palaver e

/p ‘læv r/e n. A talk, a discussion, a dialogue; (spec. in early use) a conference between African tribes-people and traders or travellers. v. To praise over-highly, flatter; to ca- jole.

To persuade (a person) to do some- thing; to talk (a person) out of or into something; to win (a person) over with palaver.

To hold a colloquy or conference; to parley or converse with. Masthead | Table of Contents | Spring 2013 Spring 2013

Founding Editors Note from the Editor 1 Zorya Vechernyaya 50 Sarah E. Bode Sarah E. Bode Zorya Utrennyaya 51 Ashley Hudson Zorya Unnamed 52 My Dear Reader 2 Remnants of a Mythology 53 Dr. Patricia Turrisi Heather Jo Divoky Executive Editor Staff Readers Dr. Patricia Turrisi Amanda Coffman Why I (Don’t) Write 5 Grasping Agency through the Role of the Vallie Lynn Watson Mother in The Awakening and The Scarlet Lauren Evans Letter 54 Contributing Editors Joel Finsel Setting Our Schools on Fire 11 Jamie L. Joyner Michelle Bliss Kitty Fiorentino Joel Randolph Finsel Ashley Hudson Emma Goodman Poetess Felicia Hemans: Challenging Courtney Johnson Greg Hankinson An Unlikely Alliance: Examining Narrative Socially Constructed Promotion of Dr. Alex Porco Katja Huru in Reality Television 16 Female Fragility in Dr. Michelle Scatton-Tessier Jamie Joyner Lauren B. Evans “The Homes of England” 60 Amy Schlag Diane Morgan Sadie E. Campbell Dr. Patricia Turrisi Renee Sloan A Peek Into the Pericardium: An Interview Rachel Smyer with Dylan Linehan 20 The Semiotics of “Wormhole Adventure Eco Chief Copy Editor Caitlin Ward Sarah E. Bode Tours” 68 Jamie Joyner Dr. Patricia Turrisi The Darkness of Midnight: Examining John Layout Editor Berendt’s Narrative as a Work of Southern An American History of Wilderness Copy Editors Sarah E. Bode Gothic Literature 26 Perception 76 Lauren Evans Renee L. Sloan Caleb Stewart Renee Sloan No Soliciting: Violence Against Sexual Fred Chappell’s Backsass: Commentary on Deviants in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Space, Place, and a Culture in Transition 82 Mr. Hyde 32 Torchwood 88 JoAnna C. Wright Brian Caskey Cover Art: “Wild Oats” by Zachariah Weaver.

Inside Sectional Art: “Enter Here To Palaver” by Dr. Patricia Turrisi. Motherly Love: Wes Craven’s Reassertion The Tree 89 of gender in the Scream trilogy 39 Death Transcends the Artist 90 Thanks: UNC Wilmington’s Graduate Liberal Studies for letting us call your program home. Dr. Pa- Casey Jordan Mills Gregory Hankinson tricia Turrisi for being the mother (not of the Craven-persuasion) Palaver needed. Our Staff Readers— thank you for expending your precious time and offering your expertise! Jamie Joyner and our other Like a Fish Out of Water 42 A Cup of Coffee 92 diligent Copy Editors for keeping their pluck during the period of “Picky Perfection.” Ashley Hud- Lori Joy Peterson Toni Whiteman son—this could never have been completed without your guidance and humanity. Robert Hoon for all your patience when we pestered you about legalities. And UNC Wilmington for creating a campus Food, Flowers, and Femininity: Masculine that encourages its students to explore and experiment, engage others, and for fostering our love for Dominance in “The Twelve Brothers” 43 academic enlightenment. Jessica Jacob A publication of UNC Wilmington’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program. Copyright © 2013 Palaver Note From the Editor | My Dear Reader | Sarah E. Bode Dr. Patricia Turrisi

ulie Thompson Klein, who I’ve come to think of the Mother of Interdisciplinary, said that wish I could tell you that I had reached this moment deservedly after long arduous toil in bridging the gaps between disciplines should lead to a certain “unity of knowledge.” Pa- the editing room. However, though I may have conceived of something that would resem- Jlaver manifests such a unification of contributors with vast backgrounds, experiences, and Ible the first issue of Palaver, it’s Ashley Hudson, Sarah Bode, and the many students and ideologies. Without this amalgamation of knowledge, Palaver would not have morphed from faculty whose collaboration on reviewing, editing and producing the inaugural issue who are an idea to a reality. truly responsible. I’d like to thank them and say in addition that they are the team you want Palaver has been gestating for nine months, two semesters, nearly 36 weeks—sometimes to have! I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when they came along. looming in my dreams, but usually it is a beacon on the horizon of my masters. I hold Palaver I’d like to tell you something about why the inaugural issue is so special. As a bona fide close to my heart because at its foundation it is devoted to exposing and fostering interdiscipli- lifetime member of the Professor Nerd Squad, one of whose primary ambitions include pro- narity through encouragement and the pursuit of always bettering yourself and your skills. I moting student excellence in written expression (because we’re made that way as much as know that as a student, having a driving force or opportunity outside of a course requirement that written expression makes the professional world go ‘round), I wanted to showcase the (like having the chance to submit to a journal or to present at a conference) helps my own kind of reflective creative interdisciplinary work that is valued in the UNCW Graduate Liber- writing. By carving out a home for Palaver at UNCW, I hope to see students’ writing here on al Studies Program. Sharing this wealth of talent with audiences beyond our classrooms is as our campus and campuses all-round the nation blossom. gratifying a task as any PN Squad member could desire. This issue proved to happen in conjunction with a whole lot of hard work and a smidgen The second reason this issue is special that I’m excited to tell you about is the transforma- of serendipity. As being our first issue, we didn’t want to limit ourselves to just one theme, tion that occurs when a writer becomes an author. When students are called upon to put their and when we were choosing submissions to accept, we did so without the restrictions a theme work out there for the public, something magical happens—their ideas take on urgency and might impose. But upon a closer, holistic look, a meandering myriad of themes emerged. their words take on the power to persuade. The magic cuts right through the hemming, haw- Issue 1 embarks with an engaging personal essay from Vallie Lynn Watson titled “Why I ing and safely noncommittal word detritus that has a tendency to appear in student writing (Don’t) Write.” Then the notion of reality is challenged with a proposal of setting traditional that never sees a reader beyond an instructor. To the authors and artists whose work appears perceptions of our nation’s classrooms on fire, perhaps sparking our posterity to get up off in this issue—submitting your work to a gauntlet of reviewers and editors requires courage as the couch (and stop watching that humdrum reality TV). Lauren B. Evans then jumps onto well as ability. Bravo! the soapbox and advocates that reality television isn’t so humdrum and could be perhaps The final reason this issue is special is that it is a profoundly original venue: an academic an interesting addition to curriculum regarding cultural studies. Singer/songwriter Dylan journal whose objective is to present treatments of issues and topics that integrate two or more Linehan brings out an ethereal sensibility in her interview about her debut album Pericardium. methods of scholarship usually reserved for single discipline research or artistic production. We then fall into a murderous rant, exposing gender definitions and constructions—including Palaver’s interdisciplinary scholarship does not take the form of serially identified disciplinary topics of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and approaches, one analysis following the other. Rather, the topics considered here are ones that the cult-classic Scream-trilogy. Authors explore gender and gender definitions with literary cry out to be studied anew, or more to the point, they that cannot be grasped adequately in any criticisms of The Awakening, The Scarlet Letter, and Grimms’ “The Twelve Brothers.” Heather other way but through comparative lenses and lights. I feel rather daring in saying that Pala- Divoky, the sumptuously colorful artist, reflects on her ancestry with stain-glass illustrations ver is a means of thinking globally. But in fact, issues that affect people deeply are not usually of the Slavic Zoryas. The theme of place is launched by a look into the poetess Felicia Hemans simple enough to “belong” to this or that single area of academic study. “Thinking globally” and how England’s gender biases influenced her poetry. A wonky wormhole cartoon by Dr. has this meaning on top of its popular connotation of looking at how different nations inter- Patricia Turrisi then sucks us even further into place. Place is carried through with an explo- pret human events—global thinking takes on relationships, between phenomena of all kinds ration of the history and current trends regarding American wilderness, “Torchwood”—an and methods of scrutinizing phenomena of all kinds, whatever the phenomena themselves original eco-poem by Brian Caskey, and a chilling representation of the Tree of Life by artist demand in order to be known better. Greg Hankinson. We wrap this issue with a piece that I know many of our readers will hold The danger of the interdisciplinary approaches we’ve invited here is that once you crack close—coffee. Author and photographer Toni Whiteman discusses coffee, its history, its social open the door to exploring the relationships between things and ways of knowing them, it’s constructs, and our fancy with the object of coffee and the coffee cup itself in her essay and very difficult to keep it shut. But why would you want to? accompanying black and white photographs of the society we have built around the object of Yr. constant friend, coffee. Patricia Turrisi I hope you enjoy every twist and turn and idea and discovery in our first issue of Palaver, and I hope it inspires a palaver between you and the pieces found here.—S.E.B. Director, Master of Arts and Sciences in Liberal Studies Program University of North Carolina Wilmington

