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Interracial Marriage and White Masculinity in American Fiction, 1830-1905 Lauren M Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations Arts & Sciences Summer 8-15-2015 The eH art of Whiteness: Interracial Marriage and White Masculinity in American Fiction, 1830-1905 Lauren M. W. Barbeau Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds Recommended Citation Barbeau, Lauren M. W., "The eH art of Whiteness: Interracial Marriage and White Masculinity in American Fiction, 1830-1905" (2015). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 634. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/634 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Sciences at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of English and American Literature Dissertation Examination Committee: Rafia Zafar, Chair Heidi Ardizzone William Maxwell Vivian Pollak Abram Van Engen The Heart of Whiteness: Interracial Marriage and White Masculinity in American Fiction, 1830-1905 by Lauren M. W. Barbeau A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2015 St. Louis, Missouri © 2015, Lauren M. W. Barbeau Table of Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii Introduction: The Un-Making of a White Man: The Marriage Contract and Intermarriage ...........1 Chapter 1: “We are All Intermingled, without Regard to Colour”: Amalgamation Debates, White Privilege, and the Rise of Interracial Marriage Plots in the 1830s and ’40s .......1 Chapter 2: “Manhood Rights” and Marriage Rites: Whiteness as Property in Clotel and The Garies and Their Friends.............................................................................................12 Chapter 3: “The Perfection of the Individual is the Sure Way to Regenerate the Mass”: Reconstructing White Masculinity in A Romance of the Republic ..............................51 Chapter 4: Caught in a Bad Romance: Interracial Marriage and the White Male Identity Crisis in The Chamber over the Gate and The Clansman ...........................................91 Coda: “An Insurmountable Barrier between Us”: The Decline of Interracial Marriage Plots and the Rise of Passing ..............................................................................................170 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................176 Appendix ....................................................................................................................................188 ii Acknowledgements The road to the dissertation has been a long one, stretching back as far as high school. For this reason, I begin by thanking David Gehler, my AP American Literature teacher, for inspiring my interest in American literature and introducing me to literary theory. I am grateful to my undergraduate advisor, David Leverenz, for the many hours he spent advising my thesis, offering sage advice to prepare me for graduate school, and talking literature with me. In those hours of casual conversation, David became my first colleague in the field. As a graduate student, I have been even more fortunate to work with the brilliant yet kind Rafia Zafar, my dissertation chair. Throughout this process, she has provided the motivation, reassurance, and intellectual challenges I have needed to develop a better project, never failing to believe in my ability to finish the dissertation even when I doubted myself. Her example has taught me be a more thoughtful scholar and a more dedicated mentor. I give thanks to my other committee members for their influence on my scholarship and teaching. Vivian Pollak’s intellectual curiosity continually impresses me, and after the rewarding experience of teaching with her, I strive to ask the kinds of thought-provoking questions that she modeled in the classroom. A critic whose work I have admired, Heidi Ardizzone has also demonstrated great generosity in her willingness join my committee and meet with me to talk through ideas and sources, despite being across town at St. Louis University. Bill Maxwell gave detailed feedback on the prospectus that guided this project and early directed me toward sources that became invaluable to the development of my ideas. I am thankful to Abram Van Engen for joining the committee at the eleventh hour, despite having to take time out of his leave to do so. iii Though not a member of the dissertation committee, I also want to thank Iver Bernstein for serving on my major field committee, reading drafts of chapters, and offering challenges that improved the quality of my work. The American Antiquarian Society provided me with generous funding for research at their archive, and I am indebted to them for access to many of the primary sources used in chapter one. In the English department, I wish to thank Kathy Schneider and Sarah Hennessey for answering my myriad emails about the process quickly and cheerfully. Throughout this process, I have benefitted from the advantages offered to me by the American Culture Studies program, which provided me with an unparalleled office space for the past year and a half. Jennifer Gallinat, Dave Walsh, and Courtney Gray consistently offered me their support and encouragement. Chapter one improved as a result of AMCS’s interdisciplinary dissertation workshop. My officemates, Noah Cohan and Nick Miller, kept me writing through the most difficult moments of the dissertation. I’m thankful to Noah for his terrible taste in music, which helped me stay focused throughout the day, and for his juvenile humor, which provided me with plenty of much-needed laugh breaks. Nick has been my grad school guide, a source of advice, a dedicated draft reader, and a commiserating friend for the past six years. Rebecca Hodges provided feedback that helped me rewrite chapter two and was willing to share writing strategies throughout the process. Drawn together by the dissertation experience, Renata Redford and I developed an unexpected friendship after having met only casually in undergrad seven years ago. Renata always answered the phone when I needed to vent and helped me talk through the ideas that became central to chapter three. My friends and family have played a key role in helping me persevere when it seemed impossible. Regular lunches with Lauren Todd kept me grounded. Michelle Peterson, who iv knows my penchant for forgetting to eat when I’m working, brought me meals and made sure that I continued eating while my husband was out of town. I am grateful to Angela Cardoz for lending her editing skills to the project. My brother, Jared Wannenwetsch, never failed to believe that my ever-expanding knowledge of the nineteenth-century would be useful, reassuring me that I could always audition for Drunk History. There are three people without whom this dissertation could not have happened. Mom and Dad sacrificed throughout my life to ensure that I would have the education I needed to be here in the first place. They have encouraged me throughout this process. Above all others, I want to thank my husband, Michael Barbeau for accompanying me on this difficult but rewarding journey. Without his willingness to take on more than his fair share of household duties and his readiness to comfort me after discouraging writing sessions, I might never have found the strength to finish the dissertation. This dissertation is dedicated to Mom, Dad, and Michael. Lauren M. W. Barbeau Gray, Tennessee July 2015 v vi vii Introduction The Un-Making of a White Man: The Marriage Contract and Intermarriage Whiteness studies resounds with statements that claim that whiteness maintains supremacy through its invisibility as a category and its marginalization of nonwhites. George Lipsitz defines whiteness as the “unmarked category against which difference is constructed,” and Cheryl Harris similarly notes that “whiteness has been characterized not by an inherent unifying characteristic, but by the exclusion of others deemed to be ‘not white’” (Harris 36, Lipsitz 1). Michael Moon and Cathy Davidson elaborate, explaining, “Groups designated as Other are always susceptible to discrimination and exclusion from full citizenship within the nation or deprived of their constitutional rights” (4). Defining who these “Other” groups are, Frances Smith Foster writes, “Women and people of color became the Other, the means by which white men could know what they were by asserting what they were not” (11). These definitions of whiteness share an emphasis on absence and negation; rather than a set of positive attributes, whiteness defines itself by its opposite. Foster concludes that the exclusion of the “Other” enabled the “founding fathers [to bring] forth upon this continent a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all white men are created approximately equal” (11). While such definitions help make whiteness (and masculinity) a visible category of identity rather than the invisible standard against which other identities are measured, they nonetheless suggest
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