By Kimberly Snyder Manganelli
The tragic mulatta was a
stock figure in nineteenth-century American literature, an attractive
mixed-race woman who became a casualty of the color line. The tragic muse was
an equally familiar figure in Victorian British culture, an exotic and alluring
Jewish actress whose profession placed her alongside the “fallen woman.”
In Transatlantic Spectacles of Race, Kimberly Manganelli argues
that the tragic mulatta and tragic muse, who have heretofore been read
separately, must be understood as two sides of the same phenomenon. In both
cases, the eroticized and racialized female body is put on public display, as a
highly enticing commodity in the nineteenth-century marketplace. Tracing these
figures through American, British, and French literature and culture,
Manganelli constructs a host of surprising literary genealogies, from Zelica to Daniel Deronda, from Uncle
Tom’s Cabin to Lady Audley’s
Secret. Bringing together an impressive array of cultural texts that
includes novels, melodramas, travel narratives, diaries, and illustrations, Transatlantic Spectacles of Race
reveals the value of transcending literary, national, and racial boundaries.
"An engaging, rich, and
provocative work that re-directs 'mixed-race' studies back to its complex
archival and historical roots, Manganelli’s book challenges readers to consider the deeply imbricated,
transnational production of 19th century racial and gender
mythologies."
—Daphne Brooks, Princeton
University
"Manganelli's clear,
engaging writing will captivate readers of nineteenth and early
twentieth-century British and American literature. This book provides a
powerful and lucid model for scholars and students interested in transatlantic
work."
—Cherene Sherrard-Johnson,
author of Portraits of the New Negro Woman
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