, This reference is not so surprising in a society where " [a]nxiety over the establishment of boundaries played a large role in nineteenth century America's conceptions and formulations of national identity Reading the (In)visible Race: African-American Subject Representation and Formation in American Literature, 2010.
, The proverbial glass house, both transparent and fragile, is an apt symbol for anxiety about the permeability of man's propriety privacy, an anxiety triggered by the mere presence of the other within the house
, For instance, it exposes aspects of Legree, the evil white planter, that are beyond the scope of the narratable. Cassy, Legree's concubine, asserts that " I could make any one's hair rise, and their teeth chatter, if I should only tell what I've seen and been knowing " . She says to Tom and Emmeline, " you wouldn't sleep much, if I should tell you things I've seen " . As Shamir notes, Acts of eavesdropping certainly contribute to what Shamir would call the strategy of exposure tellingly, it is the villain Legree whom Stowe depicts as harboring personality aspects that are intensely private, beyond the scope of the narration
, Obviously, it reveals what is hidden in plain sight, namely the haunting presence of slavery and the many skeletons living in the closets of Southern plantations and of evil masters like Legree. (Legree is literally haunted by the ghost of his dead mother and of a slave he whipped to death)
, If Stowe's novel forces white readers to witness the haunting (and often invisible) presence of slavery, it also forces black humanity (and feelings) to be witnessed
, Though the eavesdropping device is no doubt a fictional commonplace, it takes on an additional resonance when the eavesdropper is a domestic slave (John C Havard 94) Slavery and the Emergence of the African-American Novel, The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature, pp.86-100
, The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe
, In this instance, Stowe links Eliza's resistance as a slave and as a mother to her resistance as an eavesdropper, pp.203-218
, Eliza does not trust her mistress' explanation. Eliza, Stowe suggests, cannot be resigned to be a docile subject under panopticon control
, this proximity [also] stands in tension with the perception that [slave holders] drew strict social boundaries between themselves and their chattel
, described in Gone with the Wind as " exceedingly dark, " (179) dans What Virtue There Is in Fire: Cultural Memory and the Lynching of Sam Hose
, Eavesdropping as Rhetorical tactic: History, Whiteness, and Rhetoric, JAC, vol.201, pp.87-119, 2000.
, Reading the (In)visible Race
, American Subject Representation and Formation in American Literature, 2010.
, Works Cited
, Uncle Tom's Cabin, p.1852