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Familial Feeling
Entangled Tonalities in
Early Black Atlantic Writing and
the Rise of the British Novel
Elahe Haschemi Yekani
Familial Feeling
 Elahe Haschemi Yekani

Familial Feeling
Entangled Tonalities in Early Black Atlantic Writing
and the Rise of the British Novel
Elahe Haschemi Yekani
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Berlin, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-58640-9    ISBN 978-3-030-58641-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58641-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This book is an open access
publication.
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We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-­
Universität zu Berlin.

This book was supported by funds made available by the “Cultural Foundations
of Social Integration” Center of Excellence at the University of Konstanz,
established in the framework of the German Federal and State Initiative for
Excellence.
 Acknowledgements

The research for this book began at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and,

over the course of several stations and more years, has also brought me
back felicitously to Berlin. It is therefore my great pleasure to begin by
acknowledging those colleagues who have supported this project from its
inception like Eveline Kilian, Helga Schwalm, Martin Klepper and Eva
Boesenberg and who are now among the many old but also new col-
leagues, such as Dorothea Löbbermann, Anne Potjans, Jasper Verlinden
and Sigrid Venuß in the Department of English and American Studies that
I also wish to thank. I further want to express my gratitude to Gabriele
Jähnert and the colleagues at the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender
Studies and especially mention Stefanie von Schnurbein as well as Gabriele
Dietze, whose many recommendations (literary and culinary) are an indis-
pensable source of support in my development as a scholar. Magdalena
Nowicka and Silvy Chakkalakal have also become great co-conspirators in
Berlin. The University of Potsdam was another more than welcoming
context to discuss this work, especially with my criticalhabitations collabo-
rator Anja Schwarz but also with Lars Eckstein and Dirk Wiemann in the
Department of English and American Studies there. At the University of
Innsbruck in Austria Helga Ramsey-Kurz and Veronika Schuchter have
been excellent interlocutors to think more about “Uncommon Wealths”.
A generous fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study Konstanz
provided me with the great privilege and luxury to focus extensively on my
sources and discuss early readings with engaged co-fellows overlooking
Lake Constance. For the hospitality and support there, I want to extend

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

my gratitude to the entire KuKo-Team as well as to Aleida Assmann and

Silvia Mergenthal and I also wish to thank Gudrun Rath, another critical-
habitations collaborator, who made the stay in Konstanz more fun. From
the most Southern German university it took me to the most Northern
University in Germany and it was at the Europa-Universität Flensburg
that I was able to complete the biggest chunk of this manuscript, again in
the company of great colleagues like Sibylle Machat and Birgit Däwes and
many more. Ines Beeck, Seren Meltem Yilmaz, Leandra Göpner, Thao Ho
and Alina Weiermüller have been excellent student assistants whose help
in locating materials is greatly appreciated.
I have had the great honour and privilege to present various sections of
this work in many settings in Germany and abroad and I cannot thank all
my hosts by name here but do want to acknowledge the support from Lisa
Duggan and Ann Pellegrini during my time as a visiting scholar at the
Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at NYU. Tavia Nyong’o was
a great sport in agreeing to co-teach a group of dedicated students at the
Queer Entanglements Summer Academy of the German Academic
Scholarship Foundation in Greifswald with me and later again joined me
and Eva Boesenberg back in Berlin to discuss Entangled Diasporas. Mita
Banerjee has been an excellent mentor in navigating the pitfalls of
(German) academia.
In preparing the manuscript my Palgrave Macmillan editors Lina
Aboujieb and Rebecca Hinsley and the reports of the anonymous review-
ers have been extremely helpful. Thanks are also due to Amy Luo and
Malin Ståhl from Hollybush Gardens gallery in London and Lynda
Jackson from the Judges’ Lodgings Museum in Lancaster for their help
in locating pictures of Lubaina Himid’s installation.
Finally, a book on “familial feeling” cannot come into existence with-
out the love and support of friends and family, again too many to list them
all. I want to thank Henriette Gunkel, Anja Sunhyun Michaelsen, Marie
Schlingmann and Samantha Buck, Noemi Yoko Molitor and Marika
Pierdicca, Anson Koch-Rein as well as Ali, Minu and Maryam Haschemi
Yekani. My parents have been the best cheerleaders one can wish for.
Thank you. And last and certainly not least, my love and gratitude go out
to Beatrice Michaelis, without whose patience and support none of this
would have been possible.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Provincialising the Rise of the British Novel

in the Transatlantic Public Sphere  1

Part I 1719–1807: Moral Sentiment and the Abolition

of the Slave Trade  67

2 Foundations: Defoe and Equiano 69

3 Digressions: Sancho and Sterne123

Part II 1807–1857: Social Reform and the Rise of the

New Imperialism 171

4 Resistances: Austen and Wedderburn173

5 Consolidations: Dickens and Seacole223

6 Conclusion: Queer Modes of Empathy as an Ethics

of the Archive273

Index293

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Title Page of Robert Wedderburn’s The Horrors of Slavery

(London, 1824) 206
Fig. 5.1 Cartoon depicting Mary Seacole in Punch (London, 30 May
1857)256
Fig. 6.1 Lubaina Himid, Swallow Hard: The Lancaster Dinner Service,
2007 (installation photograph). (Courtesy Judges’ Lodgings
Museum, Lancashire County Council) 286
Fig. 6.2 (a and b) Lubaina Himid, Swallow Hard: The Lancaster
Dinner Service, 2007 (detail). Acrylic on found porcelain,
variable dimensions. (Courtesy the artist and Hollybush
Gardens, London. Photo: Andy Keate) 287

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Provincialising the Rise of the

British Novel in the Transatlantic Public Sphere

When I began working on this book in 2011, the 2007 bicentennial of the
abolition of the slave trade still felt recent.1 There were new films, exhibi-
tions, and a plethora of events commemorating and reflecting Britain’s
involvement in this global system of injustice on a larger national scale.
More than a decade after these events, the country appeared to have
moved on being consumed by the internal fallout and ongoing tensions
around Brexit. However, in 2020, the commemoration of enslavement
again entered the public spotlight invigorated by the anti-racist protests in
reaction to police violence in the United States and across the globe. More
and more vocal groups like Black Lives Matter no longer accept the
unchallenged adulation of slaveholders and those who profited from colo-
nial exploitation in the form of statues and monuments. In Bristol protest-
ers took matters into their own hands toppling the statue of Edward
Colston and throwing it into the harbour. Similar acts can be witnessed
worldwide. These demonstrations show how powerful cultural relics are in
shaping notions of national belonging and how they continue to impact
the devaluation of Black lives. This is why many believe such monuments
should no longer have an uncontested place in the public sphere.
For the (now revived) debate on memorial culture and racism, the
bicentenary of 2007 marked a turning point in Britain. In that context
many politicians struggled to find the right tone to commemorate slavery
and the transatlantic trade, specifically in relation to Britain’s (historical
and contemporary) self-understanding. Then Prime Minister Tony Blair

