Some background on Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin (1897-1988) can be found here. You can also listen to an oral history interview with her here. As you read the first part of this autobiography (through page 47), think about how Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin looks back on the world in which her father and grandfather lived. Does she view it with nostalgia? With skepticism? With outright critique? What does she tell us about life on the plantation?
Why does this first part of the autobiography not read as autobiography (that is, about the self) but as biography? How do class and gender figure into her autobiography?
Finally, comment on what you notice about the style, voice, and sense of self found in this early section of The Making of a Southerner.
Of Bondage to Slavery is a fitting title for Book One. Du Pre Lumpkin speaks of her grandparents being "steeped in an experience handed down from generations of slaveholders." The whites were bonded to being slaveholders, generation upon generation. Ways of life are passed on, whether good or bad, and often changes in a way of living are difficult for individuals to see or change. Blind acceptance is more often the accepted path (that is the way it has always been is often stated.) There seems to be an absence at this point in the text of outright critique, at least directly. There are more subtle indications that she is critiquing here, such as the linking of the slaves to real estate, or the "museum of slavery" that had "only pleasant reminders." The critiques are there. Du Pre Lumpkin had already turned away from the institution of slavery when she wrote this autobiography. It seems essential to treat her earlier years as a biography to accurately portray how slavery was a part of multiple generations of her family, but it is as if she had already stepped back and removed herself from this way of life.
ReplyDeleteDu Pre Lumpkin begins _The Making of a Southerner_ with an eye toward two things: heritage and place. Indeed, she organizes concerns of gender, class and identity within these two major categories. For instance, she indicates that a young southern boy—in this case, her father—was conditioned from a young age to become both a “gentleman” and the head of a plantation. She writes, “In Father’s rearing, being gentleman was counterpart to being master” (37). These two titles are, in certain ways, also indicators of class and (gender) identity. They are concepts foundationally entangled with notions of heritage (one can rarely, if ever, be “gentleman” or “master” without inheriting the role from one’s forebears) and of place—Du Pre Lumpkin is careful to indicate that anyone with enough money could own slaves, but only those raised into a southern plantation family could do it well: “[a Northerner’s] difficulty would be his inexperience”(14). By thus prefacing the narrative’s forthcoming discussion of race/class/gender with a discussion of place and heritage—she engages with this history even before broaching the topic of self, an odd move in an autobiography, to be sure—it seems likely that Du Pre Lumpkin is also building a foundation for her discussion of southern identity.
ReplyDeleteLumpkin is, without a doubt, working to establish the accepted notion of being Southern. She works to do this before even establishing her own identity. This seems strange for an autobiography, but oddly fits in with the slave narratives we have previously discussed. Lumpkin wants to shake up the pre-concieved ideas of "Southern-ness" and to do so, she must first explain what it is that she wishes to change. Thus, the background in the beginning of the work serves not only to define the over-represented South of which Lumpkin wants no part, but also to build an image in the reader of her own past. It is this insight into her very plantation-oriented ancestry that allows a certain credibility to Lumpkin's rejection of the "Old South." If someone wished to condemn the South but had never stepped below the Mason Dixon, the critique would lose much of its weight, whether or not the topic was valid. Lumpkin came from the "ideal" South but judged it to be a culture with intrinsic flaws. She uses the first of the work to highlight these flaws in a seemingly, but not really, neutral tone. By explaining the true nature of the "ideal" South, Lumpkin illustrates the the idea that there were many cultures and beliefs within the South, the injustice of the plantocratic culture, and the reasons she rejected it.
ReplyDelete(Aaron Nugent)
ReplyDeleteLumpkin's biography is from the other side of the fence, the white world. This is very different from what we've read so far, and it shows the other perspective, a glimpse into the master's world that the other writers were under the yoke of.
Something interesting about Lumpkin's writing stlye is her use of legal language. It seems like, at least when she describes her grandfather and her father's world, that lived in a legal cushion, or some kind of legal bubble that protected them and justified their actions. The bio even starts out in one of the most legal events, the dividing of a family estate through "the simple method of drwaing numbers" (4).
This sort of cold legal language is present in her imagining of of the "calm, business-like" slave markets. The man calmly describes the slaves and tries to persuade potential buyers.
She even talks of her grandparents and the way they used the holy scriptures, like a sort of legal bubble, to justify slavery and "cite divine sanction for this instituion which they could in no wise do without" (18).
The voice found in this first section of “The Making of a Southerner” is distant and impersonal. Although the author is giving a detailed account of her father’s early life, I do not find much endearing about any of the characters, and they are not much developed. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin gives a very detailed account according to her father’s stories, and she substantiates much of what she says with external resources. She includes details from the court order that was issued during the dividing of her great-grandmother’s estate. She shares the verbiage from a deed of sale that helps us see how matter-of-fact the sale of slaves was, as they are lumped in with horses and furniture. There are examples of newspaper ads for “Negroes for Sale” such as those her grandfather would have researched if in need of adding to his force of human capital. Even in regards to the the planting seasons we are given advice from the agricultural journals of the day. Each of these seems an attempt by Du Pre Lumpkin to gain credibility and possibly to display the pervasiveness of her family’s ideals through the rest of the South.
ReplyDeleteI am led to wonder how many of the paradigms set up in this first section will be foiled as the story continues. Will she unfold these things one by one and reveal them for what they truly are? I am most interested in “Uncle” Jerry’s preaching and if it will be uncovered later that he must have been able to read. It seems terribly ironic that they would give the man tremendous credit for being able to memorize a passage read to him, but never entertain the notion that he might have somehow learned to read. This seems to have the makings of an excellent example of the white slaveholders inability to acknowledge anything that did not fit with their predetermined view of the world. A view that Du Pre Lumpkin must overcome and refute.
By writing about her grandfather’s and father’s generation, Lumpkin introduces us Southern tradition during the slavery. She writes how her grandfather obtained his land, how he treated his land and slaves, what he thought of slavery based on his religion, and family tradition, all of which were common in typical Southern slave owners during that time. All these elements are written with details; for example, the prices of properties, food and activities at family reunions. Lumpkin also shows how this Southern tradition was naturally succeeded from a generation to another by writing about her father’s childhood. From a very young age, her father knows her mammy is “black and he [is] the young master” (43). Even though he is afraid of black slave Jerry, he knows that” he would have to obey when the young master spoke” (43).
ReplyDeleteLumpkin does not write Book One from her point of view but from theirs. This is seen in the last paragraph of Book One, where she writes this Southern tradition was “snatched away” (44) from her generation. Although she is going to criticize her culture in the following chapters, here, she represents the negative opinion of the majority of her community toward the emancipation.
I agree that the voice in the beginning of southern self if distant and impersonal. It reads as more of a list of facts rather than a story. But I think the reason she does this is to make it clear to the reader that this was simply just the way life was from the point of view of a white southerner. She is not at this point making any personal opinions a part of the text. She is simply trying to show facts of life at this time. She seems to be showing who her family was and how slavery was a big part of their lives but not saying they are bad people. They were just a product of all they had ever known. But, there are several spots when irony can be detected in this part as we pointed out in class and this is foreshadowing what she later comes to show in the book. But, as she moves to the next section she continues to give many facts about the way things played out after the war but she is now moving in a more personal direction which might eventually allow the reader to not only be knowledgeable about the full spectrum of slavery at this time but also realize all that Lumpkin came into realizing and all that she intended to come from writing this book.
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