Abolitionism, Reform, and Philhellenic Rhetoric

This chapter discusses the masterpiece of the American sculptor Hiram Powers, The Greek Slave, which addresses the way popular support for the Greeks changed political rhetoric in America, specifically in antislavery and women's rights circles. Even though Americans characterized Ottoman slavery as a mark of despotism, before 1821 few Americans connected Ottoman slavery with American slavery. Slavery inflicted on Americans taken captive by North African states, which were loosely connected with the Ottoman Empire, dominated anti-Ottoman discussion throughout the Barbary Wars and was an important way the American public identified the Turks as tyrannical and despotic. By the close of the Greek Revolution, abolitionist authors, however, began to read philhellenic rhetoric against the grain, calling upon antebellum American audiences to do the same. Many Americans came to realize the contradiction in supporting reform on the other side of the world while similar problems existed at home, particularly with regard to slavery and women's rights.

Washington’s Napkin

This chapter traces the origins of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun to his abandoned claimant novel (‘The Ancestral Footstep’), and argues that the novel transfers the inheritance theme to its depiction of American artists in Rome. It suggests an undercurrent of competition in Hawthorne’s depiction of the sculptors, and conflicted feelings about Hiram Powers and William Wetmore Story, particularly their self-chosen exile: conflict expressed in terms of the Yankee type. In Rome, the transatlantic difference that is so often signalled in clothes settles on nudity in statuary, a particular anxiety for Hawthorne. Transatlantic relationships also become triangular, British and American writers bonding in Rome; William Wetmore Story aspires to address American slavery by portraying African figures in classical terms.

(Un)Dress in Southworth & Hawes’ Daguerreotype Portraits: Clytie, Proserpine, and Antebellum Boston Women

Young America: The Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes (2005) is a monumental exhibition catalogue showcasing the work of Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Together the partners established a renowned daguerreotype studio in mid-nineteenth-century Boston that catered to the city’s bourgeoisie. This paper seeks to unravel the mystery of dozens of daguerreotypes found in Young America, in which elite Boston women appear to be nearly nude. The unidentified women stand in stark contrast to the carefully concealed bodies of Southworth & Hawes’ other female subjects. Why would they expose themselves in such a manner before the camera’s lens? This paper attributes the women’s state of (un)dress to their deliberate emulation of two sculptures in the classical tradition: Clytie, a marble bust dating to antiquity, and Proserpine, a mid-nineteenth-century marble bust by American neoclassical sculptor Hiram Powers. This argument first reveals how a general “classical statue” aesthetic prevailed for women’s deportment in antebellum America, then demonstrates that the busts of Clytie and Proserpine had special significance as icons of white, elite female beauty in the period. Next, this paper makes the case that Southworth & Hawes devised a special style of photography deriving from their own daguerreotypes of the two statues, in which the women’s off-shoulder drapery was deliberately obscured allowing their female clientele to pose in the guise of these famous statues. The paper concludes by arguing that the women shown in these images could pose in this style without contravening societal norms, as these mythological figures were construed by women and men in the period to reflect the central precepts of the mid-nineteenth-century “Cult of True Womanhood.” Moreover, the busts offered sartorial models that reinforced standards of female dress as they related to class and privilege. By baring their flawless, white skin, however, the women positioned themselves at the crux of contentious beliefs about race in a deeply divided nation prior to the American Civil War.