ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

lackface stereotypes, but also marked thematic contradictions that undercut the material
structures that blackface stereotypes developed in association with.
Brown never wrote a script for a minstrel show or Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He did,
however, write several comic pieces that feature the Uncle Tom characters, including a
farce on the very Harriet Beecher Stowe novel he invoked to deride minstrelsy. Uncle
Tom’s Hebb’n was a paradigmatic example of ironic humor. Brown reversed the moral
characters of Topsy and Eva, making Topsy a “pure and maligned heroine” and Eva “a
sophisticated flapper.” 222 The play goes further than the previous in mocking racial
stereotypes and the structures of literature.
Brown placed the theme of his adaptation on the surface of the text when his Eva
questioned Ophelia’s behavior, commenting: “How queerly Auntie’s behaving! She
must be sublimating a repression!” 223 Later in the action, Topsy and Eva ridicule Stowe,
and color themes, in a duet titled “Never Trust your Favorite Writer.” They note the
irony that Topsy, the morally pure of the two, is as “black as cinder,” and Eva, the
experienced one, is “as white as snow.” (156) Topsy protests the assumption that her skin
color is indicative of her moral character, maintaining that her “coloration’s no indication
[of] a sinful soul.” They summarize the point by calling Topsy a “lil’ black saint” and
Eva a “lil’ white devil.” (157) Compared to the other plays, this is an aggressive assault
on linguistic connections between color and morality, and by implication, between race
and morality.
222
Forman Brown, Small Wonder: The Story of the Yale Puppeteers (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press, 1980), 118.
223 Forman Brown, “Uncle Tom’s Hebb’n,” The Pie-eyed Piper and Other Impertinent Puppet
Plays (New York: Greenberg Press, 1933), 153. From this point on, I will use parenthentical
documentation for the lengthy selections from this play.
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