© The Author(s) 2021 1

E. Haschemi Yekani, Familial Feeling,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58641-6_1
2 E. HASCHEMI YEKANI

was criticised for not offering a proper apology by circumventing the word
“sorry”, instead speaking only of “our deep sorrow”. It seemed easier for
Blair to delegate the cruelties of slavery to the far-away shores of the
Caribbean and focus more on the abolitionist campaign at home. He also
avoided the topic of possible reparations by emphasising the “better times
of today”, showing little understanding of the ongoing global economic
repercussions that the trade in human beings and colonial exploitation in
its aftermath have produced in the Global South.2 Moreover, the simplify-
ing juxtaposition of the shameful slavers versus the noble abolitionists
overlooks the fact that historically there was often a much subtler amelio-
rationist discourse at work which, while indeed becoming increasingly
intolerant of chattel slavery during the eighteenth century, nonetheless
dehumanised people of African descent. The tension of addressing Black
agency and white benevolence is also palpable in The International Slavery
Museum in Liverpool, opened in 2007.3 The exhibition puts great empha-
sis on Black contributions to the fight against slavery and educates visitors
not only about slavery but also about West African culture. The celebra-
tory endpoint of the display is a so-called Black Achievers Wall. Visitors to
the museum and the museum’s website are encouraged to interact with
the exhibit by suggesting additions to the wall, be it “a sports person, a
writer, an activist, a television personality—anyone just as long as they are
inspirational”.4 Yet outside the museum, more recently, the achievements
of Black British inhabitants were once more violently overlooked. In April
2018, Theresa May was criticised heavily for the way in which children of
the so-called Windrush generation, Caribbean commonwealth migrants
who legally entered the country after World War II, had been targeted by
immigration authorities. Several people, whose documentation did not
meet official criteria through no fault of their own, were threatened with
or actually deported, despite having lived in Britain for more than fifty
years. In addition to Home Secretary Amber Rush having to ultimately
resign, this scandal also forced the then Prime Minister to issue an apology
that emphasised the valuable contribution of the Windrush generation
and their rightful place in the United Kingdom.5 This discourse, in turn,
seemed to rely heavily on conceptions of the “good migrant” who is never
simply accepted as belonging and worthy of the protection of the nation
state per se but continuously has to prove their “worth”.
I am using these three seemingly divergent examples—Blair’s failed
apology for Britain’s involvement in the slave trade, the celebratory “Black
Achievers Wall” in The International Slavery Museum, and May’s
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

government’s eventual attempts to appease in the so-called Windrush gen-

eration controversy by evoking the image of the “good migrant”—as
entry points into my study of the literary archive of writing which made
Blackness discursively compatible with Britishness. I want to show that the
terms, the different tones, employed in shaping national belonging in
canonical literary fiction and in the first written documents by Black
Atlantic authors, a discourse that I describe as “familial feeling” in this
book, have always relied on transnational entanglements. Individual words
like “sorry” but also “inspirational”, which figure prominently in the three
short contemporary vignettes, demonstrate that the way Blackness and
Britishness are interrelated is also a matter of tone.
Consequently, despite the prominence of the Windrush generation,
entanglements between British and other cultures are not only the result
of the migration following World War II but begin much earlier. The for-
mation of the British nation in the seventeenth and eighteenth century
was inextricably linked to the transatlantic economy and slavery in the
Americas. The concomitant financial gain bolstered modern Great Britain’s
status as the most important imperial power of the time (cf. Walvin 2007:
8). However, within this formation slavery was not an uncontested status
quo. The controversial public discourse ranged from the unapologetic
pro-slavery plantocracy to the, often Evangelical, abolitionists, and posi-
tions in-between. While Britain’s financial wealth still depended signifi-
cantly on the slave trade, the campaign for abolition also became an
unprecedented media success (cf. Wood 2002: 9). Gaining momentum in
the late 1780s, the debate on the abolition of the slave trade was influen-
tial for the British enlightenment and the emergence of the middle class.
Accordingly, in this book I look back at the historical archive of English
literature, specifically at narrative texts by Black transatlantic authors and
canonical British writers from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury to discuss how ideas of familiarity, of becoming part of the nation,
were navigated by variously positioned subjects. In the two main sections
of this study, I trace a shift in discourses on familial feeling, from the
eighteenth-century emphasis on moral sentiment and sentimentalism as
the predominant mode in fiction to social reform and realism that was to
become characteristic of Victorian writing. This also changed public dis-
course from focusing on abolition and the aftermath of slavery in the
Caribbean to a reinvention of the British empire and its enlightened New
Imperialism that was no longer built on enslaved labour but territorial
expansion in Asia and Africa. It was in competition with several European
4 E. HASCHEMI YEKANI

powers in the second half of the nineteenth century when the British
empire had, in fact, reached its greatest extent. Thus, the abolition of the
slave trade in 1807 and the Indian Rebellion of 1857 are indicators of
discursive turning points in these debates that mark the end dates of the
two sections in this book.
This particular spatio-temporal framework of Familial Feeling, I argue,
also promotes a reassessment of the so-called rise of the (British)6 novel
account that has been variously discussed ever since Ian Watt’s eponymous
path-breaking study in 1957. Reframed here as a story of entangled tonali-
ties, considering both the generic aesthetic ideals underlying the novel
form, understood first and foremost as prose writing that depicts realistic
affective individualism, and notions of Englishness and Britishness as
products of transatlantic negotiation. The rise of the novel can thus be
related to a process by which modern Britishness is consolidated as inclu-
sive of the formerly enslaved in the eighteenth century. This, however,
gives way to greater colonial ambitions in the course of the nineteenth
century. Accordingly, the novel form of writing prose that emerged in the
eighteenth century and became more established in the nineteenth cen-
tury modified the registers of how readers thought about families and
belonging and who was included in communities of the familiar. In order
to grasp these modified registers of familiarity in this book, I will discuss
four different tonalities in the work of eight authors that shaped concep-
tions of the human in relation to the debates around British national iden-
tity, the abolition of slavery, and the emergence of the British empire,
beginning with the foundational tone of Daniel Defoe and Olaudah
Equiano, followed by the digressive tone of Ignatius Sancho and Laurence
Sterne and the resisting tonality of Jane Austen and Robert Wedderburn
and finally the consolidating tone of Charles Dickens and Mary Seacole.
Literary scholar Sianne Ngai employs the concept of tone as a way “to
account for the affective dimension of literature” (2007: 44), to bridge
formal and political analysis of literary discourse, and I will return to this
idea in explaining entangled tonalities in greater detail.
This project is admittedly ambitious. It operates on at least three differ-
ent but interrelated levels. In concert with more recent approaches in the
historiography of the British empire, I firstly hope to foster a view of
British literature as part of a global network that can only be told as a story
of entangled modernities. Such a temporal framing stands in contrast to
the strong focus on the late nineteenth and twentieth century in postcolo-
nial studies and the model of “writing back”. Traditionally, English studies
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

of the novel, on the one hand, concentrate on the aesthetic and narrative
development of the genre or, owing to Edward Said’s interventions that I
discuss in greater detail in the chapter on Austen and Wedderburn, exam-
ine colonial influences on canonical sources (or, as a third independent
branch of research, analyse the “new” global Anglophone literatures in the
former colonies). In this study however, the literature of marginalised sub-
jects is not to be simply added to the established canon. Rather, the focus
is on the simultaneous and intertwined marginalised and hegemonic claim
to literature as a transatlantic sphere of subjectification. Literature there-
fore functions as the medium of middle-class self-assertion and of the
emotive access to subject status by those who have been excluded from the
realm of the human, the “family of man”, or, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
has famously phrased it, “The slave wrote not primarily to demonstrate
humane letters, but to demonstrate his or her own membership in the
human community” (1988: 128). Simon Gikandi likewise argues: “cul-
ture became the most obvious form of social mobility and self-making in
the century that invented the modern individual” (2011: 55).7 In his com-
prehensive study on Slavery and the Culture of Taste Gikandi elaborates:

