such fothees may represent for me. I am drawn to the ways all | writers do tis: the way Homer renders a heart-eating eyelops so that our hearts are wrenched with pity; the way Dos: oevsky compels intimacy with Svidrgailov and Prince 34 Black Matters [Myshkin, T am in awe of the authority of Faulkner's Benjy, James Maisie, Flaubere’s Emma, Melville's Pip, Mary Shel- ley’s Frankenstein—each of us can extend the list | am interested in what prompts and makes possible this process of entering what one is estranged from—and in what disables the foray, for purposes of fiction, into corners of the consciousness held off and away from the reach ofthe writer's imagination. My work requires me to think about how free I can be as an African-American woman writer in my gen- derized, sexualized, wholly racialized world. To think about (and wrestle with) the full implications of my situation leads ‘me to consider what happens when other writers work in a highly and historically racalzed society. For them, as for me, imagining is not merely ooking or looking at; nor isi taking ‘oneself intact into the other. Ie i for the purposes of the work, becoming. My project rises from delight, not disappointment. Ir rises from what I know about the ways waiters transform aspects Of their social grounding into aspects of language, and the ‘ways they tell other stories, fight secret wars, limn out al sorts of debates blanketed in their text, And rises from my ‘certainty that writers always know, at some level, that they do this, For some time now T have been thinking about the validity or vulnerability of a certain set of assumptions con- ventionally accepted among literary historians and critics and circulated as “knowledge.” This knowledge holds that tradi- tional, canonical American literature is feee of, uninformed, Black Matters and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of, fst, ‘Africans and then Affican-Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence—which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture—has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture's lterarure. Moreover, such knowledge assumes that the characteristics of our national lit- crature emanate from a particular “Americanness™ that is separate from and unaccountable t0 this presence. There seems to be a more or less tacit agreement among, literary ‘scholars that, because American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views, genius, and power aze without relationship to and removed from the overwhelming presence of black people in the United Staes. This agreement is made about a population that preceded every American writer of renown and was, 1 hhave come to believe, one of the most furtively radical im- pinging forces on the country’s literature. The contemplation of this black presence is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins ofthe literary imagination, “These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and championed characteristics of our national liera- ‘ure—individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell—are notin fact responses to a datk, abiding, signing Africanist presence. It has occurred to6 Black Matters ime that the very manner by which American literature distin. ‘Buishes itself as a coherent entity exists because of this un settled and unsettling population. Just as the formation of the nation necessitated coded language and purposeful restric: tion to deal with the racial dsingenuousness and moral frailty a its heart so too did the literature, whose founding char- acteristics extend into che twentieth century, reproduce the necessity for codes and restriction. Through significant and underscored omissions, startling contradictions, heavily ‘nuanced conflicts, through the way writers peopled theie ‘work withthe signs and bodies ofthis presence—one can see that a real or fabricated Afficanist presence was crucial t0 their sense of Americanness, And it shows. My curiosity about the origins and literary uses of this care- fally observed, and carefully invented, Afticanist presence has ‘become an informal study of what I call American Afficanism. I is an investigation into the ways in which a nonwhite, Africanlike (or Afticanist) presence or persona was con- structed in the United States, and the imaginative uses this fabricated presence served, I am using the term “Africanism’” rot to suggest the larger body of knowledge on Aftica that the philosopher Valentine Mudimbe means by the rerm “Afi- canism,” nor to suggest the varieties and complexities of Afvican people and their descendants who have inhabited this ‘country. Rather I use it asa term for the denotative and con notative blackness that Affican peoples have come to signify, Black Matters 7 as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people. As a trope, litte