The Transparent Mask: American Women's Satire 1900-1933
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 5-13-2011 The Transparent Mask: American Women's Satire 1900-1933 Julia Boissoneau Hans University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Hans, Julia Boissoneau, "The Transparent Mask: American Women's Satire 1900-1933" (2011). Open Access Dissertations. 390. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/390 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE TRANSPARENT MASK: AMERICAN WOMEN’S SATIRE 1900-1933 A Dissertation Presented by JULIA BOISSONEAU HANS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2011 Department of English © Copyright by Julia Boissoneau Hans 2011 All Rights Reserved THE TRANSPARENT MASK: AMERICAN WOMEN’S SATIRE 1900-1933 A Dissertation Presented by JULIA BOISSONEAU HANS Approved as to style and content by: _______________________________________ Deborah Carlin, Chair _______________________________________ Nicholas Bromell, Member _______________________________________ Steven C. Tracy, Member ____________________________________ Joseph Bartolomeo, Chair English Department DEDICATION To Ravi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to first thank the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for funding my graduate studies. I thank Professor Chola Chisunka and Professor Michael Hoberman at Fitchburg State University for their guidance and support in the early stages of this project. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I thank my committee for their time and expertise, particularly Professor Steven C. Tracy of the Afro-American Department. My thanks also to James Murray at the W. E. B. Du Bois Library for his research assistance, generously given. Over the years, many kind folks at the American Humor Studies Association, especially Professor Judith Yaross Lee, gave unstintingly of their knowledge. I’m appreciative of their guidance and encouragement. Thanks also to my sister, Nancy Hoffman, and to my mother, Claudia Dunbar, for their lifelong support of my writing. Most of all, my heartfelt thanks is extended to my husband, Ravi, and to our children, Michael, Kristin, and Abigail for their Herculean patience in what proved to be a very long process. I could not have done this without your support. You remind me that the bonds of friendship and love are only strengthened by humor. v ABSTRACT THE TRANSPARENT MASK: AMERICAN WOMEN’S SATIRE 1900-1940 MAY 2011 JULIA BOISSONEAU HANS, B.A., FITCHBURG STATE UNIVERSITY M.A., FITCHBURG STATE UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Deborah Carlin An interdisciplinary study of women satirists of the Progressive and Jazz eras, the dissertation investigates the ways in which early modernist writers use the satiric mode either as an elitist mask or as a site of resistance, confronts the theoretical limitations that have marginalized women satirists in the academic arena, and points to the destabilizing, democratic potential inherent in satiric discourse. In the first chapter, I introduce the concept of signifying caricature, an exaggerated characterization that carries with it broad social, political, and cultural critique. Edith Wharton uses a signifying caricature in The Custom of the Country where the popular press, middlebrow literature, and the democratization of language is under attack. Several of Wharton’s satiric stories also ridicule the New Woman, revealing Wharton’s anxiety over women functioning in the public arena. The second chapter features recovery work of May Isabel Fisk, an internationally known comic monologist whose work has been lost to scholars. This chapter examines Fisk’s monologues, paying particular attention to her use of the eiron and alazon comic figures. The dissertation then moves on to Dorothy Parker’s biting satires of Jazz era decadence, the sexual double standard, and the oppressive norms of vi feminine beauty promoted in mass culture. The study concludes with an analysis of Jessie Fauset’s Comedy: American Style, a novel using a signifying caricature to chastise America’s failed racial policies and an essentialist theory of race. Comedy: American Style is an overlooked Depression era satire that challenges notions of a fixed American cultural nationalism even as it presages the idea of race as a floating signifier. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................v ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. ‘A WHOLE NATION DEVELOPING WITHOUT A SENSE OF BEAUTY AND EATING BANANAS FOR BREAKFAST’: EDITH WHARTON'S SATIRIC FICTION 1899-1916.....................................................................................................................19 Signifying Caricature.........................................................................................20 Parody of Slang and Gossip Columns ................................................................43 Satire of Women in the Public Arena.................................................................52 The Pelican ............................................................................................55 The Mission of Jane ...............................................................................60 Xingu.....................................................................................................64 2. ‘THE FUNNIEST WOMAN MONOLOGIST IN AMERICA': MAY ISABEL FISK AND THE ART OF THE COMIC MONOLOGUE.......................................................72 Monologue ........................................................................................................77 Women Playwrights of the Progressive Era........................................................85 Marriage Satires.................................................................................................89 The Alazon and Eiron........................................................................................96 Lady Satires: The Alazon .......................................................................96 Dialect Satires: The Eiron..................................................................... 106 3. POLYPHONY AND THE SATIRIC GROTESQUE IN DOROTHY PARKER'S FICTION..................................................................................................................... 129 viii Polyphonic Monologues .................................................................................. 131 Satiric Grotesque ............................................................................................. 151 4. SATIRIC AND TRAGIC ELEMENTS IN JESSIE FAUSET'S 'COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE'.................................................................................................. 177 Satiric Elements............................................................................................... 179 Caricature............................................................................................. 180 Parody.................................................................................................. 181 American Cultural Nationalism ............................................................ 188 Miscegenation...................................................................................... 191 Irony .................................................................................................... 195 Tragic Elements............................................................................................... 201 Classical Analogues ............................................................................. 201 Death of the Artist................................................................................ 205 Race as a Performance ......................................................................... 218 The Gift of Laughter ............................................................................ 222 WORKS CITED.......................................................................................................... 226 ix INTRODUCTION It is the spring of 2004, and I am sitting at a large oak table in the oppressively silent but architecturally impressive John Hay Library at Brown University, blithely thumbing through stacks of World War II joke books, nineteenth century humor magazines, and oversized comic broadsides from the 1820s. I am here to see the Dorothy Parker collection for work on my master’s thesis, but I also want to take advantage of the gold mine that is the Miller Collection of Wit and Humor, the largest collect of its kind in the world. I look through the World War II joke books first because they are in good shape and there are a lot of them. The yellowed covers feature curvaceous women wearing red lipstick and red platform heels, so I am not surprised to find