Thesis: "The multiple revolutions in the eighteenth century had inspired both Haiti and the British American colonies to seek independence, and their revolutionary rhetoric was in many cases similar, a point which alarmed Americans who held to scientific theories of racial hierarchies " (Wisecup 15).
A. Main point I: There is a relation between the climate, the geographical location and the mentality of a nation or the people who inhabit that territory.
a. "Brown compares New Orleans' epidemics to London's fogs, suggesting that epidemics in the U.S. South are similar to the rainy environment which defines London, and, by extension, and Londoners" (1)
b. "England's climate was said by contemporary climatologists to have been at least partially definitive of its subject's identities. Brown's texts suggest that yellow fever defines the South and its citizens" (1-2)
B. Main point II: There is a link between the geographical location, the race and the yellow fever or some other infectious disease. The rebellion of the slaves is also connected to this situation.
a. "Brown addresses perspectives of both white and black communities regarding the relation of Haiti the U.S South, and their slaves through his account of the epidemic, which links the countries by exposing their similar histories and geographies and by raising the possibility of slave rebellion" (2).
b. "In this essay, I position Brown's texts against contemporaneous and interdependent narratives of medical and southern exceptionalism to explore how yellow fever forced bodies in different geopolitical locations to be read in relation to one another" (2).
C. Main point III: There is a point that racial differences are a relevant proof that slavery is legitimate.
a."Because the flight of fugitive slaves threatened this legislated unity, a color line between the North and South reinforced racial differences and collapsed distinctions between geography and race" (4).
b."The black body, said to be inherently suited for the southern climate and physical labor, enforced the argument that southern geography and culture constructed different bodies than the northern environment did, thus justifying slavery" (4).
D. Main point IV: There is a question whether yellow fever was imported to New Orleans because black people were supposedly immune to such diseases.
a."Antebellum debates about whether yellow fever was imported or natural to New Orleans" (6)
b."The question of whether yellow fever was imported into North America from the tropics linked the South, especially New Orleans, where the fever was especially rampant, with Haiti" (6).
E. Main point V: Certain diseases affect only people who are not locals especially in the tropics. Such is the case with the yellow fever.
a."Nineteenth century medical knowledge held that the greater amount of white blood one possessed, the greater the chance one would get yellow fever, suggesting that purely white bodies were more susceptible to a foreign, tropical disease than black bodies with biological connections to the tropics" (9).
b."Therefore, Brown's representation of diseased black bodies suggests that they might not be purely black, thus literalizing anxieties about the racial and cultural hybridizing of southern populations" (9-10).
F. Main point VI: Eventually, Brown makes it clear that black bodies were also diseased. The readers find out that the medical theories were falsely justifying slavery and purity of the white race. The white people were afraid of a revolution.
a. Accordingly, in Clotel, the white planter Morton dies of yellow fever, while his mulatto wife and quadroon children, with their greater quantity of "black blood", survive" (10)
b."The reader's surprise and discomfort upon realizing that the body could also be black forces and acknowledgement that blacks were part of the national body and undermines medical theories which defended racial and geographic exceptionalism on the basis of racial views of health and illness" (10).
Works cited:
Wisecup, Kelly."The Progress of The Heat Within": The West Indies, Yellow Fever, and Citizenship in William Wells Brown's Clotel. The Southern Literary Journal, Volume 41, Number 1, Fall 2008, pp. 1-19 (Article). The University of North Carolina Press. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
