Portrayals and portraits Essay Example for Free

Portrayals and depictions EssayThe processes of populace memory in regard to Sojourner fair play already are frame in by the multiple figurations that existed in the public consciousness prior to the three specific commemorative campaigns that plaster cast the focus of this study. Although some of the specific details vary, the basic outlines of Truths life are accessible. Born as a slave in upstate refreshed York around 1797 and origin altogethery named Isabella, Truth was freed according to the dictates of state virtue in 1827.She adopted the name of Sojourner Truth and began a life of freedom that progressed through three straightforward stages. The first stage is marked by her involvement with the Kingdom, an infamous religious community led Robert Matthews, overly know as Matthias. After Truth left the Kingdom in 1834 she traveled through New York and Connecticut, speaking at various religious camp meetings. Friends eventually directed her to the Northampton tie of Education and exertion in Massachusetts, a group founded on socialist and transcendentalist ideas.In this second stage, Truths involvement with the Northampton group introduced her to several(prenominal) notable public advocates, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Olive Gilbert, who would later become her first collaborator on her Narrative (Fitch Mandziuk, 1997, p. 16). When the Northampton Association disbanded in 1849, Truth entered her third stage as an advocate for the anti-slavery and womens make ups causes. She lived and traveled in Ohio for a hardly a(prenominal) years, finally settling in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1857 where she resided until her death.During this third stage, Truth traveled wide through eastern and mid-western states, lots appearing as a popular speaker at conventions and meetings. Among the events in this third stage of Truths life that have become the fuel for her mythic meanings were her famous 1851 speech at a womens rights convention in Akron, Ohio and an 1858 confrontation with a hostile male audience in eloquent Lake, Indiana where she bare her breast to prove she was female.In her own time, Truths contemporaries in their descriptions and accounts had transformed her write up variously to depict her as a tragic victim of slavery, a religious pilgrim, a idiotic caricature, and a fiery orator and advocate for womens rights (Fitch Mandziuk, 1997 Mabee Newhouse, 1993 Mandziuk Fitch, 2001 Painter 1994, 1996). While it is impossible to know how much discipline Truth actually exerted over the costuming and posing of these images, they do offer a striking alternative to the ofttimes grotesque, defiant, or devout descriptions of her that were available in print at the time.In all but one, Truth is seated. In these she is located in settings containing middle-class accoutrements such as bookcases, carved chairs, flowers, and books. In all of the portraits she is refined in a fringed shawl and wears tailored clothing of heavy, patterned fabrics. In some she holds knitting in one an open portrait of a young male rests in her lap. In the other portrait she is standing, her right hand resting on a cane with her left arm at her side. In all but two, she wears eyeglasses.In some she looks past the camera, directing her glance sideways or downward in others her glance is more leveled and direct. The images are striking for their middle-class depictions as Painter (1996) observes, In none of these portraits is there whatsoeverthing beyond blackness that would inspire charitynothing of the piteous slave mother or the weird Matthias Kingdom, no bared arms, no bodice taken down in public, nothing of Stowes amusing naif. The cartes de visite show a solid bourgeoisie (p. 196).These photographic images have been reproduced ever since on posters, buttons, cards, and t-shirts importantly, they serve as the primary source material for any other interpretations and representations of Truths physical appearance. Contemporary campaigns to commemorate Truth in material form necessarily spew from these available portrayals and portraits. There is much room for negotiation and advocacy, however, around precisely which version of Truth go out be visualized at a detail time and place, as well as who has the right to control and retain ownership of that image.As Painter (1996) concludes, Even today, when Truth can symbolize the savage black woman for most of her audience, others can see her as a kind of pet (p. 129). In the three recent debates over establishing statues of Truth, the ideological implications of the choices made indicate clear differences regarding her symbolic meanings. A taste perception for the bourgeois, devout, serious image among predominantly white communities marks her as a symbol of accommodation, while African American public memory continues to evoke the mythology of Gages defiant advocate and radical critique of white audiences.In each debate ov er how Truth would be remembered the concept of character provides an important lens to judge the meaning of each commemoration. From among the available portrayals and photographic records, each representation of Truth selected particular elements while deflecting others. The belongingss include in each characterization of Truth provide a revelatory index to the particular value of the community and the means through which her image was adapted to suit various purposes. Essentially, character provides the window to how questions of indistinguishability politics were negotiated in each instance.In the Portrait Monument dispute, the image of Truth in elicited by the National Political Congress of Black Women reference the angry orator first project by Frances Gage in 1863. In this version, Truth symbolizes the defiant insistence on race as a central consideration in public debate and the processes of public memory, an adaptation of this persona often used by black women to challe nge white exclusionary tactics. The characteristics depicted in the Battle Creek and Northampton statues draw out the alternative image of Truth as the upholder of principles of equality and faith.These two commemorations replicate the bourgeois aspects of Truths cartes de visite, even also depict her in safe and comforting ways. The defiant Truth is subordinated in favor of likenesses that consider creep values and celebrate conciliation rather than ones that insist on recognizing am valuing difference. Evaluation of the dimension of character in the process of public memory thus reveals the ideological functions served by a particular commemorative representation.These campaigns to re-present Truth in a material form reveal the uncertainties in the process of public memory, as well as the ways in which the practice often accommodates and dissipates political challenges to the values held honey by dominant culture. Among the potential meanings of Truth, her symbolic appropriat ion as a sign of the ideals of equality and justice easily is reconcilable with our American democratic mythology and frequent delusion that inequities can be solved but through individual acts of faith and hope. Consequently, Truth is appropriated in her most bourgeois, benign, and reverent form.The Truth commemorated is an image that is equivocal enough for us to find residues of her race and gender meanings within it if we so desire, but is also abstract enough to be of no threat on either front. (Manziuk, 2003) Genealogical research, when conducted within the context of African-American history using a variety of resources, offers a more encompassing perspective of the African American family in American society. In other words, our individual family photographs can provide a wealth of information about society in general.