Conference Paper

[Jay Jay]

Sarah Kemble Knight’s Nonhuman and Human Encounters: 

Hazzardos Rivers, Terrifying Darkness, and Surly Old Shee Creatures

This paper functions as an exploration of Sarah Kemble Knight’s The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York through an ecofeminist lens by examining the representation of human and nonhuman in the text.  Specifically, I investigate the relationships forged by Knight between human and nonhuman entities through her use of language, rendering the entity as either subject or object.  Vivid descriptions of urban and rural lands are provided by Knight, as well as numerous interactions with people she encounters during her five day journey between Boston and New Haven.  Knight participates in enforcing the dominant patriarchal ideology of her culture by describing the land she encounters as an object rather than subject, and categorizing women, Native Americans, and African American slaves as othered objects.  Ecofeminism reveals the connection between the degradation of nature and the domination of women in Knight’s journal, which is expressed in terms of subject and object.

Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines Knight’s relationship with the land through the filter of the picaresque genre in her essay “The New England Frontier and the Picaresque in Sarah Kemble Knight’s Journal.”  The frontier becomes “literary, colonized, domesticated, ‘urbanized,’ dangerous, comic, practical, and amoral” through Knight’s use of the picaresque (123).  Knight’s amoral descriptions of the land challenge the Puritan dialectical view of the land, rendering Knight’s voice unorthodox.  Additionally, Knight’s portrayal of the land is not informed by the garden metaphor found by Annette Kolodny in other women’s writings; in contrast, Knight often “urbanizes” the land she travels through, referring frequently to towns rather than the frontier.  Despite her unorthodox voice, Knight still enforces dominant patriarchal ideology, privileging the urban over the wild.

Robert O. Stephens claims that Knight describes the land in two manners: the world or the actual, and the underworld or the mythic.  He argues that scholars should focus on the mythic elements found within the journal rather than take the journal as a “literal diary.”  Stephens’s essay resituates Knight’s work within the “fruitful tradition of colonial American, and particularly New England, literature” (254).  Peter Kratzke states that whether Knight uses mimetic or mythic language and imagery, both are polemical in nature.  The body and spirit, and human and animal imagery are addressed briefly, and Kratzke notes that the “polemical landscape is blurred by very real physical danger,” which is of interest to this project (48).  Rivers in particular are the most frequently mentioned aspect of the land in the journal as Knight records her struggles to cross them without drowning.  If the landscape is the only imagery that escapes clear cut polemical categories, how does this affect the relationship of human to nonhuman in the journal?

Rough Draft

[Jay Jay]

“So long and toilsome a Journey:” Sarah Kemble Knight’s Nonhuman and Human Encounters

[Rough Draft]

This paper will function as an exploration of Sarah Kemble Knight’s The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York through an ecofeminist lens by examining the representation of human and nonhuman in the text.  Specifically, I will investigate the relationships forged by Knight between human and nonhuman entities through her use of language, which has the power to render the entity as subject or object.  Vivid descriptions of urban and rural landscapes are provided by Knight, as well as numerous interactions with people she encounters during her five day journey between Boston and New Haven.  I am interested in whether or not the binary of human and nonhuman remains static, or changes with each encounter during the journey.  A sense of fluidity could indicate Knight’s willingness to view her relationship with the landscape as subject-to-subject, rather than subject-to-object.  

Ecofeminism explores the connection between the degradation of nature and the domination of women, and the consequences of patriarchy artificially linking the two entities.  By examining the manner in which Knight represents human (particularly other women, Native Americans, and African American slaves) and the nonhuman environment, I hope to locate moments of resistance to patriarchal ideology by Knight.  However, I suspect I will find Knight more often than not upholding, and even participating in, the degradation of both nature and the domination of people of color based on their economic, class, and racial status.  If certain humans are described as objects rather than subjects, can a connection be found to landscape as subject too?

Literature Review

There is a small body of criticism dedicated to Knight’s journal, and I chose four articles to focus on for the purpose of this exploration.  Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines Knight’s relationship with the landscape through the filter of the picaresque genre.  The frontier landscape, according to Derounian-Stodola, becomes “literary, colonized, domesticated, ‘urbanized,’ dangerous, comic, practical, and amoral” (123).  Knight’s descriptions of the landscape challenge the Puritan view of the landscape, rendering Knight’s voice unorthodox.  Additionally, Knight’s landscape is not transformed by the garden metaphor found by Annette Kolodony in other women’s writings; in contrast, Knight often “urbanizes” her landscape, referring frequently to towns rather than the frontier.