The visual text… or moreover what I like to call “the imaginary” offers a contrasting take on reality when compared to the “real”. They complement one another and play off each other to develop meaning and a picture of reality. They are both a reality in one way or another… As they are the experiences and thoughts of beings from the time period. The real sticks out like a sore thumb against the imaginary. Similarly, the way in which each is created is fascinating. The imaginary has a simplistic, fake, try hard feel to it that resembles a poorly cut out mask… whereas the real holds a nostalgia, misunderstood, challenging truth that sits uncomfortably against the imaginary.
The visual text offers a contrasting image that feels intangible and slightly imaginary as it floats above the spectrum of the real and tangible. It is a smokey feeling that fills the space and allows you to imagine the images but similarly hold them as false. The real text offers a solid, difficult, brutal reality of realness and pain. I interpret the tension between the real and the visual-textual representation in the passage as a complex space in which we have the promise of “exposing the truth of slavery” fulfilled while similarly feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied in the way in which the imaginary catches us off guard and challenging that image of real that we trust oh so well… it allows us to look at the imaginary with a grand sense of “what the f*cknesss” and anger!
Looking at the text :
What a situation now, for a patriotic senator, that had been all week before spurring up the legislature of his native state to pass more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harborers and abettors! . . . How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets, and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great state interests.
He was as bold as a lion about it, and ‘mightily convinced’ not only himself, but everybody that heard him;–but then his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,–or at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle with ‘Ran away from the subscriber’ under it. The magic of the real presence,–the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,–these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a helpless mother, a defenseless child,–like that one which was now wearing his lost boy’s little well-known cap; he was, as everyone must see, in a sad state for his patriotism.” (Stowe, UTC, Ch IX: “In Which a Senator is But a Man,” Project Gutenberg)
I am intrigued to pull out the lines/words: “patriotic senator”, “stringent resolutions”, “against escaping slaves, harborers, abettors”
This holds a strict commentary on news sources, politics, and how narratives are created. Through a mere sentence this senator has become a hero who is taking action to punish this conspiracy of wrong doers. He is a king as he “scouts sentimental weakness” and saves the great state from giving up its interests for the “welfare of a few miserable” others. He is a God who everyone should be thanking. He is a “BOLD” lion! Hello, Stowe! Stowe here is painting a picture in our mind through words- a created narrative, propaganda, through the real images of concepts we know: politics, media, slavery… we are painting images in our minds of concepts that Stowe is pleading with us to see while the breathing characters- the real “helpless mother”, her “defenceless child” act out in the background. The imaginary stays floating in front of the real, clouding it, crowding the space that it exists in. In reality it exists alone in our space but through the text the imaginary takes up all the negative space we are trying to breathe within. It takes our air away and fills us with this insanely complex duality of emotions, narratives, meaning, experiences. Goddamn!
In your post the a portion of the quote reads “he magic of the real presence…” and I found it interesting to describe the agony and the fear that someone who is trying to escape slavery as being magical. It makes me wonder whether the magic comes from the person itself, is it a magical experience to see a slave be so broken down? I do not think that is it. I think what is magical is the fact that Eliza is showing emotions that are similar to that of this politician’s wife. What is magical in this sense is the fact that this slave has complex emotions and he is now face to face with the reality of slavery. Like you mentioned in your post there was idea of what a runaway slave looked like, and this challenged those ideas. But I do think the addition of this “magic” does some work of demystifying slaves. Before being seen as simply property, to now being understood in a more human and humane form. I find it an interesting choice of words that complicates the understanding of slaves and livery for the audience that Stowe is trying to reach.