The Biggest Little Marriage on Record”

Union and Disunion in Tom Thumb’s America

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9448686
AutoresJean Franzino (autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen67
Número1
Páginas189-217
Fecha de publicación2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/aq.2015.0011
OpenAlexW1989513528
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias 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