경계 넘어서기의 한계: 차일드와 쿠퍼의 소설에 나타나는 이종혼의 가족형성과 혼종성 신화 (The Limit of Crossing the Boundary: Family-formation by Miscegenation and the Myth of Hybridity in the Novels of Child and Cooper)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 19세기영어권문학회
· 수록지 정보 : 19세기 영어권 문학 / 17권 / 2호 / 109 ~ 133페이지
· 저자명 : 정진만

초록

This essay investigates the politics of cultural and territorial expansionism in the representations of miscegenation and cross-cultural hybridity, in Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok (1824) and James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers (1823). In Child's Hobomok, in the early colonial period Mary's seemingly radical choice of intermarriage with Hobomok, a native in Massachusetts, cannot transcend safely the taboo of crossing the racial/ethnic boundary prevalent in Mary's and/or Child's age. In terms of mutual acculturation between Hobomok and Mary, the author biasedly foregrounds that Hobomok is Europeanized rather than the other way around, which means crossing the boundary does not make white Americans' identity unstable at all. Additionally, Child portrays Hobomok's later renunciation of his marital status as an inevitable course prepared for a doomed Indian. Little Hobomok, a hybrid progeny symbolizing the (imaginary) reconciliation between the two racial parties, eventually loses his Indian heritage. In The Pioneers, similarly, unifying myth in the formative period of the United States is provided not only in the symbolic miscegenation between Elizabeth Temple (a representative of white pioneers in newly-built New York) and Oliver Edwards (a symbolic descendant of the vanishing Delawares) but also in the hybridization of several figures like Natty Bumppo, Oliver, and Indian John Mohigan. However, it turns out to be a rhetorical gesture imaginatively solving some historical tension from the whites' encroachments of Indians' lands. As in the case of Hobomok, crossing the boundary in The Pioneers does not actually endanger white Americans' identity in terms of blood and culture, which testifies the author's valorizing of asymmetrical and hegemonical relationship between the two racial groups. More than that, Cooper's portrayals of symbolic intermarriage between Elizabeth and Oliver elaborately pave way for rationalizing white Americans' entitlement of Indians' land. Besides, this essay identifies that Indianized Natty's romantic impulse to escape from the restrains of the Eastern civilized world is weirdly converted into a pathfinder's desire for westward expansion. Also, this essay examines how Natty's ostensibly sympathizing attitude toward a degenerated Indian John is involved with expansionist rhetoric often employed by a lot of Jacksonian politicians who campaigned for Indian removal into the West. This study would help us to understand that Child and Cooper conceal and reveal simultaneously expansionist rhetoric in diverse ways, in conformity with their contemporary (mis)belief of Manifest Destiny, in spite of (or more precisely because of) their construction of unifying “myth” between white Americans and Native Americans.

영어초록

This essay investigates the politics of cultural and territorial expansionism in the representations of miscegenation and cross-cultural hybridity, in Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok (1824) and James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers (1823). In Child's Hobomok, in the early colonial period Mary's seemingly radical choice of intermarriage with Hobomok, a native in Massachusetts, cannot transcend safely the taboo of crossing the racial/ethnic boundary prevalent in Mary's and/or Child's age. In terms of mutual acculturation between Hobomok and Mary, the author biasedly foregrounds that Hobomok is Europeanized rather than the other way around, which means crossing the boundary does not make white Americans' identity unstable at all. Additionally, Child portrays Hobomok's later renunciation of his marital status as an inevitable course prepared for a doomed Indian. Little Hobomok, a hybrid progeny symbolizing the (imaginary) reconciliation between the two racial parties, eventually loses his Indian heritage. In The Pioneers, similarly, unifying myth in the formative period of the United States is provided not only in the symbolic miscegenation between Elizabeth Temple (a representative of white pioneers in newly-built New York) and Oliver Edwards (a symbolic descendant of the vanishing Delawares) but also in the hybridization of several figures like Natty Bumppo, Oliver, and Indian John Mohigan. However, it turns out to be a rhetorical gesture imaginatively solving some historical tension from the whites' encroachments of Indians' lands. As in the case of Hobomok, crossing the boundary in The Pioneers does not actually endanger white Americans' identity in terms of blood and culture, which testifies the author's valorizing of asymmetrical and hegemonical relationship between the two racial groups. More than that, Cooper's portrayals of symbolic intermarriage between Elizabeth and Oliver elaborately pave way for rationalizing white Americans' entitlement of Indians' land. Besides, this essay identifies that Indianized Natty's romantic impulse to escape from the restrains of the Eastern civilized world is weirdly converted into a pathfinder's desire for westward expansion. Also, this essay examines how Natty's ostensibly sympathizing attitude toward a degenerated Indian John is involved with expansionist rhetoric often employed by a lot of Jacksonian politicians who campaigned for Indian removal into the West. This study would help us to understand that Child and Cooper conceal and reveal simultaneously expansionist rhetoric in diverse ways, in conformity with their contemporary (mis)belief of Manifest Destiny, in spite of (or more precisely because of) their construction of unifying “myth” between white Americans and Native Americans.

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