In Britain as elsewhere in Europe, the promotion of a culture of sense and

sensibility, of politeness and conduct operated as if the problem of enslave-
ment belonged to distant reaches of empire far away from the domestic
scene in which new identities were being constructed. (2011: 90)

While the “humanising” function of literature that Gates and Gikandi

describe seems immediately convincing, we should also direct more atten-
tion to the fact that the early Black Atlantic authors also engaged in aes-
thetically challenging forms thereby altering writing conventions and the
tonality of Britishness. Thus, my transnational mapping of the rise of the
British novel specifically concentrates on the ideal of the middle-class fam-
ily and registers of familial feeling.
Hence, secondly, the title of the book, Familial Feeling, is explored, in
Raymond Williams’s terms, as a “structure of feeling” that organises and,
on a more methodological level, challenges questions of empathy and
reading/writing in relation to processes of inclusion and exclusion. The
act of reading as empathic identification with someone else—accelerated
by the technological revolutions, increased literacy, and faster distribution
at the time—becomes crucial for the emotional register of the middle
6 E. HASCHEMI YEKANI

class. I aim to interrogate how this formation was always reliant on inter-
action with Others and cannot be framed as a linear progress narrative.8
Thirdly and finally, on a methodological level, my goal is to bring into
dialogue the mainly separated spheres of (postclassical) approaches in
(transatlantic) narrative studies, addressing aesthetic dimensions of literary
tone and narrative identity formation, with those strands of affect theory
that emphasise the political mobilisation of affect and (often negative)
feeling, prevalent in postcolonial and queer theory as well as in African
American studies, which I take up in more detail in the conclusion, dealing
with contemporary memorial culture and the ethics of engaging with the
archive of slavery. I thus advocate a continued permeability for cultural
studies perspectives in literary studies instead of a re-canonisation in
national literary studies.
Bringing into conjunction these diverse perspectives on familial feelings
of Britishness, I argue, helps to systematically resituate the well-known
texts by Defoe, Sterne, Austen, and Dickens and defamiliarise the estab-
lished understanding of the rise of the novel. The similarities in political
bearing and aesthetic choices, the entangled tonalities, regarding the top-
ics of slavery and colonialism between the canonical authors and sources
written by those whose lives have been shaped by transatlantic crossings,
such as Equiano, Sancho, Wedderburn, and Seacole, are not considered
extraordinary or in binary opposition, but rather part and parcel of the
very rise of Britishness and its narratives. These texts are read side by side
as part of a larger “family history”; together they construct, circumvent,
contest, and consolidate the narrations of modern nation states and the
emergence of a British literary canon. Before expanding on these ideas in
the literary readings in the following four chapters, I will provide a more
systematic historical and methodological contextualisation for the under-
lying premises of this book. For the remainder of this introduction, I first
explain in greater detail what I call “familial feeling” in relation to the
intertwined histories of modernity and slavery. I then discuss how this idea
can be linked to and help reframe the “rise of the novel” account and
finally suggest looking for “entangled tonalities” as a way to capture the
dynamics between the British novel and early Black Atlantic writing.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Familial Feeling
“The word ‘family’ can be used to mean many things, from the conjugal
pair to the ‘family of man’”, writes historian Lawrence Stone (1977: 21)
in his classical substantial account of the modernisation of family life, The
Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800. It is specifically this
flexibility of the term family which covers both the micro structure of
societies as domestic units within one household as well as a much larger
conception of belonging to the human race in general that I wish to evoke
in the phrase “familial feeling”.9 It purposely echoes the expression “famil-
iar feeling” because the family, despite the vagueness of the concept itself,
is referenced time and again as the locus of supposedly self-evident com-
monality. No social sphere, it seems, is as saturated with affects and regimes
of feeling as kinship structures. They organise emotional belonging as well
as social intelligibility and the accumulation of wealth. They are familiar
to all of us.
Concurrent with Stone’s family history in 1977, Raymond Williams,
one of the founding figures of British cultural studies, considered the
affective importance of cultural artefacts as part of a “structure of feeling”.
In contrast to the more static concept of ideology, Williams emphasises
the emotional dimension in the emergence and shifts of social norms. This
is his well-known definition:

We are talking about characteristic elements of impulse, restraint, and tone;

specifically affective elements of consciousness and relationships: not feeling
against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought: practical con-
sciousness of a present kind, in a living and interrelating continuity. We are
then defining these elements as a “structure”: as a set, with specific internal
relations, at once interlocking and in tension. […] The idea of a structure of
feeling can be specifically related to the evidence of forms and conventions
[…] which, in art and literature, are often among the very first indications
that such a new structure is forming. (1985 [1977]: 132–133)

These structures in turn can “support, elaborate, and consolidate the prac-
tice of empire” and affect coloniser and colonised as postcolonial critic
Edward Said (1994: 14) has argued. Hence, the realm of what feels famil-
iar is to a large degree reliant on how emotional belonging is imagined in
art and literature. Familial feeling in this book then refers to the ways in
which “the family” and “familiarity” are overlapping spheres. This is also
one of the reasons why the notion of the family is especially attractive for
8 E. HASCHEMI YEKANI

