An Observation of Tone; Cooper / Johnson

The first observation I made after skimming through the beginning of Cooper’s excerpts from A Voice From the South and Johnson’s text A Strong Race Opinion was that Cooper’s tone, compared to that of Pauline Johnson, seemed more (for a lack of better term) understanding or forgiving of the authors and perceptions that they are both critiquing. Anna Julia Cooper; born a slave in 1858 (freed at 9), was focusing on the assessment of race, specifically that of the African American woman, in American literature… whilst E. Pauline Johnson; a Canadian woman of Mohawk decent, focused her critique on the generalized perception of the “Indian Girl.”

Anna Julia Cooper

“The feverish agitation, the perfervid energy, the busy objectivity of the more turbulent life of our men serves, it may be, at once to cloud or color their vision somewhat, and as well to relieve the smart and deaden the pain for them. Their voice is in consequence not always temperate and calm, and at the same time radically corrective and sanatory. At any rate, as our Caucasian barristers are not to blame if the cannot quite put themselves in the dark man’s place, neither should the dark man wholly expected fully and adequately to reproduce the exact Voice of the Black Woman.” (Cooper, 380)

“The art of ‘thinking one’s self imaginatively into the experiences of others’ is not given to all, and it is impossible to acquire it without a background and a substratum of sympathetic knowledge.” (Cooper, 381-382)

Vs.

E. Pauline Johnson

“Not so the Indian girl in modern fiction, the author permits her character no such spontaneity, she must not be one of womankind at large, neither must she have an originality, a singularity that is not definitely ‘Indian.’ I quote ‘Indian’ as there seems to be a n impression amongst authors that such a things as tribal distinction does not exist amongst the North American aborigines.” (Johnson, 385)

“But the hardest fortune that the Indian girl in fiction meets with is the inevitable doom that shadows her love affairs. She is always desperately in love with the young white hero, who in turn is grateful to her for services rendered the garrison in general and himself in particular during red days of war. In short, she is so much wrapped up in him that she is treacherous to her own people, tells falsehoods to her father and the chiefs of her tribe, and otherwise makes herself detestable and dishonorable. Of course, this white hero never marries her! Will some critic who understands human nature, and particularly the nature of authors, please tell the reading public why marriage with the Indian girl is so despised in books and so general in real life? Will this good far-seeing critic also tell us why the book-made Indian makes all the love advances to the white gentlemen, though the real wild Indian girl (by the way, we are never given any stories of educated girls, though there are many such throughout Canada) is the most retiring, reticent, non-committal being in existence!” (Johnson, 387)

Cooper’s tone, in general, seemed to me to feel calmer and more thought out… whereas Johnson’s piece, while very informative, interesting, etc., seemed like more of a rant (though a rant that is completely justified). I enjoyed both of these texts, and Johnson’s in particular, because I am constantly arguing the distinction between “Indian” and “Native American / North American Aborigine” with both my friends and academic (FSU) colleagues.  As members of a University that permeates the Seminole image… these arguments tend to… well, piss me off.

Works Cited:

E. Pauline Johnson. "A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction." Wielding the Pen Writing on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. 385-89. Print.

Anna Julia Cooper. "Excerpts from A Voice From the South." Wielding the Pen: Writing on Authorship by American Women of the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. 379-84. Print.