August Wilson's Gem of The Ocean

  This photo from Syracuse Stage's 2007 production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean is very striking, but I thought I'd put up some words this evening to go with it.  Also, I'd like to find a few good pictures as well.

Gem of the Ocean is the first play in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle...or Century Cycle, his series of ten plays, one for each decade of the 20th century.  Here is the Kennedy Center's site on Wilson's cycle.  It's a good, quick overview with useful links.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showevent&event=titac

For more information on August Wilson, see this extensive obituary from the NY Times. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/03wilson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Gem of the Ocean is set in the 1900s, a period of time that was as close to the Civil War as we are now to the 1960s.  Two of the characters in the play, Eli and Solly Two Kings, had helped to bring slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.  During the play, Solly tells of his own escape from Alabama, and he is intending to return there to rescue his sister.  Another character, Aunt Ester had been a slave as well (although she is a mystical individual, being 287 years old and able to travel to "The City of Bones.")  In the picture above, Aunt Ester, together with Eli, Solly, and Black Mary (Aunt Ester's protege), is conducting Citizen Barlow, a young refugee from Alabama, to that city so that he can redeem himself despite a death that he was responsible for.  (At the beginning of the play, another young man has drowned himself rather than admit to a crime he did not commit.  Citizen not only committed the crime but also looked on while the young man drowned.)

The productions of Gem of the Ocean & Fences that my husband and I saw at the Kennedy Center were staged readings.  In other words, each of the actors carried with him or her a bound script; however, some barely relied on their scripts and even used them to substitute for various props.  The actor playing Black Mary, for example, held her script as if it were a frying pan.  In Fences, on the other hand, the actors playing Troy and Rose passed a script between them as though it were the baby that he had brought home from the hospital.  Despite the performances being staged readings, the actors usually wore appropriate costumes, and the set design evoked Pittsburgh without being terribly fussy.  In fact, the same blue/black background served for both plays that I saw; only the arrangement of tables and chairs differed.  This is very different from some productions that I have seen; there the set design has been very elaborate, almost museum-quality.  (See the pictures below from "Jitney" and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone.")

However, as Gem of the Ocean contains much magic realism, a museum-quality set might be inappropriate.  After all, Citizen Barlow travels to the City of Bones in a paper boat made from Aunt Ester's bill of sale, and the play's most prosaic character, Caesar, is clearly an interloper.

Here are some reviews of other performances of Gem of the Ocean.  Phylicia Rashad (the mother on The Cosby Show) has played Aunt Ester; she has also directed another production of this same play.

http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=1873

http://www.theaterscene.net/ts/articles.nsf/RP/0E50FE60ABD8EB8D8525709D003F8C5D

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06156/695731-325.stm

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/16/083723.php

DC's Arena Theater also staged Gem of the Ocean in 2006:

http://dctheatrescene.com/2007/02/06/gem-of-the-ocean/


Below is a picture from that production.  The actor playing Citizen Barlow looks quite young!


To finish with, here is another scene from the Huntington Theater's production.  In this scene, Aunt Ester is sending the peddler Rutherford Selig off to find Solly and Citizen before the police constable Caesar finds them.  Here Phylicia Rashad plays Aunt Ester.


There she is with Solly Two Kings.  Anthony Chisolm also played Solly's role at the Kennedy Center's reading. 

Midterm Study Guide for Spring 2008 -- part 1: Life Writing

This study guide will be the first of three or four that I will put up before our midterm on March 5 and 7.  To begin with, I will focus on the genre of life writing, a form of history that focuses on individuals' lives and a form of literature that provides evidence about individuals' real lives.  This genre is non-fiction, unlike plays, poems, short stories, or novels.  Documentary films that narrate a person's life story could be considered in this category, but life writing generally consists of autobiographies, memoirs, biographies, letters, and diaries.  Novels may take on the form of life writing, but this is simply a device to intrigue people or perhaps even to further mimesis (the imitation of reality).

Note that memoirs are about one part of one's life.  Autobiographies cover one's entire life (so far).

We have read two examples of life writing in class: Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  Both works are slave narratives, autobiographies written by former slaves to show the cruelty of slavery and argue for its abolition.  The slave narrative often encourages its readers to recognize what they have in common with the author.  Accordingly, Harriet Jacobs depicts her loving family who sheltered her as a young child, and Olaudah Equiano reminds his readers that he is a Christian like they are.

