THE CONTROVERSY OF THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER BY WILLIAM STYRON. THE ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL’S MASSIVE POPULARITY AND ITS STRONG CONDEMANTION.

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THESIS

THE CONTROVERSY OF THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER BY WILLIAM STYRON. THE ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL’S MASSIVE POPULARITY AND ITS

STRONG CONDEMANTION.

Submitted by

Monika Wroniszewska

Faculty of Humanities

In partial fulfilment of the requirements

For the Degree of Master of Arts in American Studies

University of Amsterdam

August 2017

Master’s Committee:

Advisor: Eduard van de Bilt

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one hand and was at the same time the target of massive criticism by black critics on the other hand. This project attempts to explore the reasons behind both the book’s enthusiastic approval and its fierce condemnation. It also investigates the author’s motives for his stereotypical and harmful depictions of black characters in his book. This study arrives at a conclusion that the firmly operating black stereotypes in the white American consciousness as well as the conviction of a black man’s unimportance are deeply ingrained in the American belief system and extremely difficult to be gotten rid of. The uncritical reception of the book proves the inability of Styron’s supporters to understand and discern the harmful effects of his demeaning depictions. It also exposes the author’s hidden apologetic feelings towards slavery and indicates that he was unable to free himself from his Southern biased mentality. This thesis also concludes that a white writer’s attempt to write from a black perspective is doomed to failure since he will never be able to properly capture the unique black experience he never shared or felt. The novel’s massive popularity then and now, fifty years after its publication, also confirms that that the black struggle for freedom (in this case freedom of bias and pre-conceived notions about African-Americans) needs to be continued.

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Introduction

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron is considered as one of the most

controversial historical novels written by an American writer. It evokes the events around the history of American slavery dealing with the Southampton slave revolt of 1831 and its leader Nat Turner. Written in the form of the first-person narration, the novel was the result of Styron’s six years of intense and toilsome writing process and was finally published in the fall of 1967, which is exactly fifty years ago. Within the first months after its release, the novel generated massive popularity among American white readers and literary critics. It regularly appeared on the best-seller lists, was sold to 20th_{Century Fox and received the Pulitzer Prize} for fiction. More recently Styron’s Confessions were included in the Time Magazine’s list of All-Time best 100 English-language novels published from 1923 – the beginning of the magazine -- to 2005. Styron was most obviously pleased with the wide scope of his novel’s intense popularity and acclamation, which at that time seemed to cement his reputation as one of the best writers of his generation. Nevertheless, despite the novel’s initial vast popularity and Styron’s literary triumph his account of Nat Turner’s life and the rebellion of 1831 was doomed to eventually face fierce critical backlash from Styron’s black audience. Blacks held the novelist responsible for perpetuating and utilizing in his work the most harmful stereotypes about African-Americans and he was accused of distorting American slave history. The book had literally slapped the black community in the face, which at that time was deeply engaged in the struggle for civil and social rights persistently denied to them by white supremacists. The controversy around Styron’s novel also opened up a discussion about the use of history in fiction and a novelist’s responsibility towards the historical accuracy of the events presented in his work.

The debate on The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron, its enthusiastic approval on the one hand and severe condemnation on the other, is an important demonstration of the deep racial division between whites and blacks that still firmly prevailed in the United States one hundred years after the institution of slavery was officially abolished and the slaves were proclaimed free human beings. The whole discussion on Styron’s book offers an interesting and important insight into how the racial bias and prejudice based on the colour of a skin operates and how difficult it is for the American white community to understand and acknowledge the harmful effects of negative stereotyping on black American citizens. The novel is also an important study of William Styron himself. Just as he attempted

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to open up the mind of the historical black rebel, his own work opens up his Southern mind and exposes his deeply implanted stereotypical perceptions of a black man.

The purpose of this thesis is to carry out a detailed inquiry about the different aspects of both the positive, (mainly) white voices embracing Styron’s novel and its condemnation by a (mostly) black audience. By juxtaposing these two contradictory responses to Styron’s

Confessions, I want to show how, depending on the color of one’s skin, the understanding of

issues of race, prejudice and stereotyping in the United States will vary. I would also like to explore William Styron’s motives for portraying the historical Nat Turner and the events surrounding his insurgence the way he did since this Southern writer strongly maintained that, despite his origins in the segregated and racist South, he was devoid of any preconceived notions regarding black Americans. Toni Morrison, the iconic writer about the Afro-American experience and race problem in the United States, makes an important argument in Playing in

the Dark, her discussion on the importance of the presence of African-Americans in American

fiction, that a white writer is not able to convey the true spirit of black people in his (or her) work and cannot do full justice to black characters as he lacks the needed experience of what it is to be black in America. I would like to investigate the validity of Toni Morrison’s argument in the case of Styron’s novel.

In the first chapter I am going to present and analyse the acclaim of Styron’s novel. In the second chapter I am going to investigate the different angles of the novel’s criticism. The third chapter is going to be the careful examination of William Styron’s motives underlying his depiction of the historical figure of Nat Turner and the Southampton revolt of 1831. A close reading of the texts involved will serve as the basis for this thesis’ methodology.

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Chapter 1. Public endorsement.

The fourth novel of William Styron was published on October 9, 1967. The book elicited in the first months after its release a mostly flattering reception. The newspaper, magazines and scholarly journals were overflowed with the highest endorsement. The author of The

Confessions of Nat Turner could not possibly have anticipated better advocacy of his latest

work and one could only wonder what a relief it must be for a writer waiting in suspense to receive such an affirmative response to his newest piece of writing. In this part of the thesis I am going to present several pieces of written word, either articles or book reviews, which appeared in the American press. These favourable reactions to the novel in question show different aspects of its public acceptance and make us aware of how the applauders perceived Styron’s Confessions. Most of the novelist’s supporters are, as one may anticipate, white American scholars. However, despite the general resentment towards the novel from the black part of Styron’s readers, there were black enthusiasts who eagerly embraced it. The view of two most significant black admirers of Styron are presented in this chapter as well as the endorsement of his novel by some notable white American scholars.

One of the very first voices of critical endorsement of The Confessions of Nat Turner was the double review of Eliot Fremont-Smith, a book critic for among others The New York

Times, The Saturday Review and The Village Voice. His two articles about Styron’s novel

appeared on October 3 and 4, 1967 in The New York Times, which was still a few days before the official release of Styron’s newest literary creation. Fremont-Smith’s evaluation could be undoubtedly marked as a paean of praise to Styron’s work, which he calls “a rich, powerful and cathartic novel.”1_{The reviewer is not bothered with the problem of historical inaccuracy} and advocates that the novel should be experienced as a meditation of history, just like Styron intended it to be. Fremont-Smith praises Styron for making the subject of his work the forgotten and abandoned part of American history – “the peculiar institution,” and expresses admiration for Styron’s incredible skilfulness in its detailed examination and deep understanding of the consequences of the institution both on the black and white mind. To Fremont-Smith, Styron’s novel “illuminates slavery as a central and inescapable fact of our history,”2_{and Styron managed to “capture its feel, sound and smells, and the shock and} outrage of the whites that here, of all places, the slaves should rise against them.”3

1 Eliot Fremont-Smith, “A Sword Is Sharpened,” The New York Times, October 3, 1967, 45.

2 Eliot Fremont-Smith, “The Confessions of Nat Turner – II,” The New York Times, October 4, 1967, 45. 3 Ibid.

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As much as Fremont-Smith compliments Styron for evoking the forgotten slavery past, he also discerns the novel’s relevance to the present. In his view, the rebellious theme of the book and the way Styron handled it makes the novel a vivid reflection of the unstable America in the sixties, characterized by the racial conflict, disorder and confusion. He puts it: “It is one of those rare books that show us our American past, our present – ourselves – in a dazzling shaft of light that cuts through the defences of commonplace ‘knowledge’ to compel understanding.”4_{According to the critic, Styron’s revival of this neglected and infamous} section of American past will help give a new approach to the teaching of history in the United States. He is convinced that these heavy and shameful issues are important and undeniable parts of American legacy, without which the understanding of the present is impossible.

Fremont-Smith also praises Styron’s interesting narrative. He finds the novel gripping, interesting and beautifully written with plenty of suspense and emotional strain woven into the story. He puts it: “the tension between love and hate, between the call of religion and the urge of the flesh, is convincingly handled; the mood of place and background is beautifully done.”5_{Nevertheless, the most important admiration of the reviewer focuses on how Styron} handled his main protagonist. According to Fremont-Smith, Styron demonstrated in his work a thorough understanding of a mind of a black slave and did an excellent job in penetrating the psyche of Nat Turner. He affirms his conviction in the following words: “Mr. Styron, white and Southern, has made a leap into a Negro’s mind re-created out of history and has given coherent voice to a catastrophe we hardly knew had happened.”6_{He juxtaposes Styron’s} remarkable ability to understand blacks with the general white Americans’ incapability of accepting black men as equal human beings and understanding slaves’ natural longing for freedom.

On the whole, in Fremont Smith’s opinion The Confessions of Nat Turner is for the novelist “a personal triumph.”7_{He compares Styron’s latest work to his two previous novels,} which according to the reviewer did not fulfil critics’ expectations and were literary failures. Fremont-Smith declares that owing to The Confessions of Nat Turner Styron managed to make a remarkable return as an acclaimed writer. To Fremont-Smith, Styron’s fourth novel is “a rich and powerful novel whose impact will be widely and deservingly felt.”8

4 Fremont-Smith, “A Sword Is Sharpened,” 45.

5 Fremont-Smith, “The Confessions of Nat Turner – II,” 45. 6 Fremont-Smith, “A Sword Is Sharpened,” 45.

7 Fremont-Smith, “The Confessions of Nat Turner – II,” 45. 8 Ibid.

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The evaluation of Fremont-Smith is a clear manifestation of a one-sided notion on slavery and its debasing practice. The reviewer’s blind acceptance of Styron’s depictions, whether the institution itself, the benevolence of Turner’s masters or the rebellion, reveals either his lack of knowledge on this part of the American past or the unwillingness to discern other truths about the history than the ones pleasing his white mind. The reviewer embraces these depictions as a fact and presents no need to question or confront them with the historical evidence. He is more concerned with the fact that Styron managed to create an engrossing piece of work, which is undeniably true and one would not question its quality to captivate the readers, than the question whether the way the story is presented is in accordance with the records on slavery. However, he fails to recognize in Styron’s story the aspects that expose the writer’s attachment to the stereotypical view of the period, which distort the authentic picture of “the peculiar institution” and at the same time cause anguish to the black critics. Even though Fremont-Smith sees the importance of the restoration of this neglected part of American history in the American consciousness, he seems to be unaware of the distortion Styron’s Confessions could cause if his portrayals were to be accepted as the truthful reflection of slavery past.

The conviction of Fremont-Smiths that Styron managed to capture the spirit of a black slave rebel had eventually turned out to be a recurring theme of the novel’s endorsement and at the same time its most fiercely criticized aspect. As Toni Morrison argues in her discussion on the importance of the presence of African-Americans in the American fiction, the white writers do not have enough capacity to be able to speak from their black characters’ perspective. The black experience in the United States is so unique, peculiar and complicated that no white intellectual could ever be able to understand and capture the soul of a black man. Since Fremont-Smith speaks from his white and so as it seems quite parochial point of view, he is obviously unable to realize that Styron’s depictions do not reflect the true spirit of historical Nat Turner, as well as they do not do proper justice to any American black man struggling with the slave and white-supremacy’s legacy.

C. Vann Woodward, an American historian, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, essayist and the Pulitzer Prize winner, was also the author of Styron’s novel’s review that appeared before the publication of the book. His evaluation was published on October 7, 1967 in The New Republic under the title “Confessions of a Rebel: 1831.” At the beginning of his assessment of Styron’s work Woodward expresses his conviction that Nat Turner’s rebellion was one of the very few organized acts of slave resistance. He considers

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Nat Turner’s armed revolt a great opportunity for a novelist to write about due to the scarcity of historical evidence concerning the rebellion and its leader. In Woodward’s view, this gives the author a total freedom in using his imagination while writing the novel. Nevertheless, Woodward recognizes in this undertaking a serious impediment: the fact that “Nat’s story would have to be seen from behind the black mask.”9_{The reviewer underlines the difficulty of} this task and calls it “the boldest decision William Styron made.”10_{Woodward also points to} the fact that there was hardly any reference on which Styron could model his project, which made it even harder to realize. Despite the obstacles, Woodward is convinced that Styron managed to write a credible story about one of the most significant black freedom fighters in the American history of slavery. He also speaks for other historians and claims that they should and would certainly not question the historical accuracy of Styron’s novel. In Woodward’s opinion, Styron’s book “is informed by a respect for history, a sure feeling for the period, and a deep and precise sense of place and time.”11

The first, rather profound error in Woodward’s assessment is his statement concerning the solitary character of Nat Turner’s rebellion. A brilliant and thorough study on American slave revolts by Herbert Aptheker traces in the historical records as many as “two hundred and fifty revolts and conspiracies in the history of American Negro slavery.”12_{This is in} contradiction to Woodward’s claim and a general notion of the uniqueness of Nat Turner’s uprising among white Americans. Woodward, however, is not a random white American who may not possess sufficient historical background to make such statements. He was a prominent historian and a professor at a university who taught American history to a new generation of American citizens and therefore should by no means play a part in a distortion of history. Woodward also contradicts himself by pointing on the one hand to the absence of sufficient historical records for the writer to be able to reconstruct the life of Nat Turner but is convinced on the other hand that Styron’s portrayal was a valid and trustworthy image of the black rebel. Even though the historian discerns the risk Styron runs by writing from a black slave’s perspective, this does not seem to be dictated by his concern that the novelist, being himself a white Southerner, was not in state to represent Nat Turner with proper fairness. In his opinion, it is the lack of any similar work on which Styron could model his novel that made his book a risky undertaking. The moment one takes all the points of Woodward’s praise into consideration, it can be clearly stated that he speaks only from a white man’s

9 C. Vann Woodward, “Confessions of a Rebel: 1831,” The New Republic, October 7, 1967, 25. 10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

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perspective and ignores the aspects of the novel that could worry him as a historian and a civil rights supporter. He disregards the importance of historical accuracy in the depiction of the life of Nat Turner and agrees that Styron’s portrayal of slavery reflected the true image of the system. Woodward’s unconditional acceptance of Styron’s depiction of Nat Turner and his disregard towards the clearly stereotypical images of the black rebel is therefore the manifestation that even a highly educated and scholarly mind is not free from the influence of the pre-conceived notions about another human being.

James Baldwin, an American writer, social critic, civil rights’ activist and Styron’s long-time friend, is by all means the most controversial voice of Styron’s novel’s advocacy. This is due to the fact that he was one of the very few African-Americans scholars who came to the defence of Styron and his historical novel. To Styron’s critics Baldwin was a traitor to his own race, who with his endorsement of Styron’s novel officially participated in the oppression of the 20th-_{century American black citizens. As James Campbell puts it in his book} Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin: “While it [Baldwin’s affirmation of the novel]

reconfirmed Baldwin in his independence, in the eyes of his black critics it offered proof that the worst names he had been called has substance: that he was an Uncle Tom, that he was a deserter, that he was out of touch with the new moves in the struggle.”13

Even though Baldwin did not write any review of The Confessions of Nat Turner, he spoke most favourably about the novel and defended Styron against the negative criticism both in the interviews either broadcasted on television or published on the pages of American press. In the article of R.A. Sokolov, which was published in Newsweek on October 16, 1967 under the title “In the Mind of Nat Turner,” Baldwin’s statements concerning Styron’s novel were recorded. In the article at issue, Baldwin predicts that Styron will have to face criticism from the novel’s opponents and deal with the accusations of arrogance and boldness in his choice to write a novel about a black hero from the first-person perspective. He comes to the defence of Styron in his declaration that “It’s a very courageous book that attempts to fuse the two points of view, the master’s and the slave’s. In that sense the book is hopeful. It’s important for the black reader to see what Bill is trying to do and to recognize its validity.”14 In other words, Baldwin praises Styron for his objectiveness in his work and his genuine attempt to present the reality of slavery from both perspectives. He appreciates Styron’s critical portrayal of Nat Turner’s master, who despite his promise to set Turner free,

13 James Campbell, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin, (Boston, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1991), 215.

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eventually sold him to another slaveowner. Baldwin sees here a striking similarity to the general attitude of white Americans towards blacks and the despair of black citizens being the result of living for hundreds of years in an unjust system of white supremacy. He puts it: “The bill is in. You are all like Massa Samuel Turners pretending not to sell us out. But we’ve always known you’d shoot us. You’ve created a population with nothing to lose.”15_{In this} way, Baldwin sees Styron’s novel as a confrontation of slavery times with the American reality of the 1960s and draws parallels between the white American state of mind then and in the present. He confesses that due to the fact that the novel takes up difficult and delicate issues of black and white race, it can be difficult to digest for its readers. However, he highlights the importance of this disturbing property of the novel and its author’s intentions. He puts it: “Styron is probing something very dangerous, deep and painful in the national psyche. I hope it starts a tremendous fight, so that people will learn what they really think about each other.”16

Baldwin seems not to be concerned at all with the way Styron presented his Nat Turner. Even though it is Styron’s portrayal of his protagonist that eventually would face the most vicious condemnation from the critics, Baldwin is very much satisfied with Styron’s Turner. Criticising Styron for his decision to write from a black perspective is obviously out of the question since Baldwin himself used a first-person narration in Giovanni’s Room, the novel in which his main protagonist was a white blond American boy. However, Baldwin’s utter acceptance of Styron’s depiction of the black rebel could be sought elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind the fact that Baldwin stayed for a period of six months in the early sixties under Styron’s roof while he was working on his novel Another Country. This was a difficult time for Baldwin since his financial situation was unstable at that time and he desperately needed a place to stay. During this period both writers spent a lot of time together and Styron even claimed that owing to this experience his ambition to re-create the historical Nat Turner could finally be realized. This statement of Styron met with Baldwin’s cheering reaction and he responded to it in words: “Yes, I think there’s some of me in Nat Turner. If I were an actor, I could play the part.”17_{Baldwin’s pronouncement leaves the reader perplexed and wondering} whether he does not want to go into detail on the issue as it would be an uneasy venture that could put his friendship in jeopardy or he genuinely believes in what he is saying. Baldwin clearly focuses only on the aspects of the book that show the cruelty of the slavery system and

15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.

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point to the injustice of this debasing practise ignoring at the same time those facets that could be unacceptable to him as a black American intellectual actively involved in the struggle for equal rights and equal treatment of black American citizens. Baldwin was himself an active participant of the Congress of Racial Equality, the civil rights’ organization of pivotal importance, and an important spokesman for the movement. Apart from his active involvement in the civil rights’ crusade, the great deal of his literary work of that period echoes the problem of race and discrimination in America. The Fire Next Time, the collection of two essays, is Baldwin’s personal and evocative study of the consequences of racism in the United States, where he makes his powerful statement on the 100th_{anniversary of} emancipation: “You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”18_{In this short utterance he makes to his} fourteen-year-old nephew, he conveys an important message to the whole nation that the freedom of a black man in the United States has been persistently denied and the struggle for racial equality is not over. Notwithstanding his contribution to the nationwide campaign against racial injustice in America, Baldwin speaks against the criticism of the black attackers of the novel and seems to be convinced that the book has cathartic qualities and can positively influence the American attitude towards race. In his opinion, “He [Styron] has begun the common history – ours.”19

John Hope Franklin, historian, Professor of History at Howard University, Brooklyn College and the University of Chicago, is another important example of an Afro-American scholar who praised and advocated The Confessions of Nat Turner. Unlike Baldwin, Franklin wrote a review of Styron’s novel, which was published on October 8, 1967 in Chicago

Sun-Times. As the title of the review suggests, the main focus of Franklin’s deliberations is

Styron’s meditation on history in the novel. Franklin shares the opinion of the already discussed Fremont-Smith and advocates that the book should be experienced as according to the author’s intention, thus not as an exact and accurate portrayal of the life of Nat Turner and the events around his rebellion but a more loose pondering on the subject. Franklin expresses his understanding of the fact that due to the insufficient historical evidence on Nat Turner the detailed reconstruction of his life caused Styron to use his imagination. The only problem of Styron’s depiction of Nat Turner that bothers Franklin is the way Styron handled his protagonist’s sexual frustrations, which led Styron’s Nat Turner to kill Miss Margaret Whitehead. All other features of Styron’s work are spoken favourably of. What particularly appeals to Franklin is how he approached Turner’s motivation behind his insurrection. In his

18 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, (New York: The Dial Press, 1963), 24. 19 Sokolov, “In the Mind of Nat Turner,” 69.

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view, “it is worth observing that Turner had not been lulled into complacency because his lot was better than that of the average slave. If anything, his sense of responsibility was heightened and his desperation was increased; for freedom cannot be compromised, nor can it be meted out as though it were crumbs from a bountiful table.”20

Franklin also expresses admiration of Styron’s deep understanding of the American slavery system. To him, Styron was honest and courageous in his depictions of the atrocities committed by the white slaveholders. He evokes two scenes from the novel confirming his claim: the first being the rape on Turner’s mother by a white drunken overseer, the latter being the forced fights of slaves held for the amusement of slaveowners. Nevertheless, the historian fails to notice those Styron’s depictions that eventually met with fierce criticism, such as Nat Turner’s emasculation, his hesitant leadership in the rebellion, the elimination of the role of Turner’s family in his upbringing, the revival of Sambo stereotype, or degrading portrayals of black women in the novel. The rape incident that involved Nat Turner’s mother is also not given full justice by Franklin since as much as he praises Styron for not being afraid to show the brutality of white plantation owners, he fails to note the fact that Turner’s mother seemed to enjoy being sexually abused by the drunken and violent white man. Such depiction could suggest that since black women are promiscuous in nature, the act of rape on them is less appalling than that committed on white women. Unfortunately, Franklin sees only the positive sides and draws the curtain of silence on the less favourable features of the novel. Taking into consideration the fact that Franklin was not only a black prominent historian but also an active propagator of black people’s struggle for equality, one can only wonder why his evaluation of Styron Confessions is so much one-sided and lacks a critical examination of all aspects of the novel, not only the ones that place Styron’s work in a positive light.

Shaun O’Connell’s review was published in The Nation on October 16, 1967 and contained a flattering analysis of Styron’s novel. O’Connell sees the relevance of the story conveyed in the novel to the events of racial turbulence in the sixties in the United States as the positive aspect of Styron’s work. However, he realizes that the novelist’s move to write about Nat Turner from the first-person narrative perspective was a risky undertaking that made Styron vulnerable to criticism and eventually could lead to attacks on his novel. What made the whole project even more complicated, according to O’Connell, is the scantiness of the historical record about Nat Turner. He notices that even though Styron had enough means to frame his novel on the historical facts concerning the revolt of 1831, he was almost

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completely left to rely on his novelist skills to re-create and reconstruct the complex personality of its black leader. Nevertheless, O’Connell is positive about Styron’s venture to write from Turner’s perspective and praises him for the courage to take, as he calls it, “a daring, imaginative leap into a tormented black psyche to better understand himself and his country.”21_{O’Connell is also convinced that Styron managed to construct a plausible portrait} of the black hero and seems not to be concerned even to a small extent with some aspects of Styron’s portrayal of Nat Turner that could be seen by other critics as prejudicial or demeaning. In O’Connell’s opinion, Styron wrote “a stunningly beautiful embodiment of a noble man, in a rotten time and place, who tried his best to save himself and transform his world.”22

O’Connell evaluation of Styron’s novel is yet another example of the uncritical acceptance of the book. Just like other Styron’s supporters, the reviewer discerns only the positive aspects of Styron’s Confessions and fails at the same time to discover its wider and more complex spectrum. This is clearly manifested in how O’Connell perceives Styron’s first person narrative. He considers Styron’s jump into the skin of a black slave the writer’s moral obligation as a Southerner and a writer supporting black people’s struggle for freedom. In O’Connell’s view, by means of such manoeuvre the novelist attempted to finally get to know a black man and tried to understand the actions he took to save his people from misery of living in bondage. It is undeniably noble of Styron to cross that barrier of racial segregation and make an attempt to understand a black mind; however, one must pay attention to the outcome of this adventurous leap into the skin of the black revolutionary, which was eventually the construction of a slave rebel personality packed with virtually all stereotypes and preconceptions of a black man existing in the white American consciousness. Unfortunately, Styron’s depictions that clearly indicate that he is not free from preconceived notions about black people do not arouse O’Connell’s attention. In his description of Styron’s Nat Turner he even calls the young Nat “a cute pickaninny”23_{and seems to accept the} benevolence of Samuel Turner towards his slaves as an obvious and not uncommon feature of the white master’s personality. This could suggest that O’Connell is himself not free from harmful prejudicial beliefs about blacks and the fact that he unconditionally accepts Styron’s depictions may very likely expose his hidden apologetic and sentimental feelings towards the institution of slavery.

21 Shaun O’Connell, “Styron’s Nat Turner,” The Nation, October 16, 1967, 373. 22 Ibid.

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All in all, there is an important message that O’Connell tries to convey. Despite his inability to discern the flaws that the novel beyond doubt has, O’Connell justifies the actions of Nat Turner and he understands his insurgence and slaughter of white people as a necessary measure he had to take to fight for his own freedom and the freedom of his fellow men. In this way, O’Connell sees the relevance of the rebellion of 1831 to the situation of black people in twentieth-century America. According to him, whites must accept the right of black people to fight against the oppressive American system even if it means resorting to force to resolve the ongoing problem of racial discrimination. In O’Connell’s view, the novel has disturbing properties since on the one hand it may encourage blacks to take militant action in the civil rights movement and on the other hand it forces white Americans to acknowledge the nation’s racial injustice and justify the black citizens’ struggle for civil rights even if it involves using violence.

