Response to Les Harrison’s Fluid Text Post

My comment on Les Harrison’s post, Fluid Text as Textual Deformation, is too long, so I decided to put my comment here. I would quibble with your claim that “digital replication of the print book is not properly the province of the digital humanities scholar.” And I wrote a blog post about this during the Miami of Ohio 9s seminar. But perhaps I can say more with respect to how this concern has functioned in my own scholarship.

Digital humanities scholars may choose not to be interested in digital reproduction, but to suggest that it is not their “proper province” is bewildering. Some students of the history of the book find analytical bibliography not properly in their field, but, as Tanselle has suggested, they fail to consider some primary evidence. I disagree with Tanselle’s assertion that books are “primary” and publisher records are “secondary,” because the distinction depends on what type of study one undertakes. Dismissing books as physical objects and dismissing the intellectual rigor necessary to reproduce them as someone else’s field (or mere workmanship) is to narrow the scope of digital humanities.

For my dissertation, I worked with a physical object. A collector assembled an edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from the National Era numbers (weekly issues were numbered, and the term “numbers” avoids confusion with the bibliographical use of “issue” for another purpose), and he or she decided that every page of each newspaper number was part of this privately constructed book, and maybe even part of the work defined as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, though that principal would play havoc with a traditional notion of a literary work (as perhaps it should). He or she also decided that three of the numbers (no. 242, no. 252, no. 259) were part of Uncle Tom’s Cabin even though these individual newspaper numbers did not include the text of Stowe’s work. I decided to respect that choice, as well as to respect the attentions suggested by binding the volume within blue boards (making a book out of it) and inserting endpapers. So I photographed the cover, the endpaper, and every page of each number of the newspaper, including those numbers that lacked an installment of Stowe’s novel

The choice to navigate between four options, “Quasi-Facsimile Text (with Line Breaks),” “Normalized Text (Prose Re-Set),” “Zoomable Image,” and “Plain JPEG (100 dpi),” is informationally dense. But it is not meaningless, and it’s a line that highlights conscious decisions and failures both of the meaningful and incidental variety. A conscious decision is to transcribe Uncle Tom’s Cabin (an editorially constructed version of the work that happens to coincide closely [except in some important spots] with the linguistic text of the two-volume Jewett book version) while providing images of each newspaper installment. Thus, each navigation option recognizes different ways of conceiving of the work: as a faithful documentary reproduction of Stowe’s text with editorial notes on copy (quasi-facsimile), as a traditional transcription with very slight emendation and less emphasis on accidents like line-end hyphenation and no notes (normalized), as a low-resolution page image that preserves much about the “book” as documentary object (plain JPEG), and as a high-resolution version of the same. In the last, image, like text, is sliced, diced, and re-constituted in parts according to user navigation. Thus, I offer three versions of reproductions that I consider respectful, according to different standards of scholarly interest. I offer a more rigorous and theoretically grounded version of this explanation in chapter I. When I invited Peter Shillingsburg to look at my edition, he objected to my decision to not just open the edition with the image, by which he meant the first page of the first newspaper issue. I chose for the opening page to foreground the transcription, because I want readers to know that that access to the text has been mediated. But that’s a conscious decision based on the belief that images, too, are mediated. One of the edition’s failures will be immediately apparent to any reader with Internet Explorer who uses your link to access my site. They are presented with nothing but menu options. Readers who use Firefox will also see a text. But that’s why I prefer readers to see the front page and its software requirements on this page: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~wnr4c/index.htm

My failure is a matter of digital workmanship, which makes demands on users because of items they are unlikely to care about. I insisted that ligatures and digraphs be reproducible. IE (at time I was doing the edition) would fail or substitute. Firefox on PC reproduced the ligatures and digraphs beautifully. The use of divs to create a divided frame works beautifully in FireFox but results in no text in IE. A better manner of proceeding would be to warn IE users, but neither I nor my technology guru knew how to fix it in time to finish dissertation.

Maybe I’m just touchy because my technology implementation includes stumbles while I claim also to be a digital scholar. The part that I’m doing more conscientiously, textual scholarship, is lost in interface concerns. My quibbles and explanations aside, it is an honor for my edition to be compared and contrasted in your blog post to John Bryant’s monumental project. I hope to create a site that will deserve that comparison in the next few years.

