Uncle Tom’s Cabin Variant: Mr. Wilson as a “reasoner” and the Logicians

In Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mr. Wilson is the owner of the bagging factory in which George Harris works. After George escapes, he encounters Mr. Wilson in a tavern, where ensues an argument in which Mr. Wilson tries to convince George that he should not have escaped slavery because religion and law enjoin him to remain in the condition.

George replies to Mr. Wilson’s brief, halting overtures–Wilson does not seem to have great conviction that the course he advocates is proper—with a brief parable. He suggests to Mr. Wilson that, where he taken from his wife and children, imprisoned by Indians, and forced to spend his life hoeing corn, he would view a stray horse rather as a “Providence” than stay enslaved because the Bible called him to “abide in the condition in which you were called.” The narrator’s characterization of Mr. Wilson’s response differs in the Era and the 1852 Jewett edition. I give both versions, with the crucial variant highlighted.

The little old gentleman stared with both eyes at this illustration of the case; but, though not much of a reasoner, he had the sense in which some logicians on this particular subject excel—that of saying nothing where nothing could be said.
(Era, 14 August 1851, 129)

The little old gentleman stared with both eyes at this illustration of the case; but, though not much of a reasoner, he had the sense in which some logicians on this particular subject do not excel,—that of saying nothing, where nothing could be said. (Jewett, vol. I, 163)

So which of the two versions offers a more apt characterization of logicians or Mr. Wilson? The Era version indicates that logicians (which may include Christian ministers and moral philosophers) excel in saying nothing because it is not possible to say anything. Put another way, the silence of logicians offers convincing evidence that they have nothing to say. Please note that the Era version has no comma, so “where nothing could be said” is a restrictive clause that applies presumptively only to “saying nothing.” The emphasis is on “saying nothing,” which I presume to mean that logicians keep silent.

The Jewett version is considerably more subtle. Mr. Wilson is “not much of a reasoner.” But though he is unlike logicians, he does have one bit of sense. He says nothing when there is nothing to say. Note, in contrast to Era version, the presence of a comma after “nothing” in the Jewett version. The emphasis here is that logicians continually prattle on even if there is, in fact, nothing worth saying.

It is not easy to know whom Stowe might mean by logicians. In the next newspaper installment, she blasts Emerson and Carlyle because they reason away the truth of Bible (a passage she would remove for Jewett). Are these the “logicians” in her cross-hairs? Or could the logician be a pro-slavery empiricist like Hume?

In any case, these are my readings. Is one version an error? Or are both equally acceptable alternatives. What do you think?

Dickinson on textual variation, thought undressed

Letter to T. W. Higginson, 25 April 1862

“While my thought is undressed–I can make the distinction, but when I put them in the Gown,–they look alike, and numb.”

Cited and discussed by Tim Morris in Philip G. Cohen’s Texts and Textuality, pg. 172. Emily Dickinson was very observant on the variability of language, the multitude of possibilities, which she often chose not to resolve or, in Franklin’s somewhat misleading formulation, complete.

I tend to agree with scholars who believe that many of Dickinson’s poems are imagined into multiple versions and not in any real sense resolved, or are resolved only when used for a particular correspondent or reader, and which does not necessarily resolve the “text” of the poem into a finished state. The presence of a variant within the line does not necessarily privilege it over the option in the foot note.

Stick Pin in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

In a University of Nebraska copy of the 1852 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, part of the Lowenberg Collection, a reader used a stick pin to re-attach the illustration between pgs. 174 and 175 of volume 1. I would think this pin provides pretty good evidence that it was read by a female reader. The pin has rusted, the illustration is no longer attached, but the pin remains, as do pin marks that hold it together.

The reader, I will say “she,” appears to have lavished considerable care on the volume in other ways. On volume 1, pg. 27, the absent chapter title “The Mother” is restored in pencil, presumably from the table of contents.

In the Typee manuscript, John Bryant notes that Melville used pins to attach revision pages. Many of the revision sheets are since detached, but the pins remain. A history of reader’s pins and pin marks, anyone?

On Marcela in Don Quixote

Fuego soy apartado y espada puesta lejos.”–Don Quixote, Chap XIV, Ed. Murillo, 186-87
“I am distant fire and far-off sword.”–Trans. Edith Grossman 99.

