{"product_id":"9780822396956","title":"TEST1 Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture","description":"Using black feminist theory and African American studies to read Victorian culture, \u003ci\u003eImpossible Purities\u003c\/i\u003e looks at the construction of “Englishness” as white, masculine, and pure and “Americanness” as black, feminine, and impure. Brody’s readings of Victorian novels, plays, paintings, and science fiction reveal the impossibility of purity and the inevitability of hybridity in representations of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and race. She amasses a considerable amount of evidence to show that Victorian culture was bound inextricably to various forms and figures of blackness.\u003cbr\u003e\tOpening with a reading of Daniel Defoe’s “A True-Born Englishman,” which posits the mixed origins of English identity, Brody goes on to analyze mulattas typified by Rhoda Swartz in William Thackeray’s \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e, whose mixed-race status reveals the “unseemly origins of English imperial power.” Examining Victorian stage productions from blackface minstrel shows to performances of \u003ci\u003eThe Octoroon\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eUncle Tom’s Cabin\u003c\/i\u003e, she explains how such productions depended upon feminized, “black” figures in order to reproduce  Englishmen as masculine white subjects. She also discusses H.G. Wells’s \u003ci\u003eThe Island of Dr. Moreau\u003c\/i\u003e in the context of debates about the “new woman,” slavery, and fears of the monstrous degeneration of English gentleman. \u003ci\u003eImpossible Purities\u003c\/i\u003e concludes with a discussion of Bram Stoker’s novella, “The Lair of the White Worm,” which brings together the book’s concerns with changing racial representations on both sides of the Atlantic.\u003cbr\u003eThis book will be of interest to scholars in Victorian studies, literary theory, African American studies, and cultural criticism.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47111128219888,"sku":"9780822396956","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780822396956_p0.jpg?v=1763752504","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780822396956","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}