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New York City Street Theater: Gender, Performance, and the Urban from Plessy to Brown City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2015 New York City Street Theater: Gender, Performance, and the Urban from Plessy to Brown Erin Nicholson Gale Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/937 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] NEW YORK CITY STREET THEATER: GENDER, PERFORMANCE, AND THE URBAN FROM PLESSY TO BROWN By ERIN NICHOLSON GALE A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 ii © 2015 ERIN NICHOLSON GALE All rights reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted by the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Robert Reid-Pharr _____________________ ________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Mario DiGangi _____________________ ________________________ Date Executive Officer Robert Reid-Pharr Barbara Webb James de Jongh Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract NEW YORK CITY STREET THEATER: GENDER, PERFORMANCE, AND THE URBAN FROM PLESSY TO BROWN By Erin Nicholson Gale Adviser: Robert Reid-Pharr This dissertation investigates the ordinary, public performances of fictional female characters in novels set on the streets of Manhattan during the years of legal segregation in the United States. I examine a range of actions from bragging to racial passing, and I argue these ordinary performances are central to our ability to interpret race, gender, and class relations. I detect race, class, and gender-based impulses to segregate and exclude others that overlap with the motives guiding the national, legal edict to segregate people by race. These guiding inclinations, legible through the history of Manhattan’s grid, zoning laws, and the city officials’ treatment of the poor, for example, are also the tendencies directing fictional characters in the texts I explore. By considering fictional performances against the backdrop of actual history, I ask how and why both real and imagined people aim to squelch singularity or uniqueness in themselves or others. I argue that while some performances deaden the fictional actors, others suggest there are alternative modes of acting through which one might be empowered by abjection despite it. v Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank my dissertation supervisor, Robert Reid-Pharr, for his unwavering support of me and this project. Each chapter draft was met with one key piece of advice: “keep writing.” Thank you for understanding exactly the kind of encouragement I needed. I would also like to thank Barbara J. Webb and James de Jongh, my dedicated and gracious committee members, for their time and thoughtfulness. This project would not have been possible without the unfailing support of my husband, Andrew Gale, who gave up a job he loved to move to New York City with me. We have had very little money in the past six years, but we have laughed and loved so much. Our beautiful children, Riley and Sam, were born during my doctoral work, and they have fueled my drive to successfully finish what I started. Should they ever read this dissertation, they can imagine the kinds of issues that were bouncing around in my head as they bounced in my lap or colored on draft pages. I am so fortunate to have friends on the level of family. I am ever grateful to Megan Paslawski, Lauren Baggett, and Katherine Broad for their friendship, support, laughter, mentorship, and babysitting. It is not always easy to live in New York City, but it is always easy to love you all. I would also like to thank my parents, David and Becky Nicholson, and my sister, Amy Williams, for their enthusiastic support of my academic career throughout my life. vi Table of Contents Introduction: Off the Rails: Confronting the Other in the 1890s…………..…..…….1 Chapter 1: A Compulsion to Perform: Repetition, Gendered Theatrics, and Surveillance in Crane’s Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893)…………..…………………...60 Chapter 2: Performing Invulnerability and (Street) Theater in John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer (1925) …………………………………….……...…………….….124 Chapter 3: Psychology of the Surface: Fantasy and Feminine Performance in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) ……………………………………………….……………..196 Chapter 4: Aftermath: Female Bodies and Ruinous Harlem in Ann Petry’s The Street (1946)………………………………………..…………………….………...252 Conclusion: Acting Up in the 1950s……………………………………..……….…317 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...343 1 Introduction Off the Rails: Confronting the Other in 1890s Manhattan In Manhattan’s Astor Opera House on May 7, 1849, William Charles Macready was booed off the stage amidst the hurling of food and furniture. The mostly Irish, lower-class Bowery masses in the audience viewed Macready, a British actor, as both a snob and insufficiently masculine. He was engaged in a well-publicized feud with a beloved American star of melodrama, Edwin Forrest, who was “muscular” and “histrionic,” as opposed to Macready, who was “subdued,” “scholarly,” and “genteel” (Burrows and Wallace 761). Forrest’s stereotypically masculine style was reinforced by the melodramatic roles he played; Bowery audiences were delighted when he repeatedly came to the aid of innocent and incapable women. Meanwhile, Macready chastised Forrest, declaring he lacked “taste.” Adding to the Irish Bowery inhabitants’ disapproval of Macready was the “rage over the famine [in Ireland] and Britain’s suppression of Young Ireland’s rebellion” (762). Further, Irish-born New Yorkers were experiencing heightened discrimination in New York City as a new wave of poor, starving immigrants arrived in the 1840s and 1850s. While theater riots were common in this era, the intense displeasure with which Macready’s performance was greeted is remarkable because this particular riot engaged gender, class, and politics; filtered into the streets over a span of five days; and ended in the deaths of twenty-two people.1 The Astor Opera House was uniquely situated at the point where the Bowery met Broadway and the rich met the poor. Broadway hosted elite shopping pageantry, and the Bowery 1 It is worth noting that, in the portion of this introduction exploring 19th century New York City, I rely heavily on Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace’s Gotham. The result of over twenty years of deep engagement with primary source material, this historical study is far superior or any other existing history of New York City. My preference for it over other histories is intentional. 2 housed poor tenement dwellers. The founders of the theater aimed to attract elites, as evidenced by their strict dress code. The location of the theater and the rivalry between a British and an American actor beloved by the poor inspired Captain Isaiah Rynders, a Tammany Hall man, to give out free tickets in Bowery haunts hoping to stir up a crowd of men who would heckle Macready. After the crowd did just that on May 7, Macready resolved to return to Britain. Forty- seven appalled elite citizens then begged him to stay and perform again, promising support. They experienced the initial riot as an unacceptable encroachment of the poor onto elite territory. Macready accepted the published invitation to perform again, and various troops were called in to ensure order. Rynders in turn rallied Boweryites with posters asking, “‘SHALL AMERICANS OR ENGLISH RULE IN THIS CITY?’” (763). The crowd outside the theater at the next performance reached ten thousand people, and the crowd members began hoisting stones, breaking windows, and rushing the doors. The police chief’s warning that force would be used was met with calls such as, “‘Burn the damned den of the aristocracy!’” and “‘Fire, fire you damned sons of bitches; you durs’n’t fire’” (763). The militia was called in, began firing, killed eighteen people (four more would die in the next few days), and injured over 150 people. An outraged group rallied again the next day but dispersed when the militia charged the crowd (764). The Astor Opera House riots in 1849 demonstrate the ways in which New York City theater walls, the performances that take place within them, and the distinctions between actor and audience are often porous. Furthermore, this incident recognizes the ways in which even staged performances in 19th century New York City are matters upon which real lives turn. The Astor Place riots were ignited by an actual theatrical performance of Macbeth but inspired a range of off-stage performances including performances of masculinity (such as one crowd 3 member’s declaration that the police should “Fire!” and his cry that they dare not/are not man enough to do so), loyalty, national pride, class pride, elite status, and authority that in turn led to performances of violence. Rynders’s distribution of tickets in the Bowery and the resulting heckling illustrate that it was taken for granted that the poor and the Irish dominated a particular area of town and that they could be relied upon to perform loyalty to an object of their affection, to their class, to stereotypically legible gender roles and the kinds of narratives that feature them, and to their country. The individual acts off-stage in the theater underline the ease with which real life sentiment and struggle are intertwined with the experience of viewing a performance. Real life is literally and figuratively projected onto the stage in this incident, and this example makes it clear that one person’s social antagonism or presumed snobbery can easily be interpreted as a marker of an entire nation’s oppression.
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