Interpretation & Cultural Analysis

Elaborating further upon the frameworks of gift exchange, the shawl from Queen Victoria to Harriet Tubman can be widely understood as more than a material object. Rather, it is an object where power and social relations converge with one another. This can be interpreted through the theories of Marcel Mauss, Karl Marx, Sydney Mintz, and D.W. Winnicott:

• Marcel Mauss

  • Mauss’s theory of gift evidently suggests that gifts are never free; they establish bonds of obligation and reciprocity that persist long after the exchange occurs. In this context, the shawl may potentially have functioned as an attempt to create a symbolic relationship between an imperial monarch (Queen Victoria) and an abolitionist (Harriet Tubman) whose life’s work directly challenged and resisted systems of domination that Victorian Britain had historically upheld.

• Karl Marx

  • This is quite interesting when incorporating Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism and how it complicates this further by revealing how the shawl’s physical form masks and reflects the political realities that shaped both women’s worlds, prompting us to investigate how an imperial gift could simultaneously express admiration and obscure structures of racial and economic inequality.

• Sydney Mintz

  • Given the global networks of exchange, Mintz’s attention to consumption and this exchange directly demonstrates how objects traveling across borders develop cultural, political, and emotional layers. The shawl’s journey from British court to Tubman’s home exemplifies the uneven yet deeply interconnected flow of goods between empire and formerly enslaved subjects, leading many to ponder how meaning transforms across such distances.

• D.W. Winnicott

  • Similar to Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects, this adds another dimension, suggesting the shawl may have offered Tubman a form of symbolic grounding through an object she could reflect on and negotiate her identity, memory, or most importantly, belonging in a world that denied her stability.

 

With regards to reciprocity, Harriet Tubman’s response to Queen Victoria’s gift is especially striking because it appears she did not engage in the kind of reciprocity that Marcel Mauss identifies as central to gift exchange. As it stands, there is no evidence that Tubman sent a return gift, formal acknowledgment, or symbolic gesture that carried equal weight, raising various questions as to why she refrained from participating in this cycle of obligation. One possibility that lingers is that Tubman, who spent much of her life fighting for justice and equality, may not have viewed the shawl within the same framework of social exchange that governed Victorian gift-giving. Tubman’s commitments to caregiving and grassroots activism did not align with the expectations of elite diplomatic reciprocity. Additionally, Tubman may have recognized the imbalance in the exchange: a formerly enslaved Black woman receiving a gift from the queen of a monarchy, tied to global systems of domination. In this case, by choosing not to reciprocate, she may have very well resisted entering into a symbiotic relationship that could imply indebtedness or alignment with an imperial power.

 

Barriers of distance and resources may have also made reciprocity difficult or impractical. Overall, Tubman’s silence during the time becomes extremely meaningful, as it displays a powerful assertion of autonomy in the face of a gesture that may have potentially carried implicit expectations she neither sought nor accepted.