restraint has been attached to its uses, As a disabling virus within literary discourse, Africanism has become, in the Eurocentric tradition that "American education favors, both a way of talking about and ‘a way of policing matters of class, sexual license, and repres- sion, formations and exercises of power, and meditations on ‘ethics and accountability. Through the simple expedient of demonizing and reifying the range of color on a palette, ‘American Africanism makes it possible to say and not say, t0 inscribe and erase, to escape and engage, £0 act out and act ‘on, to historicize and render timeless. It provides a way of ‘contemplating chaos and civilization, desire and fear, and a ‘mechanism for testing the problems and blessings of freedom, ‘The United States, of course, is not unique in the con- struction of Afticanism. South America, England, France, Germany, Spain—the cultures ofall these countries have par- ticipated in and contributed ro some aspect of an “invented Africa.” None has been able to persuade itself for long that criteria and knowledge could emerge outside the categories cof domination. Among Europeans and the Europeanized, this shared process of exclusion—of assigning designation and. value—has led to the popular and academic notion that racism isa “natural,” if eritating, phenomenon, The literanure of almost all these countries, however, is now subject to sus- tained critiques ofits racialized discourse. The United States is a curious exception, even though it stands out as being the fCUPRE eaeeeegeeegeeegeaeeeeceeee eeeaeeaeeeaeeeeeeee eee eeceaeeae necaeEEE& Black Matters ‘oldest democracy in which a black population accompanied (GF one can use that word) and in many cases preceded the ‘white settlers, Herein that nexus, with is particular formula tions, and in the absence of real knowledge or open-minded inquiry about Africans and African-Americans, under the pres- sures of ideological and imperialistic rationales for subjugation, an American brand of Africanism emerged: strongly urged, thoroughly serviceable, companionably ego-rinforcing, and pervasive. For excellent reasons of state—because European sources of cultural hegemony were dispersed but not yet val- ‘rized in the new country—the process of organizing Amer- ican coherence through a distancing Afticanism became the ‘operative mode of a new cultural hegemony. “These remarks should not be interpreted as simply an effort to move the gaze of African-American studies to a different site. I do not want to alter one hierarchy in order to institute another. It is true that I do not want to encourage those totalizing approaches to Affican-American scholarship which hhave no drive other than the exchange of dominations— dominant Eurocentric scholarship replaced by dominant Affo- centric scholarship. More interesting is what makes intlle tual domination possible; how knowledge is transformed from invasion and conguest to revelation and choice; what ignites and informs the literary imagination, and what forces help establish the parameters of criticism. ‘Above all [am interested in how agendas in criticism have disguised themselves and, in so doing, impoverished the lit- Black Matters 9 erature it studies, Criticism asa form of knowledge is capable ‘of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but ofits ideas as well; it can dismiss the difficult, arduous work writers do to make an art that becomes and ‘remains part of and significane within a human landscape. 1 js important to sce how inextricable Afticanism is or ought to be from the deliberations of literary criticism and the ‘wanton, elaborate strategies undertaken to erase its presence from view. What Africanism became for, and how it functioned in, the literary imagination is of paramount interest because it may be possible to discover, through a close look at literary blackness,” the narure—even the cause—of literary “white- ness” What is it for? What pars do the invention and development of whiteness play in the construction of what is loosely described as “American”? IF such an inquiry ever ‘comes to maturity, it may provide access to a deeper reading, fof American literature—a reading not completely available now, not leas, I suspect, because of the studied indifference ‘of most literary eriticism to these matters ‘One likely reason for the paucity of critical material on this large and compelling subject is that, in matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse. Evasion has fostered another, substitute language in which the issues ate encoded, foreclosing open debate. The situation is aggravated by the tremor that breaks into discourse on race. It is further complicated by the fact thar the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, even generous,10 Black Matters liberal gesture. To notice is to recognize