On the other hand, the contexts of Equiano's and Jacobs' autobiographies differ from each other.  Equiano's autobiography was published in 1789, during the year the Bastille fell and at the beginning of the anti-slavery movement.  Equiano may have been born in Africa (in present-day Nigeria), and his masters included Africans as well as Englishmen.  His autobiography was exceedingly popular and helped make him a wealthy man.  (I wonder if Benjamin Franklin read it.)  Jacobs' autobiography was published in 1861, the year that the Civil War began and two years before the Emancipation Proclamation.  The book was published anonymously, and in it, Jacobs referred to herself as Linda Brent.  Her authorship was not conclusively proven until the 1980s, and some sites continue to list Lydia Maria Child as her co-author.

Here is more information about the Interesting Narrative and Incidents respectively.

About The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano
-- Our anthology contains only part of this work.  The entire narrative is available online at  http://history.hanover.edu/texts/equiano/equiano_contents.html
-- The excerpt that our anthology includes begins with young Equiano being brought on board an English slave ship.  He is frightened, never having seen whites before, and expects that these strange spirits are going to kill him. 
-- In the next section, Equiano (who is 12) arrives in England and sees snow for the first time.  He believes that it is salt until he tastes it.  At this point, he is owned by Captain Pascal who will cheat him of his money and belongings.  Equiano befriends several Englishmen: a teenager named Dick who teaches him to read and a barber who teaches him religion and his trade.
-- Equiano is sold to another sea captain who brings him to the West Indies.  Eventually, he is bought by Robert King, a wealthy Quaker, but works for Captain Farmer, who helps him buy his freedom in an excerpt included in our anthology. 
-- Once free, Equiano works his way to England where he will become an antislavery activist and write his autobiography.

About Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
-- Harriet Jacobs begins her autobiography with a depiction of her happy, sheltered childhood.  Even though she and her family are slaves, she does not realize it until after her mother dies and she must work for her mistress.  We meet Jacobs' father, a strong-minded carpenter, and her grandmother, an industrious businesswoman.  Jacobs' grandmother will be the "friend of her youth."
-- Jacobs' first mistress appears to take into consideration that she is a child, letting her play.  However, she also borrows money that Jacobs' grandmother has saved in order to buy her family's freedom.  When the first mistress dies, she does not free her slaves as had been expected, but gives them to her family.  At this point, Jacobs is a growing girl, nearly a teenager.
-- After the death of her first mistress, Jacobs is given to the daughter of Doctor Flint, a "hoary-headed miscreant."  Jacobs' grandmother is sold at auction to an elderly relative of the late mistress who then frees her.  When Jacobs' father dies suddenly, she is not allowed to mourn but is forced to string together garlands for a party at the Flints' house.  Jacobs notes that whites criticized her father for his independence and strong-mindedness.
-- Doctor Flint attempts to seduce Jacobs, alternately threatening her and lavishing her with "kindness."  His wife is very much aware of this and is jealous.  Jacobs is repulsed by Doctor Flint and criticizes his wife for her jealousy and cruelty.  Nevertheless, the doctor tries to get Jacobs to sleep in his room when she works as his daughter's nurse.  Instead, Mrs. Flint demands that Jacobs sleep in her room.  She tries to find out how successful her husband's attempts at seduction have been.  (The doctor has raped other slave women before.  He sells them and their children when he loses interest in the women.  A slave who spoke about his partner's relationship with the doctor is savagely beaten.)
-- Doctor Flint builds a house for Jacobs who then informs him that she cannot live in this house because she is pregnant with another man's child.  This man is an unmarried white neighbor of the Flint's.  He appears to treat Jacobs kindly, and she is proud of his interest in her.  Later she is ashamed of this liaison. 
-- However, Jacobs must tell her grandmother that she is pregnant.  At first, the grandmother throws her out of her house.  Eventually she shows that she understands her granddaughter's situation but does not forgive her.
-- Several years later, after the birth of two children (Benny and Ellen), Jacobs decides to escape.  While making Doctor Flint think that she has fled to the North, she hides in a crawl space at her grandmother's house.  Benny and Ellen, in the meantime, are bought by their father who will eventually marry.
-- After seven years, Jacobs heads up North where she still must flee from first Doctor Flint and then his heirs.  When Emily Flint and her ne'er do well husband come to New York City to track Jacobs down, she must flee with her daughter to Massachusetts, and her friend Mrs. Bruce must buy her despite Jacobs' disapproval.  Only then are Jacobs and her children free.  At the end of Incidents, Jacobs and her children return to live with Mrs. Bruce.

Keep in mind that The Interesting Narrative and Incidents are only one type of life writing (autobiography/slave narrative).  Beginning with St. Augustine, other writers wrote spiritual autobiographies.  In the 17th century, Puritan Lucy Hutchinson wrote a biography of her husband who was executed by Charles II on his return to power.  In the 18th century, scandalous autobiographies were popular, but Benjamin Franklin wrote his autobiography in order to provide a model for readers.  Autobiographies and memoirs are also means of self-expression.  Some life writing was never intended to be published; in the 1660s Samuel Pepys kept his diary in code!  One wonders whether Anne Frank would have wanted her diary to be published if she had lived.

