Piazza Tales

Gleason, William

doi:10.18574/nyu/9780814732465.003.0002

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“…As William Gleason notes, both the inner and outer tales reveal "acts of black resistance to planter-defined space." 24 Beyond offering resistance to white spatial control, however, Chesnutt's tale also poses a challenge to planter-defined time. One enslaved character, Skundus, pretends to be asleep, for instance, but he claims his own sense of time through his secret meetings with Cindy in the swamp.…”

Section: Sleep Surveillance and Subversion In "A Deep Sleeper" And "M...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When John replies that he'd rather purchase a mule, Julius tells him: "I doan lack ter dribe a mule. I's alluz afeared I mought be imposin' on some human creetur; eve'y time I cuts a mule wid a hick'ry, 'pears ter me mos' lackly I's cuttin' some er my own relations, er somebody e'se w'at can't he'p deyse'ves" (24). John evinces little understanding of the mule metaphor in Julius's tale but, as Robert Stepto points out in an explanatory note to the story, "As symbols of agricultural life in the South, mules have been historically associated in U.S. culture with enslaved African American laborers, often to racist ends" (24).…”

Section: Nowhere To Sleep In the "Sleepy South"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I's alluz afeared I mought be imposin' on some human creetur; eve'y time I cuts a mule wid a hick'ry, 'pears ter me mos' lackly I's cuttin' some er my own relations, er somebody e'se w'at can't he'p deyse'ves" (24). John evinces little understanding of the mule metaphor in Julius's tale but, as Robert Stepto points out in an explanatory note to the story, "As symbols of agricultural life in the South, mules have been historically associated in U.S. culture with enslaved African American laborers, often to racist ends" (24). Through John and Julius's dialogue, Chesnutt associates the mule metaphor with the new railroad, a connection that possibly alludes to the mass employment of African American men as railroad porters at the turn of the century.…”

Section: Nowhere To Sleep In the "Sleepy South"mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Charles Chesnutt's "Uncle Julius" Tales Sleepy Subversions of Scientific Racism and the Master Clock

Huber¹

2021

Studies in American Fiction

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Charles Elam, in his 1869 study A Physician's Problems, classifies working-class somnambulism as a condition suffered by sleep-deprived laborers who, while asleep at night, repeat the same mechanical actions of their previous day's work. 1 Decades earlier, white physicians in the U.S. South argued that repetitive habits were innate among enslaved African Americans. Physician Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, who was employed by the Medical Association of Louisiana to document health conditions among the enslaved, wrote in 1851 of his newfound "medical discovery": dysaesthesia aethiopis. This racialized "ailment" caused persons of African origin to behave "like a person half asleep" and "that is with difficulty aroused and kept awake." 2 Cartwright held a belief common among antebellum doctors: that African bodies required less sleep than their Anglo counterparts. These so-called physicians agreed that enslaved people only needed enough rest to make it through a day's labor. At the same time, however, Cartwright claimed that the enslaved, if given the chance, would spend all their time in repose. Critic Benjamin Reiss details how these findings were as fascinating as they were horrifying: "Afflicted slaves . . . would 'wander about at night, and keep in a half nodding sleep during the day,' mindlessly disrupting their communities like a faulty automaton or senseless machine." 3 Reiss's summation of Cartwright's diagnosis calls to mind Elam's description of a sleep disorder symptomatic of overwork. However, unlike Elam, who blamed environmental factors for working-class somnambulism, Cartwright asserted that it is the very bodies of the enslaved that were at fault. For Cartwright, dysaesthesia aethiopis was a race-specific affliction-an inherent laziness-that could only be managed through the prescription of hard labor.

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Section: Sleep Surveillance and Subversion In "A Deep Sleeper" And "M...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Nowhere To Sleep In the "Sleepy South"mentioning

confidence: 99%