an already dis credited difference. To enforce its invisibility through silence is to allow the black body a shadowless participation in the dominant cultural body. According to this logic, every well. bred instiner argues against noticing and forecloses adult dis- ‘course, Its just this concept of literary and scholarly mocurs (which functions smoothly in literary criticism, but neither makes nor receives credible claims in other disciplines) that has terminated the shelf life of some once extremely well regarded American authors and blocked access to remarkable insights in their works. “These mocurs are delicate things, however, which must bbe given some thought before they are abandoned. Not ‘observing such niceties can lead to starling displays of schol- arly lapses in objectivity. In 1936 an American scholar inves tigating the use of Negro so-called dialect in the works of Edgar Allan Poe (a short article clearly proud of its racial equanimity) opens this way: “Despite the fact that he grew ‘up largely in the south and spent some of his most fruitful years in Richmond and Baltimore, Poe has ltd to say about the dacky."* ‘Although I know this sentence represents the polite par- lance of the day, that “darky” was understood to be a term ‘more acceptable than “nigger,” the grimace T made upon reading it was followed by an alarmed distrust ofthe scholars ‘Kis Campbel, Poe Tremont of the Negro and of te Negro Dials.” Sm Engl 6 98), p8 Black Matters abilities. If it seems unfair to reach back to the thimies for samples of the kind of lapse that can occur when certain manners of polite repression are waived, let me assure you equally egregious representations of the phenomenon are still common, ‘Another reason for this quite omamental vacuum in literary discourse on the presence and influence of Africanist peoples in American criticism isthe pattern of thinking about racialism in terms of its consequences on the victim—of always defining it assymetrcally from the perspective of its impact on the object of racist policy and attitudes. A good deal of time and intelligence has been invested in the exposure of racism and the horri results on its objects. There are constant, if erratic, iberalaing efforts to legislate these mat- ters, There are also powerfil and persuasive attempts to ana Ize the origin and fabrication of racism itself, contesting the assumption that itis an inevitable, permanent, and eternal part of al social landscapes. { do not wish to disparage these inquiries. It is precisely because of them that any progress at all has been accomplished in matters of racial discourse. But that wellestablished study should be joined with another, ‘equally important one: the impact of racism on those who perpetuate it. Tt seems both poignant and striking how avoided and unanalyzed is the effect of racist inflection on the subject. What I propose here isto examine the impact of notions of racial hierarchy, racial exclusion, and racial vulnera- bility and availability on nonblacks who held, resisted, explored, of altered those notions. The scholarship that looksBlack Matcers into the mind, imagination, and behavior of slaves is valuable ‘But equally valuable is a serious intellectual effort to see what cial ideology does to the mind, imagination, and behavior of masters. “Historians have approached these area, a have socal sc- centiss, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and some students of comparative literature. Literary scholars have begun to pose these questions of various national literatures. Urgently needed is the same kind of attention paid to the literature of the western country that has one of the most resilient Africanist populations in the workd—a population that has always had a curiously intimate and unhingingly separate exis- tence within the dominant one. When matters of race are located and called attention to in American literature, critical response has tended to be on the order of a humanistic nos- ‘ram—or a dismissal mandated by the label “politcal.” Excising the political from the life of the mind isa sacrifice that has proven costy. I think of this erasure as a kind of ‘trembling hypochondria always curing itself with unnecessary surgery. A criticism that needs co insist that literature is not only “universal” but also “race-fiee” risks loboromizing that literature, and diminishes both the art and the artist. Tam vulnerable to the inference here that my inquiry has vested interests; that because I am an African-American and writer I stand t0 benefit in ways not limited to intellectual fulfilment from this line of questioning. I will have to risk the accusation because the point is too important: for both black and white American writers, in 2 wholly racalized Black Matters 15 society, there is no excape from racially inflected language, and