The Reconstruction of Whiteness: William Wells Brown'sThe Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom

Abstract

Focusing on William Wells Brown's one published play. The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858), I address Brown's decision to supplement his antislavery lectures with dramatic readings of original plays. In this effort to challenge the terms of a representative identity as a black antislavery lecturer, Brown presented a conception of social life grounded in what I term multiply contingent identity. By this formulation, one's social identity is always contingent and is always in danger of being undermined as one's performance of selfhood awaits verifying responses in the form of reciprocal performances in the field of social relations. In The Escape, Brown turned his own performance of identity on the antislavery lecture circuit into a commentary on performance itself, especially on performances both shaped and veiled by the ideology of race. In this way. Brown attempted to reposition white northern antislavery sentiment, reconstructing whiteness by emphasizing its contingent relation to a reconfigured vision of African American identity.

Literary Racial Impersonation

“…be in a real minstrel show), the character exposes a complex system of relations built around the institution of slavery. Initially, Cato seems to perpetuate a stereotype of the happy-go-lucky Black house servant who is blissfully unaware of his oppression, but he eventually seizes an opportunity to escape to Canada, revealing that he was aware of his oppressive circumstances all along (Ernest 1998). The satire relies on racist stereotypes to produce a parody of Black people and does not aim to accurately portray them (Carpio 2008).…”