Insidious Taint: Race and Consumption in the Nineteenth-Century American Domestic Novel

Abstract:“Insidious Taint” problematizes the role of the white “angelic consumptive” figure in novels that strive to influence readers’ views on slavery through emotional connections with characters. This character was modeled on the idealized “diathesis” or medical character sketch of a consumptive person, but that is always and only white. In fact, the white consumptive was a subject of racial medicine that claimed black bodies were not capable of contracting pulmonary tuberculosis. Therefore, novels like Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Southworth’s Retribution, and Mary Denison’s Old Hepsy attempt to undermine racist structures but in doing so, they depend upon artifacts of those same structures. Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig and Frances Harper’s Minnie’s Sacrifice, however, offer the most radical approach in casting black characters as consumptives. The divergent popular and critical successes of these examples reflect readers’ investment in maintaining rather than subverting radicalized identities.