the work writers do to unhobble the imagination from the demands of that language is complicated, interesting, and definitive. Like thousands of avid but nonacademic readers, some power ltrary ers in the United States have never read, and are proud to say £0, any Aftican-American text. It seems to have done them no harm, presented them with no dis: ‘cemible limitations in the scope of their work or influence. suspect, with much evidence to support the suspicion, that they will continue to flourish without any knowledge what- soever of African-American literature. What is fascinating, however, isto observe how their lvish exploration of litera- ‘ure manages not to see meaning in the thunderous, theatrical presence of black surrogacy—an informing, stabilizing, and disturbing clement—in the literature they do study. It is interesting, not surprising, that the arbiters of ertical power in American literature seem to take pleasure in, indeed relish, their ignorance of African-American texts. Wha is surprising is that heir refusal to read black texts—a refusal that makes to disturbance in their intellectual life—repeats itself when they reread the traditional, established works of literature ‘worthy of thei attention, It is possible, for example, to read Henry James scholar ship exhaustively and never arrive at a nodding mention, much less a satisfactory treatment, of the black woman who lubricates the tum of the plot and becomes the agency of ‘moral choice and meaning in What Maiie Knew. Never are14 Black Matters swe invited to a reading of The Beast inthe Jang” in which that figuration is followed ro what seems fo me it logical conchision. It is hard to think of any aspect of Gerad Sicin’s Three Line that has not been covered, cxcepe the exploratory and explanatory uses to which she pus the black woman who holds center stage in that work. The wngency and anxicry in Willa Cather’ rendering of black characters are lable ro be mised entirely; no mention is made of the problem that race causes inthe technique andthe reiblry of he ast novel, Sapphire and he Slave Gir. These ers soe no excitement or meaning in the ropes of darkest, exalt, and desire in Emest Hemingway or in his cast of black men. “They se no connection between God's grace and Afianist “othering” in Flannery O'Connor. With few exceptions, Faulkner crcsm collapes the majo themes ofthat writer imo discursive “mythologis” and teats the later works— whose fous is race and class—as minor, superficial, marked by deetne ‘An instructive parle to this willed scholarly inference is the centuierlong, hysterical blindness to feminist dis- course and the way in which women and womens esis were read (or unread). Blaane sexist readings are on the deci, and where they stil exis they have litle fect because ofthe suceesful appropriation by women oftheir own discourse National teraurs, ike writes, get along the best way they can, and with what they can, Yer they do seem to end up describing and inscribing, what is really on the national mind. For the most prt, the literature ofthe United States Black Matters has taken a its concer the achtecnre of & new white ma I am disenchanted by the indference of literary criti rovward examining the range of that concem, 1 do have a lasting reso: the writers themselves. Writers ar among the most sensitiv, the most intlle- sully anarchic, mos epresentatve, most probing of artis, The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, «0 familiarize the strange and mystify che fiir, isthe est of chee power. Te languages they use and the socal and histor ical context in which these languages signify are indirect and direct revelations ofthat power and its imitations. Soi is them, the creators of American literature, that I look for clarification about the invention and effect of Afcanism in the United States My early assumptions at reader were that black people signified lil oF nothing in the imagination of white Amer fcan writers. Other than as the objects ofan occasional bout of jungle fore, other than to provide local color orto lend some touch of versimilrede or 0 supply a needed moral gesture, humor, oF bt of pathos, blacks made no appearance at all. Tis was a reflection, I though, ofthe marginal impact that blacks had on the lives ofthe characters in the work as well asthe creative imagination ofthe author. To imagine or wit otherwise, to suse black people throughout the pages and sencs ofa book like some government quota, would be Iadicrous and dishonest. But then I stopped reading asa reader and began to read as a writer. Living in a racially arcuate and predicated 516 Black Matters ‘worl, I could not be alone in reacting to this aspect of the American cultural and historical condition. I began to sce hhow the literature I revered, the literature I loathed, behaved in its encoumer with racial