The Biggest Little Marriage on Record”

Union and Disunion in Tom Thumb’s America

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9448686
AutoresJean Franzino (autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Volume67
Fascículo1
Páginas189-217
Data de publicação2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490
EditoraProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/aq.2015.0011
OpenAlexW1989513528
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas14

This article examines the extensive national newspaper coverage of the “Tom Thumb wedding,” the 1863 nuptials of Lavinia Warren and Charles Stratton, two little people performers from P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. The article argues that in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation, the Northern mass media presented the Strattons as idealized representations of whiteness, making their wedding a figure for the purity and unity of white America. At the same time, however, the newspaper coverage of the Strattons upended the traditional assumption that disability bars one from citizenship. The “Tom Thumb wedding” thus provides a unique vantage point from which to reconsider the freak show’s role in the historical production of race, as well as the dynamic relationship between disability, racial identity, and national belonging

Aesthetics · Art · Citizenship · Emancipation · Identity (music · Independence (probability theory · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Military history and social perspectives