those excluded from the realm of the human as a means to claim inclusion
into both the larger “family of man” and the micro level of the nuclear
family. The family is where the demarcation between self and Other is
challenged. The Caribbean plantation, for instance, becomes the physical
space in which interracial sexualised violence alters notions of who belongs
to Britain. This debate will be addressed in the chapter on Austen and
Wedderburn.
Stone describes in greater detail the processes that led to the modern
family unit becoming the predominant form of living together in Europe.
He recounts this development as a change from what he calls the “restricted
patriarchal nuclear family” to the “closed domesticated nuclear family”
which in Britain evolved in the late seventeenth century and predominated
in the eighteenth. “This was the decisive shift, for this new type of family
was the product of the rise of Affective Individualism. It was a family orga-
nized around the principle of personal autonomy, and bound together by
strong affective ties” (1977: 7). In more than one respect, Britain pio-
neered the development of this middle-class family ideal. Earlier than in
any other European state the so-called industrial revolution (and the con-
comitant urbanisation) gave rise to smaller family units and a rigid class
system, as Friedrich Engels (2010 [1884]) outlined not by coincidence in
relation to England in 1884 in The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State.10 The modern individual then is conceptualised as autono-
mous and social at the same time.
So, while the nuclear (bourgeois) family can be understood as the epit-
ome of modern belonging, it also becomes increasingly regulatory with
respect to gendered, racialised, and sexualised norms, as Michel Foucault
(1998 [1976]) has famously delineated in what he called the shift from the
“deployment of alliance” to the “deployment of sexuality”, which from
the eighteenth century onward complemented the former.11 This creates
ambivalence in the sense that the family can be considered to be both
inclusionary and exclusionary. Metaphorically, the variously gendered
family relations are extended to the very state itself in phrases such as
“fatherland” or the “mother country”.12 Accordingly, the conception of
modern nation states as “imagined communities” in the eighteenth cen-
tury superseded earlier systems of religious community and dynastic realm,
as Benedict Anderson has described in his well-known work of the same
name. Anderson stresses the importance of newspapers and novels, or
more generally “print-capitalism” in this process (1991: 9–36; cf. also
Bhabha 1990).13 Consequently, constructions of familial feeling and the
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

rise of print culture need to be considered in unison to understand the

shifts from the debate on abolition in the eighteenth century to colonial
expansion in the nineteenth century. These modifications of regimes of
familial feeling, I argue, can be described as gradual changes in emphasis
from moral sentiment to social reform and from sympathy to charity.
In The Navigation of Feeling, William Reddy explains:

Scholars working on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries […] have

begun to trace out the rise and fall of an emotional revolution of the past,
called “sentimentalism,” or the “cult of sensibility”—a loosely organized set
of impulses that played a role in cultural currents as diverse as Methodism,
antislavery agitation, the rise of the novel, the French Revolution (including
the Terror), and the birth of Romanticism. (2001: x)

The modern emphasis on sentimental feeling seems connected from the

outset to both literary aesthetic developments (the rise of the novel,
Romanticism) and political upheaval (anti-slavery agitation and the French
Revolution/terror). In this understanding, literature tests the limits of
acceptable subjects and objects of emotional attachment. Some examples
of eighteenth-century sentimentalism, specifically novels like Henry
Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (2009 [1771]), draw a fair amount of
ridicule regarding the many tears shed on their pages already from con-
temporary readers and even more so from later Victorian writers (cf. Todd
1986: 141–146).14 By now there is a well-established field of scholarship
that deals specifically with sentimental fiction and slavery/abolition.
Especially noteworthy in the British context are Markman Ellis’s The
Politics of Sensibility. Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel
(1996), Brycchan Carey’s British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of
Sensibility (2005), Lynn Festa’s Sentimental Figures of Empire in
Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (2006) as well as Ramesh
Mallipeddi’s Spectacular Suffering. Witnessing Slavery in the Eighteenth-­
Century British Atlantic (2016).15 These studies are valuable foundations
for my readings, which I hope to complement by emphasising global
entanglements and by discussing how the sentimental rhetoric extends
into a longer history of the familiar/self as well as the strange/Other in
Victorian fiction (and eventually even into contemporary efforts to com-
memorate the abolition of slavery in Britain).
So rather than focus exclusively on the mode of literary sentimentalism,
I am more interested in how the selected writers shift the tone of
10 E. HASCHEMI YEKANI

representing self and Other in varying familial registers. Beginning with

the foundational tone of claiming the status of a self-reflexive modern
subject in Defoe and Equiano’s writings, I then juxtapose the already play-
ful mocking and digressive style of the sentimental men of letters Sancho
and Sterne. Increasingly, familial feeling includes notions of terror and
unrespectability in the aftermath of the terror of the 1790s and the aboli-
tion of the slave trade in the Caribbean, which Wedderburn’s writings that
I read with Austen’s Mansfield Park represent. We again witness a more
pronounced demarcation of Britishness in relation to both the United
States and the colonies in the Victorian writing of Dickens and Seacole
which can be characterised as consolidating the new imperial ambitions of
the nation. So, while I do look at the “development” of novelistic writing,
I aim to do so by focusing on transnational interaction as well as challeng-
ing the narrative of liberal progress.
Regarding the very concept and term enlightenment, historian
Sebastian Conrad suggests that “it is less instructive to search for alleged
origins—European or otherwise—than to focus on the global conditions
and interactions in which the ‘Enlightenment’ emerged” (2012: 1009)
and proposes to pursue a “long history of Enlightenment” (2012: 1015).
He argues:

[T]hinking in stages was one of the ways in which eighteenth-century

Enlightenment thinkers translated cultural difference into a language of
progress. But while this idea coexisted with other notions of being “enlight-
ened”—the progress of reason, the public sphere, secular world views—by
the late nineteenth century, Enlightenment was increasingly inserted into a
narrative of evolutionism and the advance of civilization. It was thus trans-
formed from a process into a currency—some had more of it, and some
needed tutors to give it to them. (2012: 1019)

In line with more and more eighteenth-century studies scholars, like

Srinivas Aravamudan (1999) and Felicity Nussbaum (2005), Daniel Carey
and Lynn Festa also critique a uniform understanding of Enlightenment
(writ large) “into a kind of shorthand notation for a group of familiar
abstractions: rationalism, universalism, equality, human rights, and sci-
ence” (2009: 11) and in the introduction to their edited volume The
Postcolonial Enlightenment call on literary critics to “make both centre and
periphery plural” to “recognize multiple points of entry into discourses of
Enlightenment as well as the possibility of alternative genealogies and
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

teleologies” (2009: 24). Such an extension of the postcolonial framework

to include the rise of modernity already in the eighteenth century helps
bring into closer focus the entanglement of modernity with transatlantic
slavery and colonialism, to divert “the otherwise frictionless circulation of
the eighteenth century to itself as Eurocentric romance” (Aravamudan
1999: 329). Following these thinkers, I want to trace a “long history” of
familial feeling in relation to the rise of the British novel. Hence, the two
sections, demarcating writing before and after the 1807 British abolition
of the slave trade, should not be understood as standing in stark opposi-
tion or marking a linear progress narrative but rather be aligned with
Conrad’s account of an enlightenment continuum. As part of this process,
novelistic conventions also take stronger hold.16 Accordingly, we can
observe a modification from sentimental to domestic fiction,17 which
becomes reliant, again in Conrad’s terms, gradually on a nationalistic
“narrative of evolutionism and the advance of civilization”.18
Let me contextualise these literary developments further in relation to
the history of the slave trade. Obviously, it is predominantly work coming
out of the academic discipline of history that has offered productive
attempts to read European history as always already in relation to colonial-
ism and the triangular slave trade. These approaches are linked to labels
such as connected or entangled histories as well as histoire croisée and
transatlantic19 history or modernism (cf. Beckles 1997; Conrad 2012;
Conrad et al. 2013; Werner and Zimmermann 2006).20 Given the limited
first-hand accounts of the colonised and enslaved, however, alternative
methodologies come into play in these historiographic accounts.21 One
angle is the attempt to write counter-histories, often incorporating fic-
tional sources. In their influential transatlantic “history from below” The
Many-Headed Hydra, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, for instance,
reconstruct the “lost history” of a “multiethnic class” (cf. 2000: 6) focus-
ing on rebellious inter-racial alliances. In a similar but differently framed
attempt, linking eighteenth-century accounts of slavery to more contem-
porary history and what he calls “the long twentieth century” Ian Baucom
(2005: 17) discusses the Zong massacre22 and the numerous ways in which
this history and the spectre of the dead still “haunt” modern capitalist
societies. Given the many fictionalised versions of the event, including
J.M.W. Turner’s 1840 painting “Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead
and Dying—Typhoon coming on” (later simply called “The Slave Ship”),
he too turns to artistic imagination in his Specters of the Atlantic.23 One
way to reconstruct transatlantic history then is the recourse to neglected
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 (Hiljaisuus; antaa valomerkin vasempaan.)

