Reading the Apostrophe’s Absence: On Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s meetins

In UTC, the dialect form of meeting (sometimes plural meetings) is meetin’ (with apostrophe to signal dropped g in pronunciation) or meetin (with neither g nor apostrophe). What might the presence or absence of the apostrophe mean?

Hayley:
’t was as good as a meetin, now, really, to hear that critter pray; (Jewett 14-15)

Chloe:
we ’s goin’ to have the meetin’.”
Mose and Pete:
We wants to sit up to meetin’,—meetin’s is so curis.
(Jewett 48)

Sam:
O, Lor, if it warn’t as good as a meetin’, now, to see him a dancin’ and kickin’ and swarin’ at us. (Jewett 77)

Hayley:
I know there ’s differences in religion. Some kinds is mis’rable: there ’s your meetin pious; there ’s your singin, roarin pious; them ar an’t no account, in black or white; (Jewett 218)

Before we examine the Era, let us make a provisional observation on the basis of the Jewett text. Unlike for the African American slaves (Sam, Chloe, and Chloe’s children Mose and Pete), Stowe for Haley omits the final g in his speech without noting its absence with an apostrophe. The written signs for Haley’s spoken words mark his ignorance that a terminal g could be present in written form. Now, the Era:

Hayley:
’twas as good as a meetin now, really, to hear that crittur pray; (Era 89)

Chloe:
for we’s goin to have the meetin.” (Era 97)
Mose and Peet [sic]:
We wants to sit up to meetin—meetins is so curis. (Era 97)

Sam:
Oh, Lor, if it warn’t as good as a meetin, now, to see him a dancin and kicken and swaring at us. (Era 105)

Hayley:
I know there’s differences in religion. Some kinds is mis’rable; there’s your meetin pious—there’s your singin, roarin pious—them ar aint no account, in black or white, (Era 145)

The newspaper text presents complications. Haley, like the African American slaves, elides the g. No printed sign (an apostrophe) marks the absence. Note also that during the preparation of the Jewett edition, it seems that the apostrophe as a sign of the dropped g was added to Sam’s verbs (dancin’ and kickin’ and swarin’) (77) but not added to Haley’s adjectives (singin, roarin). (218).

While reading the early installments of Stowe’s work in the Era I had the definite but vague impression that the distinction between dialects was more marked on a class basis than a racial basis. That is, the dialect that distinguishes upper and lower classes of characters is more marked than the dialect that distinguishes characters by their racial identification as Black and White.

Many readers have observed that Uncle Tom speaks a whole range of dialects. I think that his rise in class began with Stowe the author, over the course of the novel’s composition. Other markers include bilious (Era) vs. brilliant (Jewett) Scriptural prints and New Testament only (Era) versus Bible (Jewett). When she goes back to her earlier newspaper draft and switches Tom’s New Testament for his Bible, she is retroactively raising his initial economic class membership to a rank higher than the “lowly” which I think he more firmly inhabits in the newspaper text. In both book and periodical version, Haley is marked by his language as lower morally and ethically even than African American slaves.

So a question to consider is whether Tom’s biblical citations are limited to the New Testament before he arrives in the St. Clare household. Looks like it will be necessary to tag every scriptural quote.

Thoughts on the Psychology of Transcription

For the past five days I’ve rededicated myself to transcribing my copy of the first edition of John P. Jewett’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While in my dissertation I outlined my techniques of transcription–and I strive for the utmost rigor–here I’d like to reflect a bit on the psychology of transcribing.

One of the joys of transcribing is discovery. In the Jewett edition, on page 68 of volume II, for example, one finds this passage: “Tom and Eva were seated on a litttle mossy seat, in an arbor, at the foot of the garden.”The three t’s in the intended word “little” are an error in the Jewett first edition.

I originally described this as a discovery, as something not previously noted. That was incorrect. I have since checked the Internet Archive, Wright American Fiction, and Early American Fiction. EAF silently corrects it. Wright corrects it in brackets. And Internet Archive reproduces the error. The last leads to a thought. It is difficult to catch obvious errors during transcription, which are at risk of being silently corrected (Note: For a textual scholar, silent correction of obvious errors is a bad thing. An accurate record is a higher concern than correcting obvious errors). A scanned text that is not proofread may well provide a good check for errors in the original. I happen to have taken a break immediately before resuming on the paragraph with litttle, so my level of attention was higher. I need to re-think my assumption that scanned texts provide few benefits to textual scholars. Juxta has aided with that re-thinking. Maybe they would be a good source of obvious errors, if one could just find a way to deal with all of the thousands of scan errors.

Absent scholarship’s small joys, the joys would be fewer. I think of transcribing as among the most intense types of close reading. But it’s not leisurely, and it is easy to become distracted. When I transcribed UTC in the Era, the first hurdle was to set a regular schedule. I always transcribed on Saturday mornings, and I tried to establish a pattern of transcribing twice weekly in addition to Saturday morning. I can transcribe for two hours. After that, the time is unproductive. The entire time transcribing cannot be spent like a machine, and it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to be distracted by the newspaper’s other stories, which was a benefit for my dissertation.

When I’m transcribing the book, the distractions are more frequent. The best technique is probably to set aside a quiet time twice a day (30 to 45 minutes per session) to transcribe. I think the most productive attitude is obsession with page counts. The second volume of UTC is 322 pages. If I transcribe 10 pages per day, it will take 32 days to transcribe volume 2. But if I transcribe 16 pages per day, I can finish in 20 days. Trouble starts when you skip a day, or two, because soon it will be a week, or a month, or two. It’s better to stay obsessed with managing a pace.

Because I have no illusions that the first transcription will be accurate, I work somewhat at ease. When you’re planning to compare this initial transcription to four other transcriptions (as I am) it does not have to be. I know there’s still to be a long process of collating against other transcriptions, checking each variant, correcting each error, double-checking that the correction was made accurately the first time, checking against a different transcription, and oral proofreading. All in good time. I see that I’ve only transcribed six pages today, Ophelia’s introduction to Topsy. So…back to work.