I’d considered that the reason I wasn’t the city. Fifteen years before we’d had a com- Why I (Don’t) Write | more inspired to write was a fear of fail- plicated friendship and I—who rarely gets Vallie Lynn Watson ure. Failure is a certainty in writing. A first, nervous—was terrified to see him. It was fourth, or tenth draft will always be a failure storming the night I got in, so he brought of sorts, otherwise there would be no need to a couple of bottles of wine to my room and revise. Still, I’m not sure how much I really soon everything was fine. We picked right care when I do fail at something. In trying up. After he left, I drank more wine, and I 2008 assistant, I was responsible for twenty-five to recollect things I’ve failed at so that I can moved back and forth between the two win- students a semester, and now as full-time in- measure how much it bothered me, I come dows with my black and white Mead Com- recently read an article about how a cer- structor, over a hundred. If I don’t do the job, up blank. Either I haven’t failed at much, or if position notebook and took notes; which I tain parenting skill in the 1970s and 1980s I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid, I don’t eat so, it mattered little. Sometimes I joke about later developed into a short story that I’m so Ihas backfired: the way to assure one’s and so on. I also enjoy it. It’s not difficult. The having failed at marriage, but really, I believe glad I wrote—just to have those memories child had healthy self-esteem, many felt, was hours are a lazy person’s dream. I’m a good my ex-husband is the one who failed. So this committed to paper. to emphasize to the child that he is brilliant, teacher and getting better. I like the students, article I read, explaining that having to work There’s something about writing by a genius, can do or be anything he wants to— they like me, and it makes me feel like I’ve hard can feel like a failure of sorts, compli- hand (which I hadn’t done in awhile) that President of the United States, an astronaut. accomplished something concrete and posi- cates the matter. I think there’s something to I’ve discovered, or re-discovered feels good. Doctor, lawyer. I was surprised that was tive that day. I could be almost satisfied to do it. Perhaps it’s the notion that I won’t be able In a way it feels less like work, because in my a trend; I assumed it was how all children nothing but teach college for the remainder to produce art on the first, second, tenth, or warped-from-too-much-school mind, work were—and should be—raised. But the result of my career. twentieth try. But if I don’t mind failing, why is done at a computer. In another way, it feels of this phenomenon, the article explained, My literature classes were different than do I mind the work? I don’t know if I’m a productive (which would seem to mean that was that these children, intelligent as they my writing classes: more rigorous, more good writer. But I think I could be with time. it is work) because it’s there, in hard copy in may be, began to feel that if they had to put challenging, and less fun. Literature teachers I’ve been this way—lazy?—since I was a my handwriting. It can’t be erased by high- forth effort, if they had to work for some- have exacting demands and are tough grad- teenager. I remember once carrying laundry lighting it with a cursor and hitting the delete thing, it felt like they were failing. Because if ers, so the literature classes came second be- up the stairs, and I dropped a sock. I was so button. they were such geniuses, nothing should be hind teaching. resentful that I had to exert any extra effort, A month or so after New York, I went too challenging. I adore writing classes. I get a natural high any work, to pick up that sock. Maybe this is to New Orleans, about an hour from where I This resonated with me, because I seem from being in workshops, the sitting around, normal teenage attitude, but I’m not sure I’ve live. It was the weekend of what would have to have an aversion to work. I call myself dissecting each other’s works, suggesting entirely grown out of it. been my tenth wedding anniversary, so I “lazy,” a term my social worker best friend new ideas, helping each other to create art. A It’s true that my parents raised me re- decided to treat myself and get out of town. disapproves of. She catalogs the many op- bonus is that it, like teaching, provides that peating how intelligent I was. Teachers and The view from the twentieth floor spanned portunities I’ve been given and concludes end-of-the-day feeling of concrete accom- standardized tests indicated the same, which the entire French Quarter, with spots of the they must be based on effort, and I easily plishment. I would stay in school forever and forever frustrated my mother, because from winding river visible through closer, taller rebut each one—ex- just take workshops if junior high until my junior year of college, hotels. I stayed in the room much of the time, plaining that luck and Because if they were such I could. The trouble my grades were poor. I was having too much ordered lots of room service, and liberated timing have mostly geniuses, nothing should be is I’ve never gotten fun with my friends to study, and I didn’t the mini-bar, and I took notes in my Mead paved my way. She much writing done. buy into this propaganda about my poten- Composition book on a short-short story that points out that I’m too challenging. Once I get a story go- tial. To this day, close to earning my doctor- I thought might make a nice companion for about to finish a Ph.D. ing, I usually enjoy the ate, I think I’m okay-smart, but perhaps be- the one I wrote in New York. program and says that wouldn’t be possible process. I always enjoy the end result, the cause I keep surrounding myself with highly But after I got back, I didn’t continue to if I were “lazy.” I explain to her that the rea- sheer completion of a story, and I’ve enjoyed educated people in academic settings, I’m work on it. I didn’t write again until my next son I’m in this program—or the reason I’m even more when I get a story published. But constantly reminded of how smart I’m not. workshop deadline. I linked those shorts with supposed to be in this program—is to be a often the only thing that pushes me to start a A couple of years ago the writing process some I’d written the semester before, trying writer, but until recently, I barely wrote at all. story is the twice-a-semester deadlines, and sped up perhaps 10 percent. The increase to weave a narrative about a woman who The consensus among my graduate then I usually start something a few days be- was inspired by hotel rooms. I went to New avoids relationship troubles by hotel-jump- school peers is that our writing should come fore it’s due. I’m terrified I’ll never be able York for a week-long conference and had a ing. Procrastination had won again—my ef- first, our teaching should come second, and to write after I graduate. That without dead- corner hotel room with two completely dif- forts were sloppy—but I was starting to feel our literature classes last. The reality, or at lines, I’ll never summon the “willpower.” ferent views: one of Times Square and one more curious. least my reality, is this: teaching is what I Dr. Phil and my social-worker best friend of Central Park. An old high school/college get paid to do. For three years, as a teaching agree that there is no such thing as “willpower.” friend who I hadn’t seen in a decade lived in

Watson | 5 6 | Watson remember the day, as an undergraduate, impressing anyone. met some people on- can do “this” even though I wasn’t sure what often, but I was surrounded by people who that I decided to become a double major line in a hobby discussion-list and several “this” was or could be. were better-read than I. Many had published Iin English and Psychology. I was proud of us started talking privately off-list. Over As I was finishing my masters, I applied in magazines, a couple had published books. to tell people. Perhaps impressive sounding those four years, we exchanged upwards of to some community college teaching jobs and It took me about half a semester to realize academic feats interest me more than the 100,000 e-mails. I beat myself up then, as I do applied to a few Ph.D. creative writing pro- how bad my writing was compared to some actual learning. It’s true that one draw to a now, about not spending that time writing. It grams, not really expecting to get into any. of my classmates. Ph.D. program was that one day I could be didn’t occur to me until very recently I was, (My friends teased me, asking if a doctorate I attribute the many great things that have Dr. Watson. The first couple of years of my in fact, writing. I’ve archived the messages, in writing stories was even a degree, and I come my way in life to good luck and timing. undergraduate education were poor; I was and sometimes I go back to September of wondered the same, if going on with gradu- Not, as noted, effort. Mississippi Review need- more interested in frat boys and kamika- 2001, or May of 1999, or whenever. It’s just ate school wasn’t just a way of putting off real ed someone to work in their office my first ze shots than studying. Once I moved onto like reading a journal with others’ feedback life a little longer.) I applied to the University summer there. The work was typical office the upper division English classes (and onto thrown in. of Southern Mississippi (USM) only because work but a joy to do—busy work (which, in long-haired, guitar-playing boys), I became a I finally got fed up with my life and my I was technically still a Mississippi resident my mind, equates somehow to concrete ac- little more interested. marriage and thought an escape would be and didn’t have to pay the application fee. I complishment) in an area I was interested in. The first fiction writing workshop I took graduate school. I wasn’t accepted into the was accepted to USM and one other school My past life as a secretary paid off—as I was was mostly by accident. I had no idea what English department of that university, so and wanted to visit both before I made my asked to stay at the magazine as the primary a writing workshop was besides that it was I applied to places within five or so hours decision. I drove to USM first and met with graduate assistant. called English 445 or whatever, and I stum- and was accepted to a few. I chose one in the the director of the program, Frederick Bar- As mentioned, I knew very little about bled into the classroom of someone I didn’t Midwest. thelme. My department funding wasn’t final- literary magazines or publishing; I’d only realize was a well-known writer of literary While in the M.A. program, I enjoyed ized yet, and I didn’t sent one other thing fiction, Barry Hannah. I didn’t know what writing—or enjoyed the finished product know if I’d be teach- My friends teased me, asking out since my Big Mud- “literary fiction” meant. By the end of the anyway—a but only wrote when I had a ing, which I wanted to if a doctorate in writing stories dy review, and it was second week of class, I was sort of in love deadline and beat myself up for not writing do. He asked me what rejected. From day with this thing called a workshop. The teach- more. I never considered sending anything my career goals were, was even a degree, and I won- one, everything about er was pure charisma, and I’d never had a out for publication. I rarely read a literary and I said I wanted to dered the same, if going on working in the office class so exciting. magazine, figuring that it would be above someday have a posi- was a learning expe- We turned in four stories a semester my head. I had no interest in the publishing tion like his, to teach with graduate school wasn’t rience. As I’d thumb and had the choice of having them read and world; it sounded like a lot of office work creative writing. He just a way of putting off real life through and shelve workshopped by class or not. Barry Hannah and that’s what I’d just run away from. I was asked what I thought other literary mag- assigned grades (A, B, C) to our stories. We numb from divorce and the only day of the was the best way to a little longer. azines, I started to did not submit portfolios at the end of the se- week I looked forward to was Wednesday. get there. I said—an- recognize and read mester, and I guess I didn’t realize that his Workshop. There was an ice storm in early gling to be assigned classes to teach—get- emerging authors. My first week I got to send suggestions were in the context of revision. December of my first semester, and our last ting more teaching experience. Barthelme an e-mail to an author I’d once studied and I don’t know if the others just automatically workshop was cancelled. I was devastated. said my thinking was flawed, sat back, and that was exciting. When I started reading for kept working on their stories, but I thought In a workshop a year or so later, our looked pleased. He said that I needed to im- the Prize issue that first fall and realized the that was it, I was done. I didn’t think I was a professor assigned us to write a review of a merse myself in writing and publishing. That variety of work out there, I began to feel like good writer or had any future at it, but I was recent book of poetry. I’d just ordered a col- if I decided to enter the program, I would be it was a world I could navigate some small hooked on the atmosphere, the community. lection from Amazon, written by a (different) pushed, hard, to write publishable material, corner of. I started sending out the little I’d I took two undergrad workshops with him, guy I knew from high school who I hadn’t that it wouldn’t be easy. I wondered if he was written and got a few things published. This and when working at the same university talked to in years, and wrote my review on trying to scare me off. I went back to Motel should have inspired me to write more! all after I graduated, took two graduate work- that. When the next issue of Big Muddy, the 8, thought, “you’re on, buddy,” and decid- the time! but I didn’t. shops with him. school’s literary magazine, came out a few ed not to visit the second school. If this place Another lucky break: a couple years lat- During the four years after I graduated months later, I was shocked to find that she couldn’t get me writing, nowhere could. er, around the time I discovered my love of with my undergraduate degree, I worked had included my review. I read that issue But, intimidated most of my first year writing in hotels, I injured myself and had in various secretarial positions on campus. cover to cover, over and over, and ordered and busy balancing my literature courses shoulder surgery. Not only did I have a valid I was bored and miserable. It took me may- copies for everyone—my dad, my high and teaching two classes, I again only wrote excuse not to write, I had a valid excuse to be twenty minutes out of the eight-hour school English teacher, and of course, the old the bare minimum. The workshops still pro- stay in school an extra semester. But in the workday to do the work assigned to me. I friend. It was the first time I felt the itch of, duced the natural high, though were far more months I was unable to use my right arm, didn’t ask for extra work, I didn’t care about okay, maybe there’s something here; maybe I intense. Workshops were riotous, hilarious these little hotels stories tapped around my

Watson | 7 8 | Watson head and wanted to be put to paper. When completion that each short provided that in- my ability to write that sucker—not a Ph.D. 2013 I could write again, I got them written. But spired me to want to keep adding on. I hard- title. still, at the last minute for a workshop, al- ly noticed when I stopped writing shorts that I would not have been led to that state of ive years later, I have completed my ways. could stand alone and was writing pieces mind without just the combination of writ- doctoral program, finished—and pub- The little stories started out as traditional that only worked in context of the larger sto- ing teachers I’ve had over the years. I include Flished—my hotel room novel. I am ac- flash fiction; each one striving to stand alone. ry—not much different than writing a tradi- Mississippi Review itself among my teachers. tively publishing short stories and a little po- Flash fiction felt manageable to me, - some tional novel/novella. Like I was tricking the Without that exposure, I’m not sure I would etry and nonfiction, am working on a second thing to be written quickly and perhaps re- lazy part of my brain into thinking it wasn’t have found the confidence to be a writer. Masters, and have a University job teaching vised, but ultimately a as much work. That the director, who eventually became primarily creative writing. Last fall, I taught story that could come The idea of writing a hun- I also played mind my greatest mentor, said at our first meet- my first graduate fiction writing workshop, to completion and be games about where I ing was, after all, correct. My thinking was which back in 2005 is what I told Frederick more or less disposed dred or two hundred or three could write. My ob- flawed. The teaching develops over time, it Barthelme, who eventually become my men- of. Initially the dozen hundred pages, then having session with hotels was the writing that needed immediate at- tor and dear friend, was all I wanted to do or so stories I cobbled long predates my col- tention. And I didn’t write enough over the with my life. And it was thrilling, the best together featured a to revise and re-navigate the lection, but because of last four years, by far, but have poked at class I’ve ever taught, but I’ve found it still nameless woman and same story over and over the initial inspiration so many areas—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, wasn’t enough. I still feel lazy, still feel like a variety of name- and the repeating ho- newspaper publications, presentations—that I’m not writing enough. And thank good- less men, written in sounded not only daunt- tel rooms in the work, I am not dissatisfied. ness. That fear of not writing that’s plagued a somewhat evasive, ing but plain miserable. I believed I could only me for years is my best motivation, my inter- ghostly tone, and I be- write at hotels. Travel girl I went to elementary school with nal deadline. I hope I never lose the fear of gan to think about how I could connect them is of course hard to afford for a graduate stu- just found me on the internet and not writing. It keeps me moving. to form a longer work. dent, so I had another built in excuse to limit Ae-mailed. We updated each other on Before these hotel shorts, I’d only writ- my writing. the last few decades. When I told her I was in ten traditional short stories of ten to twenty Good timing strikes again: had I not in- school for creative writing and had published pages, and I was never satisfied with any of jured myself I wouldn’t have been around a couple of things she replied, “That’s per- them and only revised them and sent them to fill a last-minute, full-time instructor posi- fect. You always wanted to be a writer, grow- out halfheartedly. The flash fiction, howev- tion in the department and be able to put off ing up.” I was stunned that she remembered, er, interested me, possibly another indication graduation yet another semester. During the because I’d forgotten. I was also pleased; it of my inherent laziness. Piece by piece, they fourth year (of a three-year program) I drove made me feel like a real writer, however lit- See our Featured Artists page on our website certainly required less work than a more tra- to USM’s Gulf Coast campus several times tle I wrote. And it didn’t please me because for more information about Vallie Lynn Wat- ditional short story. a week and taught four classes a semester, I liked the title “writer;” I was pleased that I son or to purchase her debut novel A River So Once I’d aimlessly written about thirty a fantastic experience. I knew for sure now was defined by an interest in work that I do, Long. Or visit her website: www.vallielynnwat- pages of the shorts I started to think about that teaching full-time is something I can do in fact, enjoy. son.com writing on to novella or novel length. Most and want to do. fiction writers dream of publishing a novel I also know for sure that writing is one day, and I was no different. But never something I can do and want to do. As my had seriously thought I would do so. The first semester of full-time teaching turned idea of writing a hundred or two hundred into Christmas, I started studying for my or three hundred pages, then having to re- long-avoided Ph.D. comprehensive exams. vise and re-navigate the same story over and Rather, I tried, but I kept going back to my over sounded not only daunting but plain series of hotel stories. Now that something miserable. Compiling and linking a group of more important was threatening my writ- flash fiction to form a larger work seemed far ing time, I couldn’t get enough of it. Even more controllable. Through the shorts I cre- though I knew I wouldn’t graduate if I didn’t ated a not-entirely-linear, hazy sense of time pass my exams (but wait, wouldn’t that be a and place, which allowed me to move the shame, if I didn’t graduate, and had to stay in shorts around in the larger piece without as school even longer . . . ), it was more import- much concern had they not been fragmented. ant that I finish my collection. I knew if I had Mostly though, as said, it was the feeling of to grab one thing in a mental fire, it would be

