남북의 체제 충돌과 유혹의 다층구조: 캐롤라인 헨츠의 『농장주의 북부 출신 신부』와 반톰소설(Anti-Tom novel)의 정치학

Multiple Layers of Seduction in the North-South Conflict: The Politics of the Anti-Tom Novel in Caroline Lee Hentz’s : The Planter’s Northern Bride

This study investigates how the seduction motif—originally depicting a masculine, corrupt England violating a feminized, innocent America—is appropriated in Caroline Lee Hentz’s _The Planter’s Northern Bride_, a representative anti-Tom novel. Hentz employs the figure of the Northern confidence man (con-man), disguised as a pastor, to incite rebellion among enslaved people on a Southern plantation, promising freedom and prosperity in the North. This intrusion destabilizes the plantation community, drawing its members—slaveholders, women, and slaves—into complex layers of mutual seduction and deception. Through the reassertion of a divinely sanctioned covenant of hierarchical order, the benevolent planter restores stability. Exposing the confidence man’s deceit, he calls for sectional reconciliation based on shared Christian values, while warning against abolitionism as a divisive force. Ultimately, the novel upholds the moral legitimacy of Southern slavery under paternalism, portraying abolition as a threat to national unity rather than a path to justice.