Harriet Jacobs (Revised)

   In 1929, Virginia Woolf maintained, "All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn...for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds" (202).  Although Woolf did not have Harriet Jacobs in mind and Jacobs, in turn, did not have Aphra Behn in mind, one of these women might well have been the former slave who wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in the 1850s.

Of course, Jacobs used a pseudonym when she first published her life story as slavery was still legal and the Fugitive Slave Act was still in force.  Additionally,  as this teacher's guide suggests, some of her readers might have wondered whether she was the only author of her story, and readers today ask themselves how much her story draws on the "novel of seduction."  After all, Jacobs had set out to convince her audience to fight against slavery, and to do that, she had to consider them and their prejudices about women.

http://college.hmco.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/jacobs.html

This site from PBS also addresses these issues more concisely:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2924.html

Historian Margaret Washington helps 21st century readers understand the concerns that Jacobs faced as a slave who could not marry in an era when sex outside of marriage stigmatized women:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4i3089.html


The University of Minnesota's VG/Voices from the Gaps has published a brief biography.  It touches on what Harriet Jacobs did after publishing her one and only book:
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/jacobsHarriet.php


Or you may find this timeline to be more useful. 

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JACOBS/hj-timeline.htm

Literary scholar Jean Fagin Yellin recently published a book-length biography of Jacobs.  (Prof. Yellin was the scholar who rediscovered Jacobs' autobiography and proved her authorship of it.)  Here is the NY Times review of the book-length biography:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E7DD1038F932A25754C0A9629C8B63

Here are some historical documents, including the runaway notice that was posted.  The second site links to a collection of Jacobs' correspondence.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1541.html

http://www.yale.edu/glc/harriet/docs.htm

Here is a summary of Incidents. Our anthology has not reprinted the entire work, as engaging and enthralling as it is!

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jacobs/summary.html

For a contemporary review of Incidents, go to this link:

http://www.yale.edu/glc/harriet/11.htm

Jacobs' brother John may have written his own life story as well.  In 2000, it was published with Incidents.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jjacobs/summary.html

http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/docsouth_workshop/digital_narratives/excerpts/plantation.html

Historians consider slave narratives and evidence from slavery as sources in this issue of History Now:

http://www.historynow.org/12_2004/index.html

See this site for links to slave narratives transcribed in the 1930s:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/resources/wpa.html

The New York Public Library's Schomburg Digital Collection contains a number of books by nineteenth-century African-American women.  Among them are Sojourner Truth's autobiography, Frances E.W. Harper's novel Iola Leroy, and several books of poetry. 

http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/digs-t/@Generic__CollectionView;hf=0

While a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas, Melanie Ulrich put together this web site on feminism and the anti-slavery movement:

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/RHE309/abolition/

Aphra Behn's Oroonoko

We may read selections from Aphra Behn's Oroonoko alongside the excerpts from Olaudah Equiano's and possibly Harriet Jacobs' slave narratives.  Oroonoko, however, was a novel (that may or may not have been autobiographical) written about 100 years before Equiano's time and over 150 years before Jacobs'.  Some scholars argue that Oroonoko even predates the novel.  Others argue that the protagonist's royal blood was much more important to the author than his race was and that she was using this story to comment on the then-current political situation in England.  (In November of the year that Oroonoko was published, James II fled from England and was deposed.  The new king was his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange.)

In this novel, Aphra Behn, a novelist/playwright/political pamphleteer *and* one of the first professional women writers in England, tells the story of her friendship with Oroonoko, an African of royal blood who is kidnapped into slavery and ultimately rebels against the Europeans.  Oroonoko is unsuccessful and is then executed.

The picture above is from Thomas Southerne's successful play that was based on Behn's novel.  In this play, Oroonoko's wife is depicted as a European.  Behn, however, depicted this woman as a dark-skinned African. 

For more background about Oroonoko, see these sites:

http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/aphra_behn_oroonoko.htm

http://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/oroonoko.html

http://www.english.bham.ac.uk/staff/tom/website/work99/bp3/Behn/essay/essay1.html

http://www.litkicks.com/Oroonoko/

As you can see, it is controversial whether or not Oroonoko is a novel--and how autobiographical it was. 

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/11/aphra_behn_still_a_radical_exa.html

For more information about Behn and her career, see these sites:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/behn_aphra.shtml

http://www.lit-arts.net/Behn/chron-ab.htm

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/behn/behnbio.htm

For links to her works (poems, plays, & novels), see this site at Luminarium:

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/behn/behnbib.htm

I've enjoyed reading her play The Rover!  Hellena in this play is a feisty girl.