(Pian alkaa kauttaaltaan valkoisiin verhottuja sotilaita

ilmestyä vasemmalta, kerääntyen kukkulan ympärille ja
taustalla olevan metsän suojaan. Jokaisen lakissa on pieni
kuusenoksa. Heikki Ortela katselee kukkulalta joukkojen
äänetöntä kokoontumista. Nouseva aurinko heittää kultaisen
ruskotuksen kukkulalle, punaten lumisen metsän ja valkoisiin
verhotut joukot, joiden luku hetki hetkellä lisääntyy.)

Eemi (on katsellut nousevaa päivää, ihastuneena toveriaan

läheten): Katsoppas tuonne, mikä näky! Punertavat lumilakeudet ja
tummat metsät niiden takana. Näetkö tuon jäätyneen järven ulapan
ja sen takana kylän, joka näyttää siellä rauhassa nukkuvan? Kirkon
akkunoissa palaa aamuruskon kilo ja valkoinen joukko tuolla alhaalla
näyttää pikemmin olevan matkalla kirkkoon kuin taisteluun.

Heikki (lyö häntä olkapäälle): Niin on, veli hyvä! Kaunis on aamu.
Mutta aika rientää, emmekä saa enää viivytellä hetkeäkään.

(Laskeutuvat alas, pysähtyvät etualalle.)

Eemi: Kuule minua vielä puoli minuuttia.

Heikki: No mitä sinulla nyt on sydämelläsi?

Eemi: Minun matkani taitaa päättyä tähän. Tuntuu niin

kummalliselle, aivankuin tapahtuisi minulle nyt jotakin.

(Heikki katsoo toveriaan vakavasti ja äänettömänä.)

Eemi: Illalla, kun nukahdin hetkeksi, näin unissani tämän kukkulan

ja auringonnousun ja valon semmoisena kuin sen nyt äsken näimme.
Sitten lähdimme hyökkäämään yli jään. Mutta äkkiä levisi eteeni
paksu sumu, joka himmensi valon ja äänet ja kääri minut kuin
verkkoon, josta jonkun aikaa vielä kuulin sinun äänesi niinkuin
jostain hyvin kaukaa. Pian sekin hävisi ja kaikki sekosi sakeaan
hämärään. Tunsin tukehtuvani ja siinä samassa heräsin, mutta tuon
unen painostus on minua vaivannut koko yön.

Heikki: Eihän sitä tiedä. Sallimuksen kädessä on sotamiehen elämä

jos kenen, mutta untahan se sentään oli.

Eemi: Mikä lienee, mutta niin omituiselle tuntuu, ettei koskaan

ennen. (Huutaa joukoille.) Pojat, oletteko valmiit?

Äänet hillitysti monista suista: Valmiit.

(Jääkärit kiiruhtavat oikeaan, valkoiset joukot liikehtivät

mennen poistuvien jälkeen. Kauempaa kuuluu
komentosanoja, sitten kaikki hiljenee. Kirkas valo leviää yli
metsän. Näkymä tyhjänä hetken.)

(Kuuluu kiväärien yhteislaukaus, konekiväärit alkavat soida,

ammunta kiihtyy, silloin tällöin jyrähtää tykki. Ilma sakenee ja
hämärtyy. Matti Porkka tulee takaisin vartiopaikkaan. Miina
tulee vasemmalta metsästä eikä huomaa häntä.)

Miina (puoleksi kuiskaten)-. Ivan, Ivan — paapushka, miilaja

paapushka. (Ampumista kuuluu.) Laupias Isä, ne ovat sen
tappaneet. Tuommoinen ryske ja meteli! (Huomaa Porkan, hyökkää
raivostuneena kohti.) Perkeleen lahtari, sinäkö hänet tapoit?

Porkka (tyynesti): Kenen?

Miina: Iivanan.
 Porkka: Montakin taitanut mennä. Olikos tällä Miinalla joku oma
omituinen Iivana?

Miina (hämmästyy): Porkkako, meidän pitäjän miehiä! Niin oli,

oma mulla oli, yhtä hyvä kuin oma mies. Jos te, isäntä, olette hänet
ampunut, niin jumalauta minä sen kostan teille, vaikka vainajana
minä sen kostan.

Porkka: Miina parka.

Miina (itkee ja raivoaa): Sanokaa joutuin, sanokaa heti paikalla,

onko hän tapettu. Jos vielä on elävänä, niin päästäkää hänet. Pois
me mennään täältä Venäjälle, pois teidän tieltänne, ja tenavani minä
vien mennessäni. Mitä minusta, vaikka tappaisit, mutta kun tuolla
mökissä on ne mukulat. Iivana lähti edeltä ja käski meidän odottaa.
Sanoi hevosen saavansa Suomenkylästä ja lähti edeltä tuomaan
tavarakoria. Lupasi meidät hakea sitten sieltä mökistä. Vartoilin
aikani, ja kun ei ruvennut kuulumaan, jätin tenavat sinne ja lähdin
etsimään. Me on matkustettu monta vuorokautta, mutta kuorma oli
painava ja raskas keli. Antakaa meidän mennä eteenpäin Venäjälle.
Sinne nyt menee koko köyhälistö, niin meistä pääsette. Missä on
Iivana, sanokaa!

Porkka: Se oli varmaan se sinun Iivanasi, Miina parka, joka tässä

oli äsken suurine kerineen, kaupitteli sinun kenkiäsi ja kahvipannuasi
muutamalle miehelle, joka metsästä tuli ja metsään meni.

Miina: Valehtelet! Valehtelet!

Porkka: Sinä olet tuntenut minut tenavasta saakka. Oletko

koskaan kuullut minun valehtelevan? (Äänettömyys.) Et ole, se sinun
täytyy myöntää, enkä nyt vanhana ole sitä konstia opetellut. (Miina
vaipuu kivelle, vaikertaa huojuttaen ruumistaan.) Niin se nyt on, että
se ryssä on sinut pettänyt.

Miina (kavahtaa pystyyn): Ei ikinä, ei ikinä!

