WOMEN IN THE WORKS OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Bradsher, Frieda Katherine Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 04/10/2021 14:21:23 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/298523 INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or notations which may appear on this reproduction. 1. 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ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, MI 48IOE © 1979 FRIEDA KATHERINE BRADSHER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WOMEN IN THE WORKS OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER by Frieda Katherine Bradsher A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 7 9 Copyright 1979 Frieda Katherine Bradsher THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Frieda Katherine Bradsher entitled Women in the Works of James Fenimore Cooper be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree Qf Doctor of Philosophy Qt ,6sC I / 9 7 y Dissertation Direction: Date# As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read this dissertation and agree that it may be presented for final defense. / LuM 1 Date 7 Da Date Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense thereof at the final oral examination. 11/78 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available- to bor­ rowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For their helpful advice and careful readings of my manuscript, I sincerely thank Albert F. Gegenheimer, Sidonie A. Smith, and Edgar A. Dryden of the Department of English of The University of Arizona. For the immense patience and skill that provided me with many nineteenth- century volumes, I thank the inter-library loan staff of the University of Arizona Library and all those unknown librarians across the country who assisted them. For permission to examine and to quote from unpublished material in the Collection of American Literature, I thank the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. For the constant encouragement that preserved my enthusiasm for this study and sometimes even my general sanity, I am especially grateful to my parents and all my family and friends, whether they are as far away as South Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, or Oregon or as close as the Arizona Quarterly office. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Sherry O'Donnell and all the other members of the Women's Studies Feminist Theory Group of The University of Arizona for emotional support and invaluable intellectual stimulation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT vi 1. THE PROBLEMATIC WOMAN IN COOPER'S SOCIETY 1 Social Roles of Men and Women 6 Feminine Sexuality . 11 Feminine Spirituality 22 Two New Feminisms 29 2. WOMEN IN COOPER'S PERSONAL LIFE 33 The Mother 34 The Wife 36 The Daughters 49 3. JUSTICE IS FEMININE, 1820-1824 73 The Complexity of Femininity 75 Women and the Discovery of the Self 86 Women and the Education of Men 100 Justice Thwarted 104 4. A DARK COMPLEXITY, 1825-1833 107 The Metaphors of Complexity 112 Characterization and the Tragedy of Rejection 136 Double Plotting and the Tragedy of Rejection 158 5. ADULTHOOD AND INITIATION IN THE PATHFINDER 171 The Separation 181 The Initiation Proper 189 The Return 200 6. JUDITH, DEERSLAYER, AND CHRISTIAN INITIATION 206 Christianity and a Hero's Denial of Complexity 211 Adulthood, Sin, and Repentance 228 The Problem of Justice 245 The Author and His Hero 254 iv V TABLE OF CONTENTS—Continued Page 7. AMBIGUITY DENIED: CONVENTIONAL WOMEN IN THE NOVELS OF THE 1830s AND 1840s 269 "The proper sphere of a woman": The Ideal of Decorum . 272 "A total abnegation of self": The Ideal of Selflessness 285 "Her thoughts and prayers": The Ideal of Spirituality .297 8. AMBIGUITY CONDEMNED: WOMEN IN JACK TIER AND THE WAYS OF THE HOUR • 305 Jack Tier 306 The Ways of the Hour: The Ambiguity 314 The Ways of the Hour: The Condemnation 325 9. FROM ACHIEVEMENT TO INSANITY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COOPER HEROINE 345 REFERENCES 358 ABSTRACT "Women in the Works of James Fenimore Cooper" is a develop­ mental study arguing that changes in the treatment of women indicate significant shifts in the author's concepts, especially those concerning the nature of truth and the moral nature of the world. According to Cooper, women are especially apt at testing these issues because they, more so than men, embody a dualism that combines good and evil. In stressing this feminine complexity, Cooper often articulated common assumptions of his age, country, and class, assumptions explored in chapter 1. He was also influenced by his mother and wife, who conformed to most of the standards of the time, and by his four daughters, who indirectly challenged many conventional attitudes, as chapter 2 demonstrates. The third chapter argues that in the early fiction of 1820 through 1824 women may establish a transcendent justice by discovering how their own complexity echoes that of the world and by educating men about true virtue. Chapter 4 discusses the increasing pessimism about human nature that between 1825 and 1833 led Cooper to expand his vocabulary of metaphors for dualism and, through ironic characterizations and double plotting, to emphasize the tragedies resulting from rejections of the feminine. In 1840 with The Pathfinder, the subject of chapter 5, Cooper returned to his early theme of a woman's discovery of her own nature and described Mabel Dunham as undergoing a classic initiation into vi vii adulthood even as Natty Bumppo destroys his hopes of happiness by remaining blind to her dual nature. In The Deerslayer (1841), analyzed in the sixth chapter, Natty fails the moral tests of his own initiation by refusing to accept Judith Hutter. This refusal is linked to his denying that her repentance can atone for her sin, a denial that the author, as an orthodox Christian, subconsciously defined as heretical even as he consciously tried to idealize his protagonist. After 1841 Cooper attempted to abandon the complex femininity that in Judith had presented Deerslayer with spiritual problems he could not solve. As the seventh chapter indicates, he returned to the conventional definition of virtuous women as decorous, self-denying, and spiritual that he had used in the late 1830s, and in most of the fiction of the forties Cooper emphasized heroines who do not challenge or threaten men. Ultimately, however, this attempt to deny moral dualism proved troublesome. In two late works, discussed in chapter 8, the attempt failed. In Jack Tier (1846-48) the title character, a woman posing as a man, parodies both the ideal woman and Natty Bumppo, while in the final novel, The Ways of the Hour (1850), the main character, Mary Monson, is presented paradoxically as both the pathetic victim of social corruption and as a dangerous feminist who threatens to destroy the foundations of civilization; unable to solve this contradiction in her characterization, Cooper concluded by defining her as insane.