Why Is Melanctha Black

This article reads Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha” as a racial, if not racist, text—a text not solely about blacks but also about Jews in the sense that black characters work as a mask for the author’s concern about her own Jewishness. Nineteenth-century pseudoscientific medical discourses link blackness, Jewishness, and homosexuality—the trinity of “difference”—based on their biological connectedness and similarities. Examining the racism and misogyny particularly inherent in the theories of physiognomy, this article will demonstrate the ways in which Stein employs and manipulates representative prejudices of her time in the portrayal of female characters in Q.E.D., as well as the black Melanctha, through which she reveals and conceals her own racial and sexual identity as a Jewish-American lesbian woman. Arguing that the aesthetic experimentation of “Melanctha” grows out of the author’s concerns about her racial and sexual marginality, this article further offers a context in which the black Melanctha may be read as a character Stein created to treat her racial self-hatred, a problematic phenomenon exhibiting the productive power of fear

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Hatred · Identity (music · Jewish identity · Judaism · Lesbian · Literature · Physiognomy · Power (physics · Pseudoscience · Psychoanalysis · Racism · Sociology · Theology · American Jewish Fiction Analysis · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · Psychology

• Collecting Lives

  Open Access•Elizabeth Rodrigues•Collecting Lives•2022

  Añadir item

• “Melanctha Was Too Many for Him”

  Christopher Leslie, Christopher R Leslie•Interdisciplinary Literary Studies•2020

  Añadir item

• Homosexuality and American psychiatry

  Ronald Bayer•Homosexuality and American…•1987

  Añadir item

• Jewish self-hatred

  Sander L Gilman•Jewish self-hatred•1986

  Añadir item

• Prospero and Caliban

  Dominique O Mannoni, O Mannoni et al.•Prospero and Caliban•1964

  Añadir item

• Disorderly conduct

  Carroll Smith-Rosenberg•Disorderly conduct•1985

  Añadir item

• The dialect of modernism

  Michael North•The dialect of modernism•1994

  Añadir item

• Blackface, White Noise

  Michael Rogin•Blackface, White Noise•1996

  Añadir item

• Discipline and Punish

  Michel Foucault, Simon Prebble•Surveiller et punir•2019

  Añadir item

• Unlikely Collaboration

  Barbara Will•Unlikely collaboration•2011

  Añadir item

• Physiognomy; or the Corresponding Analogy Between the Conformation of the Features, and the Ruling Passions of the Mind

  Johann Caspar Lavater•Scientific and Medical Knowledge…•2023

  Añadir item

• Queer Theory and the Jewish Question

  Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz et al.•Nova Religio The Journal of…•2005

  Añadir item

• The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex

  Charles Darwin•Princeton University Press eBooks•1981

  Añadir item

• Women's Writing in Exile

  Margaret Higonnet, Margaret R Higonnet et al.•Tulsa Studies in Women s Literature•1992

  Añadir item

• Society Must Be Defended’

  Muriel Côte, Mark Coté•Canadian Journal of Communication•2004

  Añadir item

• Disorderly Conduct

  Nanette J Davis, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg•Contemporary Sociology A Journal…•1987

  Añadir item

• Favored Strangers

  Susan Albertine, Linda Wagner-Martin et al.•Journal of American History•1996

  Añadir item

• A Different Language

  Robert Merrill, Marianne Dekoven et al.•American Literature•1984

  Añadir item

• Favored Strangers

  Marianne Dekoven, Linda Wagner-Martin et al.•American Literature•1996

  Añadir item

• The Third Rose

  Bernard I Duffey, Bernard Duffey et al.•American Literature•1961

  Añadir item

• Painted Lace and Other Pieces

  Fred B Millett, Gertrude Stein•American Literature•1957

  Añadir item

• A Medical Record of the Mulatto Hysteric

  Yeonsik Jung•English Studies•2017

  Añadir item

• Criticism and the Color Line

  Georgina Dodge, Henry B Wonham•African American Review•1998

  Añadir item

• Coming Out of the Jewish Closet With Marcel Proust

  Jonathan Freedman•GLQ A Journal of Lesbian and Gay…•2001

  Añadir item

• Gertrude Stein's Brain Work

  Maria Farland•American Literature•2004

  Añadir item

• Manliness and Civilization

  Gail Bederman•Manliness and Civilization•1995

  Añadir item