Eying Italians: Race, Romance, and Reality in American Perception, 1880--1910
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1999 Eying Italians: Race, romance, and reality in American perception, 1880--1910 Joseph Peter Cosco College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Cosco, Joseph Peter, "Eying Italians: Race, romance, and reality in American perception, 1880--1910" (1999). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623965. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-5ks5-gk91 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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UMI Number: 9974954 UMf UMI Microform9974954 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPROVAL SHEET This dissenation is submitted in partial fulflllment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved. December 1999 Kenneth M. Price ~-sM4Roberti cholnick ~/l;:tL Allegheny College ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. DEDICATION The author dedicates this dissertation to his father and mother, Anthony and Carmella Cosco, whose sacrifices made it possible for me to become an American and whose pride serves as a enduring reminder of my Italian heritage. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................. v ABSTRACT . vi INTRODUCTION: THOSE MAGNIFICENTLY MISERABLE ITALIANS AND THEIR WRETCHED, PRINCELY ITALY ..................................... 2 CHAPTER I: RllS AND STEINER: IMMIGRANTS OLD AND NEW AND THE MAKING OF AMERICANS ...................................................... 52 CHAPTER II: WHOSE HOME IS THIS ANYWAY? HENRY JAMES, PICTURESQUE PEASANTS AND A..AGRANT FOREIGNERS . 173 CHAPTER ill: THOSE EXTRAORDINARILY ITALlAN TWINS: RACE, NATIVISM AND THE TWINNING OF ITALIANS ..................... 299 EPll..OGUE: NOTES OF AN (UN)NATIVE SON .................................. 409 ll..LUSTRATIONS . • . .. 424 BIBUOGRAPHY . ... 430 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The writer wishes to express his appreciation to Professor RichardS. Lowry, under whose supervision this dissertation was written, for his guidance, advice, and criticism. The author is also indebted to Professors Kenneth M. Price, Robert J. Scholnick, and Benjamin Slate for the careful reading and criticism of the manuscript. Finally, the writer wishes to thank his wife, Kathleen S. Casco, for her support and patience during the project. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This dissenation explores how American representations of Italians and Italian Americans engaged, reflected and helped shape the United States' developing concepts of immigration, ethnicity, race, and national identity from 1880 to 1910, when masses of Italian and other "new immigrants" rigorously tested the country's attitudes and powers of assimilation. In a larger sense, the research examines how the process of constructing the modem Italian/Italian American was part of the process of America constructing for itself a modem national identity for a new century. The dissenation looks at a variety of "texts," including journalism, travel literature, autobiography, fiction, and photographs and illustrations of the period, but concentrates on a handful of American writers and their works. Chapter l compares the reponage and photography of the immigrant journalist Jacob A. Riis with the reporting of the "new" immigrant journalist Edward A. Steiner. Chapter 2 examines Henry James's The American Scene in the context of his other writings on Italy and Italians, including travel essays, short stories, and The Golden Bowl. Chapter 3 focuses on Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad and Pudd'nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins. Also part of the discussion are two works by William Dean HoweUs, Venetian Life and A Hazard of New Fortunes. The research showed that these writers altematel y supported and subverted America's often conflicting and confused attitudes and ideas about Italy and Italians, a tangle of discourses related to the romance of artistic, heroic, picturesque Italy and the reality of the Italian "Other" arriving in the form of masses of immigrants on American shores. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EYING ITALIANS: RACE, ROMANCE, AND REALITY rN AMERICAN PERCEPTION. 1880-1910 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 Introduction Those Magnificently Miserable Italians And Their Wretched. Princely Italy ''There is glut in the market. People have their house full of Italian views, and their libraries full of Italian travels, and the boarding school misses are twaddling nelle parole Tuscane" -American Whig Review, 1847 ··ves. yes. hang the dagoes!" -New Orleans lynch mob, 1891 ''The killing of the eleven prisoners had in it no race feeling whatever. There has been no hostility to the Italians in America, as such .... The men were not killed in the New Orleans prison because they were Italians, but because they were believed to be members of a secret-assassination society responsible for a brutal murder." --U.S. Representative Henry Cabot Lodge, 1891 ''They are beaten men from beaten races; representing the worst failures in the struggle for existence." -- Francis A. Walker, president of MIT and former superintendent of U.S. Census, 1896 A gloomy mist bung over New Orleans on the night of October 15, 1890, as David C. Hennessy, the popular police superintendent, left the precinct station after an evening meeting with the Police Board at City Hall. Before calling it a night, Hennessy stopped in at Dominic Virget's saloon with his close friend CapL William J. O'Connor, and indulged in a late-night snack of half a dozen oysters and a teetotaling glass of milk. Leaving the saloon around midnight, Hennessy parted company with his friend at the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 corner of Rampart and Girod. O'Connor, a former city policeman now working for one of the Crescent City's private protective forces, had offered to accompany Hennessy further, but the chief declined. "There· s no need to come any further with me now, am;· Hennessy reponedly insisted. ''You go on your own way" (Gambino 2). Hennessy then headed home alone toward the river. He lived with his mother in a greatly deteriorated neighborhood of small cottages, rooming houses, and shanties now housing some blacks and Italian immigrants. Despite the physical and social decay, Hennessy's mother had sentimental