• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.265-284
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• 2011

This paper examines how Sedgwick makes a political allegory of founding the nation in domestic terms in The Linwoods (1835). Set in the Revolutionary period, The Linwoods is a historical fiction reconstructed by the writer in order to diagnose currently controversial issues. In this aspect, Sedgwick's interest in history is genealogical in Foucaudian sense. Foucault's genealogical method provides a way of recuperating a part of history hidden, submerged, obliterated by the official history. Seen in a genealogical perspective, the story of the Linwoods can be viewed as a political allegory in order to explore political conflicts of Sedgwick's own day. Faced with the threat of national disunion presented in the Nullification Crisis of sectional conflicts and divisions, Sedgwick attempts to provide a fictional solution to the first serious challenge to the U. S. Constitution. Going back to the times around the American Revolution, Sedgwick emphasizes how strenuously the American Constitution of America was formed as the outcome of the war against the tyranny of Britain, and how the Union was made on the basis of the cooperation between the States. By posing a contrast of political positions between family members, Sedgwick imagines a family/nation that allows diverse political positions. The conclusion of a diversity of marriages between man and woman who agree to be united after overcoming their differences in political affiliations seems to show her conservative proclivity to support the Union. However, by emphasizing the principles of freedom and equality represented by the significant role of Isabella and Rose, an African-American slave, in the victory of the American Revolution, Sedgwick also supports the spirit of the Jacksonian American democracy.