Watson | 9 10 | Watson being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a Setting Our Schools on Fire | people.” The report goes on to state that if an unfriendly foreign power attempted to impose Joel Randolph Finsel the mediocre educational performance on us that exists today, “we might well have viewed it as an act of war” (9). “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”—Plutarch An act of war! A rising tide of mediocri- ty! This is serious. So how have we been doing Having recently re-entered since then? In 2008, on the report’s twenty-fifth n my third week of student teaching I was faced with diving into a dull lesson on coordi- academia after over ten years anniversary, the non-partisan campaign Strong nating conjunctions while, from the north tower of the World Trade Center, a toxic miasma American Schools observed that “stunningly Iof black soot billowed out into the otherwise clear blue September sky. I had the television of contemplation, I can’t help few of the Commission’s recommendations ac- on during my prep period and was still watching, transfixed, as my third period class began but wonder: should empow- tually have been enacted.” Recommendations to trickle in around the screen. One little girl began to cry. Her sister lived in New York, she in 1983 called for longer school years and high- said. Another student, who jogged in just as the late bell pulsed and the second plane struck, ering students to take back er, more rigid requirements (Lapham’s Quarter- watched with wide eyes. “Whoa, that’s soOo cool!” he exclaimed, “It’s like a video game!” some control of their studies ly 39). I’m reminded of Einstein’s definition of Leading him to his seat with my eyes, I handed the girl my phone to call her sister, reassuring insanity: doing the same thing over and over the rest of the thirty-three ninth-graders that everything was going to be okay. have a place in the future of and expecting different results. I was pretty sure the principal would make an announcement soon, probably instruct us education? Let’s examine, for a moment, a typical ed- to get under our desks with our hands over our heads. But until then, my instincts told me to ucation setting. Desks arranged in neat rows wait and see. After a few minutes fielding questions, I finally called my mentor in the faculty facing forward where a teacher presents infor- lounge, whispering into the phone, “What should I do?” Her response: “teach through it.” I mation, often using the blackboard to highlight talking points or occasionally a diagram, for was to stick to the lesson plan. “Kids need structure,” she said. “This is no different than Col- the students’ consumption. When the bell rings, like Pavlov’s dogs, students file into another umbine. Continue on as though nothing has happened.” room, where the same scene plays out again. This structure, according to education historians, But I couldn’t. The little girl was having trouble getting through to her sister. How could is no accident. I expect her to pay attention to my grammar mini-lesson? Even more unsettling was that this For over a century this model of schools as learning factories served America well. Russian was the class when I was expected to execute my mentor’s ultimatum: give a student deten- satellite Sputnik propelled the United States to reinvest in math and science. At the time we tion, no matter what happened, or face a C for the semester. To defy her, in her words, “would needed innovative engineers to catch up with the Russian’s technologically, along with facto- be extremely detrimental for future job prospects.” Were we still living in the dark ages? I ry workers to produce the parts (Marshall). But should producing factory workers still be the wondered. Like the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave, forced to ascribe form from the most important aim of education? distorted reality of shadows cast upon the wall? Let’s go back in time to ancient Rome. In the year 64 BCE, philosopher and statesman Sen- Although I was only a few years older than most of my students, I knew not to befriend eca understood education as a separate entity from what he considered job training when he them. But what was wrong with being friendly? Apparently, the flexibility I allowed in class, wrote, “I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money…they to my mentor, registered as a liability. Whenever I allowed the class to deviate from the outline are our apprenticeship, not our real work. Why ‘Liberal Studies’ are so called is obvious: it is I had given her a full week in advance, she perceived a weakness. Did I have difficulty staying because they are the ones considered worthy a free man. But there is really only one liberal on task, or was my willingness to improvise an essential part of the educational process? study that deserves the name—because it makes a person free—and that is the pursuit of wis- In order for students to learn, teachers need to help them find connections, to build a dom” (144). If Seneca, tutor and later advisor to Emperor Nero, were alive today, I wonder if bridge between what they already knew and the new material at hand. When an opportunity he would think we have education confused with something else. arose for what I considered meaningful discussion, I didn’t hesitate to step back, to see where Undoubtedly, society has changed. Making money is a matter of survival, and plenty of a tangential flow might go before bringing them back to task. My mentor embodied a more attention, most would argue, should be paid in that regard. But what of that which stirs our traditional, authoritarian approach. As I observed during my first few weeks of class, her souls and inspires a lifelong interest in learning? Seneca continued, “Geometers can calculate lessons allowed very little breathing room for spontaneous interaction. Maintaining control, the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distance separating above all else, remained paramount. stars…Well, if you’re such an expert, measure a man’s soul; tell me how large or how small Having recently re-entered academia after over ten years of contemplation, I can’t help that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you’ve no idea what straight- but wonder: should empowering students to take back some control of their studies have a ness means in life” (145). place in the future of education? Would a paradigm-shifting concept, like the introduction of a Let’s move forward in history. John Dewey, perhaps America’s foremost educational the- more democratic class structure in our public schools, work in favor of the future by allowing orist, understood the value of instilling the right mindset in students when he said, “The most smothered flames room to breathe, and, perhaps with some care, fan to a blaze? important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning” (44). Reading on a But first, are we sure there is a problem with our present model of instruction? A report little further, I began to wonder if Dewey would agree with my former mentor’s approach. commissioned in 1983 during President Reagan’s first term foreshadowed the current state As a student-teacher, I submitted weekly detailed lesson plans for my mentor’s review. In of our education system, stating, “The educational foundations of our society are presently retrospect, I am grateful for this requirement because it not only forced me to plan ahead but Finsel | 11 12 | Finsel also called for complete engrossment in the subject. I needed to know all I could about swords present moment, of allowing for the flow of a classroom to take unexpected turns that could and drunken heroes battling gangly bottom-lurking beasts in order to pull off a Beowulf les- shake the very foundations of what some teachers rely on as an essential mechanism of class- son successfully. But how did my students fit into the plan? What might one of them say if room management. By not giving students the power to participate outside the lines, some prompted out of their apathetic slump that might cause a ripple of interest to spread? And if might argue, there is smaller chance of descending into chaos. Yet the only viable way forward so, how should I handle it? By quickly bringing them back to task, or by allowing room for this I see is to allow more opportunities for our students’ self-discovery. Let’s instill an active stake kind of spark to catch fire? My instincts led me to believe in the latter. In 1938, Dewey seemed in our children’s future from an early age and empower them onto self-motivating paths. to agree when he wrote in “Experience and Education:” Maria Montessori ran a preschool over a hundred years ago in a Roman slum. Her uncon- ventional methods later propelled her to tour the world for the next 40 years lecturing on the Preparation is a treacherous idea[…]Almost everyone has had occasion to look back upon child’s natural capabilities. In “The Secret of Childhood,” published in 1936, she wrote, “We his schooldays and wonder what has become of the knowledge he was supposed to have can readily know what young animals will be like when they mature. A gazelle will be light amassed during his years of schooling, and why it is that the technical skills he acquired and swift of foot; an elephant will be awkward and heavy in its gait; a tiger will be fierce, and have to be learned over again in changed form in order to stand him in good stead. Indeed, a rabbit will be a timid vegetarian. But man is capable of becoming anything, and his apparent he is lucky who does not find that in order to make progress, in order to go ahead intellec- helplessness as a child is the seedbed of his distinctive personality” (40). Montessori believed tually, he does not have to unlearn much of what he learned in school. (44) in a child’s potential to find his own way. She continued, “Making use of his own will in his contact with his environment, [a child] develops his various faculties and becomes in a sense Dewey describes an uninspired education as something learned in a “watertight compart- his own creator” (40). ment” in isolation in order to pass an exam. He even goes on to say that students often have to Another enlightened concept: the power to create our own realities. We are not powerless. be re-educated later, to “unlearn” school lessons in order to “go ahead intellectually.” Why? In fact, all of us are full of latent powers many do not even realize they possess. Because the learning process is “so disconnected from the rest of experience that is not avail- “One of the great problems facing men is their failure to realize the fact that a child pos- able under the actual conditions of life. It is contrary to the laws of experience that learning of sesses an active psychic life even when he cannot manifest it, and that the child must secretly this kind, no matter how thoroughly ingrained at the time, should give genuine preparation” perfect this inner life over a long period of time,” Montessori explained, expanding her pro- (44). jection of human potential by describing a child as “a soul in a dark dungeon striving to come Fast forward from 1938 to 1983 and Reagan’s “rising tide of mediocrity” report. Now jump out into the light, to be born, to grow, which slowly but surely animates the sluggish flesh, ahead to the present. What are we missing? Dewey warned, “When preparation is made the calling to it with the voice of its will. And, all the while, there is standing by a gigantic being controlling end, then the potentialities of the present are sacrificed to the suppositious fu- of enormous power waiting to pounce upon it and crush it” (40). ture. When this happens, the actual preparation for the future is missed or distorted. The No parent or teacher enjoys peeking in that smudged looking-glass very long. But con- ideal of using the present simply to get ready sider an alternative viewpoint. By shifting a child’s focus away from his or her innate devel- for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and opmental path, we are not only performing a disservice to the student, we are missing out on even shuts out, the very conditions by which a But how did my students fit a unique opportunity for our own personal growth. Montessori concludes, “The image of a person can be prepared for his future” (45). We into the plan? What might one child as spiritual being becoming incarnate not only stirs us but imposes upon us new respon- prepare for our projection of the future, some- sibilities” (40). Turns out, we can learn a lot from the young people among us. Taking this pos- times forsaking the practice of being in the mo- of them say if prompted out sibility into consideration, what should be the “new responsibilities” of a more enlightened ment. If all that ever exists, exists in the present of their apathetic slump that education? moment, should we not also place equal em- Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson faced this question before Harvard’s Phi Beta phasis on cultivating a sense of presence in the might cause a ripple of inter- Kappa honor society in his speech “The American Scholar.” In 1837, he predicted, “The time unpredictable potentialities that can arise at est to spread? And if so, how is already come…when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron any moment? By not holding to a rigid precon- lids, and fill the postponed education of the world with something better than the exertions of ceived form, we create the space necessary for should I handle it? By quickly mechanical skill.” this kind of spontaneous interaction that can bringing them back to task, or Emerson had the insight to recognize the oneness we all share. He describes a society lend to true insight. divided into narrowly specialized skills as one in which “the members have suffered ampu- How, then, can the act of preparation by allowing room for this kind tation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a evolve in the greater educational scheme? of spark to catch fire? stomach, an elbow, but never a man.” Scattered into pieces, man loses the collective power that Again, Dewey: “We always live at the time we is greater than the sum of its parts. Emerson refers to this concept as a “fountain of power[…] live and not at some other time, and only by so distributed to multitudes[…]so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared drops, and cannot be re-gathered.” for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run Thus, the inertia of empowerment is lost. The coals of inspiration are banked beneath the amounts to anything” (44). pressure to perform well in quantifiable ways that show direct results. Are longer school years Clearly, this educational historian sees the need to allow for a spontaneous variable when and more rigid requirements, as suggested by Reagan’s 1983 study, really going to change preparing lessons. As an enlightened scholar, Dewey understood the value of living in the much when they miss the fundamental problem that society has evolved to where it’s too easy

