Bosses and Broomsticks: Ritual and Authority in Antebellum Slave Weddings
2009; Southern Historical Association; Volume: 75; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-6893
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoIN DECEMBER 1861 A WOMAN WITNESSED A WEDDING THAT TO SOME eyes would have been indistinguishable from the weddings of slaveholders. ceremony took place in plantation church in Camden, South Carolina, and was performed by minister who doubtless had celebrated many an elite union. guests appeared respectable and greeted the occasion with almost solemnity, and the bridesmaids arrayed themselves in white swiss muslin. (1) Mary Chesnut's eyes, however, were more discriminating. As she committed her memory of the ceremony to her diary, Chesnut spared even paternalistic praise for the similarities that this wedding, between two of her family's slaves, bore to the rites enacted by her own class. Her sentiments toward African Americans mingled disgust, condescension, and fear, and these emotions shine forth in her full account: Oh! the bridal party--all as black as the ace of spades. bride and her bridesmaids in swiss muslin, the gayest of sashes--and bonnets too wonderful to be described. They had on red blanket shawls, which they removed as they entered the aisle and seemed loath to put on when the time came to go out--so proud were they of their finery. But it grew colder and colder--every window and door wide open, sharp December wind. Gibbes Carter arose amidst the ceremony and threw red shawl over the head of the congregation, to shivering bridesmaid. shawl fell short and wrapped itself about the head of sable dame comfortably asleep. She waked with snort, struggled to get it off her head, with queer little cries. Lord ha' mussy! What dish er here now. There was for moment decided tendency to snigger--but they were too well-bred to misbehave in church, and soon it was unbroken solemnity. I know that I shook with silent laughter long after every face was long and respectable. bride's gloves were white, and the bridegroom's shirt bosom was snowy expanse fearfully like Johnny's Paris garments, which he says disappear by the dozen. This one had neat little frills and mock diamond of great size in the middle. Miss Sally Chesnut said, Those frills marked it Camden or homemade. (2) In this description, Chesnut displayed the condescension Kenneth M. Stampp so eloquently ascribed to whites at slave weddings: The family, he wrote in 1956, found it pure delight to watch bride and groom move awkwardly through the wedding ceremony, to hear solemn preacher mispronounce and misuse polysyllabic words, or to witness the incredible maneuvers and gyrations of 'shakedown' [a dance]. Certainly Chesnut's painstaking characterization of the sleeping slave woman represents the finest currency in arch disdain. In literary terms, the shawl thrown by Chesnut's friend onto the woman's head could well symbolize an artifact of civilization settling briefly but awkwardly upon the head of savage. That the woman responded to the disturbance with animalistic noises and semiconscious outburst of dialect made clear just how far she and her enslaved sisters remained from the diarist's own role of urbane sophisticate. Further, Chesnut's repeated emphasis on the color of the slaves' skin--describing a sable dame, bridesmaids all as black as the ace of spades, and the dusky face[s] in the crowd--and her sister-in-law Sally Chesnut's suggestion that the slaves had stolen their masters' clothing underscored the disjuncture between the ritual in its ideal (that is, elite white) form and the African American perversion thereof. Mary Chesnut aimed particularly piercing barbs at the women in the party: as an incisive critic of gender conventions, she knew just how to cut pretenders to the southern lady's mastery of aesthetic expression. In this context, Chesnut rendered the idea that slave wedding might be solemn and respectable every bit as laughable as the clownish woman's waking snort. …
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