Letting the Flesh Fly: Topsy, Time, Torture, and Transfiguration

“Letting the Flesh Fly” by Jayna Brown examines the portrayal of the character Topsy from the book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Topsy’s is a young black female child who’s character was created and illustrated by adult aged white women. The performance of the childlike character has vast differences in the rendering between white women verses black woman.

In the section Talking the Body (p.59), Brown discusses Elizabeth’s Grosz’s, “Volatile Bodies” and explains the body as a vessel. I found Brown’s questions instrumental in helping me understand the daunting depiction of Topsy. “The vessel has two interpretations. One the one hand, this vessel can be occupied by ‘animating, willful subjectivity; on the other hand, it can be thought of as a ‘passive…object over which straggles between the ‘inhabitant’ and others/exploiters may be possible.”  Brown goes on to discus the second part of the interpretation as the body as an instrument that requires discipline and training. I found this particular explanation of the body somewhat interesting as how it explains the merge of race, performance, and gender of this distinct character.

On page 71, Brown describes “female minstrel acts were performances of white women’s proprietary access to black body, as surrogate, as servant, as always available for use.” Why would these white subjects feel “free” in a character that is described “a conditioned rebellion against proscriptions of white female duty (p.74) through the vessel of a slave? On page 76, Topsy is described “the quintessential symbol of black artistic denigration and humiliation,” is this the interpretation of whites in regard to delineating black bodies?