Performativity and Racial Absence in Twentieth Century Women's Writing

1 WOMEN WRITING RACELESSNESS: PERFORMATIVITY AND RACIAL ABSENCE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY WOMEN’S LITERATURE A dissertation presented By Sarah Payne to The Department of English In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts March 2019 2 WOMEN WRITING RACELESSNESS: PERFORMATIVITY AND RACIAL ABSENCE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY WOMEN’S LITERATURE A dissertation presented By Sarah Payne ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University March 2019 3 Abstract Ample literary criticism exists on racial passing and multiracialism. Implicit in much of this work is that one must still identify as one or more races. However, throughout the twentieth century numerous historical figures and fictional characters try to opt out of racial categorization. Yet there is a dearth of literary scholarship on what I call “racelessness.” I define racelessness as an often temporary, frequently unsuccessful existence outside of racial categorization. Influenced by theories of performativity, I argue racelessness is determined by reciprocal negotiations and constitutive negations. Characters can actively refuse race; external forces can also impose racelessness. Many examples involve a negotiation between individual desires and dominant social beliefs about race. Additionally, racelessness rarely manifests as a verbal denial of racial identity. More often, racelessness occurs during silences, omissions, and formal gaps such as dashes and ellipses. The silences, refusals, and negations that accompany racelessness are not empty voids, but significant moments that constitute meaning. I analyze women’s writing from the 1920s through 1960s across three geographical regions: the U.S. South, the Caribbean, and Harlem. The temporal and spatial scope illustrates how historical, political, and social conditions produce different variations of racelessness. Yet the shared history of slavery, colonialism, and racial hierarchies also creates textual similarities in seemingly disparate works. I focus on eight writers: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, Esther Chapman, Marie Stanley, Jean Rhys, Nella Larsen, Eliot Bliss, Zora Neale Hurston, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. There is little scholarship on many of these authors, some of whom embodied racelessness in their own lives. The neglect of these authors is not due to literary merit, but to the fact that representing, and attempting to live out, racelessness engenders social illegibility. Examining a range of textual genres, I develop four versions of racelessness: interracial sex, 4 liminal racial identities, traveling and mobility, and the subversion of class status. I also analyze how these authors grappled with race in their own lives and used literature not only to represent racelessness, but to constitute the concept itself. This dissertation aims to recuperate several under-appreciated authors and to acknowledge racelessness as a literary phenomenon. I argue racelessness is a prevalent concept in twentieth century literature, but one that has evaded our attention because of its inherent illegibility. Attending to racelessness forces us not to conflate absence with emptiness and raises the challenge of representing identities premised on negation without describing them as negative. 5 Acknowledgements During my final semester of dissertation writing, I also trained for the Boston Marathon. As I logged miles and filled pages, I sometimes felt like a very solitary figure. But in reality, I know reaching these goals was only possible because of a great many people. To my advisor and dissertation chair, Carla Kaplan: I remember early in this project I was pleased when you said my work “had teeth,” so to speak. I was then befuddled when you compared me to an onion that had been left out too long. What you meant was that my ideas were sprouting. As you’ve challenged me, supported me, and let me take agency over my work, I’ve continued to sprout. What kind of foul onion that makes me I don’t know, but at least I’m an onion that doesn’t bury the lead. To my second reader, Nicole Aljoe: thank you for your continual enthusiasm about my work. I have left all of our meetings with renewed excitement about my own ideas, a better sense of myself as both a scholar and a teacher, and an ability to laugh at my mistakes and then improve them. And to my third reader, Jack Matthews: I am forever grateful that after I took one class with you as an undergrad, during which I probably said two words, you agreed to join my committee. Thank you for taking that chance, your confidence in my work, and your sense of humor along the way. This project has greatly benefitted from archival work and I am grateful to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the History Museum of Mobile, Alabama, and the University of Tulsa McFarlin Library Special Collections. I would also like to thank Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature for providing me with a travel grant to conduct research at McFarlin. 