The review of Philip Rahv, an essayist and literary critic, appeared on October 26, 1967 in The New York Review of Books and is an example of a total endorsement of Styron’s

Confessions. According to Rahv, “this is a first rate-novel, the best that William Styron has

written and the best by an American writer that has appeared in some years.”24_{In Rahv’s} opinion, the most crucial reason for the greatness of the book is the novel’s major theme, which played a crucial and inherent part in the forming of “the national experience”25_{in the} United States. The reviewer compliments Styron on his deep understanding of the slavery history and his full embracement of the idea that a black slave conducted an uprising that cost so many lives of white plantation owners and their families. Rahv applauds the writer that he managed to refrain himself from creating a cliché ending which would expose the feeling of guilt and repentance on the side of Styron’s main protagonist. Instead, as Rahv puts it, “far from sounding a note of reconciliation, Styron explores the Negro militant’s hatred of whites, which grows ‘like a granite flower with cruel leaves.’”26_{The reviewer confesses that a great} number of American whites who were convinced of slavery’s benevolence still has not been able to come to terms with the idea that slaves hated their owners and yearned for freedom. Rahv also draws a parallel between the events in the past and their contemporary relevance. He considers the racial movement of the sixties a part of the legacy of “the peculiar institution” and that Styron’s novel in this regard has a resonance to the events around the racial issues in the sixties. However, Rahv finds it important that Styron managed to stay

24 Philip Rahv, “Through the Midst of Jerusalem,” The New York Review of Books, October 26, 1967, 1. 25 Ibid.

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within the boundaries of the novelistic canon and did not involve himself into, as Rahv puts it, “political or sectional bluster.”27

One of the most interesting parts of Rahv’s evaluation of Styron’s novel is his view on the author’s move to write from a black man’s perspective. Other Styron supporters regard it as a bold and dangerous undertaking, Rahv on the other hand sees only advantages of the novelist’s use of the first person narrative. He considers the fact that Styron was a white Virginian as a benefit regarding the subject of the novel and the way he handled the story of a black revolutionary confirms, in Rahv’s opinion, “that he [Styron] is pre-eminently equipped to deal with the theme.”28_{The critic states that neither a white Northerner nor a black writer} could have done it better than Styron. He is convinced that a Northern writer would have lacked the necessary experience and the feeling of the South to be able to cope with the story of Nat Turner and a black writer would not have been able to be objective and impartial enough to confront the slavery theme and, as Rahv puts it, “would have probably stacked the cards, producing in a mood of unnerving rage and indignation, a melodrama of saints and sinners.”29_{The way Styron depicted other black characters is also spoken highly of by the} reviewer. According to Rahv, Styron was able to identify with them and showed a high degree of inner perception in doing so. He sees it as Styron’s great achievement and he states that in this regard Styron even managed to surpass Faulkner, his artistic role-model. He puts it: “Whereas Faulkner’s Negroes are still to some extent the white man’s Negroes, Styron’s are starkly themselves.”30_{One must admit that such an opinion could well be considered as} audacious since Rahv is for some obscure reasons convinced of the Virginian writer’s objectivity on the slavery issue and completely ignores the shameful history of Southern injustice and brutality towards blacks. By claiming that a white Southerner possesses the knowledge of a black man’s psyche, Rahv disregards the painful reality of total segregation of blacks and whites in the Southern states, which successfully prevented both sides from interacting with each other and at the same time from enabling them to get to know one another. The reviewer also fails to realize what impact the racial indoctrination had on the mind of the Southern white citizens and that a firmly ingrained and persistently reaffirmed prejudice could not be easily erased from the consciousness of a Southern mind. Styron’s depictions of slavery and Nat Turner are unfortunately the confirmation of this fact. Sadly enough, Rahv is not able to see that Styron’s attempt to recreate the spirit of the black rebel

27 Ibid., 1. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 2.

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resulted in the caricatural product that exposed Styron’s hidden racial bias. This exposure provides the validation of Toni Morrison’s conviction that no white literary figure, even driven by the best intentions possible, is able to understand the unique experience of a black man in America and give justice to his black characters.

Since Rahv is not well enough equipped to realize the flaws of Styron’s Confessions, he concentrates on expressing his admirations of how gripping Styron’s book is. What particularly catches his attention is Nat Turner’s secret fascination of Miss Margaret Whitehead, a white girl of his desires and the only person he eventually kills in his rebellion. Rahv does not occupy himself with the fact that Styron’s Turner, a black slave who is about to start a crusade against the Southern slaveholders, falls for a white girl, a daughter of a slave owner, and entangles himself with by no means unhealthy fantasies about raping her. Rahv accepts the story as it unfolds and seems to be totally unaware that Styron’s depictions are the fulfilment of stereotypical and harmful preconceptions about blacks.

The voice of George Core could be regarded as a moderate endorsement of Styron’s novel. His assessment was published in the spring of 1970 in Southern Literary Journal, which is one and a half year after the release of William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black

Writers Respond. The author of the review, who was at that time fully aware of the criticism

Styron’s novel had stirred up, generally opposes the critics’ condemnation of the novel. At the beginning of his review, Core draws attention to a feeling of responsibility a Southern novelist carries in writing his fiction. He is constantly subject to criticism and accusations of conveying in his work Southern ideas and beliefs. He puts it: “The Southern novelist must often awake, during the darkest of the night, in a roil of tangled bedclothes and cold sweat. He is haunted by a recurring nightmare – that he will be called Southern by his critics and that his work will be defined as gothic and grotesque – or that, worse still, the same fiction will be deemed a historical novel.”31_{With this statement Core makes an important point. The} Southern literary figures are indeed charged with a heavy burden of responsibility towards the genuine depictions of his black characters and are definitely more subject to criticism when their work treats of the black experience in America. However, if an author himself classifies his work as a historical novel and his story treats of historical events and historical figures, he has undoubtedly an obligation to depict those events and those figures accurately and according to the historical facts. However, unless he feels he is objective enough to give full

31 George Core, “The Confessions of Nat Turner and the Burden of the Past,” Southern Literary Journal, Spring 1970, 2, ProQuest, 128.

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justice to his characters and unless he has total confidence that he is able to convey the true spirit of the theme of his work, he should not embark on such a perilous enterprise as writing a historical novel about the American slavery. Styron is a perfect example of how important this self-consciousness is to prevent a literary work from becoming a caricature of what an author really wanted to achieve. Styron’s bold conviction that despite his Southern roots and growing up in the total discriminative and oppressive system he was able to understand the soul of the historical slave freedom fighter resulted eventually in the creation of a corrupted and biased picture of Nat Turner and his rebellion and accounted for Styron’s artistic failure.

