Race and Gender in Louisa May Alcott's "My Contraband" (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, University of Hamburg, course: Emily Dickinson and Her Contemporaries , language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction

Louisa May Alcott is one of the best known American female writers of the 19th Century. Her work primarily dealt with the role of women in society, accompanied by other topics such as work and the issue of slavery. The short story "My Contraband", first published in 1863 under the title "The Brothers", depicts both gender and racial issues. Set in the sphere of the Civil war and war hospitals, it is the story of the encounter of a white nurse and a mulatto contraband. Throughout the plot, Alcott paints a fascinating and dense picture of female desire and the fascination emanating from the mulatto. Though no explicit sexual action happens between the two, there are many hints at a strong erotic desire on the nurse's part.
This paper will investigate the way in which this mulatto is described, in which way this is linked to the forbidden desire of the white nurse and what her strategies are to make this desire less a taboo. My assumption here is that the nurse has to somehow "whiten" the contraband in order to make her desire more explicable and at least a little more "legal".
To prove this thesis, I will begin with a short overview of the historical background against which the story is set. In the following chapter, after a synopsis of the story itself, I will firstly take a closer look at the introduction of the contraband, secondly at the description of the nurse and investigate in how far racial stereotypes are introduced and used and, in the description of the woman, in how far she does or does not correspond to the ideal of womanhood in the 19th century. Concluding, I will describe the tabooed relationship between the two and the woman's strategy to deal with her desire.
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