Finsel | 13 14 | Finsel for students not to care? It’s the same as trying to solve obesity by buying bigger pants. Schools, according to Emerson, “can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but An Unlikely Alliance: Examining Narrative in Reality Television | to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, Lauren B. Evans by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.” When this happens, students “shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator…its beauty is the beauty of his own mind.” Emerson insists on the concept of latent powers still untapped within us when he said, “The one thing in the world, of value, in an active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstruct- eality television shows have been controversial among audiences since they became ed, and as yet unborn.” popular around the turn of the twenty-first century. In theory, reality television pres- There is a sense of timelessness and inter-connectedness in this vigorous manifesto that Rents unedited stories about real people in their real lives. In reality, however, television succeeded in planting a new seed of consciousness on this planet. But I would argue its emer- studios cannot keep to this standard and still gain financially from these shows. Studios use gence still lies dormant or in chrysalis form, waiting to take wing in each of our individual gimmicks and liberal editing to ensure that audiences have access to the most exciting sto- present moments in time. If only we can seize it! rylines during their viewing time. Some shows have even been known to write scripts for this Emerson describes the mind “taught to aim at low subjects” as one which “eats upon it- “reality.” Many opponents of reality television suggest that audiences enjoy it because of the self.” Now, that would be a powerful form of mind-control. But to what end? George Orwell simple structures and storylines that do not require much critical thinking. However, I think described a future society in 1984 as one in which “power is for power’s sake” (268). At the to understand the popularity of reality television, you have to examine the broader picture. close of 2012, the United States education system was ranked seventeenth in the world (Pear- The popularity of reality television in our contemporary culture and society proves the over- son). Makes me wonder who has the most to lose if we were to invest heavily in education? whelming power of a narrative, regardless of presentation. According to Emerson, when the soul is not “subject to dollars…the scholar is the delegat- The phrase “reality television” encompasses several subgenres under its umbrella. Amer- ed intellect…he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends icans, in particular, have the opportunity to watch competitions, atypical family situations, to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.” celebrities in their everyday lives, a variety of people living under one roof, and humanitarian In enlightened form, education is plastic and fluid. Nature is not fixed and neither should efforts, to name a few. Though the audiences of these shows all watch reality television, their our educational practices be. True alchemy takes place not in the process of turning lead to demographics and television habits can differ drastically. For instance, Jersey Shore on MTV gold, but in the process of altering a student’s state of mind. Do we view our students as ves- ranked number one in its timeslot for people between the ages of twelve and thirty-four in its sels to be filled or fires to be kindled? first season in 2010 (Seidman), while the majority of the Dancing with the Stars audience was older than sixty that same year (Carter). For the 2009-2010 television season, nine of the top n the morning of September 11th, when I hung up the phone after receiving my men- twenty-five television shows on broadcast networks were classified as reality television (An- tor’s instructions to go back to the lesson plan as though nothing had happened, and a dreeva). A large number of Americans from all demographics choose to watch reality televi- third plane slammed into the Pentagon and a fourth fell in Shanksville, PA, I knew that sion, but why? What could make Americans so interested in the “real” lives of other people? O This answer lies in the show’s ability to create a narrative out of a seemingly straight-forward there was something terribly outdated about the traditional approach to educating our young. Emerson insisted, “It is one soul which animates all men.” Perhaps when we finally let go of concept. our fear-based need for control and security, we will have not only released our students into One of the shows at the forefront of the reality television excitement, Survivor, proves this the forest of true discovery, but may also rediscover some of the same sense of wonder we too theory. Watching strangers survive together on a deserted island caught America’s attention, may have lost along the way. but the concept should have lost its charm after two or three seasons of the same stories. The showrunners knew that, so they made Survivor a competition. To survive the island, the strangers needed to work together; however, with money involved, the players could never Dewey, John. “Experience and Education.” Lapham’s Quarterly: Ways of Learning 1.4 (2008): 44-45. Print. really trust each other. Each season, audienc- What could make Americans es watch the castaways create alliances only to Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” American Transcendentalism Web. Texas A&M U. n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. betray each other a few episodes later. The ex- so interested in the “real” lives Marshall, Lisa. “Democracy in Action: Educating Students to Think, Create, Initiate.” Natural Awakenings, August 2010. Web. February ecutives and crew in charge of Survivor antic- of other people? 2012. ipate these betrayals and use them to create a Montessori, Maria. “The Secret of Childhood.” Lapham’s Quarterly: Ways of Learning 1.4 (2008): 40. Print. narrative that runs throughout the season. Sur-

Gardner, David P., et. al. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform: An Open Letter to the American People : a Report to the Nation vivor begins by presenting a biography of all the castaways, so audiences connect with them and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education. Washington DC: National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983. in the first episode. Many of the castaways have personal reasons for needing the money, such Print. as a sick relative or their children’s college tuition—so they will do whatever it takes to win. Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Penguin, 1961. Print. The casting directors find people with these motivations to make the show more interesting

“Index of Cognitive Skills and Educational Attainment.” The Learning Curve. Pearson Plc, 2013. Web. 15 Nov. 2012. and to ensure controversy. Survivor also uses gimmicks to keep the narrative interesting. For instance, once alliances are formed, the castaways may be split into teams of men against Seneca. “Letters from a Stoic.” Lapham’s Quarterly: Ways of Learning 1.4 (2008): 144-145. Print. Finsel | 15 16 | Evans women, causing them to form new alliances. Even if the show has no script, the directors and use their knowledge about the competitors’ personal lives and points of view to create drama. producers always have a plan to get the narrative they want. For example, someone with acrophobia might be faced with a task that involves heights, or a The people behind Survivor use a puppetmaster mentality to create the narrative they country music singer might have to sing a hip-hop song. Watching a competitor face personal want, but shows like The Hills go even further. The Hills started as a simple premise: following obstacles gives the audience something they can understand and cheer for, which keeps them Lauren Conrad and her friends through their lives as single women in their twenties in Los involved in this narrative. Angeles. The show followed the cast through their hookups, breakups, jobs, and friendships Reality shows not based on competition to some extent use the same strategy. The Real by forcing the women to interact on-camera as often as possible. Because filming the women Housewives franchise, The Hills, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Jersey Shore, and other shows that twenty four hours a day would be costly, the crew would have Lauren and her friends re-enact present people supposedly living their normal lives, also create conflict to keep their audience any situations the audience needed to see. Soon, the crew went even further to instigate fights intrigued. The shows frame some cast members to look like villains and some to look like the and relationships until the show could no longer be considered “real.” Americans knew this, hero for audiences to support. The shows also initiate and grow romantic relationships that yet still watched the show. Lauren and the other women gave countless interviews stating may not exist outside of the confines of this new reality they have created for the cast. Audi- several instances when the show took extra liberties in editing and filming their lives. The cast ences want to see heroes and heroines succeed and couples defy odds and obstacles to be to- mentioned scripts in some interviews and even referred to themselves as separate from their gether, which mimics long standing narratives like Beowulf, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and characters. Though this should have driven viewers away, the show continued for six seasons. Juliet and others dating back to before television existed. Reality shows have just placed a new The audience hooked onto the narrative beginning in season one and wanted to see it through label on the same stories people have loved for centuries. until the end. The writers for the show created characters the audiences loved and hated and Many critics of this genre insist reality television makes its audiences dumber. For in- created arcs for the characters to grow and change just like a scripted show. Sometimes these stance, in Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, author Lisa arcs had no basis in reality, but drew in audiences anyway. Bloom claims Americans have “veered off track into a culture of empty-headed narcissism” Even American Idol, which presents itself as a straightforward singing competition, uses and challenges women to spend more time thinking critically than time watching “an increas- narrative to draw an audience. Once the live performances begin, millions of Americans vote ingly bloated, empty diet of reality television shows” (3-4). I would challenge this thinking each week for the singers they believe to be the best performers. The early stages of judging with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s speech “The American Scholar.” Emerson says, “We all know, between the millions of auditions have the potential to be tediously boring, but the people that as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the in charge of American Idol use these first few weeks to begin the narratives of all contestants broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed they view to have potential. The audience learns about their dreams and their lives before the by any knowledge” (92). Reality shows give show, which causes them to form bonds with specific contestants. Audiences watch the show Audiences want to see heroes audiences a view into many experiences they each week to learn more about their favorite contestants and to watch them grow and change would not be privy to in their own reality. For through the lens provided by the show. The performers on the show form fan bases first from and heroines succeed and instance, The Amazing Race presents a world- their stories, then those fan bases expand with their performances. The worst singers in the couples defy odds and obsta- wide-race/scavenger-hunt hybrid that allows competition oftentimes end up with recording contracts based solely on the personal connec- the audience to see places and cultures it may tion formed between the contestants and millions of viewers. cles to be together, which mim- never have the chance to experience first-hand. Several shows use basic narratives to draw in viewers. Competitive shows that involve ics long standing narratives Though this knowledge may not fall into typi- a monetary prize often showcase contestants with a specific need for the money like medical cal areas of academia, is it accurate to say audi- bills, student loans, or struggling family members. Some shows exploit budding romantic like Beowulf, William Shake- ences gain nothing from watching reality tele- relationships when the cast presents this opportunity. Audiences love to watch good triumph speare’s Romeo and Juliet vision? over evil, especially when an underdog is involved, so many showrunners edit to depict this Shows like Jersey Shore and The Hills pro- dichotomy. Though reality shows use real people, the people are treated much the same as and others dating back to be- vide audiences with a look into subcultures characters in a fictional story. The show’s writers and directors insert the right elements and fore television existed. Reality they may never have the opportunity to see. show the right scenes to create characters for audiences to identify with, and then do the same Although promiscuity and partying in night- to create a villain to act as the opposing force. The push and pull between these opposing shows have just placed a new clubs show sides of society many people are forces keeps the audience coming back to watch their favorite characters overcome whatever label on the same stories peo- uninterested in, these reality shows give au- obstacles they may face to gain whatever they are looking for. diences a chance to better understand these In competition-based reality shows like Survivor, The Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, ple have loved for centuries. life choices if they choose to watch. Cooking and American Idol, the goal is obvious from the beginning: each competitor wants to be the last shows like Chopped and Top Chef provide an in- person standing at the end of the season. However, the competitors that will do whatever it sight into the world of cooking for anyone who takes to win are often framed as villains, even though the point is to win. Audiences want to wants the knowledge. These television shows should not go so far as to replace other forms of see kindness and teamwork even in the midst of competition, so directors and editors edit to education, but they can be used as supplemental materials. Reading about a different culture make sure audiences see this teamwork from some competitors and not from others. Show- or lifestyle choice in a book may not provide the same insight as actually seeing this culture in ing competitors with opposing strategies forces a side by side comparison and provides the action. Why just read about life with multiple children when you can also watch reruns of Jon audience with the conflict and drama needed to keep them entertained. Reality shows also and Kate Plus Eight and see for yourself?

Evans | 17 18 | Evans Our contemporary society consistently invents new ways to present the same narratives we have seen and heard for centuries. Reality television executives saw the opportunity to A Peek Into the Pericardium: An Interview with Dylan Linehan | present real people as their characters and to make the narratives feel more real for the com- Sarah E. Bode mon individual. No matter how liberally the show changes in the editing room or how true the characters onscreen connect with reality, one thread remains constant in weaving together all reality shows in the genre: the narrative. Whether these age-old narratives imitate the real lives presented or real lives imitate the narratives often goes unexamined, because the lives on display, real or embellished, continue to captivate audiences week after week, season after ylan Linehan is one of those musi- ing, and it was gone moments after I stopped season. cians who when you hear them for singing it. Now I always carry around some Dthe first time they put you in a state sort of recording device because you never of raw awe. When she performs she seems to know when you’re going to come up the next transcend the stage and become this beacon song. What really inspires the music for me for the ethereal. is listening within. I never know when I’m I recently listened to Linehan’s debut al- going to receive my next melody or phrase bum Pericardium while speeding down Col- that will birth the next song, but I practice lege Road and had to pull over because I had quiet listening always. I remember when I to shut my eyes. I had to really listen. I in- was in college, I’d get a lot of my ideas while stantly put myself in the keys of her piano—I in class. I’d run out to the bathroom to record felt her joy, her pain, her immense pleasure the melodies, which would always be awk- and displeasure. Linehan astounds me with ward because the people in the bathroom her ability to portray such raw and taboo would think I was crazy, and the people in thoughts and feelings. the classroom would think I always had to Now, a solid month after snagging the go to the bathroom! I try to always go where album at Linehan’s CD Release Party, when the music takes me; I view our bodies as the I speed down College Road I belt the lyrics Turn page to listen to Linehan’s song “For Us.” along with her, twiddle my fingers with the violin, and tap the heel of my hand against my gear-stick along with the drums. And I catch myself still in awe in those suspiciously silent seconds between songs. Upon perhaps the thirtieth time listening to Linehan’s “For Us,” I knew I had to delve behind this artist’s pericardium.

Sarah E. Bode: I tend to find inspiration spon- taneously and sporadically throughout life. I am not one of those artists/writers who can methodically find inspiration in the same ac- tion or place over and over again. How about you? What was the first thing that inspired you to write your own songs?

Andreeva, Nellie. “Full Series Rankings For The 2009-10 Broadcast Season.” Deadline.com. PMC, 27 May 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. Dylan Linehan: The desire to channel music Bloom, Lisa. Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. New York City: Vanguard Press, 2011. Print. was present ever since I can remember. The first song I wrote was about some dolphins Carter, Kelley L. “‘Dancing With The Stars’ Tops ‘American Idol’ In Ratings For First Time.” MTV. Viacom International Inc, 6 April 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. that were swimming next to the boat I used to live on with my family. I believe I must have Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” American Transcendentalism Web. Texas A&M U. n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. been three or four. My parents tried record- Offering (above) shows Linehan clutching a pig’s Seidman, Robert. “MTV Is the #1 Cable Network for 12-34 Year Olds.” TV by the Numbers. TV By The Numbers, 1 April 2010. Web. 6 Dec. ing it, but like most song ideas, they are fleet- 2012. heart, photographed by Kelsey Ann Linehan. Evans | 19 20 | Bode “For Us” instruments of our souls, and I try to be the timeless, too. Times change, but emotions scoring in the future. Written by Dylan Linehan best channel and instrument I can be so when and the way they are evoked do not. SB: In an interview I did eons ago with Mar- I do get that melody or lyric inspiration, I am iana Johnson, professor in UNC Wilming- Available on her debut album: Pericardium not held back. I sometimes feel like this really SB: Can you explain your creation/compos- ton’s Film Studies Department, she said film isn’t my music…it’s from another place. That ing process—do you have any quirky habits is the highest art, because it can encompass Press the play button to listen to “For Us.” is my inspiration. when you’re “in the zone?” all other art forms. Where do you place mu- sic in the hierarchy of the art? SB: And now, for a, perhaps, more personal DL: One thing I always tell my piano stu- question: who is the “us” in “For Us”? dents is, when you’re writing music there is DL: I have been involved in film since I was a no such thing as a “wrong note,” not when lot younger and the combination of all aspects DL: I wrote “For Us” during the hardest time it comes from the heart. When I’m not work- of art is certainly what has always drawn me It’s been a long time since we talked face to in my life. I was in college and struggling ing on a specific song, I get into a medita- to it. I don’t agree with placing art in a hi- face, with the balance of practicing piano hours tive, cleared state and erarchy of which is You’ve kept that kindness in your eyes through and hours a day with tests and homework just plunk my hands Stories are timeless, and if the more important than the love and the hate, on top of that, fostering seven sick hound on the keys and let music is done in a way that others, though. That’s And I’ve been meaning to say, it don’t matter puppies, trying to keep my relationships my heart do the rest. like asking which to me if you’re tall or if you’re strong, with others the best I could, and on top of I don’t think about it speaks universally, then it can sense is most import- As long as we get along... that ended up having mono for nine months. or get worried about ant: sight, smell? They I went from running half marathons to being hitting a wrong note. I become timeless, too. Times are all equally import- We’ve got some roads to unwind, but what’s in a sick and unhealthy body that couldn’t sit back and watch my change, but emotions and the ant tools in helping us worse is behind, take me on a twenty minute walk without fingers move, I let the way they are evoked do not. interpret the world in If you’re in then I’m in too, I can’t do this with- becoming exhausted. I felt trapped in my music take over. I al- our own unique ways. out you… own body—a body that had become foreign ways record these ses- to me. I wrote this song as a theme to get me sions. All of my songs begin this way. I guess As far as what music contributes to film, Chorus: For us, it’s for us. out of the rut, to form an alliance with myself you could call it a stream of consciousness. I feel like music is the glue that ties every- For us, it’s for us. and focus on the most important relationship Then I go through it and take the parts I like, thing together. It sends the audience in any I believe we are all here to work on: with us and by that time, the vocal melody begins to emotional direction the scene needs to go My heart beats for you, without words asks to and ourselves. It’s for us. All of these experi- form and I discover the idea behind the song in. I’ve had the opportunity to score several change, ences we have good and “bad.” It’s for our that was trying to be released all along. Ev- short films and, as I said above, my first fea- You kept filling up those empty holes with personal learning experiences to grow and ery song is a unique journey. But like some ture film, and it’s fun to play around with the whatever you’d attain, learn to love and appreciate ourselves. things in life, you don’t quite know where many directions you can take a scene in. It’s And I’d be lying if I didn’t say we are the result you’re going when you’re following your touchy though, because eliciting the appro- of our pain, SB: It seems like your songs are stories then? heart, but when you get there, you realized priate kind of emotion always requires great I’ll be quiet to hear you, let’s let go of our you knew all along. sensitivity. Sometimes it’s hard to get it just shame… DL: They all are inspired by stories, and then right. You kind of have to be a new “charac- as I write them they start taking a new form SB: We heard “For Us” was in the film Don’t ter” that’s interacting with the actors in the The impulses, id, you follow, well I won’t let us and creating their own story as they go along. Know Yet—congratulations! What was it like scene that’s not seen, just heard. be swallowed, My favorite kinds of albums tell stories with- to have your song mixed with the art of film? By our mind we’re confined now let’s break in a story; a themed album or musical. That’s SB: I tend to sing everywhere—like in the free together… definitely my next project. I grew up playing DL: Oh man, it is an incredible feeling. It’s car, in the shower, in bed, in the kitchen… and singing with my family to the music of amazing to see something like that come to- well, you get the idea. Do you spontaneously Chorus my heritage—old time music. Each song is gether. I was surprised at how well it fit with break out in song or is this considered bad basically another way to pass down stories the vibe of the scene it’s in. It’s the last se- form? No matter what happens, we are bound to one of things that happened a long time ago. I try quence of the film, and the energy is lively. another, to draw from that when I write. I want peo- I actually ended up scoring a lot of the film DL: Oh, yes I do! I sing frequently through- I couldn’t imagine any better for each other ple down the road to understand what it was with music from my album. I love writing out the day, even when I talk to people at like to be alive during this time. Stories are cinematic-type music in general and try to work, apparently. They recently pointed out Chorus timeless, and if the music is done in a way include that style in my music anyways. I that I sing my hellos and goodbyes and sev- that speaks universally, then it can become hope I get the opportunity to do more film eral things in-between. But I have learned to

