What is the Influence of Romantic Literature on Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation?
The Romantic period will go down in history as the period when a lot of events took place across the world. Peter Kitson and Fulford (1998), co-editors of Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and empire, 1780 - 1830, have put together the writings of a number of writers who sought to debate on the Romantic Movement in relationship with colonialism. The Romantic period witnessed a number of momentous events which included, the “loss of the Americas, the French Revolution, the abolition of slavery, and the turn to the east signalled by the British Empire’s expansionism policy.” Therefore, they argue, most of the writers of that period that included, Blake, Burke, Coleridge, and Clarkson to name a few, wrote on societies that were part of the Empire. It was during the Romantic period that an awareness on race came to fore. On reading some of the works of writers like Edward Long and Charles White, one gets the lofty feeling that the concept of race wasn’t arbitrary, but natural. The British brought Africans to work in their fields and households, and were subjected to intense slavery and bonded labor. For writers such as Long and White, literature was to assuage the belief that the human race was hierarchical in nature, of which, the African stood at the bottom of the ladder.
Dr John Marriott (2014), in reviewing Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation trains his attention to the unprecedented number of writings emerging from this period on the subject of slavery. In Volume 1 contains just about all known black writings on slavery published in Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In Volume 2, contains extracts from writings on the subject of abolition of racism, from eminent writers such as James Ramsay, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. In Volume 3, the subject of emancipation is covered by publications produced from 1823 - 26. Volume 4, edited by Alan Richardson, has some of the diverse, contradictory and complex response to slavery by poets such as Blake, Cowper and Burns. Volume 5 is dedicated to Drama, and has such dramatists like Isaac Bickerstaff and John Fawcett. Drama was at the forefront of social matters during this time, but those produced by Bickerstaff and Fawcett for example, had nothing to do with antislavery sentiment. Volume 6, on fiction, showed the importance of a utopian vision, sans slavery. In understanding Blake, one of his poems, The Black Boy, juxtaposes his personal life to that of the black boy. His themes are mostly based on children and Little Black Boy is no different. Right from the time Blake began his career at the age of fifteen as an engraver, he was fascinated by his work and when he began to engrave for book sellers and publishers, he found this method of writing on his own, most enthralling. This poem, especially from the engraved picture of a saint bending to solace a white boy and a black boy behind him, can be interpreted in different ways; one way of interpreting is by showing the distinction of race, another would be to urge unity, a third would be the acceptance of good (White) against evil (Black). In many ways the poem portrays the spiritual awakening of divine love that transcends racism. The poem begins with a boy conscious of his dark skin, in self-pittance, and trying to solace himself in saying that, though his skin was dark, he had a white soul, which was pure and humble.
What is worth noting is that Blake’s, The Little Black Boy, can be seen as among the finest of poems depicting the abolitionist movement. His interpretation of portraying the black boy as a superior being, by giving him ontological power and epistemological skill shows the sentiments on social injustice. This clearly shows that the majority of writers associated with Romantic Literature had gradually sought the removal of slavery, and were for abolition and emancipation. However, the more one reads about slavery, the more intricate it becomes when it comes to defining it. From some of the readings, it becomes difficult to apprehend the varying theories that view slavery as a product of civility, or whether it was created by economic or political compulsions, and condemned by the laws of human progress, say Davis (1984), in Slavery and Human Progress, in George Carter’s, (1991) A review of slavery, emancipation and abolition in South Africa and the United States. The book seeks to examine the situation in South Africa and America during the eighteenth century, where slavery, emancipation, and abolition were prejudiced; going by the way some writers approached the subject. This, he says is because, certain writers have assumed that slaves, whether they were in Muslim or Latin American slavery, could be brought together without considering the social conditions that change constantly. Another assumption is that a slave’s status reflects his or her social condition, while some others assume that there is a distinction between the slaves who worked in households in comparison to those who worked in plantations, and finally, there were others who assume that any form of slavery could co-exist in a single society. Whatever the assumptions, it is clear that all these writers unanimously addressed the issue of slavery.
Between 1787 and 1833, abolitionist literature was at its zenith (enotes.com, 2014). William Blake’s The Little Black Boy in 1789, Thomas Chatterton’s poem African Eclogues in 1770, Thomas Clarkson’s The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament in 1808, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade in 1792, William Cowper’s The Negro's Complaint in 1778, and Leigh Hunt’s Descent of Liberty: A Mask in 1814, to name a few, all targeted the vicious vices of contemporary society of the eighteenth century. However, this practice continued well after 1833, as English attacked the fallacy of slavery and racism, especially in the U.S. Prominent writers such as Frances Trollope, Walter Savage Landor, and Charles Dickens questioned the revolutionary heritage of liberty and equality, when more than half a million black slaves languished in the South of the country. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic Uncle Tom's Cabin, attacks the rather feudalistic ideology of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which prohibits anyone from offering aid or assistance to runaway slaves. In the novel, Eliza, overhearing Shelby and his wife talk of selling her and Uncle Tom, flees with Harry to the North in search of freedom. Haley pursues her, but she manages to escape by crossing the freezing Ohio River, only to be hunted by a slave hunter named Loker. They finally win freedom as they cross over to Canada. Through her illustration of the characters and theme, Stowe sought to awaken in her readers, the institution they followed, and advocating the emancipation of slaves in that country. She, like many other Romantic literary writers, sought to dispel the nuance of civility by enticing slavery. Slavery, she wrote, “is evil, un-Christian, and intolerable in a civil society” (enotes.com, 2014).
Conclusion
The Romantic period was dominated by literary works by a majority of poets, dramatists, novelists and short-story writers who attacked the system of slavery, and sought to invoke abolitionism and emancipation. From the work of Peter Kitson and Fulford (1998), co-editors of Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and empire, 1780 - 1830, to Dr Marriott’s review of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation, and Davis’ Slavery and Human Progress, in George Carter’s, (1991) A review of slavery, emancipation and abolition in South Africa and the United States, one gets a feel of the minds of writers of that period who engaged in rebuking colonialism and slavery. It was during the Romantic period that people became aware of racism, thanks mainly to these writers representing Romantic literature.
Works Cited
Davis, D, B, (1984), Slavery and Human Progress, Oxford, New York, p.8-9
Kitson, P, J, and Fulford, T, (2002), Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation (Book), Romanticism, 2002, Vol. 8 Issue 1, p111, Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.cecybrary.com/ehost/pdfviewer/
Carter, G, E, (1991), A review of slavery, emancipation and abolition in South Africa and the United States in the Academic Journal, American Studies International. Oct91, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p69 Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.cecybrary.com/
Kitson, P, J, and London, D, L, (1999), Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic period, Pickering & Chatto, 1999, ISBN: 9781851965137, p.3664
Marriott, Dr. J, (2014), Review of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic period, Retrieved April 7, 2014, from http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/247