ideology. American literature «ould no help being shaped by that encounter Ys, I wanted to identify those moments when American literature was ‘complicit inthe fabrication of racism, but equally important, | wanted to see when literature exploded and undermined it Sil, those were minor concerns. Much more important was to contemplate how Afficanise persona, narrative, and idiom ‘moved and enzched the tex in selEconscious ways, o con sider whae the engagement meant forthe work ofthe writer's imagination. How docs literary urerance arange itself when it eres to imagine an Africanist other? What are the signs, the codes, the literary strategies designed to accommodate this encounter? What docs the inclusion of AMficans or African- ‘Americans do to and forthe work? Asa reader my assump- tion had always been that nothing “happens: Africans and their descendants were not, in any sense that mates, thr; and when they were there, they were decortive—displays of the agile writers technical expertise I asumed that since the author was not black, the appearance of Affcanist characters ‘or narrative or idiom in a work could never be about anything ‘other than the “normal,” uncacaize, ilsory white world that provided the fictional backdrop. Certainly no American text of the sort Iam discussing was ever writen for black eople—no more than Unde Tom Cabin was witten for Black Matters 17 ‘Uncle Tom to read or be persuaded by. As a writer reading, | came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream isthe dreamer. The fabrication of an Africanist persona is reflexive; an extraordinary meditation on the self; a powerful explora. sion of the fears and desires that reside in the wrterly con- scious. Its an astonishing revelation of longing, of teror, of| perplexity, of shame, of magnanimity. It requires hard work not to see this Its a if [had been looking ata fishbow!—the glide and, flick of the golden scales, the green tip, the bolt of white careening back from the gis; the castles atthe bottom, sur- rounded by pebbles and tiny, intricate fronds of green; the barely disturbed water, the flecks of waste and food, the tran- aquil bubbles traveling to the surfice—and suddenly I saw the bowl, the structure that transparently (and invisibly) permits the ordered life it contains to exist in the larger world, In ‘other words, I began to rely on my knowledge of how books ‘get written, how language arrives; my sense of how and why ‘rites abandon or take on certain aspects of their project. I began to rely on my understanding of what the linguistic struggle requires of writers and what they make of the sur- prise that isthe inevitable concomitant of the act of creation, ‘What became transparent were the self-evident ways that ‘Americans choose to talk about themselves through and. ‘within a sometimes allegorical, sometimes metaphorical, but always choked representation of an Africanist presence, bn wy. as18 Black Matters Tare made mc ee find of wifi cl adn * binds gi ad ot xt cold ave mad ings par oo rout trey ngs Fase solic ands hve cnn th each ing. cin pie i Will Caer Shs ost ad Sloe Gi,» te at hs bra vay ined fos body of Amen le by cate a Referens hs el in mth Cather solani re spose, dni, een cating nh bet ree ton off fawe—of wiih thea alee man What emis es cowpea fo the cop poles te book eth pre nd op sm Simpy was heal Cars it rea So of ber peep, te naroving Re coe the oblgon ro ok ely at what might he coe the book to ami le” aniline tre te wy Sten i i te nna ioe as wer ded by ine t,he inane, fr the T suspect that the “problem” of Sapphins and the Slave Gir is not that it has a weaker vision or is the work of 2 weaker mind. The problem is trying to come to terms crt. cally and anstically with the novel's concems: the power and license of a white slave mistress over her female slaves. How ‘an that antent be subsumed by some other meaning? How ‘an the story of a white mistress be severed from a consider. ation of race and the violence entailed in the storys premise? Black Matters If Sepphirn and she Slave Girl neither pleases nor engages 1 it may be enlightening to discover why. It isa if this ase book—this troublesome, quiely dismissed novel, very impor- tant to Cather—is not only about a fugitive but is itself fugitive from ies author's literary estate. Tis also a book that describes and inscribes its narative’s own fugitive fight from itself ‘Our fist hint of this ight appears in the tite, Sapphire sand the Slave Gir. The gl referred to is named Nancy. To have called the book “Sapphira and Nancy” would have lured (Cather into dangerous deep water. Such a tte would have clarifed and drawn artention immediately to what the novel ‘obscures even as it makes valiant effort at honest engagement: the sycophancy of white identity. The story, brify, i this. Sapphira Colbert, an invalid confined to her