Date of Award

Spring 2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

English

Committee Director

Jeffrey H. Richards

Committee Member

Joseph Cosco

Committee Member

David Metzger

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E64 A56 2007

Abstract

Despite critics'ack and forth argument over the merits, or lack thereof, of a uniquely black theatre experience, black women playwrights, much like their male counterparts, were once wholly invisible to the white community. But what makes their invisibility unique is their absence in the black world and in literary scholarship. Unfortunately, modern scholarship has oftentimes dismissed these exceptionally powerful plays, cataloging them as poorly written and lacking stylistic and formal elements. It was only recently that they were included in a highly male-dominated history of African American theatre and art. The question of their use of sentimentality, however, remains unanswered.

Using a framework of the public voices of these black female playwrights, interwoven among a historical analysis of anti-slavery writing, lynching, and the ideologies that shaped American culture for both blacks and whites, I suggest that Angelina Grimke, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Mary Church Terrell mimic the writings of both black and white female abolitionists, who used sentimentalism as a form of resistance and deconstruction. Furthermore, the goal of this thesis is to demonstrate that the rhetorical form of Grimke, Johnson, and Terrell represents a desire to reinvoke the spirit of the black matriarch, whose powerful presence encourages racial equality for black men and women, rewrites the signs of lynching, and redefines womanhood as an experience representative of all women. By positioning women and the family in the forefront of their dramas, these playwrights dismantle and restructure the horror that surrounds lynching.

I suggest that in these plays we see a shift not only in characters but in narrative action as well. The so-called "heroes" of the lynch rope are unmasked as criminals and murders. The victim is no longer a white woman or her womanhood. Instead, we see the suffering of black men, women, and children. The horror now becomes the destruction of the black family and the sanctified murder of black men. Through this literature, we are offered a different perspective from which to view the signs of lynching.

DOI

10.25777/chqx-1g47

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