“Equal Communion”: Racial Hierarchy and Gender Identity in Ann Stephens'sMalaeska

Near the end of Ann Sophia Stephens'sMalaeska(1839), a young woman argues with her fiancé, William, about whether he will agree to meet an American Indian woman whom she has befriended. He proclaims with “a smile of haughty contempt” that he has “never held equal communion with a colored race” (263). Sarah heatedly responds, “I have no predilection for savages as a race…may I not be allowed a favorite: especially as she is a white in education, feeling, everything but color?” (264). In this significant exchange, William and Sarah's statements encapsulate two 19th-century responses to the possibility of cross-racial contact. Although the characters perceive themselves to be arguing with each other — William rejects the possibility of such relationships outright even as Sarah forcefully argues for her right to have a friendship with the racial “other” — the modern reader must be struck by the fact that both characters are enmeshed in the same hierarchy of race that premises whiteness as a superior identity. While Sarah argues for a logic of identification based in culture and affect, her desire to be allowed a “favorite” is no less rooted in racialist discourses than is William's. Stephens's gendering of these apparently contrary but essentially similar responses is the topic of this essay.