Another focus of Core’s attention is on defending Styron against the accusations regarding his profound departure from the facts included in the original Confessions of Thomas Gray. To deal with this problem Cores evokes Gyorgy Lucács, a philosopher and literary historian mostly known for his study of the historical novel. The critic agrees with Lucács’s opinion that a novelist should avoid twisting the history in his depictions of the past events. One could definitely notice Core’s inconsistency on the issue since Styron’s alterations are numerous and quite explicit. The problem is that Core considers the modifications implemented by Styron unimportant. To him, it does not matter whether Turner was educated by his parents or his slave master, or whether it was according to the historical evidence that the faithful slaves defended their owners. What really does matter to Core is “Nat’s stature as a man as Styron renders it – and his place in the society which produced him.”32_{Due to the fact that he is not able to see the significance of Styron’s changes of the} existing historical evidence and how they influence the reception of Nat Turner, his rebellion and other slaves among Styron’s readers, Core cannot really realize the distortion of the slave history the novel smuggles into the American consciousness.

According to Core, the highest significance of The Confessions of Nat Turner lies in its relevance to the contemporary times. He stresses here that the novel has cathartic properties and is a means for its readers to become reconciled with the past. The correspondence between the Southampton rebellion and the civil rights movement is certainly undeniable for both events are guided by a common struggle and a common goal, which is the freedom from oppression and injustice. However, it is important to realize that the black civil rights’ activists are descendants of the Africans, who were forcefully brought to America and kept as slaves for more than two centuries. These activists are humans devoid of their roots and their history, who have to grapple with the slavery legacy every single day of their life. In their

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battle for justice they are in desperate need of a role model who would set an example for them and Nat Turner is to them their hero and the important symbol of the struggle for their freedom. On this account, the relevance of the novel to the racial turmoil happening in the 1960s fails to achieve the aim it should. The way the slaves and Nat Turner are portrayed in the novel is regarded by most blacks as demeaning and humiliating and the novel is accused of affirming the biased attitude of white Americans towards black citizens. In this way, the novel rather than building the bridges in the deeply divided American nation seems only to exacerbate the existent tension between blacks and whites, and performs more the function of stirring up a hornet’s nest than seeking for a solution.

All in all, the positive evaluations of Styron’s novel discussed in this part of the thesis possess one common thread, namely a very shallow and superficial approach to the very deep and complicated problematic of The Confessions of Nat Turner. The critics lack objectivity that would make their assessments credible to the more conscious audience. They persistently ignore or are unable to discern the important aspect of Styron’s depictions, which is the perpetuation and utilisation of virtually all harmful preconceived notions about black people existing in America. They mutually defend Styron against the problem of the historical inaccuracy in his novel and indiscriminately agree that Styron had a right to meditate in his own personal way on the life of the historical figure of Nat Turner and his rebellion. Styron’s supporters are at the same time oblivious to the writer’s responsibility for the historical accuracy in such a literary genre as a historical novel and demonstrate at the same time that the black Americans’ right to the proper and genuine depiction of their slavery past is not their prime concern. They laud Styron for the revival of the forsaken slavery past, the bravery in showing the cruelty of the system, Styron’s courage to write from a black man’s perspective and the novel’s relevance to the racial chaos of the sixties. On the other hand, they disregard those aspects of Styron’s portrayal that would suggest the benevolence of the institution of bondage, the author’s apologetic feelings towards the oppressive system, his biased attitude to the Nat Turner’s rebellion and his inability to fully acknowledge the historical black rebel as a national hero. Styron’s stigmatization of his protagonist with such attributes as homosexuality, sexual obsession for white women, cowardice and hesitancy in leadership, and weak personality are fully embraced by the critics. This unfortunately clearly manifests their consent that these depictions truthfully characterize a black personality and at the same time exposes their shared prejudicial feelings towards blacks. Their complete embracement of Styron’s novel also demonstrates their denial of the complexity of the

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problem of racism in America and firmly operating bias towards black citizens, who still have to grapple with the injustice of the American system and the legacy of the debasing practise of the persistent white supremacy. The uncritical acceptance of Styron’s novel by his supporters shows what profound changes still have to be made in the American consciousness before it is freed from pejorative racial stereotyping and subconscious negative racial bias towards black citizens. Only when the mythicizing and whitewashing of the shameful part of the American history at the expense of black people are put to an end, is the reconciliation with the painful past and dealing with the troublesome present possible.

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Chapter 2. Negative publicity in the American press and Ten Black Writers Respond.

The negative voices regarding Styron’s Confessions did not appear so abundantly in the American press and academic journals as its critical acclaim. An explanation for such situation could be sought in the white press’ general unwillingness to publish negative assessments of a white American’s work. Moreover, the loud and enthusiastic approval from Styron’s supporters effectively made the negative criticism seem miniscule and insignificant. Despite all that, the negative commentaries regarding Styron’s fourth novel did feature in the pages of the American print media (mostly black, however) and provided a firm base for the eventual massive backlash and the novel’s condemnation. In this part of the thesis the most notable voices of criticism that appeared in the American press are presented and discussed in detail, as well as the collection of ten critical essays written by black American scholars published in the form of a book. The volume was titled William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten

Black Writers Respond and was considered a culminating blow in the whole criticism against

Styron’s novel.

Wilfred Sheed, a white English-born American novelist and essayist, is the author of the review that was published in The New York Times just a few days before the release of Styron’s novel. His evaluation of Styron’s work is one of the most insightful and contained a blistering criticism of the novel. Obviously, it was not the kind of review that the author anticipated with delight. Even though the discrepancies between the historical facts and the events portrayed in the novel were one of the major angles of criticism among other reviewers, the historical accuracy was of minor importance to Sheed. In his view “Styron uses history properly to put his own experience into fancy dress and see how it looks. No historical novel has ever done more.”33_{However, Sheed is more concerned with, as Albert E. Stone} suitably puts in his book The Return of Nat Turner, “Styron’s missed or squandered opportunities.”34_{Despite the fact that the novel is generally praised for its contemporary} relevance by Styron’s enthusiasts, Sheed is of the opinion that the novel lacks the link between the historical Nat Turner and the racial unrest in the United States in the sixties, and according to the reviewer, Styron managed to “expunge the 20th_century”35_{from his work.} Moreover, Sheed notices that the novelist included only his own personal view of the historical Nat Turner and his revolt, lacking at the same time objectivity on the subject. A great deal of the reviewer’s focus is kept on criticism of the clichés about blacks Styron

33 Wilfred Sheed, “The Slave Who Became a Man,” The New York Times, October 8, 1967, 1.

34 Albert E. Stone, The Return of Nat Turner (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1992), 111. 35 Sheed, “The Slave Who Became a Man,” 3.

