Editing Tarring and feathering (section)

====North America====
The punitive social ritual of tarring and feathering has appeared in numerous [[American literature|American works]] of both "canonical literature and dime novels", even as the actual practice became less frequent, "dramatizing debates between summary punishment on the one hand, and individual rights on the other".<ref name=Trininc>{{cite thesis |last=Trininc |first=Marina |date=August 2013 |title=Blackening character, imagining race, and mapping morality: Tarring and feathering in nineteenth-century American literature |type=PhD |publisher=[[Texas A&M University]] |url=https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/151298/TRNINIC-DISSERTATION-2013.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |access-date=July 22, 2022}}</ref>{{rp|2, 4}}<ref name=Trininc2018>{{cite journal |last=Trninic |first=Marina |date=2018 |title=Edgar Allan Poe's Tarred and Feathered Bodies: Imagining Race, Questioning Bondage, and Marking Humanity |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/710348 |journal=South Central Review |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=26–39 |doi=10.1353/scr.2018.0034 |s2cid=150323211 |issn=1549-3377|url-access=subscription }}</ref> This outward blackening by tar was generally equated with blackness of character, which again was linked to racist notions of the inferiority of black-skinned slaves, while the feathers were sometines regarded as "nodding to [[Native Americans in the United States|[American-]Indian]] headdresses". "[[John Trumbull]], [[James Fenimore Cooper]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], and [[Edgar Allan Poe]], among numerous others, draw on tarring and feathering to portray anxieties about the "experiment" of democracy in which egalitarian alignment of society yielded a racialized social opprobrium."<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|3–7, 47, 159}} The earliest representations in literature were in the context of the [[American Revolution]], in a poem by [[Philip Freneau]] and in John Trumbull's ''[[M'Fingal]]'' from 1776, which in its literary form of "the mockepic genre [...] resonated with the euphemistic, tongue-in-cheek language used in newspapers".<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|39–40}} This background reappeared in [[Jimmy Carter]]'s 2003 novel ''[[The Hornet's Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War|The Hornet's Nest]]'', which features a "stunning" scene with the tarring and feathering of [[Loyalist (American Revolution)|loyalist]] [[Thomas Brown (loyalist)|Thomas Brown]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2003/11/16/patriot-acts/0165c33f-41c0-4b5a-aa6a-2bbeb667947d/ |title=Patriot Acts |last=Perrin |first=Noel |date=16 November 2003 |type=Review |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |access-date=20 October 2022 |quote=many effective scenes and a few stunning ones, like the tarring and feathering of a young loyalist named Thomas Brown, who later founds the military unit called the Florida Rangers.}}</ref> The torture was presented as the pivotal event for the radicalization of that character.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Fried |first=Ellen |date=Summer 2004 |title=The Revolution in the South |magazine=[[Prologue (magazine)|Prologue]] |volume=36 |number=2 |pages=73–74}}</ref>

James Fenimore Cooper's ''Redskins'' from 1846 presented the act of tarring and feathering in the context of the [[Anti-Rent War]] as the "unwarranted, imbalanced threat of violence from misguided, irrational, and selfinterested crowds".<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|55, 59–65, 70}} In the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, tarring and feathering appeared as problematic side-effect of democracy and nationalism in the United States of America of his time,<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|114–126}} progressing from a symbolic regicide in the American Revolution to fratricide.<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|146}} In "[[My Kinsman, Major Molineux]]" (1831), Robin, the nephew of the eponymous character, seeks him in vain throughout the story. Finally, Robin sees the Major taken by in a procession, tarred and feathered, having fallen out of the favour of his community. Here Hawthorne examined the effect this punishment has on the "community after engaging in such a brutal act",<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|114–126}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Dowries |first=Paul |date=2004 |title=Democratic Terror in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and "The Man of the Crowd" |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1754-6095.2004.tb00161.x |journal=Poe Studies |volume=37 |issue=1–2 |pages=35–31 |doi=10.1111/j.1754-6095.2004.tb00161.x |access-date=28 September 2022|url-access=subscription }}</ref> while he used it as "as a metaphor of persecution and victimization" in "[[Old News: The Old Tory]]" (1837) and "The Custom-House", the introduction to ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]'' (1850).<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|126–130, 135–136}} In ''[[Doctor Grimshawe's Secret]]'' (1882) Hawthorne puts both perspectives together "as characters alternate between victims and perpetrators with each passing moment".<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|146–149}} In the stories "The Liberty Tree" and "Tory's Farewell" from the collection ''[[Grandfather's Chair]]'' (1842), Hawthorne shows tarring and feathering as a sign of "mob mentality that dismisses common sense" and is unwarranted as a means of political and social dispute.<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|130–132, 149–150}}