My site is free, and maybe another truth holds. Some of what you get is what you pay for.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Revising Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Topsy in the Jewett Paperback

I am comparing multiple copies of five printings of Uncle Tom’s Cabin using collation and transcribing individual copies of the following texts: newspaper, manuscript fragments, two-volume Jewett edition, one-volume paperback Jewett “Edition for the Million” (1852/1853) the Jewett Illustrated Edition (1853), and the Houghton Osgood New Edition (1879). In the past few months I have transcribed four selected chapters from all three Jewett editions, and I have found a significant alteration to the Topsy character in the one-volume “Edition for the Million.”

I did not anticipate that Stowe had revised for this cheap edition–I did not anticipate that she had not either–but I am not aware that another scholar has noticed Stowe’s revision of the Edition for the Million. Because the edition was printed in double columns, in small type, without illustrations, and sold cheap (37 1/2 cents), it appealed to readers from a lower social class than would the two-volume leather-bound first book edition or the lavishly illustrated one-volume edition. The passage discussed below offers nearly indisputable proof that Stowe revised her work for the paperback edition, but whether she revised for considerations of audience, in the moment because she was an inveterate reviser of proof, or in response to certain criticism, I don’t know. I’ve queried a number of Stowe scholars, and they are not aware that the revision of this passage has been previously noted.

Topsy in chapter XX informs the other children that they are sinners but celebrates her special achievement: “I ’s the wickedest critter in the world…” In the paperback edition, this paragraph, which concludes “plumed herself on the distinction” is followed by a passage that, as far as I can presently determine, is unique to this edition.

  “But I ’s boun’ to go to heaven, for all that,
though,” she said, one day, after an exposé of this
kind.
  “Why, how ’s that, Tops?” said her master,
who had been listening, quite amused.
  “Why, Miss Feely ’s boun’ to go, any way; so
they ’ll have me thar. Laws! Miss Feely ’s so
curous they won’t none of ‘em know how to wait
on her.”
(pg. 96)

The passage does not appear on page 50 of the first Jewett edition (on Early American Fiction site).

Nor does it appear in the National Era version (see pg. 178, column A (top) in my dissertation edition).

Although I qualify my statement with “as far as I know,” I have checked—in addition to the National Era newspaper the two-volume first book edition—the illustrated edition and the Houghton Osgood New Edition. Not one of those editions has this passage, so I surmise for now that it is unique to the paperback Edition for the Million. (Note: I need to get hold of Opperman’s dissertation to check British editions). As for why no one has noticed, the paperback editions are relatively rare and a bit frustrating to locate given the variety of cataloging methods (post on identified copies coming soon). The passage is followed with Miss Ophelia’s effort to teach Topsy the catechism, which directly follows Topsy’s pluming of herself in the other versions. This alteration, to me, is stunning.

Since finding the alteration during the first week in November, I’ve been attempting to think about what it means in context. One thing it means is that in this edition Topsy first imagines a route to heaven through her service to Miss Ophelia. Topsy’s doctrine for salvation has taken its cue from Miss Ophelia’s emphasis on order and neatness, and Topsy assumes that her mistress’s obsessions must represent a path to heaven. Topsy reasons that Miss Ophelia’s eternal happiness must depends on service that respects the woman’s peculiarities, and Topsy believes confidently that only she can provide the requisite level of service. Indispensable service to a heaven-bound mistress is thus Topsy’s first plan for heaven. This plan is Topsy’s own invention, and in the paperback version it precedes Little Eva’s intercession. This step (in this paperback version only) precedes Topsy’s move toward Christian redemption on the basis of Eva’s unconditional love.

In this version of the text, Topsy is a reasoning being, whose interpretation of Christian doctrine is subversive and a biting critique of Miss Ophelia’s faults. The passage offers an alternate perspective on Topsy’s point of view, and her adoption of a Christian doctrine–that even the mass readers would imagine is theologically faulty–marks the failure of Miss Ophelia’s effort to teach Topsy the way that she should go.