chair and de pendent on slaves for the most intimate services, has persuaded herself that her husband is having or aching to have a liaison with Nancy, the pubescent daughter of her most devoted female slave. I is clear from the beginning thar Mistress Col- bert is in eror: Nancy is pure to the point of vapidiy; Master Colbertisa man of modes abies, ambition, and imagination. Sapphira’s suspicions, fed by her feverish imagination and. by her leisure to have them, grow and luxuriate unbearably ‘She forms 2 plan. She will invite a malleable lecherous nephew, Martin, to visit and let his nature run its course: [Nancy will be seduced. The purpose of arranging the rape of her young servant isto reclaim, for purposes not made clear, the fll arentions of her husband. 1920. Black Masters Irene with thee pln comes from Sepphin daughter, Rachel, erange fom her moter primary foe her talons ews ut ako, we aed Bee, bras Sapphira doesnot tle opposition. Its Rachel who mange ocflscr Nays cape te noth and eed, wi et ep of er ey Mr Cte: Awe Glaion ofl ofthe white crate take ce danger coe ofr chen operate wih the recuperation ofthe ete, The rconcation af the ewo ley Hack carci vended in pons in ‘which many year er Nang reo sehr ged meter and recount her por igh at narave w the aon Chil winning the cum and the happiness che novels denouenent The novel was pubs in uo, be ba hep dl often pid ach sin a wt ati nt am ees ani probes ofexecon Both are, T bee, not tea Cather vat fling in nara. power, be becawe of her srg 0 ad an dos comple Bares the interdependent working of power, re, and sexuality in a white woman's batle for coherence, : Ina was thiol inactive sve ara 4 ing ape ftom, But we a sna hing of the wil of ef jue cae he emai Nano’ fg ate within te hous Br er expe And the al fig, the test ers he sve mse Farnham the plot cape the auto's cone and Black Matters ‘own fugitive stars becomes clear, is destined to point to the hopelessness of excising racial considerations fom formula sions of white ideniy ‘Escape is the central focus of Nancy's existence on the Colbert farm. From the moment of her fist appearance, she is forced to hide her emotions her though, and eventually her body from pursuers. Unable to please Sapphira, plagued by the jealousy of the darker-sknned slaves, she is also barred from help, instruction, or consolation from her own mother, Till That condition could only prevalin a slave society where the mistress can count on (and an author can believe the reader does not object to) the complicity of a mother in the seduction and rape of her own daughter. Because Tills loyalry to and responsibility for her mistress is so primary, it never ‘ceurs and need not occur to Sapphira that Till might be fhure or alarmed by the violence planned for her only child. "That assumption is based on another—that slave women are rot mothers; they ae “natally dead,” with no obligations to their offipring or their own parents “This breach startles the contemporary reader and renders ‘Fill an unbelievable and unsympathetic character. It is @ ‘problem that Cather herself seems hard put to address, She both acknowledges and banishes this wholly unanalyzed ‘mother-daughter relationship by inserting a furtive exchange between Till and Rachel in chapter 1 Till asked in a low, cautious murmur: ‘You sine heard nothin’, Miss Rachel?”Black Matters “Not yet. When Ido hea, Pet you know. [saw her into good hands, Ti 1 don't doube she's in (Canada by this time, amongst English people? “Thank you, mam, Miss Rachel. 1 ean say no ‘more. I don't want them niggers to see me cryin It she's up there with the English folks, she'll have some chance.?"* ‘The passage seems ro come out of nowhere because there has been nothing in a hundred or so pages to prepare us for such ‘maternal concem. “You ain't heard nothin?” Till asks of ‘Rachel. Jus that—those four words—meaning: Is Nancy all ‘ight? Did she arrive safely? Is she alive? Is anybody afer hee? All ofthese questions lic in the one she does manage to ask ‘Surrounding this dialogue isthe silence of four hundred Years. Ie leaps out of the novels void and out ofthe void of historical discourse on slave parent-child relationships and Bain. The contemporary reader is relieved when Till finally finds the language and occasion to make this inguiry about the fate of her daughter. But nothing more is made of it. And the reader i asked to believe thatthe silence surrounding the inguiry as well as its delay are due to Till’s greater concen about her status among dark-skinned “eld” niggers. Clearly Cather was driven to create the exchange not to rehabilitate Till in our readerly eyes but because at some point the silence Mite Cate, Spin ad te Sa Get (New Yorks Aled A Koh 40) ps, Black Matters 23 became an unbearable violence even in a work full of violence and evasion. Consider the pressures