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University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2012 The Queen of the Household: Mothers, Other Mothers, and Female Genealogy on the Plantation in Postslavery Women's Fiction Correna Catlett Merricks Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Merricks, Correna Catlett, "The Queen of the Household: Mothers, Other Mothers, and Female Genealogy on the Plantation in Postslavery Women's Fiction" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 196. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/196 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “THE QUEEN OF THE HOUSEHOLD”: MOTHERS, “OTHER” MOTHERS, AND FEMALE GENEALOGY ON THE PLANTATION IN POSTSLAVERY WOMEN’S FICTION A Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English at The University of Mississippi by CORRENA CATLETT MERRICKS August 2012 Copyright Correna Catlett Merricks 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT In many ways, the plantation defined the U.S. South because it was the primary site of production, and therefore income, for prominent southerners. In addition to being a site of production, the plantation created a complex series of connected relationships that was imagined by the plantocracy to be a large family unit. It functioned according to a specific hierarchical model that was primarily based on a patriarchal understanding of genealogy. Yet Kate Chopin’s “Désirée’s Baby” and “La Belle Zoraïde,” Pauline Hopkins’s Contending Forces, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Julia Peterkin’s Scarlet Sister Mary, Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, and Katherine Anne Porter’s The Old Order are woman-centered; each text focuses on a mother-child relationship and privileges the voices of women over the voices of male characters. These texts focus on female genealogy rather than a traditional patriarchal understanding of genealogical history. Tracing female genealogy makes space to see alternate foci of power on the postslavery plantation and the ways women, particularly mothers, utilize this power. Looking at these texts through the lens of female genealogy illuminates moments when these authors explore the plantation’s insidious nature and resist its traditional power structure. Each story places emphasis on exploring individual identity through an understanding of one’s cultural and family history. This dissertation explores the ways black and white women, 1890-1950, express a shared identity. The six authors experience a shared historical memory; ii each author reflects on the impact the plantation has had on the characters in her stories, and each author presents a new image of the changing plantation south. The authors explore their characters’ anxieties about women’s roles and places in a patriarchal society, and they explore the ways women gain and exchange power, both overtly and covertly. They also examine the ways mothers and children both love each other and manipulate each other. They look at relationships between black and white women, and they examine the ways these women are “family” and the ways they are not. Finally, they examine the ways a shared violent history shapes relationships between women in the present. iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my sons, Isaiah and Ezra, and to my husband, D. You have enriched my life so much, and I am grateful to you for helping me keep perspective during this process. I hope that pursuing my dreams encourages you to pursue your own. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I deeply appreciate the help and encouragement I received from my advisor, Dr. Kathryn McKee, and my committee members, Dr. Jay Watson, Dr. Annette Trefzer, and Dr. Ted Ownby. I am also grateful for the assistantship I received from the Department of English in order to finance my studies. In addition, I am grateful to Dr. David Davis, for his encouragement and listening ear as I talked through some questions and ideas with him. I am also grateful to Leslie Andres for helping me edit and revise this dissertation. Finally, I am grateful to my mother, Sue Catlett, and to my mother-in-law, Patti Merricks, for helping me by caring for my children during this process. I could not have done this without your help. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ….................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION: MAPPING NEW GENEALOGIES IN SOUTHERN WOMEN’S FICTION ….................................................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: “I’M SO HAPPY; IT FRIGHTENS ME”: FEMALE GENEALOGY IN KATE CHOPIN’S AND PAULINE HOPKINS’S FICTION …........................................................... 31 CHAPTER 2: “ME AN’ MY CHILLEN DON’ NEED NO MAN”; BODILY MOTHERHOOD IN THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD AND SCARLET SISTER MARY............................ 71 CHAPTER 3: CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION ON THE PLANTATION: COMMODIFICATION AND ANXIETY IN DELTA WEDDING AND THE OLD ORDER... 113 CONCLUSION: THE HELP’S REPRESENTATION OF THE CONTEMPORARY PLANTATION SOUTH …....................................................................................................... 158 LIST OF REFERENCES …...................................................................................................... 171 VITA …..................................................................................................................................... 179 vi INTRODUCTION MAPPING NEW GENEALOGIES IN SOUTHERN WOMEN’S FICTION In her book, Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women’s Writing, 1930-1990, one of Patricia Yaeger’s themes is southern women writers and their relationships with their mothers. Referring to Virginia Woolf’s assertion that “we write back through our mothers if we are women” (253), Yaeger traces a line of descent in which women’s writing becomes historically significant, and she acknowledges that we have 150 years’ worth of southern women writers to reflect upon. Yaeger asks a significant question: “If we write back through our mothers when we are women, the question we must ask in the South is—which mothers? Many white southerners were raised by black women, while many black southerners lost the constancy of their mothers to underpaid work in white homes” (253). In much southern fiction, genealogical history and reflections on the idea of family include women who were not actually part of the family. The role of mother and the cultural texts surrounding motherhood have a significant impact on how both black and white women understand themselves, their identities, and their bodies. This dissertation is about motherhood in southern women’s fiction, but it is not just about the connection between biological mothers and their children. Instead, it is about motherhood in some of its various shapes and forms it takes in southern fiction, including biological mothers but 1 also the “other” mothers who exist on the peripheries of southern texts. It is also about missing mothers: there are countless stories in southern fiction of women who have lost their children and children who have lost their mothers. It is about grieving mothers: story after story tells of black women who mothered white children while being forced to push their own biological children to the side. While reflecting on the place of genealogy in Southern Studies, I began to wonder if it would be possible to map a more extensive genealogy, genealogy that would include the “other” mothers in family history and that would expose the secret children of plantation owners who inherited their fathers’ features, but who would never inherit their possessions. In this dissertation, I focus on the plantation as a matriarchy and the significance of female genealogy in the works of women writers who engage the south: Kate Chopin, Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Julia Peterkin, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter. Examining the plantation as a matriarchy may seem problematic because the plantation was dominated by white males. In Cotton’s Queer Relations, Michael Bibler writes “no matter what the plantation setting in a text may look like, the defining characteristic for all of them is a hierarchical system of social relations in which every person is bound together through the blatantly heterosexualized rhetoric of paternalism” (5). Yet the texts I explore as part of this dissertation are woman-centered; each text focuses on a mother-daughter relationship and privileges the voices of women over the voices of male characters. Because of these characteristics, I argue that these texts focus on female genealogy rather than a traditional patriarchal understanding of genealogical history. Tracing female genealogy makes space to see other foci of power on the plantation and the ways women, particularly mothers, utilize this power. Kate Chopin explores a relationship between a mammy and her mistress in “La Belle

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