The Addressed and the Redressed
Helen Hunt Jackson's Protest Essay and the US Protest Novel Tradition
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8895093 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Brian Norman (0000-0002-3677-0109, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 111-134 |
| Publication date | 2007-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras.37.1.111 |
| OpenAlex | W4248410531 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 19 |
If the American protest essay is available to writers who engage in political advocacy, what is its relationship to the much more famous protest novel tradition? Writings in the protest mode, even those by established novelists, are often considered non-literary on the grounds that they are too polemical, ephemeral, or earnestly partisan. This article examines the case of Helen Hunt Jackson, whose protest novel Ramona (1884) was a wild commercial success and spawned a myth of New California that persists to the present day. But the novel has its origins in A Century of Dishonor (1881), a dense protest essay published three years prior, in which Jackson seeks justice in a direct appeal to the US Congress on behalf of American Indians. Jackson's overlooked essay version of Ramona provides an instructive case study of how protest essays may better perform the political work often attempted—but not always achieved—in the protest novel. Whereas literary studies often dismisses protest essays as non-literary, merely political, or journalistic, or in some way positions them as subsidiary, my project places such work at the centre of a literary tradition deeply concerned with the fulfilment of the nation's promises to be inclusive
Appeal · Art · Economic Justice · Literary criticism · Literature · Media studies · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American History and Culture · American Literature and Humor Studies · Classics · History · Law · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
Democracy and the Foreigner
Mixed-Bloods, Mestizas, and Pintos
Postcolonial American Studies
Slavery and the Literary Imagination
Imagined communities
Historical Amnesia and the Vanishing Mestiza
Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy
Ramona Memories
White Slaves" and the "Arrogant Mestiza
The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879-1885
Crossroads of Cultures
Ramona and Postnationalist American Studies
Ramona's Baskets
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,07 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2011 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |