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Thesis-1997D-B474f.Pdf (5.182Mb) THE FACADE AND THE REALITY: WORLD'S FAIRS CELEBRATE PROGRESS AND UNITY WHILE AMERICAN NOVELISTS REVEAL SOCIAL DISPARITY AND INDIVIDUAL ISOLATION By GWEN YOUNG BENSON Bachelor of Arts Northwestern Oklahoma State University Alva, Oklahoma 1982 Master of Education Northwestern Oklahoma State University Alva, Oklahoma 1983 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of The requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR Of PHILOSOPHY May, 1997 C O P Y R I G H T By Gwen Young Benson May, 1997 THE FACADE AND THE REALITY: WORLD'S FAIRS CELEBRATE PROGRESS AND UNITY WHILE AMERICAN NOVELISTS REVEAL SOCIAL DISPARITY AND INDIVIDUAL ISOLATION Dissertation Approved: Dean of the Graduate College 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my committee chairman, Dr. Jeffrey Walker for his patience, his support, his thoughtful recommendations and challenges, and his encouragement throughout the development of this project. I would like, also, to extend my appreciation to the other committee members, Dr. Linda Leavell, Dr. Edward Walkiewicz, and Dr. L.G. Moses for their inspiration and valuable suggestions. I wish to thank my family for their unfailing support. My children have earned my special gratitude for their understanding and patience. For my husband, I must express special appreciation for his supportive love, his insight, and bis words and acts of kindness through the times when this project demanded all my time, thoughts, and energy. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues, the students, and the administration at Northwestern Oklahoma State University for their encouragement. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page Introduction . 1 I. The 1876 Centennial Exposition: Diversity and Industry ... 16 II. Americans in Europe: Houses and Power in The Portrait of a Lady .......... 62 III. Houses and Social Disparity: The Unfulfilled American Dream in The Rise of Silas Lapham .. 104 IV. The 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition: The White City and America's Facade of Unity . 156 V. Houses and Society in The House of Mirth: Lily Bart's Rootless Isolation. 198 VI. McTeague: Beneath the Urban Dream . 233 VII. The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition: Elegy for a Dream . 272 Works Cited . .305 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. The Double Corliss Engine at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. 52 2. President Grant and Dom Pedro of Brazil on opening day preparing to start the Corliss Engine. 52 3. Philadelphia Centennial Exposition 1876 . 53 4. Women's Pavilion at the Centennial Exposition 54 5. Memorial Hall at the Centennial Exposition. 54 6. The Crystal Palace at the 1851 World's Fair in London. ....... 55 7. The Eiffel Tower .. 55 8. The Great East River Suspension Bridge . 55 9. Edmonds' Taking the Census . 56 10. Peace and Plenty ..... 56 11. Gift for the Grangers 57 12. The Centennial: State Exhibits in Agricultural Hall 57 13. Hovenden's The Old Version 58 14. Eytinge's The Hearthstone of the Poor . 58 15. The Court of Honor looking west 192 16. Court of Honor facing south 192 17. Court of Honor looking east 192 18. Sullivan's Golden Door 193 19. Ferris Wheel above the Midway Plaisance. 193 20. Mary McMonnies' Primitive Woman 194 V 21. Mary Cassat Modern Woman ............. 194 22. Women's Dormitory ................. 195 23. Woman's Building ................. 195 24. Children's Building 195 25. Court design at the Panama-Pacific Exposition 299 26. Court of the Universe. 299 27. Night view of the Tower of Jewels 300 28. Tower of Jewels . 300 29. Joy Zone · . 301 30. Official poster of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. 301 vi 1 Introduction Individuals and nations struggle to establish their identity within society or within international corrununities. Most often this identity and its accompanying sense of security rely on the ability to create an outward appearance that shows financial success. This struggle to secure and maintain identity often consists of controlling entrance of new members, manipulating the lives of current members, and excluding those with different backgrounds or ethnic heritages. Nations blazon their wealth, art, industry, and territorial possessions to prove their ability to control future growth and establish national supremacy. Individuals use outward evidence of wealth to flaunt their membership in the upper levels of society. The most corrunon expression of a person's ability to control life and place in society is the family home. A house indicates success, stability, family unity, and a moral base. However, nations and individuals focus on their facades to hide personal insecurities and social disunity. During the nineteenth century, America competed in world's fairs, and people built ornate homes, developed complex social designs, and tried to ignore the undercurrents of change. Because the issue of change and its effect on identity belongs to nations and individuals, a dual approach can help to show how national 2 change and individual lives mingle. Homes represent individual and social attitudes, and related national events reveal social and national interests. Houses in literature, then, reveal one aspect of the changing society in nineteenth-century America. Houses in life and literature have long been an important component of American identity. Throughout American literature, authors have used houses and house imagery to carry or reinforce major themes in their works. They have intertwined houses with the psychological mazes of the human mind and with questions of human morality. Poe's William Wilson and Roderick Usher are inseparable from the buildings that represent their tortured and often dual personalities. Melville's Bartleby retreats into the blankness of his walls and his homelessness as he gradually resigns from society, both personal and professional. Hawthorne's Dr. Heidegger resides within a shadowed room that mirrors the science versus humanity conflict of past and present. Hester Prynne's isolated home embodies her separation and the strength she develops because of her enforced moral isolation. Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond reinforces his philosophy about mankind's relationship with nature. Interior scenes such as the Quaker kitchen in Uncle Tom's Cabin reveal the aura of serenity, safety, and peace epitomized by hearth and home. 3 Before the Civil War, Americans sought personal fulfillment in the exploration of the human mind and its limits. The imaginative union of man and nature was a step toward personal growth and philosophical understanding of the individual's place in society. In part, Americans believed they could achieve this oneness because they had conquered and settled the wilderness of the new world. The resulting rural society of the farmer and his family epitomized happiness. Literature during the first half of the nineteenth century often represented the family hearth as the source of peace, inner strength, and the source of moral values. Symbolically, the houses in the works of Thoreau, Whittier, and Stowe provided havens against confusion and even evil forces. Houses symbolized personal soul~searching in the works of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. In literature, houses provided security or offered convenient symbols of a person's need to explore the inner universe to find a place in the external world. A person often discovered, through house and room imagery, the why's and wherefore's of personal existence and felt secure in understanding and relying on the unchanging moral values in a stable world strengthened by the traditions of hearth and home. As Americans explored the nation's territory and developed its cities, houses continued as symbols of stability, progress, and affluence. Historically, frontier 4 log cabins and personal monuments to success, such as Monticello and Mount Vernon, represented a desire to appropriate and improve one's place and space. Covered wagons crossed the prairies and mountains and served as temporary homes for Americans who sought their dreams as landowners and homeowners. The wagons held the furnishings that linked the past to the future. Determined to control their place, settlers built homes of native materials or burrowed underground in sod houses if no lumber were available. Building a home meant permanence and ownership of space, thus insuring personal identity and control over the often hostile environment. After the railroads linked the eastern and western coasts, Americans moved across the continent and settled the frontier in increasingly larger numbers. Settlements became towns, and towns grew into cities. 1 Importation of European building styles and furnishings completed the process of expressing success through the size and design of a house. With the growth of technology, American society grew more diverse and American authors recorded this evolution of a nation. As American literature moved from Romanticism to Realism and Naturalism, house imagery adjusted to present the social changes facing individuals who attempted to identify their roles in the new America. Authors used house imagery to show the gradual separation of the individual from an evolving society. Eventually, conflict arose from 5 society's desire to unify and to control its diverse elements and the individual's need for stability and the power to have choices or fulfill ambitions. Morality seemed less clear-cut, and people began to measure their worth in wealth, possessions, and social standing instead of personal growth traditionally fostered by family unity and tradition. However, examination of the changing image of houses in American life and literature requires a framework for focus. Popularity of nineteenth-century world fairs suggests that they showcased society as America saw itself. Therefore, fairs and expositions serve as microcosms of contemporary life and concerns. 2 The role of fairs and expositions as mirrors of social, artistic, commercial, and industrial change has roots in early, open town markets, jousting tournaments, or trading posts in isolated, barely chartered territories. However, the more formally structured national exhibits of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began in London in 1851.
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