Porkka: On kuin onkin, eikä se ollut ensimmäinen ryssä, joka sen

teki tässä maassa, mutta taivas suokoon, että olisi viimeinen. — Sinä
Miina olit antautunut pahaan peliin. Kyllä olen sinun vehkeesi
tietänyt. Minun pitäisi oikeutta myöten panna sinut vastaamaan
vakoilutoimesta maan vihollisen kanssa. Pitihän sinun ymmärtää,
mitä se oli.

Miina (raivostuu): Vai maan vihollisen! Onko köyhällä mitään

maata? Älkää puhuko minulle isänmaasta, se on lörpötystä,
pettämistä. Ei köyhällä ole isänmaata muuta kuin pieksun pohjan
alla, ja sen alan hän valloittaa mistä hyvänsä. Ei minulle tarvitse
puhua joutavia. Sanokaa vain, kuinka asiat ovat, tappakaa tahi
jättäkää, mutta pian.

Porkka: En rupea tässä nyt kanssasi kiistelemään, mutta en tiedä

kuinka sinun kävisi jos olisit toinen ihminen kuin olet. Mutta sinä olit
lapsena meillä paimenena, — niin, ja sinulla on monta lasta. Siksi
lähetän sinut niiden kanssa sinne kotipuoleen ja varoitan, että eläisit
ihmisiksi tästedes.

Miina: Vieläkö Iivana elää?

Porkka: Tuolla on pidätettynä.

Miina: Kaupitteliko se minun kenkiäni ja kahvipannuani?

Porkka: Niin teki.

 Miina: Saatanan perkele! Missä se on? Minä väännän niskat siltä
nurin.

Porkka: Pidetään siitä Iivanasta huolta, mutta et sinä sitä enää

näe. Taltuta vaan mielesi ja kiitä, että pääset vielä takaisin omaan
mörskääsi Pakinkankaalle.

Miina: Mitä siellä enää. Tavarat on hävitetty ja seinätkin myyty,

rahat syöty ja jääneet kyydeistä pitkin tien vierustoita. Ei ole minulla
enää muuta kuin neljä ryysyistä tenavaa. (Itkee.) Ei kukaan anna
työtäkään. Nälkäkuolema on edessä siellä niinkuin täälläkin. Sama
se, missä se tapahtuu.

Porkka: Sinun elämäsi vielä korjautuu.

Miina: Ei se tästä enää.

Porkka: Jos minä sanon, että sinä elät, niin sinun on eläminen. Ja
huolen myös pidän, että alkuun pääset. Jollei työtä tule muualta, niin
ainakin minulta, ja koppas saat mukaas ja kahvipannus ja muut.
Saat huomenna passituksen kotiisi. Hae meiltä leipää, että pääset
alkuun. En anna viljaa, muuten tulisit kiusaukseen keittää sen
viinaksi. No niin, aletaas nyt mennä. Ja kun tulet nyt tenavalaumas
kanssa Pakinkankaalle, niin opeta niille kaksi kallista asiaa.
Ensimmäinen on, että köyhälläkin on isänmaa, ja toinen että ryssä
on aina ryssä, vaikka sen voissa paistais.

Miina: Mutta mökki on myyty.

Porkka: Sano ostajalle, että Porkan Matti käski vaan asua, ja

lopusta pidän minä huolen.
 Miina: Tulevat ne pennut iloiseksi, kun pääsevät kotiin. Tämä on
ollut, uskokaas isäntä, kamala matka.

(Menevät, näyttämö tyhjänä hetken.)

Eemi (tulee oikealta kahden suojeluskuntalaisen tukemana,

heikosti): Jättäkää tähän, kauemmaksi en enää jaksa.

(Miehet asettavat hänet istumaan kivennojalle, aukaisevat

takin,
jonka alta verenpunaama paita tulee näkyviin.)

I suojeluskuntalainen: Me haemme paarit.

II suojeluskuntalainen: Se on ainoa, mitä voimme.

Eemi (viittaa sinne, mistä ampumista kuuluu): Pojat, siellä teitä

kaivataan, minä — en enää tarvitse mitään.

I suojeluskuntalainen: Meidän täytyy kiiruhtaa.

(Menevät vasemmalle.)

Eemi (yksin jäätyään kohottautuu hiukan, katsoo taivasta ja

kukkulaa): Sammunut — (Pää painuu raukeasti alas).

Varma (tulee kiireesti vasemmalta, kuuntelee yhtämittaista

ampumista, nousee kukkulalle, silmäilee oikeaan, laskeutuu alas ja
odottaa tovereitaan): Kumma, kun niitä ei vielä näy. (Kuulee Heikin
valituksen ja huomaa Eemin.) Haavoittunut! (Menee luo, kohottaa
päätä kasvot nähdäkseen.) Hyvänen aika, Eemi! Onko sinun käynyt
pahoin?

Eemi (heikosti): Sinäkö, Varma! (Hymyilee, raukenee horteeseen.)

 Varma (polvistuu hänen viereensä, avaa takin, huudahtaa
pidätetysti nähdessään paidan, ottaa käden, koettelee valtimoa):
heikko se jo on, Eemi-rukka, paha sinun siinä on ollaksesi, —
kylmäkin. (Riisuu takin päältään, asettaa sen peitteeksi, ottaa hänen
päänsä polvelleen.) Noin, nyt on parempi.

Eemi (avaa silmänsä, tulee tuntoihinsa): Oletko se sittenkin sinä?

Kuulin äänesi ja luulin unta näkeväni — on, oikein hyvä minun on
näin — en luullut sinua enää näkeväni — se onkin viimeinen kerta —
näitkö sinä sen ruskon tänä aamuna? Elämä on kaunis — ja
kuolemakin —, Varma, kaikki on hyvin niinkuin on.

(Hiljaisuus, sairaan silmät sulkeutuvat.)

Varma (itselleen): Kuolee —

Eemi (heikosti, kuin katsellen mennyttä aikaa): Muistatko, kun

kerran marjassa ollessamme eksyimme metsään? Siellä suurella
Kydönnevalla, missä valokkia oli suo keltaisenaan?

Varma: Muistan minä sen, olin viisivuotinen ja sinä vähän

vanhempi. Olimme tulleet heinäväen mukana, — ne korjasivat silloin
kuivia heiniä rantaniityiltä.

Eemi: Marjoja oli paljon. Me kuljimme aina kauemmaksi ja viimein

emme löytäneet sieltä enää pois.

Varma: Tuli ilta ja alkoi hämärtää. Minä väsyin niin että aloin itkeä.
Sinä kannoit minua sylissäsi, kunnes väsyit itsekin, lopulta
rupesimme maata, mätäs päänalaisena.

Eemi: Silloin luulimme, että meidän täytyi kuolla metsään —, sinä

panit kätesi kaulalleni — Muistatko, mitä silloin sanoit?
 Varma: Muistan, muistan.

Eemi (koettaa kohottautua istuilleen, mutta kipu ruumiissa

pakottaa hänet pysymään samassa asennossa).

Varma: Koskeeko kovin?

Eemi: Ei pahoin, — mutta väsyttää niin kovin. Istutko siinä, jos

nukun?