Ah, Marcela, the beautiful shepherdess who refuses Grisóstomo and rebukes Ambrosio, who wrongly blames her for his friend’s death. One of my favorite lines of the chapter is Marcela’s exposition of the consequences should beauty, upon being loved by the ugly, submit: “[C]ae muy mal el decir: `Quiérote por hermosa; hasme de amar aunque sea feo’” / “[I]t is absurd for anyone to say: ‘I love you because you are beautiful; you must love me even though I am ugly.’” And the other is the exposition of a danger more grave, that two beautiful subjects are presumed to love equally, an assumption that must be rejected for its fearful consequences:

Pero, puesto caso que corran igualmente las hermosuras, no por eso han de correr iguales los deseos, que no todas hermosuras enamoran; que algunas alegran la vista y no rinden la voluntad; que, si todas las bellezas enamorasen y rindiesen, sería un andar las voluntades confusas y descaminadas, sin saber en cuál habían de parar; porque, siendo infinitos los sujetos hermosos, infinitos habían de ser los deseos (186)

But in the event the two are equally beautiful, it does not mean that their desires are necessarily equal, for not all beauties fall in love; some are a pleasure to the eye but do not surrender their will, because if all beauties loved and surrendered, there would be a whirl of confused and misled wills not knowing where they should stop, for since beautiful subjects are infinite, desires would have to be infinite too (99)

Desire, were it equal to beauty, has cosmic consequence of unmanageable desire. In Don Quixote, the shepherdesses’ appeal to unequal desire promises to release us from the pastoral and into the quotidian, the modern.

Job Search with English Ph.D.: Milestone Reached

My job search has reached a milestone. Today, 11 March 2008, I signed a letter to accept a tenure-track position in Textual Editing and American Literature at Kent State University. This was what I hoped for when I abandoned my 8-year career as a technical writer and began pursuing the English Ph.D. in 2002. This academic year 2007-2008 was my third run through the spin cycle that is the job hunt, and now I can concentrate on the next cycle that is the tenure process. But today I pause for a brief moment of reflection.

Aside from the CLIR fellowship, which I applied for and received in 2006, the job hunt has been a period of frustration and agonizing doubt. In three years I’ve sent application letters for approximately 100 tenure-track positions and received a handful of requests for additional materials, one interview at the annual Modern Language Association conference, one on-campus interview, and one tenure-track job offer. That is no misprint: one MLA interview, and one job. For over two years I’ve ruefully responded to my dissertation adviser’s nugget of wisdom–”You only need one job”–with a silent retort: “Yea, but I do need one.” He seems as wise now as I always hoped he would be.

But this third year on the market–a term that I despise–had a difference. Kent is the first department to include “textual editing” in the title of a position, which makes it close to an ideal position for my scholarship. I am also a scholar of American literature, but with textual editing as my secondary emphasis–in application letters for positions in American literature–no department saw how to fit my candidacy into its sense of how the discipline needs to be represented. Would-be textualists have reason to worry that the discipline of American literary and cultural study is imagining your work out of existence. I’m sure that more recent work (and revised wording) has changed how my applications were read, but I have evidence only that one committee could be brought to imagine a future for the scholarly work that I do within its department.

I have kept working on the aspect of literary scholarship that thrills me: the exploration of textual difference, the modes of representation for that difference in editorial and digital scholarship, and the consequences for a larger enterprise of cultural study. But my patience with this job application process was nearing its end, and I’m glad for this hiatus, which I intend to make a long one. Of course, I have a grant application to write and an article to revise. So work that is oddly similar to job market–position yourself in the discipline, explain why your work is crucial–continues apace. If you have had two frustrating years on the job market, may my post inspire you to regroup, to hope, and to dedicate yourself to taking the third run. After all, you only need one job.

National Era Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Dissertation Edition Moves to new URL

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”: An Edition of the “National Era” Version, my dissertation, was at http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/~wnr4c/index.htm. But it has moved. It is now at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~wnr4c/index.htm. The “2″ after www is discontinued.

I wonder how long I will be able to act as its shepherd. I wonder how long I can rely on the kindness of current colleagues, friends, and former colleagues to serve as co-shepherds. Perhaps I’ll find a way to make time to ensure its survival (and updates, perhaps for other browsers) for a reasonable period. But right now I’m too busy with other things.