exerted by the subject: the need to portray the faithful slave; the compelling attraction of exploring the possibilities of one woman's absolute power over the body of another woman; confrontation with an uncon: tested assumption of the sexual availability of black females; the need to make credible the bottomless devotion of the ‘person on whom Sapphira is totally dependent. It is afterall ‘bers, this slave woman's body, in a way that her own invalid flesh is not. These fitional demands stretch to breaking all narrative coherence. It is no wonder that Nancy cannot think up her own escape and must be urged into taking the risk. [Nancy hat to hide her interior life from hostile fellow slaves sand her own mother. The absence of camaraderie berween Nancy and the other slave women turns on the device of color fetsh—the skin-color privilege that Nancy ‘enjoys because she is lighter than the others and therefore ‘enviable, The absence of mother love, always a troubling con- ‘cem of Cather’, is connected to the assumption of a slave's natal isolation. These are bizarre and disturbing deformations Cf realty that normally lie mute in novels containing Africanist characters, but Cather does not repress — altogether, The character she creates is at once a fugitive within the household and a sign of the sterility ofthe fiction- ‘making imagination when there is no available language t0 dei orcom ane ef wei erestingly, the other major cause * constant eee that she should be unarmedr 24. Black Masters in the face of the nephew's sexual assault and that she alone is responsible for extracting herself ftom the crisis. We do ‘not question her vulnerability. What becomes ttillating in this wicked pursuit of innocence—what makes it something other than an American variant of Clarisa—is the racial com- ponent. The nephew is not even required ro court or latter "Nancy. After an unsuccesful reach for her from the branches of a cherry tree, be can, and plans to, simply ative wherever she is sleeping. And since Sapphira has ordered her to sleep in the hall on a pallet, Nancy is forced to sneak away in the dark to quarters where she may be, but is not certain 0 be, safe. Ocher than Rachel, the pro-abolitionist, Nancy has access t0 no one to whom she can complain, explain, object, fr from whom she can seek protection. We must accept her total lack of initiative, for there are no exits. She has no recourse—except in miserable looks that arouse Rachel's curiosity [Nor is there any law, ifthe nephew succeeds in the rape, to entertain her complaint. If she becomes pregnant 25 a result of the violence, the issue is a boon to the economy of the estate, not an injury to it. There is no father or, in this case, “stepfather” to voice a protest on Nancy’s behalf, since honor was the frst ching stripped from the man. He is a “capon,” we are told, given to Till so that she will ave no mote children and can give her fall attention and energy to Mistress Sapphira Rendered voiceless a cipher, a perfect victim, Nancy runs the risk of losing the readers interest. In a curious way, Black Matters a5 Sapphir's plotting, lke Cather’s plot, is without reference to the characters and exis solely forthe ego-graiction of the slave mistress. This becomes obvious when we consider ‘what would have been the consequences ofa succesful rape Given the novels own terms, there can be no grounds for Sapphir’s thinking that Nancy can be “rained” in the con- ‘ventional sense. There is no question of marriage to Martin, {0 Colber, to anybody. Then, too, why would such an assault ‘move her slavegirl outside her husbands interest? The prob- ability is that it would secure i. If Mr. Cober is tempted by [Nancy the chaste, is there anything in tavocracy to make him disdain Nancy the unchaste? ‘Sacha breakdown inthe logic and machinery of plot con struction impli the powerful impact race has on narrative and on narrative suategy. Nancy isnot only the vicim of Sapphira's evi, whimsical scheming. She becomes the uncon- sulked, appropriated ground of Cather inquiry into what of paramount importance to the author: the reckless, unabated power of a white woman gathering identity unto herself from the wholly availble and seniceable liver of ‘Aficanist hers. Tis seems to me to provide the coordinates ofan immensely important moral debate. This novel i nota story of a mean, vindictive mistress it isthe story ofa desperate one. It concerns troubled cist appointed woman confined to the prison of her defeated flesh, whose social pedestal rests on the study spine of racial degradation; whose privileged gender has nothing that cle- ates it exept color, and whose moral posure collapses26 Black Matters without a whimper before the greater necessity of self-esteem, ‘even though the source of that esteem is a delusion. For Sap- phira too is a fugitive in this