The Gendered Narrator: The Voice of the God/Mother in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred

Abstract

Stowe's second slave novel, received in the shadow of Uncle Tom's Cabin, has met with rather mixed reviews since its publication. The novel is narrated in a unique way, reflecting Stowe's idea of women's role in society. I call this role, and this narrator, the God/mother. She is creative and nurturing, authoritative and motherly, didactic and intrusive. The God/mother emerges as she recreates herself in her heroines, narrates in the halting and disrupted rhythm of domestic life, and asks the reader to be an obedient child that will take the moral to heart. How readers respond to a text is based on expectations created by social issues, the genre, and the author. Dred's initial reception is evidence that its earliest readers were not entirely predisposed to accept the role of the obedient child.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA267544

Entities

People

  • Susan C. Ross

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Boundaries
  • Christianity
  • Churches
  • Contrast
  • Education
  • Families (Human)
  • Fish
  • New England
  • New York
  • Personality
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Religion
  • Societies
  • Standards
  • Students
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Art

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.