Faded Blackness: Racial Ideologies of Whitman, Alcott, and Cather Reflecting the Antebellum and Postbellum Periods
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Date
2018
Department
English and Languages
Program
Master of Arts
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This item is made available by Morgan State University for personal, educational, and research purposes in accordance with Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Other uses may require permission from the copyright owner.
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Abstract
The problem of this study is to examine racial ideologies in selections from Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, and Willa Cather’s literature, depicting the antebellum and postbellum periods. Selected works from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass include “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors,” “I Hear America Singing,” “I Sing the Body Electric,” “Reconciliation,” “Pioneers! O Pioneers!,” “Salut Au Monde!,” “The Sleepers,” “Song of the Open Road,” “Song of Myself,” and “Song of the Redwood Tree.” This study will also examine Louisa May Alcott’s “My Contraband” and Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl, written decades after the works of Whitman and Alcott. “Faded Blackness” will examine the three writers’ responses to the racial schisms of the antebellum and postbellum periods in American history and will compare them to racial ideologies existing today. The writer argues that each artist’s work reveals a marginalizing of the presence of the African American and other people of color. As a result, limitations were placed upon character expansion by repudiation of development. A psychological approach to racial implications of Whitman, Alcott, and Cather will also be explored, utilizing the reader-response theory. Whitman, Alcott, and Cather project a specific philosophy on the position of African Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color. This racial discourse remains an ongoing issue of relevancy as America continues on her journey toward equality and racial harmony.