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successfully sneaked into his book. Sheed ironizes Styron’s excessive use of black stereotypes. As his sarcastic comments note: “The white folks began to talk backlash – we tried being nice to these baboons and look where it got us – and no doubt they were able to follow through on it and no doubt an era of repression was Turner’s immediate legacy.”36_Or “The Good Book which the owners have fed their darkies in selected spoonfuls turns out, in larger doses, to be equivalent to a keg of nitroglycerine.”37_{And yet another example: “…} before Armageddon commences, he [Turner] decides he will have to break training and get himself a wife.”38

Styron’s use of a historical novel as his literary genre also comes under Sheed’s criticism. Even though he recognizes a potential in taking Nat Turner on as a subject of the twentieth-century literary work, he strongly doubts the success and effectiveness of using fiction in doing so. Sheed sees the use of Nat Turner as the narrator as yet another cause of the novel’s failure. He puts it: “We are in effect being asked to spend a short lifetime in the head of one skilfully animated museum piece.”39_{In Sheed’s view, Styron exhausts his reader with} his thorough penetration of Turner’s psyche and calls the effect of such detailed analysis of Turner’s life “the monotony beyond the call of monomania.”40_{According to Sheed, Styron} neither managed to convey any innovative message in his work, nor did he present a new original perspective on the Southampton rebellion of 1831. Even though Sheed is sceptical about virtually all aspects of the novel, he seems to be content with Styron’s portrayal of slavery and that he managed to convey the climate of that period. He puts it: “he [Styron] does have something to say about the physical situation of slavery, the way that America looked and sounded and smelled from underneath: the only position the American Negro has known to this day.”41_{This is undoubtedly the allusion to white supremacy and the way black} men have been thought of since their “peculiar” origins on the American soil. Sheed is convinced that Styron’s contribution to the reintroduction of the American slavery past is very limited and justice to the blacks could only be done with the proper and fair restoration of the whole period. Even then, the reviewer doubts the ability of white Americans to understand the brutality and injustice of the system.

36 Ibid., 2. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 3. 41 Ibid.

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Herbert Aptheker is one of the sharpest and most important contributors to the criticism of Styron’s Confessions. Aptheker was a highly regarded historian specialized in the African-American field and a political activist. It is worth mentioning that he is the author of two scholarly studies on the slave resistance in America, the first being Nat Turner’s Slave

Rebellion (his master’s thesis), and the latter American Negro Slave Revolts (his PhD

dissertation). Aptheker’s review of Styron’s novel appeared in The Nation on October 16, 1967. The historian is clearly distressed with Styron’s depiction of Nat Turner’s revolt as a unique, isolated and unexpected uprising, and stresses the importance of a proper comprehension of the Nat Turner rebellion, which in his view “cannot be understood unless it is seen as the culminating blow of a particular period of rising slave unrest.”42_Aptheker juxtaposes Styron’s portrayal of Nat Turner’s rebellion with the historical records, which show that the general feeling of impending revolt penetrated the antebellum south. Aptheker also deals in his review with Styron’s persistent picturing black slaves as dehumanized creatures devoid of honour and manhood, the beings with broken souls that are not able to take the responsibility of their own lives. Styron’s revival and reaffirmation of Sambo stereotype is to Aptheker the demonstration of how the apologists’ views of American slavery are still valid in the sixties.

As one might expect, the main focus of Aptheker’s criticism is aimed at Styron’s lack of historical accuracy. As an expert in this area, the historian is able to assess the range of the discrepancies between the historical facts about Nat Turner and his rebellion, and they are, according to him, numerous. The most disturbing disparity, in Aptheker’s view, is the way Styron disposed of the members of Turner’s family and narrowed down its importance in the upbringing of young Nat Turner. Although Aptheker admits that slavery due to its brutal practice managed to undermine the slave nuclear family, he is convinced that “it never fully destroyed it – in large part because of the women’s ingenuity and resistance.”43_Aptheker evokes the Moyniham report, which stated that the single-parent families were spreading among the black ghettos of the 1960s and that the reason for such situation was not the consequence of unemployment but the legacy of slavery. He declares that the fact that Nat Turner was brought up by both parents and a grandmother contradicts the document at issue and concludes that “this is the fault of the thesis – not of Nat Turner!”44

42 Herbert Aptheker, “A Note on the History,” The Nation, October 16, 1967, 375-376. 43 Ibid., 375.

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Aptheker is convinced that the author of a historical novel has the responsibility to remain truthful at least to some extent to the real events the novel presents. He draws a parallel between the numerous and diverse historical inconsistencies in Styron’s novel and the general approach to the history of contemporary white Americans. Aptheker calls it “a consequential distortion – a distortion widespread in the United States at the present time.”45 In this way, the historian draws attention to the significant problem of the false and misleading way of perceiving the slave history in the country and the hypocrisy behind it. In his book on Nat Turner’s rebellion, Aptheker argues that the way an individual and his actions are perceived depends on how it suits the dominant group that this individual will be portrayed and understood. In this way, he could either be pronounced a glorious revolutionary if he acts in the interest of the dominant group or a ruthless bandit if he is against it. In this case, Nat Turner – the historical leader of the important slave resurrection, has persistently been labelled in the white supremacist world as a deranged outcast or bloodthirsty monster because he dared to stand up against the oppression of white exploiters and reach out for his freedom and the freedom of his fellow blacks. Even though it might not have been Styron’s intention, his portrayal of Nat Turner could most certainly be perceived as the fulfilment of the negative notions about this disturbing slave personality, and thus serve as a tool to reconfirm the already existent distortion. According to Aptheker, the re-evaluation of Nat Turner’s status in the American history could only be possible when there is a willingness on the side of the corrupted dominant group to accept the difficult and painful truth of slavery’s atrocities. He puts it: “If and when humanism arrives and animalism is driven from the world, Nat Turner will be labelled as one who fought against the latter. His motives will be admired and sadness, and amazement, perhaps, will grip the observer who will realize that, with those admirable motives, society, as then arranged, made his bloody deeds necessary.”46_The massive embracement of Styron’s novel among the white American intelligentsia is, however, a confirmation that America is definitely not ready for such a revolution in its consciousness and the black struggle for the proper recognition of slavery and its atrocities needs to be continued.

