“Perfect Scene of Horror”: Cholera, Race, and Pandemic Injustice in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s "Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp" (1856)

When cholera—the great pandemic of the nineteenth century—finally struck North America for first time in 1832, politics, medicine, and society were utterly helpless face socially physically disruptive power disease. While sudden appearance, rapid progression, massive death tolls traumatized individuals as well entire collectives, cholera’s violent, degrading symptoms crossed social threshold disgust, tabooed conversation, seemed to render artistic representation impossible. However, disease shaped century’s literature manifold ways left remarkable traces fictitious worlds contemporary American texts. Cholera plays a crucial role Harriet Beecher Stowe’s "Dred: A Tale Great Dismal Swamp"; has however received little attention analyses this classic U.S. literature. At interface literary studies medical history, article explores how traumatic experience cholera is inscribed text despite an assumed impossibility narration. It shows that through merging dreads with radical criticism slavery, becomes narratable, especially gothic mode, which allows unspeakable be spoken of, reveals familiar pattern ethnic injustice.