Varma (hyväillen hänen hiuksiaan): Nuku sinä vain, nuku vain.

(Sairas vaipuu horteeseen, Varma kuivaa silmiään, ampumista

kuuluu kaukaa. Äkkiä kajahtaa voimakas hurraahuuto oikealta.)

Eemi (kavahtaa pystyyn, katsoo riemastuneena Varmaan):

Voittaneet Suomenkylän!

(Pää hervahtaa Varman rinnoille, loppu on tulitit.)

Varma (katsoo kuolevaa vaieten, sulkee sitten hellästi silmät):

Leikkitoveri!

(Sanitäärit tulevat paareineen.)

Varma (laskee kuolleen pään sylistään hangolle ja väistyy hitaasti

ruumiin luota. Sanitääreille): Tässä emme enää voi mitään, mutta
tuolla jäällä on varmaan monta, jotka meitä tarvitsevat.

(Menevät kaikki oikealle.)

Anna (tulee vasemmalta, polvistuu veljensä viereen, pitää hänen

kättään omassaan. Hetken kuluttua tulee Heikki kiireisesti.)
 Heikki (huomattuaan ruumiin astuu luokse, paljastaa päänsä,
seisoo hetken äänettömänä, hiljaa, puoleksi itselleen): Näinkö sen
sittenkin piti käymän.

Anna (nousee, kääntyy Heikkiin): Heikki!

Heikki: Niin, sinäkin olet nyt täällä.

(Pikainen tervehdys.)

(Äänettömyys, kantopaarit tulevat, Heikki nostaa ruumista

sanitäärien mukana, jotka vievät sen pois; silloin tällöin
jymähtää vielä tykki etäällä.)

Anna (kahden kesken jäätyään): Sinä olet varmaan minulle

suuttunut?

Heikki: Niinkö luulet.

Anna: Onhan syytäkin.

Heikki (kääntyy pois): Sinäpä sen sanoit.

Anna: Tuo asia on ollut vaivoinani yötä päivää. Nyt tahdon päästä
siitä ja selvittää kaiken.

(Vaikenee voimia kooten.)

Heikki (lähenee Annaa, vakavana): Mitäpäs tämä

selvittelemälläkään paljoa valkenee. Sinä Anna olit se ainoa, jota olin
ajatellut siitä saakka kuin jotakin opin elämästä ymmärtämään. Siltä
se minusta näytti kuin sinäkin —, niin no, olin pitänyt asiaa jo
melkein valmiina noihin kevätjuhliin asti. Jotakin minussa repesi
silloin, eikä sitä koskaan voi saada entiselleen. Siitä päivästä oli
minun oma itseni kuin kuollut, viha minussa vain kyti ja teki
tehtäviään.

Anna (lähenee liikutettuna): Voi, Heikki.

Heikki (kylmän surumielisenä): Niin se on, Anna, mutta ei sitä

tarvitse surra. Minun täytyy nyt taas mennä toimeeni, jotta hyvästi
nyt sitten vaan. Ne meidän välimme eivät koskaan tule siksi, mitä ne
ovat olleet, ja jos se kerran ei ole sitä, ei sen tarvitse olla
muutakaan.

Anna (vetäytyy loukattuna kauemmaksi): En ole aikonut pyytää

takaisin olleita ja menneitä. Minua vaivasi vain se sana, jolla silloin
puolileikillä peitin totuuden.

Heikki: Sana?

Anna: Tottapa sen muistat, mistä tämä juuri alkoi.

Heikki: Eihän se siitä.

Anna: Mistä sitten?

Heikki (ankarana): Pakotatko sinä minut sen sanomaan —

yhdentekevää! Silloin se katkesi, kun ryssän urkkija laski
käsivartensa sinun harteillesi.

Anna (säikähtää): Näitkö sinä?

Heikki (koettaa hillitä mielensä kuohua): Enkö olisi saanut? Ehkä

se ei niin sopivaa ollutkaan, että noin salaa, — mutta ei se ollutkaan
tarkoitukseni. Tuon pikkukinan jälkeen olin jo ennättänyt leppyä ja
tuumasin, että sovitaan se pois, mutta kun tulin takaisin Ahjolan
pihalle sinua etsimään, silloin näin sellaista, mitä en koskaan olisi
uskonut. (Lyhyt vaitiolo.) Mutta hyvähän oli nähtynä sekin. Siitä
hetkestä vasta opin todenteolla vihaamaan ryssää.

Anna: Kuule, Heikki, Vasili oli löytänyt ketjuni ja suostui antamaan

ne takaisin vain sillä ehdolla, että itse sai ne kiinnittää kaulaani.

Heikki (hymähtää): Siitäkö se alkoi, vaikka eihän minun tule tutkia

eikä sinun tunnustaa.

Anna: Ei sillä ollut mitään alkua enempää kuin loppuakaan.

Heikki: Mitä — eikö? — ovat sitäpaitsi puhuneet —

Anna: Ei siitä sen pitemmälle tultu.

Heikki (kiihkeästi): Onko tuo totta? Olisiko ollut erehdys, — olenko

sinua syyttä epäillyt?

Anna: Minä vihaan ryssää niinkuin sinäkin.

Heikki (mennen luo, ottaa Annan molemmat kädet): Minun tyttöni,

en tiedä mitä minun pitäisi sanoa.

(Samassa Porkka ja Varma tulevat. Nuoret vetäytyvät pois

toistensa
luota hiukan noloina. Torvet puhaltavat Vaasan marssia.)

Heikki. Jaha, kello on jo yhdeksän, koska pojat ovat lähteneet

asemalle kapteeni Karkulaista vastaanottamaan.

Varma (mennen Annan luo): Sanoinhan minä —

 Porkka (kättelee Annaa, lyö Heikkiä olkapäähän): Niin, yhdeksän.
Näin aamusta päivin on jo niin paljon ehtinyt tapahtua — tiedä
olisinko saanut nähdä, vai näkemättömänäkö olisi pitänyt olemani.
Yhdentekevää, hyviä uutisia on itsellänikin tuotavana. (Soitto kuuluu
lähempää, sitten jälleen etenee.) Äsken tuli puhelintieto
yleisesikunnasta. Menestystä on ollut armeijallamme, lopullinen
voitto on enää vain parin viikon asia.

Heikki: Ja sitten kun tupa on puhtaaksi lakaistu, on vielä

porraspielet siivottava. Ei tässä työ kesken lopu.

Porkka: Eipä ei.

(Tytöt hiljaisessa keskustelussa keskenään. Kuuluu junan

vihellys, laukauksia, eläköönhuutoja, näyttämöllä olijain katse
suuntautuu vasemmalle. Hetken kuluttua tulee kapteeni
Karkulainen (Ortela), hartiakas, harmaahapsinen vanhus
vasemmalta, kaikki hämmästyvät.)

Heikki (menee vastaan ensi hämmästyksestä toinnuttuaan): Isä!

Varma (menee hiukan ujoillen): Todellako?