6 Thank you to my parents for instilling a love of reading and a sense of tenacity. I am immensely grateful to my friends, especially Samantha Przybylowicz Axtell, Ceillie Keane, Jonathan Osborne, Rebecca Petitti, and Bill Quinn. Whether you read a draft or made me take regular breaks to watch Scandal, your support and friendship has sustained me during this process. And to Ian: thank you for handling the day to day when I needed to write but also making me take breaks for my sanity. Your unwavering support and optimism has been invaluable. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………3 Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………5 Table of Contents……………………………….…………………………………………………7 Introduction………………………..………………………………………………………………8 Chapter One……………………………………………………………………………...………27 Not Quite White: Josephine Cogdell Schuyler, Esther Chapman, and Interracial Sex Chapter Two…………………..…………………………………………………….……………66 Dual Identities and Double Audiences: Racial Liminality in the Work of Marie Stanley and Jean Rhys Chapter Three…………………..……………………………………………………….………102 Routes, Roots, and Race: Nella Larsen, Eliot Bliss, and Women’s Racelessness Chapter Four………..………………………………………………………………….….……138 Money Matters: Classed Racelessness in Zora Neale Hurston and Georgia Douglas Johnson Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….175 8 Introduction Finding Presence in Absence: The Illegibility of Racelessness “At certain times I have no race, I am me.” Zora Neale Hurston, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) “[…] that blessed sense of belonging to herself alone and not to a race.” Nella Larsen, Quicksand (1928) In 1924, Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander wed Alice Jones. Their relationship seemed to be the stuff of fairytales: a poor, working class woman swept off her feet and saved from poverty by a charming, well-to-do man. The Rhinelander family of New York had money, power, and influence. Alice, a maid, had none of these. As detailed in Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone’s Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White (2001), Kip’s family was opposed to their relationship because of class differences, but Kip persisted. Indeed, once word spread of their marriage, front-page headlines broadcast the union between a “society youth” and a “cabman’s daughter” (“Society Youth Weds”). Yet a month later, under intense pressure from his father, Kip filed for an annulment. What happened to the Rhinelander couple? As it turns out, their marriage not only crossed class lines, but racial ones as well. In the annulment complaint, Kip accused Alice of defrauding him by lying about her race. During their courtship, Alice supposedly let Kip think she was white when in fact she was mixed race. A media frenzy erupted, with newspapers across the country reporting “Kip 9 Rhinelander Sues ‘Dusky’ Wife” and “Bride Denies Being of Negro Ancestry.”1 As the case continued, the Rhinelander marriage became one of the top ten news stories of 1925 (Ehlers 2). Alice’s father was in fact mixed race, but in order to convict her of fraud, the court had to decide whether or not Kip knew Alice was mixed race before their marriage. They’d had premarital sex and Alice’s physical features, the court argued, would determine her race. Thus Alice was forced to strip before the white, all male jury so they could determine if her body revealed supposedly black traits. On seeing her bare breasts, the jury ruled Kip must have known she was black. Alice was acquitted, but she still paid a high price (Lewis and Ardizzone). The Rhinelander case exemplifies the confluence of legal, social, and biological definitions of race that pervaded the era. During the 1920s, anti-immigration legislation increased; “mulatto” was removed from the U.S. census, reinforcing a black/white binary; and Ku Klux Klan membership reached an all time high (Benn Michaels). As white women and African Americans advocated for increasing social and political rights, white men in particular felt their power threatened. A slew of regulatory efforts, both legal and extralegal, developed to police identity. Census categories, lynchings, and official legislation were just a few methods that attempted to define and control the bounds of racial identity. Anyone who defied categorization was a threat. With limited options for racial identity, some struggled or even flat out refused to fit into a black/white binary. Alice Jones’s family was listed as white in the 1915 census, though her father’s naturalization papers listed him as “colored” (Ehlers 75). Members of the community were unable to decide if Alice and her family were white or black. Jean Toomer, a well-known Harlem Renaissance writer, was similarly ambiguous and he chose black or white on various 1 “Kip Rhinelander Sues ‘Dusky’ Wife.” Chicago Daily Tribune. Nov. 27, 1924. 1; “Bride Denies Being of Negro Ancestry.” Boston Daily Globe. Nov. 15, 1924. 1. 10 government documents as it suited him (Byrd and Gates xi-lxx).

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