Bode | 21 22 | Bode be more protective over my voice because the end of the class, he asked me if I could so upset because I hadn’t found him sooner, The day that I finally heard where he was, I it’s such a tiny grouping of muscles that can play my song “Carry On” with him at Kenan and he was coming up with all these outra- discovered he had literally just died—he had tire easily and become strained. I’ve become Auditorium during his show! I hadn’t been geously awesome ideas for the music I only broken his leg trying to jump out of a pasture more appreciative of true vocal rest before to UNCW in a while, so coming back to per- wished I could have recorded on the album! I to freedom and they put him down on the performances. It always makes a difference. form on that stage was surreal. It was also really hope we can continue to work together spot. This was the day the song “Tazmanian the biggest show I had ever done. We ended again in the future. He blows me away. He White” was being completed in mixing. It SB: You’ve performed with some very tal- up rehearsing that song once—fifteen min- really gets the music and is brilliant at inter- was so bizarre, the timing of it all. Now, I can ented musicians—like utes before going on preting the emotions. say he is free. The song took on the meaning DBR and UNCW’s Whatever goes on in the mind stage! I actually pre- I had always kind of meant for it to have, or Chris Johns. How sur- to create art is wild, wild stuff. ferred that because it SB: One of our other artists in this edition, at least pretended to. As I said above, some real was playing with made it so much more Greg Hankinson, believes that artists see songs finish the stories and some stories fin- someone who has And I like that some of it isn’t raw. We were com- death differently from other people. Do you ish the songs. touched so many oth- really explainable. municating through agree? Does death touch any part of your er talented musicians? the music and there music? SB: If death is another form of living, is there was not a whole lot music there, too? If so, what kinds? DL: When I worked with DBR, it was a very of thinking involved—just feeling the music DL: I’m not sure if I can say artists see it dif- powerful and emotional experience for me. communicate through us. ferently than others…maybe in the sense that DL: Yes, of course. The music comes from My vocal coach, Marina De Ratmiroff, who you work all of your life to create, and when somewhere, right? I had this wild experience is a performer who also teaches at UNCW, When I was a cellist short for my CD release you die, your art lives on. But I see death once. I was sitting in my living room in an set up a master class session where I would party, I asked Chris Johns if he could rec- as another form of living, that we live on as “in-between” state. My eyes were open, and play two songs in front of her class for DBR, ommend a student, and I was so surprised well. We are made of energy, which can’t be I was conscious of my surroundings. I kept who was coming through town on tour. At when he offered to play the music himself! I destroyed. We just simply move on. I don’t “tuning into” this beautiful music with peo- remember the first time we worked through see us as humans, rather energies choosing ple singing these wild harmonies that were Keys to My Heart (below), photograph by the music together…I got really mad. I was to live a human experience. Looking at it that so loud and ethereal. I had never heard any- Kelsey Ann Linehan. way, for me, doesn’t make death as final. thing like it before, and it sounded like I was Death does appear in my songs from time to in a cathedral listening to it with my ears in time though. In my song “Another Day Like the moment, loud and clear. I kept tuning in Sunday,” the character of the song dies at and out of it at my discretion, kind of like a the end (sorry for the spoiler! Haha). But it’s radio station. The same thing happens to me not like it’s the end for that person. The line when I wake up sometimes. I’ll hear this in- is “Somehow your soul just got away.” We credible music. I wonder, where is that com- move on and take our experiences with us. ing from, I’m hearing it with my ears, aren’t In another experience, death literally did I? If only I could harness it! I certainly attempt touch one of the songs on my album, or to. I try to be in tune with my surroundings maybe in a weird way it was the other way both physical, mental, and spiritual as well around. “Tazmanian White” is about a beau- as I can. I have gone into these sort of tranc- tiful white horse I owned many years ago, es when writing music sometimes, too. I’ll who I believe was never meant to be ridden. record a musical stream of conscious for ten He was such a free spirit. The idea of the song minutes and when I listen to it later, I don’t is if you love something, let it free. Don’t be really remember what I did—I’m listening afraid to let go of a love or a dream if it’s not to it with new ears. Whatever goes on in the meant to be. My dream was for my horse to mind to create art is wild, wild stuff. And I love me and for us to go far in competitions. like that some of it isn’t really explainable. He never wanted my love, he wanted free- dom. When I was writing the song, I always SB: What’s next for you? You mentioned a pretended I had opened up the pasture gates themed album idea you are developing? Any and let him out to run free and be happy. In chance you can spill about that? truth, I had to sell him when I went off to college. It took me years to track him down. DL: Now that my first album, “Pericardi- Bode | 23 24 | Bode um,” has been released, I am constantly won- be my best effort to do so. Our bodies are cer- dering, “now what?” I would love to go on tainly instruments themselves. As long as I The Darkness of Midnight: Examining John Berendt’s Narrative as tour. And I do have enough material for the continue to develop mine and stay open to a Work of Southern Gothic Literature Renee L. Sloan next two albums, but it needs a lot more de- the music and stay true to my heart, I will | veloping. I see three albums ahead now, two find a way to spread the word and to tell sto- of which are rock-operas delving into many ries. of the themes we discussed above such as life before living and life after death. The way I See our Featured Artists page on our website t is no secret that Americans are fascinated by Southern culture. One only needs to look at 1 interpret music and try to “channel” it, I am for more information about Dylan Linehan, the success of writers such as Margaret Mitchell, Tennessee Williams, and James Dickey. in an in-between state frequently, neither to listen to some of her music, or to buy some IAll of these writers produced images of the South that were eccentric, beautiful, fascinat- living here nor there. I have always tried to of her awesome swag. Or visit her website: ing—and fictional. However, in 1994 a new picture of the South emerged. In his bookMidnight explain that, and I think the rock-operas will www.dylanlinehan.com in the Garden of Good Evil, John Berendt brought many of the Southern stereotypes to life. His characters were more than just characters; they were real people. With elements of madness, racial tension, history, and voodoo, the book is an interesting read, and it breathes life into the elements of Southern Gothic fiction. Though it is a true story, an examination of the text reveals symbolism and elements of Southern Gothic present in literary fiction writing. Some question the authenticity of Berendt’s work, saying that he was forcing stereotypical repre- sentations of the South to make his story more successful. For me, these subtexts contribute to the authenticity of the narrative and are reminiscent of the old adage, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Midnight may be a work of nonfiction that depicts a crime that happened during one of Berendt’s travels to Savannah, but the labels “nonfiction,” “true crime,” and “travel litera- ture” don’t capture the essence of the work. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a work of Pericardium (below), designed by Heather literary merit and should be lauded as a work of Southern Gothic literature. Divoky, is the cover for Linehan’s debut album. To discuss how Midnight embodies the elements of the Southern Gothic, it is first necessary to talk about the genre itself. Southern Gothic literature is a subdivision of the broader genre of Gothic literature. Gothic literature originated in England in 1764 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. Some critics saw his work as “a counterfeit medieval tale published long after the Middle Ages” (Hogle 1), but elements of romance, history, and the supernatural led to the work’s classification as “Gothic.” While authors such as Mary Shel- ley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allan Poe followed Walpole’s lead and published Gothic novels, the genre was not widely recognized until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Modern Gothic literature is much like the Gothic literature of previous decades in that it possesses cer- tain characteristics. The setting for Gothic literature is usually an “antiquated or seemingly an- tiquated space,” which is further explicated as anything from a “a castle” to a “large old house or theatre,” or a “new recreation of an older venue,” and the space holds “secrets from the past (sometimes the recent past) that haunt the characters, psychologically, physically or otherwise at the main time of the story” (Hogle 2). Such literature also deals with themes of death, the su- pernatural, and the “grotesque.” The grotesque refers to anything “characterized by distortion or unnatural combinations; fantastically extravagant; bizarre, quaint” (“grotesque”). Like Gothic literature, Southern Gothic deals with the same themes of death, the supernat- ural, and the grotesque. However, Southern Gothic literature usually presents these themes with a twist that relates to the South’s troubled history. In Southern Gothic literature, the gro- tesque “focuses largely on themes of terror, death, and social interaction” and the rise and fall of the southern plantation provides “an analogy to the medieval settings available to English gothic writers” (Witalec). While the themes of terror and death are found in traditional Gothic

1 Margaret Mitchell, Tennessee Williams and James Dickey wrote about the South and Southern culture. Mitchell’s epic, Gone with the Wind, Williams’ plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire, and James Dickey’s novel, Deliverance, were all wildly successful in their printed forms, and eventually made into motion pictures. The success of these books came before the publication of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Bode | 25 26 | Sloan literature, the theme of social interaction is somewhat exclusive to Southern Gothic. Social in- his tenure had written a book of hymns that became the first hymnal used in the Church teraction usually refers to the relationships among the races—usually Caucasian and African of England. A Savannah merchant had bankrolled the first steamship to ever cross the At- American—and a dichotomy between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” In Southern literature, lantic, the Savannah, which made its maiden voyage from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819. race and class interactions bring about tension, which usually fuels the conflict within the (Berendt 40) piece. Other sources call for additional elements, including “real or perceived occult events, and Berendt shows that the city was a site of historical importance and helps to establish it as an a woman at risk” (Palmer 123). The real or perceived occult events are usually associated with antiquated space. In addition, it gives readers a way to connect with the city and begin work- the supernatural and possess themes of terror and death. The “woman at risk” is often a little ing on establishing a shared narrative by finding their own history among the city and its less obvious. In traditional Gothic literature, the woman at risk is usually the protagonist, and people. the threat is “a physical one, of death or loss of virginity, and the symptoms of fear and terror In addition to the city being an antiquated space, the settings of many of Midnight’s scenes are described in the bodily terms of the sentimental romance: tears, fainting, the heart jumping also epitomize the concept of antiquated spaces. One example is Mercer House, the home of in the breast, and so on” (Palmer 123). However, in more modern works, such a threat can be Jim Williams. Mercer House was built for a Confederate General, Hugh Mercer, singer and figurative, or it may threaten a feminized object or character, such as a highly sexualized or songwriter Johnny Mercer’s great-grandfather. The house represents Savannah’s Civil War gay character, like Danny Hansford in Midnight. history and pays homage to Savannah’s claim to fame as the birthplace of Johnny Mercer. The final characteristic of Southern Gothic literature is that it must take place in the Amer- Mercer House also meets the criterion of being a “a new recreation of an older venue.” The ican South.2 The prevalence of Gothic literature in the South has led to the new sub-genre clas- mansion had fallen into a state of disrepair, and Williams restored it “to something greater sification of Southern Gothic. The popularity of this work by writers in the southern United than its original elegance” (Berendt 7). In addition to Mercer House, scenes also take place States has been largely attributed to the fascination with plantations and the antebellum era. in Bonaventure Cemetery. The cemetery has been around since colonial times and includes This is likely because “plantation houses satis- monuments to World War I and Civil War soldiers. In chapter two, “Destination Unknown,” fy some desire for connection with history; as Berendt meets historian Miss Mary Harty, and she tells him that the cemetery used to be Col- these sites contextualize the present within a [I]t gives readers a way to onel John Mulryne’s plantation home. The reference to the southern plantation provides both history that is tangible, they convey a sense of connect with the city and be- historical context to establish the area as antiquated and helps to address the commodification collective identity, of a heritage that Americans of the plantation as a tourist venue. Berendt’s attention to setting and history help classify share” (Adams 164). Plantations declined after gin working on establishing Midnight as a work of the Southern Gothic subgenre. the Civil War. Most Americans’ ancestors were a shared narrative by finding The second way to distinguish a work of the Southern Gothic tradition ties in with the an- involved in the conflict in some way and there- tiquated space by alluding to secrets within that space. Midnight exemplifies this criterion also fore feel a certain connection to plantation life. their own history among the in Mercer House and Bonaventure Cemetery. The “secrets” in Mercer House—the circum- Thus, the collapse of the plantation provides a city and its people. stances around Danny Hansford’s death—are critical to the plot of the book. The entire story modern day equivalent to the medieval battles is built upon these secrets and Jim Williams’ fear of the revelation of the secrets that haunt of early Gothic literature. The plantation home him throughout the work. When Williams finally tells Berendt that shooting his handyman of the past “has been transformed from the site of an economy based on slave labor to a pop- and lover Danny Hansford was not an act of self-defense but an act of rage, the secrets are un- ular tourist site from which issues of slavery, if not racism, have been largely excised” (163). leashed and begin to haunt Berendt as well. Similarly, in the cemetery, Mary Harty mentions This speaks to many Southerners’ desires to relive and sometimes—as we see in Midnight— that “the dead are very much with us in Savannah” (Berendt 31). She then tells him about reinvent the past through Civil War re-enactments and parades. The issue of slavery is absent spirits that haunt the cemetery, including those of Colonel John Mulryne and his party guests. from such events, and the focus remains on the actual battles and the “history.” Using these This allusion to the dead still haunting the living foreshadows how Minerva will attempt to definitions and criteria for the Southern Gothic subgenre, I will prove thatMidnight in the Gar- quiet the spirit of Danny Hansford before he “does harm” to Jim Williams. By writing about den of Good and Evil is foremost a work of Southern Gothic literature. Jim Williams’ death and including that he died in the “very spot” where he shot Danny Hans- The setting for Midnight—Savannah, Georgia—adheres to the criteria of an antiquated ford eight years prior, Berendt is able to allude to the physical haunting of Jim Williams. By space. The city itself is more than two hundred and fifty years old and has been the site of showing the secrets kept inside these ancient venues, and how these secrets figuratively, and many historical events. In chapter three, Berendt approaches the librarian at the Georgia His- possibly physically, haunt these characters, Berendt reiterates that nonfiction can be Southern torical Society to learn more about Savannah. He writes: Gothic. In modern Southern Gothic literature, the grotesque is often not manifested in the phys- The librarian recited a list of Savannah’s historic highlights: America’s first Sunday school ical sense, such as a girl with a wooden leg.3 In recent Southern Gothic works, such as Mid- had been founded in Savannah 1736, America’s first orphanage in 1740, America’s first night, grotesqueness manifests as mental disease and depravity. This grotesqueness is “one black congregation in 1788, America’s first golf course in 1796. John Welsey, the founder that depicts human beings, rendered grotesque by their extreme and incongruous passions of Methodism, had been the minister of Christ Church in Savannah in 1736, and during and obsessions, as the ultimate source of horror” (Bailey 269). Examples of “extreme and in-