"Dramatizations of the ritual in antebellum literature reveal the deep political and psychological anxieties about the use of violent social coercion to establish the always shifting class and racial boundaries of U.S. nationalism."<ref name=Trininc2018/> [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s humorous short story, "[[The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether]]" (1845), featured the staff of an insane asylum being tarred and feathered as a means of torture.<ref name=Uther/><ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|92–93}} In his short story "[[Hop-Frog; Or Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs]]" (1849) appeared the "image of the tarred and feathered body as ape", which "for Poe, is the embodiment of white terror associated with the chaos of rioting and insurrection."<ref name=Trininc2018/> Both stories are written against the background of the [[abolitionism]] debate, and the tarring and feathering is also seen as the outward sign of a "power inversion", which can be related for Poe's society both to the relationship of slave and master, as well as abolitionists and anti-abolitionists.<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|88, 92–93}}  Psychiatric history researcher Wendy Gonaver assumed that "Tarr and Fether" "mocks the conceit that bourgeois liberalism can contain the violent madness of revolution". The story was very loosely adapted by [[The Alan Parsons Project]] into the song "[[(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether]]" on the ''[[Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Alan Parsons Project album)|Tales of Mystery and Imagination]]'' album.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Camastra |first=Nicole J. |date=2020 |title=Self-Styled Madness: Fitzgerald's "Nightmare (Fantasy in Black)" and Poe's "The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" |journal=The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=143–163 |doi=10.5325/fscotfitzrevi.18.1.0143|s2cid=235033356 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Huckvale |first=David |date=2014 |title=Poe Evermore: The Legacy in Film, Music and Television |publisher=[[McFarland & Company]] |pages=168–169 |isbn=9780786494415}}</ref> A more racialized context, where tar is used to blacken the skin against abolitionists and sympathizers "to correspond to the purported color of the slaves they were trying to free" is prevalent in the atmosphere preceding the [[American Civil War]]. This was reflected in literary works like [[Harriet Beecher-Stowe]]'s novel ''[[Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp|Dred]]'' from 1856 and ''[[Rose Mather]]'' (1868) by [[Mary Jane Holmes]].<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|151–154}}

The ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' (1885) by [[Mark Twain]] "perhaps more than any other literary work, immortalized the punishment": [[List of Tom Sawyer characters#"The King" and "the Duke"|the King and the Duke]] are tarred, feathered, and [[Riding a rail|ridden on a rail]] after performing the Royal Nonesuch to a crowd that Jim had warned about the rapscallions. Twain points out the dehumanizing effect of the ritual and "that even those who deserve blame do not warrant punishment outside the law".<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|154–157}}<ref name=Uther/> In 1958 the social punishment appears as a humorous element in [[James Thurber]]'s modern fable "What Happened To Charles": the duck Eva, who eavesdrops on every conversation she hears but never gets anything quite right, is ironically tarred and ''un''-feathered, i.e. plucked, after she mistakes "shod" (having shoes put on) for "shot" and spreads the [[rumor]] that the horse Charles has been killed (he turns up alive and wearing new horseshoes).<ref>{{cite book |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|date=1989 |title=Elements of Literature: Grade 10 |publisher=[[Holt McDougal]] |page=75 |isbn=9780157175318}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author-link= |date=1967 |title=Teacher's Manual for Literature to Remember: Literary Heritage Basal Textbooks |volume=5-8 |publisher=[[Macmillan Inc.|MacMillan]] |page=50}}</ref> In [[Philip Roth]]'s 2004 [[alternate history]] novel ''[[The Plot Against America]]'', the 8-year-old protagonist has a daydreaming fear of himself and his family being tarred and feathered. Here this "antiquated punishment from Western mythology" symbolizes the humiliation the Jewish family suffers in a climate of antisemitism.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hirth |first=Brittany |date=2018 |title="An Independent Destiny for America": Roth's Vision of American Exceptionalism |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/705455/summary |journal=Philip Roth Studies |volume=14 |number=1 |pages=70–93 |doi=10.5703/philrothstud.14.1.0070 |s2cid=165720331 |access-date=26 October 2022|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In [[Anne Cameron]]'s ''The Journey'' (1982) it is an example of misogyny in the American West.<ref>{{cite book |last=Fehrle |first=Johannes |editor-last1=Zwierlein |editor-first1=Anne-Julia |editor-last2=Petzold |editor-first2=Jochen |editor-last3=Boehm |editor-first3=Katharina |editor-last4=Decker |editor-first4=Martin |date=2018 |title=Anglistentag 2017 Regensburg - Proceedings |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337389385 |access-date=10 February 2023 |publisher=Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier |chapter="If I get an outfit can I be cowboy, too": Female Cowboys in the Revisionist Canadian Western |page=216 |isbn=978-3-86821-767-4}}</ref>

Scholar of American literature Marina Trininc observed in 2013 that tarring and feathering has also appeared in recent American novels against the background of terroristic attacks in the US and worldwide.<ref name=Trininc/>{{rp|158}}