This post is an effort to interpret the significance of what I believe is an authorially revised version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the paperback edition. I welcome feedback from anyone who would reject, question, or enrich my perspective on this alteration. Readers are also advised to consider Les Harrison’s comment below, which addresses Stowe’s response to Lyman Beecher’s religious doctrine.

UPDATE: After posting this, I thought in my mind that this surely does not end the story. So I decided to do a little follow-up. A version of the passage appears in Stowe’s dramatic adaptation for Mary Webb, The Christian Slave. Jake tells Topsy she’s bound to go to torment. Topsy insists that she’s bound to heaven, but Amanda joins in and seconds Jake’s assertion. Topsy’s responds:

Shall too! Miss Feely ’s bound to go thar, and they ‘ll have to let me come too; cors she ’s so curus they won’t nobody else know how to wait on her dar!

See Christian Slave, Act II, Scene VIII, on Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture at
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/xianslav/utplhbsaII8t.html

Obama’s Election: In Search of Uncle Tom

I celebrate the election of Barack Obama, but I temper my celebration. I am teaching a course that considers America’s multi-ethnic society through the prism of our nation’s long history of race. In a Wednesday blog post (not in public view), one of my students seemed thrilled to assert that with the election the United States has stepped into a post-racial society. In my response to the student’s blog post, I offered the following caution:

[C]ould Obama be “symbolic” of racial progress while the reality of racial difference remains much the same that it was on Monday?

I was thinking of a way that we might be able to tell. I am concerned, within the next four or five months, that a prominent magazine or newspaper will run a feature whose hook is that it explores the the opinions of the permanent White House civil servant staff on the novelty of a black president and first lady? Why would this be important, you ask. The unstated but important reason–I would answer–is that the permanent White House staff is predominantly African American.

In my lifetime, I have never noticed such a story–it has never been newsworthy what the permanent civil servant staff thought of the president or first lady–because one characteristic of the civil servant staff is that it never, ever airs White House dirty laundry. Historians study that part of history decades later.

While I fully believe that the lives of electricians and plumbers and farm workers and janitorial staff and nurses and chambermaids is a vital part of a shared human experience and I truly believe that having the voices of such people in the public eye is a useful service, the speed with which the Washington Post jumped on the story is amazing.

See Wil Hagood, “A Butler Well Served by this Election.”

Score one for a professor’s gift of prophecy. The story has considerable pathos. While I can only extend my sympathy in the abstract–because I know of the man and his wife only in the outline offered by the story–I can note that my outrage at the timing of the story is undiminished. Editors and a reporter at the Washington Post are unaware of their own impulse to understand the 2008 presidential election from the perspective of Uncle Tomism. That is, one of the paper’s FIRST ways to understand Barack Obama’s election is to get the impressions of African American servants at the White House.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe within three days of the last five presidential election the reactions of the butlers and chambermaids and secretaries at the White House were thought newsworthy. Prove me wrong by searching Lexis-Nexis or another such database. I so despair that I can’t even bring myself to bother. Maybe this is public history in the making, the beginning of a public airing of White House dirty laundry from the inside. But from my perspective this story reeks of Uncle Tomism in its most egregious and enduring forms, the celebration of the loyal Black man, who willing sacrifices himself for the sake of his Mas’r.

My concern is that this first impulse of the mainstream media means that a society which considers itself post-racial will replay its forgotten racial myths with unconscious abandon. If those who are unaware of the past are doomed to repeat it, welcome to another long nightmare of minstrelsy. Now that we plan to view the presidency from the inside, what’s next? Domesticity under the microscope. How long before the New York Times reports from an anonymous White House source that Michelle Obama prefers an unreasonable thread count on sheets?

I do not diminish the symbolism of Obama’s election. It is an extraordinary achievement. But it may be made possible precisely because we have forgotten how racial myths have shaped the United States’s conception of its meaning. Perhaps the election will be salutary to understanding America’s history of race relations in another way. After such stereotypes are exposed to the light, educators and journalists will have a responsibility to inform students and the public why their idea of a post-racial society is a pernicious myth. That is, if they can recognize those stereotypes when they appear.