An Abolitionist Heteroglossia: Racial Reconstruction in Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted
Journal Title: Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi - Year 2016, Vol 56, Issue 2
Abstract
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's 1892 novel Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted has been widely discussed in relation to the ways in which the novel caters to the popular gender ideologies that deny and devalue black womanhood in both the antebellum and postbellum United States. This article, however, argues that Iola Leroy can further be considered a reformist novel that explores the questions of racial identity and slavery as well as diverse constructions of abolitionism in the postbellum United States. Harper's Reconstructionist views challenge the antebellum organization of social spheres and gender norms that support slavery's cruel practices, while engaging with the public discussions that compose an abolitionist heteroglossia. Harper bridges the divide between racial prejudices and an unbiased perception of the black race through heteroglossic dialogues that feature characters' powerful arguments against slaveholders' theories about the black race and slavery. Covering a span of time from the Civil War to the Reconstruction Era, the novel suggests that as long as racial preconceptions and proslavery opinions are not abandoned, national Reconstruction will be dysfunctional and the nation will be unable to reach a harmonious political identity. All of the abolitionist discussions in the novel serve to connect the characters in a dialogic affinity in venues for sociopolitical discussion on slavery and abolitionism as possible means of Reconstruction. Thus, this article analyzes how Iola Leroy portrays the abolitionist voices that infiltrate into proslavery arguments in line with critic Mikhail M. Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, and hence examines how Harper emancipates her text from authoritarian views by constructing episodes of dialogic relations among the abolitionist discussions against the backdrop of the monologic arguments of racial slavery.
Authors and Affiliations
Nisa Harika GÜZEL KÖŞKER
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