2 The boundaries on this area often vary, but are usually depicted as far west and South as Lousiana, and as far north and East as Virginia. 3 This refers to the more traditional brand of Gothic literature, in which Flannery O’Connor used manifestations of physical grotesqueness, Berendt’s setting in Savannah, Georgia, would always fall within the boundaries of this category. such as Hulga’s wooden leg in “Good Country People.” Sloan | 27 28 | Sloan congruous passions” would be Danny Hansford’s bisexuality and desire for sex, Jim Williams’ The fourth element present in most Southern Gothic literature is an allusion to the occult. homosexuality and predatory sexual relationship with young Hansford in exchange for mon- This allusion can bring about a theme of horror or terror because it often involves calling upon ey, and Luther Driggers’ reclusiveness. During the 1980s—the time in which the events in this the spirits. This is also very unsettling for people in the South because such actions contra- book took place—homosexuality was still listed as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Sta- dict the teachings of religion in the South. The tistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It was not removed completely from the DSM until presence of voodoo in the chapter titled “Mid- 1986. The presence of homosexuality in the text could also help classify Berendt’s work as a For many, the idea of being in night in the Garden of Good and Evil” serves work of Southern Gothic literature because at the time it was considered a “mental illness” by a cemetary after dark would be as the occult reference for this book. The Occult most psychoanalysts. Another aspect of grotesqueness within the book would be the society’s is defined as “of or relating to magic, alchemy, attitudes toward sexual orientation and race. The story of Sadie Jefferson was one such exam- unsettling, but the presence of astrology, theosophy, or other practical arts ple. Berendt first mentions Sadie when he discusses his fascination with Savannah. Her name a voodoo priestess calling out held to involve agencies of a secret or myste- appeared in a short news story in an old newspaper clipping from 1914, which read: rious nature; of the nature of such an art; deal- to the spirits in the “Witching ing with or versed in such matters; magical” It is no indication of insanity to tango. This was settled yesterday by the lunacy commis- Hour” (midnight) succeeds in (“occult”). Voodoo was a religion whose origin sion which decided that Sadie Jefferson is sane. It was alleged the woman tangoed all the in the United States can be traced to New Orle- way to the police headquarters recently when she was arrested. (Berendt 26) creating a sense of Gothic ans. While voodoo was not founded on witch- terror. craft or “Black Magic,” its call out to the spir- The story of Sadie Jefferson possesses the element of insanity—another instance of a mental its of the dead makes it, by modern definition, grotesqueness—and we later learn that there is no more to Sadie’s story because she was a an example of the Occult. However, the actual black woman. When Berendt attempts to look her up in the city directory, he can’t find her and voodoo religion does not use dolls, does not use the casting of “spells,” and does not employ later learns that he was “consulting the wrong part of the city directory” (Berendt 42). The gro- blood-letting or the use of old bones or trinkets.4 Because Minerva uses dove’s blood to put a tesque element at work in this context is the mental depravity of racism and discrimination. curse on District Attorney Spencer Lawton, has a wax doll for working magic, and pays “shiny Racism and mental depravities are prevalent in Midnight. Danny Hansford, Jim Williams, dimes” to her husband for winning lottery numbers, she is a perverted image of a voodoo and Chablis are all victims of discrimination, spiritual mother. Her religion does border more on the practicing of the Occult. For many, the and the citizens of Savannah represent mental idea of being in a cemetery after dark would be unsettling, but the presence of a voodoo priest- depravity in their closed-mindedness. Chablis, Chablis is living her life as a ess calling out to the spirits in the “Witching Hour” (midnight) succeeds in creating a sense of Danny, and Jim all experience discrimination Gothic terror. As Minerva tells Berendt and Williams, “Dead time lasts for one hour—from a as a result of their sexuality—Danny is bisexu- female, and notices that black half hour before midnight to a half hour after midnight. The half hour before midnight is for al, Jim is homosexual, and Chablis is transgen- men tend to be more aggres- doin’ good. The half hour after midnight is for doin’ evil” (Berendt 247). The presence of the dered and homosexual. The Southern society “witching hour” and the good and evil spells help to show Midnight as a work that possesses attempts to exoticize them in order to see them sive pursuing her, and more elements of the Occult. as the “Other.” The idea of the other is derived physically abusive with her The final criteria for a work of the Southern Gothic subgenre is that it must possess “a from identity and the concept of the “Self.” We woman at risk.” Because of the queer nature of Midnight as a text, the idea of a “woman” may as humans define by negation, the citizens of when they find out about her not necessarily be a woman at all. Chablis is the physical representation of a woman, and thus Savannah attempt to eroticize Chablis, Danny, sexuality. serves as “a woman.” Though Danny Hansford is a man, he also serves as a representation of and Jim in an attempt to establish them as oth- a woman at risk because he is highly sexualized by both male and female characters. Because er. Savannah’s “inhabitants control the femi- this eroticization is typical of female characters, he represents “a woman at risk” because Jim nine looks of their city, and exclude individuals such as Chablis and Danny Hansford on ac- Williams, Corinne, and others in the town view him in an effeminate way. His drinking, drug count of their race, sexual orientation and free spirit” (Farca 2). Discrimination against Chablis abuse, and volatile temper make him a character “at risk.” His behavior makes it likely that is shown through her conversations with Berendt as she tells him that she does not date “black harm will come to him either by his own hands or at the hands of someone else—like Jim boys” or “play up in them black bars” (Berendt 106). Chablis then tells Berendt, “When black Williams. The first part of the book focuses on Danny Hansford and alludes to a violent end. boys find out about my T, honey, they be ready to kick my ass,” so she avoids “them black By the middle of the book, this prophecy is fulfilled. Chablis becomes the “woman at risk” in bars, honey. I don’t need no gun to my head” (Berendt 106-107). Chablis is living her life as a the second part of the story, because she attends the black debutante ball and risks having her female, and notices that black men tend to be more aggressive pursuing her, and more phys- sexuality exposed to the black men of whom she’s so very afraid. Thus Chablis and Danny ically abusive with her when they find out about her sexuality. Similarly, Danny Hansford is become representations of women at risk in Midnight. discriminated against because he is of a lower socio-economic status than many of Savannah’s Berendt’s nonfiction novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, without a doubt pos- citizens. In order to control him, they sexualize him, referring to him as “a walking streak of sesses all of the necessary characteristics found in Southern Gothic fiction. His use of writing sex” (Berendt 130). Chablis and Danny become sexual objects, and, as a result, are able to be seen as the “other.” The presence of race, class, and sexual orientation discrimination show the 4 This information about voodoo was obtained from the essay, “Why We Can’t Talk To You About Voodoo” by Brenda Marie Osbey. Her essay about the ancient voodoo practices was published in issue number 2, volume XLIII of the Southern Literary Journal. None of the Os- Southern ideology as “depraved”—a common element in Southern Gothic literature. bey’s content is explicitly cited in this paper, but the ideas and information about the voodoo religion were obtained from her essay. Sloan | 29 30 | Sloan methods typically found in fiction writing, such as dialogue and scene-by-scene construction, make this a work of literary merit, and it should be recognized as a work of Southern Gothic No Soliciting: Violence Against Sexual Deviants in Strange Case of Dr. literature. Such recognition is important because the interest in the South and Southern cul- Jekyll and Mr. Hyde JoAnna C. Wright ture is prevalent even today. However, the social climate of the South is changing and modern | writers, such as Berendt, must continue to document the South. Berendt’s work is especially important because it shows the historical ideologies of the South alongside modern social is- sues. He shows how the Southern Gothic has adapted to the “New South.” obert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is often observed as a conspicuous tale of the duality of good and evil residing in all men coming. This analy- Rsis begins as a departure from Stevenson’s doubling in Jekyll and Hyde and will instead reveal a reflection of the political climate of late nineteenth-century London between secret, homo-social relationships and the prejudice and violent efforts of English law to eradicate homosexuality. An examination of the existing male associations in Jekyll and Hyde renders the primary antagonist, Hyde, distinct in his heterosexuality and places the other male characters in an intricate map of homo-social relationships. Hyde’s crimes come to represent a resistance to homosexuality and even perpetuate the notion of male, heterosexual dominance over fem- inine sexuality, and it is through such resistance that he is transformed from being one part of the dual nature of man into a paradigm of social prejudice against sexual deviancy. It is necessary to establish Hyde’s heterosexuality before attempting to situate his actions as being paradigmatic of social prejudice toward anything that publicly departed from hetero- sexual norms. Beginning with the scene in which a maid observes two men approaching one another at “about eleven” o’clock in the evening beneath her bedroom window (20):

The older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his point- ing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breath such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognize in him a certain Mr. Hyde…in is hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he an- swered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentlemen took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. (20)