novel, committed to escape: from the possiblity of developing her own adult personality and her own sensibilities; from her femaleness; from mother- hood; from the community of women; from her body. She escapes the necessity of inhabiting her own body by dwelling on the young, healthy, and sexually appetizing (Nancy. She has transferred its care into the hands of others. In this way she escapes her illness, decay, confinement, anonymity, and physical powerlessness. In other words, she has the leisure and the instruments to construct a self, but the self she constructs must be—is conceivable only as—white. "The surrogate black bodies become her hands and feet, her fantasies of semual ravish and intimacy with her husband, and, not inconsiderably, her sole source of love. If the Afticanist characters and their condition are removed from the text of Sapphira and the Slave Girl we will not have a Miss Havisham immured or in flames. We have nothing: no process of deranged selfconstruction that can take for granted acquiescence in so awful an enterprise; no cdrama of limitless power. Sapphira can hide far more success- fally than Nancy. She can, and does, remain outside the normal requirements of adult womanhood because of the infartilized Afticanist population at her disposal ‘The final fugitive in Cather’s novel isthe novel itself. The plot's own plotting to free the endangered slave girl (of no apparent interest, a6 we have seen, to the girl's mother or her Black Matters 27 slave associates) is designed for quite other purposes. Tt func- tions as a means for the author ro meditate on the moral equivalence of fiee white women and enslaved black women. ‘The fact that these equations are designed as mother-daughter pairings and relationships leads to the inescapable conclusion that Cather was dreaming and redreaming her problematic relationship with her own mother, ‘The imaginative strategy is a dificult one at best, an impossible one in the event—so impossible that Cather per- mits the novel to escape from the pages of fiction into nonfic- tion. For narrative credibility she substinutes her own deter- ‘mination to force the equation. It is an equation that must take place outside the narrative. Sapphiva and the Slave Girl tens at the end into a kind ‘of memoir, the author's recollection of herself as a child wimessing the rerum, the reconciliation, and an imposed all rightness” in untenable, outrageous circumstances. The silenced, acquiescent Afficanist characters in the narrative are ‘not less muzzled in the epilogue. The reunion—the drama of it, like its narrative function—is no more the slave characters! than their slave lives have been. The reunion is literally stage- ‘managed for the author, now become a child. Till agrees to wait until lite Willa is at the doorway before she permits herself the first sight she has had of her daughter in ewenty- five years (Only with Africanist characters is such a project think- able: delayed gratification for the pleasure of a (white) child. ‘When the embrace is over, Willa the white child accompaniesBlack Matters the black mother and daughter into thei narrative, listening to the dialogue bur intervening in it at every turn, The shape and detail and substance of thet lives are hers, not thers, Just a8 Sapphira has employed these surrogate, serviceable black bodies for her own purposes of power without risk, s0 the author employs them in behalf of her own desire for a safe participation in loss, in love, in chaos, in justice. But things go awry. As often happens, characters make claims, impose demands of imaginative accountability over and above the authors will to contain them, Juse a6 Rachels intervention foils Sapphir’s plot, so Cather’s urgent need to know and understand this Afficanist mother and daughter requites her to give them center stage. The child Cather lis- tens to Tis stories, and the slave, silenced in the narrative, has the final words of the epilogue ‘Yet even, or especially, here where the novel ends Cather fecls obliged to gesture compassionately toward slavery ‘Through ills agency the elevating benevolence of the institution is invoked. Serviceable to the ls, this Afticanist Presence is permitted speech only to reinforce the slave holders’ ideology, inspite ofthe fact that it subverts she entire Premise of the novel. Til's voluntary genuflection is as ecstatic a it is suspicious, In reeurning to her childhood, at the end of her writing career, Cather rerurns 10 very personal, indeed private caperience, In her last novel she works out and toward the meaning of female betrayal as it faces the void of racism. She may not have arrived safly like Nancy, but to her credit she did undertake the dangerous journey. wo Romancing the Shadow shadows Bigger than people and blacker shan niggers Robert Pow Waren fom "Peel Sui Sothorn Exp,