Ortela (puristaa liikutettuna kummankin käsiä): Olipa tämä

sattuma, että te lapset —

Porkka: Kumma on, kun kuolleetkin nousevat haudoistaan —

(puristaa molemmin käsin). Oikeinko sinä olet siinä ihan elävänä,
vanha veikko!

Ortela (sulkee hänet painisyleilyyn).

Porkka: Ai ai, ihan olet entisesi.

 Ortela: Uskotko jo, että olen se sama entinen Ortelan Juhannes.
Vai vieläkö kummajaiseksi epäilet?

Porkka: Totisesti sinut eläväksi tunnustan. Mutta selitä nyt

kumminkin, — tässä äsken juuri kuulimme huhuja, että olisit
hirttäytynyt Krestyssä. Ei siinä näköjään perää ollutkaan.

Ortela: Kurjassa kunnossa tosiaan olin silloin, kun täältä minut

veivät. Se pitkäaikainen nälkäpiina oli vähällä sekoittaa järjen, mutta
kun ne lopuksi huomasivat, että siitä ei ollut apua eikä odotettuja
ilmiantoja tullut, siirsivät minut ensin Viaporiin ja sitten Krestyyn,
missä sain taas tavalliset vangin olot ja aloin hiljalleen toipua.
Koppitoverini hirttäytyi, ja siitä nimien sekaannus. Olin kuljetettu jo
Siperiaan saakka, kun Venäjän vallankumous puhkesi, ja sieltä se
sitten alkoi vaivalloinen vaellus kotimaata kohti. Sellainen matka ei
kovin nopeasti edistynyt, sen voitte arvata, semmoinen sekasotku
kun siellä ryssäin maalla silloin oli, ja kulje siellä sitten taitamatta
kieltä ja — rahatonna. Kun vihdoin pääsin Suomen rajalle, oli sota jo
syttynyt, ja kotiinpääsy toistaiseksi melkein mahdoton.

Enhän minäkään ruvennut jouten olemaan, kun kerran oli näin

pitkälle tultu. Kuljeskelin Pohjois-Karjalan syrjäseutuja ja sieltä liittyi
mukaani joukko Karjalan ja Kainuun miehiä, — rohkeita, karskia
poikia muuten. Olemme kulkeneet korpia ja saloja, ilmestyneet
joskus rintakylillekin ja tehneet ryssille pientä pahuutta.

Porkka: Joopa joo, niistä on täällä kyllä paljonkin kuultu, mutta

kukapa olisi osannut aavistaa, että kapteeni Karkulainen oli entinen
Juhannes Ortela.

Ortela: No kun ne nimet silloin siellä vankilassa sekosivat, ja

karkulainen kun kerran olin. Sitäpaitsi tuntuu itsestänikin kuin olisin
haudasta noussut. Neljä vuotta niissä oloissa on pitkä aika sentään.
(Laskee kätensä Varman olalle.) Sinäkin olit vielä pikkutyttö
lähtiessäni ja nyt olet jo täysi-ikäiseksi tulossa. Paljon olet
muuttunut, mutta olisin sinut tuntenut pitemmänkin eron jälkeen.
(Hellästi.) Äitivainajaansa tulee tuo tyttö. (Katsoo liikutettuna Varmaa
tuokion ja sitten Heikkiä.) Kasvanut on tuo poikakin ja miehistynyt.
Kuulin siitä joskus mainittavankin ja tuumasin, että mies taitaa
siitäkin huhdittomasta tulla, sinähän Matti muistat, kuinka tuo tenava
oli vallaton ja omapäinen.

Porkka: Muistanpa kyllä ja enkös minä sitä silloin sanonut, että

antakaa pojan vaan pitää sisunsa, eipä tiedä mihin sitä vielä
tarvitaan.

Ortela: Mutta kuinkas se äitimuori, tottapa vielä on elossa?

Varma: Elossa, ja aivankuin nuortunut viime kuukausina. Hänkin

on koko sydämellään ollut meidän nuorten puuhissa mukana.

Ortela: Niin, se onkin vanha ajatus, ei vain nykyisten polvien

tuntema. — Vapaudenkaipuu on Pohjanmaan lakeuksilla elänyt jo
Jaakko Ilkan ajoista asti. Vanhemmat ovat sen lapsilleen perinnöksi
jättäneet, polvesta polveen on se kansan verissä ollut jo vuosisatoja,
mutta tämän nykyisen polven tehtäväksi oli tullut sen työn
täyttäminen. (Annaan kääntyen): Ja tämähän on Harjun Anna, en
ollut tunteakaan, niin ne nuoret kasvavat.

Porkka (rykäisee, vilkaisee Heikkiin): — joko mä sanon senkin

tässä muun ilon yhteydessä?

Heikki (vähän ujoillen): — tuota vielä ehtisi, eihän nyt ole aikaa
ajatella omiaan.
 Anna. Eihän sitä vielä —

Porkka: Älkää suotta — niin se kumminkin käy — ja onhan se jo

aikakin.

(Aurinko heittää kirkkaan valon näkymälle.)

Ortela (ottaa Annaa kädestä): Onhan jo aikakin, että emäntä

saadaan Ortelaankin. Eihän se muori enää pitkälle jaksa, ja minäkin
mielelläni antaisin jo hoidon nuorempiin käsiin.

Porkka: Ja katsokaas kuinka tuo päiväkulta jo paistelee, ja

muutaman viikon päästä on jo kylvöaikakin käsissä. Siihen mennessä
on sotatoimet lopetettava. Nälkä on maassa, pellosta sitä on taaskin
elämän uudistus tuleva. Sillä sota on sotaa, haavoja lyödään,
haavoja saadaan. Tänä aamuna on Harjunkin ainoa poika siirtynyt
vainaitten joukkoon, samoin moni muu, eikä meistä kukaan vielä
tiedä, selviääkö leikistä eheänä. Mutta luonto on rikas ja antelias,
uusilla jäsenillä täytetään poistuneitten paikat, ja muutaman vuoden
ja vuosikymmenen kuluttua ei sodan jälkiä varmaan ole enää
huomattavissa.

(Torvet kauimpana puhaltavat: »Kytösavun aukeilla mailla

on kansa».)

Heikki (katsoo vasemmalle): Pojat sieltä jo näkyvät tulevan. Nyt

siis uudella voimalla etelään ja itään! (Annalle.) Tosiaan tuo aurinko
lämmittää niin herttaisesti tänään, kevät tulee — (ottaa kädestä).

Anna (silmiin katsoen; hiljaa): Sitä olen jo kauan odottanut.

(Soittokunta tulee vasemmalta, edellä lipunkantaja sinivalkoista

lippua kantaen. Suojeluskuntapukuiset miehet kulkevat ruoduissa
laulaen »Kytösavun aukeilla mailla…» Joukossa toipuneita
haavoittuneitakin, kellä siteissä pää, kellä käsi. Laulavat, lavalla olijat
yhtyvät lauluun:)

Orjuus pois, tahi menköhön henki, niinkuin se mennyt on

isienki. Orjuuden ijesta ei tää suku huoli, sankarit vaan käy
kuolemaan.

Väliverho.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEIKKI ORTELA ***

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