Melodramatic tableaux vivants

Abstract

The novel Sab (1841) by the Cuban-Spanish writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda has been called both a radical anti-slavery novel (Sommer 1991, Davies 2013) and an anti-abolitionist novel that only pays lip service to the abolitionist cause (Williams 2008, Gomariz, 2009). In this article I approach this ambiguity by moving the focus from content to form and from story to reader. Building on insights by Peter Brooks (1976), Jacky Bowring (2017) and David Denby (1994), I argue that formally the novel is a melodramatic tragedy and that its melodramatic tableaux vivants foster moral reflection in the reader by creating a clash between the ideal and the real and between surface and depth. I develop this in critical dialogue with ideas about the (dis)connection between emotionality, empathy and human rights developed by Lynn Hunt (Hunt 2007) and Lynn Festa (2006).