Another notable criticism on Styron’s novel came from June Meyer, a highly acclaimed African-American poet, writer and essayist of her generation. Her review appeared in The Nation on December 4, 1967 and had definitely a fierce and passionate character. The main point of Meyer’s critique is Styron’s use of a first-person narrative. Meyer finds it

45 Ibid.

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appalling that Styron hijacked the life of Nat Turner and delivered the confessions of this historical figure’s life. Meyer points to the fact that since Styron’s protagonist had never had the chance to speak for himself and tell his own story, any other attempt to speak from his own perspective is, according to the reviewer, “an outright fake.”47_{Even though she admits} that Turner’s own confessions would have been pretty partial and most probably dripping with “…‘rage and indignation,’”48_{Meyer comes to the conclusion that Styron’s novel is yet} another instance of “fantastic, black-to-white ‘dialog’ miscarried by white-controlled media through the ‘medium’ of the now professional, white intermediary.”49_{She is exasperated with} the pattern of black Americans’ experience being delivered by white voices and finds it even more absurd that those works are reviewed and commented on mostly by white critics. In this way, black Americans barely get the chance to participate in the events dealing with and judging their own life and their unique experience in American history. She says: “The white problem will never be solved as long as American black life is an imagining, a TV spectacular, the product of rank intuition, the casualty of gross misinterpretation, and grist for statistical games.”50

The critically acclaimed work of Edward Said in which he investigates the nature of western mythmaking about the East is relevant here. Said argues that Orientalism is an ideological product of the Occident, which introduced still firmly operating harmful stereotypical assumptions about the eastern societies, particularly the Islamic ones, to serve the purpose of imperialism and secure power. Said points to the damaging effects of these notions since they are generally superficial and produce a falsified picture of the Orient. He explains the functioning of a group holding power as follows: “There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces.”51_{There is a striking similarity of the problematic} of the American black experience being controlled and filtered by the white dominant group Meyer argues about to that of orientalism. In both cases, the stereotyped groups do not get the chance to speak for themselves and are victims of harmful mythmaking. The fact that those manipulated images have prospered in the western world is a clear confirmation of the

47 June Meyer, “Spokesmen for the Blacks,” The Nation, December 4, 1967, 597. 48 Ibid.

49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 599.

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imperialistic nature of the dominating group willing to do all it takes to ensure its supremacy and justify its profits from the exploitation of other parts of the world or their people. In the United States of America, slavery and its lingering effects such as racism and stereotyping are the manifestation of the dominance of the WASP elite over the black minority for the social, financial and political benefits. Styron’s novel and its massive popularity demonstrates how far America is from cutting off that mythmaking, accepting the painful truth of its atrocities and embracing blacks as equal American citizens to be finally able to apply the American ideals of freedom and liberty to all its citizens and not only those with a white skin complexion.

Darwin T. Turner, an African-American literature critic, a poet and an English professor and the chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Iowa, is the author of another contribution to the criticism of Styron’s novel. His review was published on April 2nd_{, 1968 in The Journal of Negro History and raised some vital issues on Styron’s} novel. One of them is Turner’s assertion that Styron conveyed in his historical novel exactly the feelings of white Southerners of the post-slavery era and that his book serves as the reaffirmation of the stereotypes embedded in the minds of white Southerners. He puts it: “Styron has actually exhumed and modernized most of the old myths about the conscious and subconscious desires of Negroes.”52_{Darwin T. Turner brings up an event in his life when he} was interrupted and verbally attacked by one of white Virginian students while conducting a lecture on black writers to the white college students just because he referred to Nat Turner as “a prototype for Negro heroes.”53_{The agitated white student had always been taught that Nat} Turner was a bloodthirsty fanatic, who took many lives of innocent Virginians. This incident precisely illustrates the manipulation of history and of the meaning of somebody’s life that Herbert Aptheker talks about in his study on the rebellion of Nat Turner. This historical rebel could have easily been identified as a national hero had he acted in the interest of the white Southerners. Instead, since it was just the opposite, he was cast into the Southern American consciousness as an outlaw and a great enemy of the nation. According to Turner, Styron’s novel only reassures its white biased readers that what they have always believed in is exactly in compliance with the historical evidence on this Southampton rebel. Turner also points to the narrative method Styron used to write his book. In his opinion, this creates an extra peril that the reader could find the story more credible and could be more likely to believe it. The

52 Darwin T. Turner, review of The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron, The Journal of Negro

History, vol. 53, no. 2 (April 1968): 183, http:/ /www.jstor.org/stable/2716491

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reviewer asserts that as a consequence of the use of the main character as the narrator “the reader may have difficulty remembering that he is reading fiction.”54

Darwin T. Turner also addresses a few rather blatant stereotypes about blacks Styron perpetuated in his novel such as a black man’s obsession with white women, docility of slaves, benevolence of slavery, immorality of black women (versus the purity of white ones obviously), but most importantly the danger of educating slaves. According to Darwin T. Turner, the novelist implies that there comes nothing good from teaching slaves how to read and write but can only destroy them and bring misery to the owners. In the case of Nat Turner, his literacy first led to his madness, then rebellion and eventually his death. In the case of his owners, the education of Nat Turner backfired and resulted in a bloody murder of approximately 55 whites. The reviewer also points to Styron’s implication that slaves “do not develop homicidal hatred for white people unless they live in a close personal relationship.”55 In Turner’s opinion, such depictions of Styron provide validation for racism and discrimination in the sixties. The message of Styron’s novel could be that white American had better keep blacks in the inferior position if they want to avoid trouble and backstabbing. The critic is concerned with the massive popularity of Styron’s Confessions and its negative consequences. According to Turner, the readers seeking answers for the turbulent situation of America at that time will definitely not find them in this novel.

Robert McColley, History Professor Emeritus at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is another white scholar who supported the negative criticism of Styron’s novel. His review of The Confessions of Nat Turner was published on December 4, 1968 in Civil

War History: A Journal of the Middle Period. Just like Herbert Aptheker, McColley is

strongly displeased with the lack of historical accuracy in Styron’s novel and its favourable reception by some of the prominent historians, who should be aware of the distortion the novel could cause if Styron’s depictions were accepted as a trustworthy picture of slavery and Nat Turner’s rebellion. McColley is also concerned with the tremendous popularity of the novel and the fact that it is “now being seriously recommended to students of history as a general valid description of slavery as it was in the southern United States.”56

McColley also gives thought to the various approaches to Nat Turner Styron could have taken but chose not to. According to the reviewer, “there are good historical grounds for

54 Ibid., 185. 55 Ibid. 184.

56 Robert McColley, review of The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron, Civil War History 14, no. 4 (December 1968): 346. Project Muse. Web. 14 February 2017.

THE CONTROVERSY OF THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER BY WILLIAM STYRON. THE ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL’S MASSIVE POPULARITY AND ITS STRONG CONDEMANTION.

TABLE OF CONTENTS