Mandingo (novel)
Mandingo is 1957 novel by Kyle Onstott. The book is set in the 1830s in the antebellum South primarily around Falconhurst, a fictional plantation in Alabama owned by the planter Warren Maxwell. The narrative centers on Maxwell, his son Hammond, and the Mandingo slave Ganymede, or Mede. Mandingo is a tale of cruelty toward the black people of that time and place, detailing the overwhelmingly dehumanizing behavior meted out to the slaves, as well as vicious fights, poisoning, and violent death.[1]
The novel was made into a film of the same name Mandingo in 1975.
Author
Onstott began writing Mandingo when he was 65 years old. He based some of the events in the novel on "bizarre legends" he heard while growing up: tales of slave breeding and sadistic abuse of slaves. "Utilizing his [adopted] son's anthropology research on West Africa, he handwrote Mandingo and his son served as editor. Denlinger's, a small Virginia publisher, released it and it became a national sensation." He was invited to write an article for True: The Man's Magazine in 1959 about the horrors of slavery.[1]
Publication
Mandingo was first published in 1957 in hardcover. It was 659 pages long and sold around 2.7 million copies. Subsequent paperback editions whittled the novel down to 423 pages. The novel sold a total of 5 million copies in the United States.
Mandingo is the only novel of the Falconhurst series that Onstott wrote, but he edited the next three novels in the series. All of the sequels were penned by either Lance Horner or Henry Whittington (Ashley Carter).[1]
Plot
Mandingo takes place in 1832 on the fictional plantation Falconhurst, located in Alabama. Warren Maxwell is the elderly and infirm owner of Falconhurst and he lives there with his 19-year-old son, Hammond. Falconhurst is a slave-breeding plantation where slaves are encouraged to mate and produce children ("suckers"). Because of the nature of the plantation, the slaves are well fed, not overworked, and rarely punished in a brutal manner. However, the slaves are treated as animals to be utilized as the Maxwells wish.
Hammond's father wishes him to marry and produce a pure white heir. Hammond is skeptical and is not sexually attracted to white women. Despite his concern, he travels to his Cousin Beatrix's plantation, Crowfoot, there Hammond meets his 16-year-old cousin, Blanche. He asks Major Woodford, Blanche's father, permission to marry her. After receiving the Major's permission, Hammond and Charles Woodford, Blanche's brother, travel to the Coign plantation where Hammond purchases a "fightin' nigger", Ganymede (aka Mede), and a young, female dark-skinned slave named Ellen. Later, Hammond reveals his love for Ellen, despite his intentions to wed Blanche.
On their wedding night, Hammond leaves his and Blanche's room in the middle of the night. Hammond believes that Blanche is not a virgin. Although she denies having previous sex partners, it turns out that Blanche lost her virginity to her brother, Charles, at age 13. She does not reveal this fact to Hammond.
After a few months at Falconhurst, Blanche is bored and dissatisfied. She begins drinking heavily and is jealous of Hammond's continuing preference for his "bed wench", Ellen, who is now pregnant. Soon, Blanche is also pregnant. While Hammond is away, Blanche calls Ellen to her room and whips her. Ellen miscarries and it is unclear whether her miscarriage is caused by the whipping.
While in Mississippi, Hammond sells one of his male slaves to a German woman, who obviously wants the slave for sex. When the other men in the group explain this to Hammond, he is physically repulsed and denies that a white woman would ever willingly sleep with a black slave.
Critical reactions
Although Mandingo was a national and international best-seller, selling 5 million copies nationwide critical opinions about the novel were—and continue to be—mixed. While black novelist Richard Wright praised Mandingo as "a remarkable book based on slave period documents", other critics have deemed the book sensationalist and offensive. Van Deburg writes that "None of the three contributors to the [Falconhurst] series could be considered knowledgeable about the black experience" and argued that "The Falconhurst novels reveled in white sexual exploitation of black slaves." Van Deburg's use of the word "reveled" suggests that the authors of the Falconhurst series wrote mainly to titillate the audience rather than to criticize the culture of American slavery.
Racial Stereotype
The Mandingo is a stereotype of a sexually-voracious black man with a huge penis, invented by white slave owners to promote the notion that blacks were not civilizable but "animalistic" by nature. They asserted, for example, that in "Negroes all the passions, emotions, and ambitions, are almost wholly subservient to the sexual instinct" and "this construction of the oversexed black male parlayed perfectly into notions of black bestiality and primitivism."[2]
Slavery in this book also never sugarcoated all black-skinned slaves are treated like they are subhuman. Portrayed in this novel black-skinned slaves are have no price and exploited by the master. Clearly this Negro slavery is considered as racism.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Mandingo (novel). Retrieved January 29, 2021.
- ↑ Stereotypes of African Americans. Retrieved January 29, 2021.