Review of Harry Brown in The Horrid Alternative: Miscegenation and Madness in the Frontier Romance

Harry Brown in "The Horrid Alternative: Miscegenation and Madness in the Frontier Romance" opens by quoting Thomas Jefferson's views of inter-ethnic marriage. Jefferson wanted America to merge and with that, for the Puritan populace to marry the indigenous community. Writers of the time worked on building a marriage between the two races but did so with a patriarchal society breathing down their necks. Regardless of popularity, miscegenated women became characters in new American novels. Brown focuses on the critiques of such early works and the separation between the critics and the interest in the general public. Throughout "The Horrid Alternative" Brown discusses the madness that was written into the early American novels in defense of miscegenation. Brown argues that the critics and the public had various opinions and that even though most of the early American novels wrote safely around miscegenation, the presence of the foreigner was important and necessary.

Brown opens his discussion of miscegenation with the history of race. In the early American societies the history of the race was ambiguous, the main question was whether or not race was deprived from multiple forms or one single form. Many opinions went around about whether or not the popular race had been formed of one race or of a combination of races, but ultimately the idea of a multi-race origin was thought of as animalistic. Therefore, miscegenation was inhuman and seen as the lowest of evils. In literature, the same topic was seen as a form of insanity. Child's Hobomok and Sedgwick's Hope Leslie conclude that the main character suffers from temporary insanity and that is why she has agreed to unify with another race. Brown goes on to state that the women who were stained with the Indian sexuality were portrayed as insane, mad, and lethargic. All the vitality these characters possessed before the union were lost. Instead they suffered from loss of speech proving that if a woman were to romanticize with an Indian that she would lose the importance of life and communication, energy and a vital mind. Child and Sedgwick emphasize the early fear of miscegenation by creating the union under the gothic pretense of madness and an unsound mind.

Brown states that the early American literature dealing with miscegenation were written as gothic literature. The themes were dark, nightmarish, unreal. Child used the gothic subtext when writing the romance between Mary and Hobomok. Mary, overcome with sadness, enters into a temporary state of madness and agrees to become his wife. The insanity overwhelms her and, with perhaps some help from witchcraft, she gives in to the miscegenation. By writing the romance through insanity, Child creates an atmosphere of abduction not seduction. Child continually states that it was a madness that drove this union, not love. Even though Child's novel brings up promising alternatives to race war, in the end she still makes the Indian disappear and assimilates the child. Miscegenation and gothic literature are linked together in early American literature.
Similarly, in Hope Leslie, Sedgwick shows the downward spiral of the main characters loss of self through gothic themes of insanity. Faith has lost the ability to communicate with her family; she is pale and she has lost any and all energy she had before the union. In a way she has become like the "vanishing Indian" that was popular in miscegenation texts. She vanishes from the white population into the Indian community much like the Indians vanished from the white society back into their own Indian culture. Another interesting point Sedgwick emphasizes is the strength of the interracial union. Together, the interracial marriages fail; both members lose respect and the woman becomes lifeless. However, if the two members separate they grow in power and both remain energetic and respected. Jefferson pleaded for interracial marriage and harmony, but Sedgwick and Child write literature that disproves the idea.

Unlike Sedgwick and Child, James E. Seaver wrote a "true story" that proves interracial marriage could exist. His account, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, states that a woman can fall in love with an Indian while maintaining a full presence of mind. Furthermore, Jemison raises the children well and flourishes among the Indians. She masters both English and Seneca and, at the end of the novel, she has blended both societies together successfully. Seaver's Narrative proves that the critics and the public disagree. The critics were inanimate about keeping the races separate and that literature such as the one about Jamison should not be published. Despite their protests the book sold and the public enjoyed it, not because of earlier claims that these narratives controlled miscegenation but for the pure fact that they could not. Seaver crossed a line that early novelists had drawn and, through this action, proved that the public thought more like Jefferson than was earlier expected.

Brown writes that early American miscegenation novels like Child's Hobomok and Sedgwick's Hope Leslie wrote about interracial marriage through the patriarchal system. Even though they assimilated the Indian in the end, they inserted the Indian and the idea of a union with another race into the heads of the public. This small step was then expounded upon when Seaver wrote the account of Mary Jemison. Although critics protested against the crossing of the line, the public bought and read the Narrative and proved critics wrong. Miscegenation may have been a "horrid alternative" in the beginning, but after several novels it became more like Jefferson's idea of world peace.