It is essential to precede an analysis of this scenario with an understanding of the maid, Adams, Jessica. “The Southern Plantation in Popular Culture.” Cultural Critique. 42 (1999): n.p. JSTOR. Web. 13 Oct. 2012. who later narrated the scene to the police. The encounter between Hyde and Sir Danvers Bailey, Peggy Dunn. “Female Gothic Fiction, Grotesque Realities, and Bastard Out of Carolina: Dorothy Allison Revises the Southern Goth- Carew, the older gentlemen, was witnessed only by the young maid, who provided “few and ic.” Mississippi Quarterly 63.1. (2010): 269-292. Academic Search Complete. Web 7 Dec. 2012. startling” details after summoning the police three hours after the encounter due to fainting Berendt, John. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. New York: Random House, 1994. Print. (20). Prior to the encounter, the maid is described as being “romantically given, for she sat Farca, Paula Anca. “White, straight lady Savannah of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Notes on Contemporary down upon her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of Literature 37.3 (2007): 2. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Oct. 2012. musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that experience) nev- Hogle, Jerrold E.. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2003. Print. er had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more kindly of the world” (20). While she is only described as a girl without an exact age, the maid is either a very young girl or perhaps “occult, n.” OED Online. 2012. Oxford University Press. Web. 1 Nov. 2012. older and extremely naïve. Her musings consist of the peace and kindness of the world, and Palmer, Louis. “Bourgeois blues: class, whiteness, and Southern Gothic in early Faulkner and Caldwell.” The Faulkner Journal 22.1-2 (2006): therefore she is incapable of suspecting anything untoward in “an aged and beautiful gentle- 120+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Oct. 2012. men with white hair” walking the streets of London at eleven o’clock at night (20). “Southern Gothic Literature.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 142. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. The maid’s innocence acts as a censor of the encounter between Hyde and Carew, and Web. 13 Oct. 2012. Sloan | 31 32 | Wright because of her ambivalence at the possibility of there being something wrong with the entire in the streets and begins to violently beat him to death. The only other character who makes incident occurring at eleven o’clock or why Carew was out prowling the streets at such a late an effort to accost Hyde, in the sense of becoming better acquainted with him, is Utterson. hour, it becomes necessary to observe the details that are not present. This is what the text is When Utterson stops him on the doorstep to Jekyll’s home, Hyde is still resistant to associate attempting to say indirectly through the filter with him. When questioned about how he came to know Hyde’s identity, Utterson states, “we of the naïve maid. Interpretations of the Carew have common friends” (15). Rather than claiming to have no friends, or denying that Jekyll is Her musings consist of the murder perpetuate the older man as a victim of his friend or associate, Hyde “snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with a senseless and unprovoked assault. Antonio extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house” (15). Ut- peace and kindness of the Sanna searches for the parallels of silence and terson is unsuccessful in gaining further acquaintance with Hyde until discovering him dead world, and therefore she is homosexuality in Jekyll and Hyde and believes in Jekyll’s laboratory. that any homosexual acts occur silently within Unlike the other male characters in Jekyll and Hyde, Hyde is the only one without homo-so- incapable of suspecting any- the text. Stevenson avoids stating the homo- cial relations. There are only five females to speak of within the entire text: the young maid thing untoward in “an aged sexual acts other than in metaphors, or that who narrated the murder of Sir Danvers Carew, the young girl Hyde trampled and her moth- these acts occur in literal silence where nothing er, Jekyll’s house maid, and “an ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman” who is the only and beautiful gentleman with is spoken in dialogue. Sanna appears to chan- person employed at Hyde’s residence (22). These females are stationary within the text and ex- white hair” walking the streets nel the naiveté of the maid in his interpreta- ist without forming heterosexual relationships to the primary male characters within the text. tion of the Carew murder, stating “it is inter- Unlike Hyde, the other male characters form of London at eleven o’clock at esting to note that the most malevolent action a complex web of intermingled, homo-social night (20). narrated in Stevenson’s tale is perpetuated in [Jekyll’s] closet-homosexuality relationships. Utterson, Jekyll, and Dr. Lanyon silence” (30). Despite the function of Sanna’s may have been his impetus for form a friendship that has existed for many essay claiming to discover silent homosexual- years. Utterson and Enfield are cousins; and it ity in Gothic fin-de-siècle literature, this particular scene between Hyde and Carew, and the developing the means neces- is established early on in the text that Enfield metaphorical silence that exists, is neglected in his analysis. Instead, Sanna notes the silence: sary to divorce his more is known around the town for his potentially “Hyde quietly murders Carew” (33). Taking into consideration the presence of unheard dia- homosexual proclivities. Jekyll has employed logue between Hyde and Carew, as well as the fact that Hyde beat Carew to death, it seems depraved nature from his a butler, Poole, who has “been twenty years in futile in notating the silence of the murder. known identity. [Jekyll’s] house” (36). Utterson also employs a It would have been useful for Sanna to note the cause for the entire incident between Hyde male clerk, Mr. Guest, and considered Sir Dan- and Carew; explicating what is not said in this incident begins to establish a more heterosex- vers Carew “one friend and client” (26). ual vision of Hyde against a backdrop of homo-social relationships. Stevenson’s choice of Jekyll, like Enfield and Carew, also has potentially homosexual inclinations. His closet- words in the maid’s narration is more revealing to how the event progressed between Hyde homosexuality may have been his impetus for developing the means necessary to divorce his and Carew. The Oxford English Dictionary reveals “accosting” someone to have two distinct more depraved nature from his known identity. Jekyll states that his “pleasures were (to say interpretations by the mid-nineteenth century. Either “to approach and speak to, especially the least) undignified” (56). However, in creating Hyde, Jekyll miscalculates in assuming that (in later use) in a bold, hostile, or unwelcome manner; to waylay (a person) in this way; to his darker self’s corrupt pleasures would correlate with his own improper pursuits. Instead, address,” or in addition to this version, to approach “a prostitute: to solicit (a potential cus- Hyde’s actions are abhorrent to Jekyll. He states: tomer)” (“accost, v.”). If we are to trust the maid’s description of Hyde being accosted “with a very pretty manner of politeness,” then it is likely Carew approached Hyde in the hopes of I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I pursuing him sexually. called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inher- Another character has appeared earlier in Jekyll and Hyde who behaved similarly to Carew. ently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure Mr. Utterson’s cousin, Mr. Enfield, is described as “the well-known man about town” (5). The with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. Oxford edition of Jekyll and Hyde, edited by Roger Luckhurst, expands on this term by stating it Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde. (57) “[implies] certain sexual behavior” (184). Enfield first saw Hyde when he was “coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning” and Hyde’s pleasures derive from the torment of others, but the reader is never given a first- witnessed Hyde’s first horrific act of the text when he trampled over a young girl (6). Enfield’s hand account of the precise details of his other repugnant actions. Hyde trampling the little deliberate ambiguity about where he came from, as well as the early hour of the morning, girl and the murder of Carew are the only two instances of his malevolence that the reader suggests that like Carew he was out in pursuit of sexual pleasures. However, when Enfield has witnessed; both occurrences were told secondhand by other characters who witnessed stops Hyde, to the point of physically restraining him, Hyde “was perfectly cool and made no the events. The trampling of the young girl fractures the notion of Hyde presented so far. resistance” (7). This is a stark contrast to the manner in which Carew politely accosted Hyde, In trampling the girl and murdering Carew, Hyde begins to unravel as an archetype of the and yet his reaction to Carew is astonishingly violent. Criminal Law Amendment Act, which made homosexual acts illegal, and his character now The ambiguity of Hyde’s other horrific actions makes it essential to attempt to account reveals commentary in the direction of women and feminine sexuality and how that sexuality for his motivation in murdering Carew. He breaks out into a rage when Carew accosts him navigates the terrain of the imperial and misogynistic British Empire.

Wright | 33 34 | Wright The act of Hyde physically overpowering a young girl, pushing her beneath his feet and men and it being just that: they are both men. Their crimes target a demographic that hinges walking over her, represents Hyde’s dominance over her sex, a dominance that is established on a specific factor; while Jack targets the lower class and Hyde targets those in his path, both by force and without the consent or desire of the young girl. By simply noting a binary that deliver punishment to people who partake in seemingly unorthodox sexual practices. These already exists within the text, Hyde’s masculinity and the young girl’s femininity, this chang- unorthodox sexual practices—prostitution, homosexuality, gross indecency, sodomy—were es the perhaps accidental trampling to a harsher, more explicit metaphorical rape. However, illegal during the late nineteenth century when Jack was prowling the streets and Hyde was there are several binaries within this incident. Some perpetuate the notorious theme of duality becoming popular in the household lexicon for criminal behavior. Understanding that Jack that exists in Jekyll and Hyde, and others deviate from the simplistic idea of dual nature and and Hyde’s victims were also criminals suddenly changes the perception, and reception, of begin to unravel a power structure in the text that expands beyond masculine and feminine their crimes. If the intention behind their choice of victims was to eradicate sexual filth from discourse. When the young girl represents femininity, and Hyde embodies masculinity, it be- the world, starting with London, then Jack and Hyde become violent criminals that bear the comes crucial to remember that the setting of this encounter occurred at “about three o’clock uncomfortable title of vigilante. of a black winter morning” (6). There is not a simple answer as to why a young girl was by According to the Oxford Dictionaries, a vig- herself at that time of the morning; however, the implications of why a woman would be out ilante is someone who is “a member of self-ap- If the intention behind their and alone at that time cause a shift in how this incident is perceived. Instead of a metaphorical pointed group of citizens who undertake law choice of victims was to eradi- rape by Hyde asserting his masculine dominance over a weaker feminine representation, the enforcement in their community without legal young girl’s depiction shifts to that of a prostitute. Hyde’s representation is still masculine, authority, typically because the legal agencies cate sexual filth from the world, but it is no longer simply implicated in the binary conflict of feminine subjugation by violent are thought to be inadequate” (“vigilante”). It starting wtih London, then Jack masculine dominance. has been stated that the sexual acts Hyde and If Hyde is the only male character who does not engage in homo-social relationships, and Jack targeted are illegal; however, it is evident [the Ripper] and Hyde become goes so far as to inflict violence on those who do, yet he also violently asserts his dominance that there would be a measure of personal prej- violent criminals that bear the over female prostitutes whose business perpetuates heterosexuality, then Hyde has shifted udice involved for the two men to risk being from an embodiment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act and instead stands as a violent condemned and executed for their crimes, re- uncomfortable title of vigilante. opposition to sexual deviance. Simon Joyce’s essay usefully situates Jekyll and Hyde’s reception gardless of their seemingly good intentions. in nineteenth-century London and its correlation to a contemporary criminal known as Jack We can only speculate upon the impetus for the Ripper. His text seeks to identify “the criminal as an intellectual or artistic genius,” and an- Jack, especially since almost nothing is known alyzes such popular literary characters as Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll (501). He states that “the about him (if he is indeed a man), as well as Hyde’s own motivations. Since both have been five murders ascribed to Jack the Ripper seemed to correlate closely with the recorded actions presented as domineering, masculine figures targeting victims who are primarily female pros- of Mr. Hyde” (502). To clarify Joyce’s association between the two criminals, Jack the Ripper titutes, the discourse has moved back to that binary between masculinity and femininity—yet, was a pseudonym for a serial killer in London’s Whitechapel who killed five prostitutes over Jack and Hyde are now taking liberties in accusing and punishing the women, or men, who a three month period of time. The “recorded actions of Mr. Hyde” amount to the trampling step out of their socially-constructed sexual bounds. of a young girl and the murder of Sir Danvers Carew. The existing correlation between Hyde Joyce once more notes an unusual factor between Hyde and Jack in stating, “the East Lon- and Jack the Ripper perhaps stems from their own motivations for targeting the victims they don Advertiser speculated that ‘a murderous lunatic [is] concealed in the slums of Whitecha- chose. pel, who issues forth at night like another Hyde, to prey upon the defenceless [sic] women of Jack the Ripper was, and remains to this day, a legendary serial killer without any form of the ‘unfortunate’ class’” (502). The female victims of Hyde and Jack were all joined in the low- physical embodiment: face, name, location, or gender. E.D. Cohen, for the purpose of identi- er demographic of society in East London; however, let us not forget that Hyde also murdered fying various forms of masculinity in the late nineteenth century, notes that “the stories that an upper-class man which, according to Sanna, was marked “as a sort of offense, of a wound identified ‘Jack the Ripper’ as an upper-class man gone bad provide the paradigmatic example to the entire nation and its legislative system” (30). The paradigm of social prejudice against of what we now mean when we colloquially say that someone has a ‘Jekyll and Hyde person- sexual deviance is on the verge of breaking apart between Jack and Hyde; their sex, their ality’” (184). In making this connection, Cohen is defining Jack the Ripper by Dr. Jekyll and targets, and their crimes converge as a tenuous grip that holds them together. Hyde departs Mr. Hyde, respectively, in order to humanize him. Doing this allows Jack the Ripper to be slightly from Jack in killing Carew, an upper-class man, and this murder begins to symbolize removed from the mystical pedestal he was placed upon as an unseen killer who was smart a high standard of behavior that no one in Victorian society may escape from. In the “shocking enough to evade the authorities and lowers him to simply Jack, as he will now be referred, a murder of an M.P.,” (Carew was a member of parliament), Hyde completes his embodiment human with the same fallacies, vulnerabilities, and mortal qualities as the rest of us. Dr. Jekyll of vigilante. The legislative structure begins to fall apart when people like Hyde exist in the and Mr. Hyde, in the same manner, can be defined by Jack the Ripper as a criminal body, and world to persecute sinners regardless of their class, sex, race, or any other binary affiliation. this analysis can go astray into many directions that venture into the mind of Dr. Jekyll and his The reactions of the other characters to Hyde perpetuate him as an archetype for a near-dys- dissatisfaction as an elite member of society and those societal constraints placed upon him, topic form of justice; their unexplained fear and hatred of him resulting in a desire to be rid of as well as how, as stated previously, Hyde’s own wants and intentions were so removed from him. Mr. Enfield, when first seizing Hyde after trampling the girl, notices that the other wit- Jekyll’s that it began to frighten the doctor. This analysis also continues to explore Hyde as not nesses of the crime share the same reaction that he does toward Hyde: “Well, sir, he was like just one part of another man but as a criminal with ambitions driving his actions. the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that [doctor] turn sick and white with Cohen and Joyce’s correlation of Jack and Hyde rest on one commonality between the two the desire to kill him” (7). Hyde’s appearance rouses this reaction in nearly every character

Wright | 35 36 | Wright who encounters him. Hyde is described as “a little man” and was “so ugly that [he] brought er self, Dr. Jekyll, partook in but then expanding the demographic of his victims to all who out the sweat on me like running” (7). This fear that Hyde incites in all who see him could sim- departed from the sexual norms held sacred by marriage vows. Revealing that a startling ply be his appearance; however, in Hyde there is perhaps a recognizable facet of prejudice and comparison exists between the fictional Mr. Hyde and the very real, yet very elusive, Jack the loathing toward all who defy the standard of sexual norm (sex between husband and wife) Ripper, served to perpetuate societal prejudice against those who went astray in their sexual- set by Victorian society. This norm, which was likely deviated from behind closed doors, cast ity, or in the case of women, dared to express that sexuality at all. Proclaiming Hyde and Jack an unrealistic expectation on sexuality, especially feminine sexuality. Sexual deviance, which the Ripper as vigilantes does not justify their intentions and actions but rather removes the remained a broad and encompassing term in the Victorian era, was a secret affair, and one that blind-fold that served to hide how far a prejudice socio-legal system would go to eradicate participants wanted to remain that way. Hyde threatened to not expose adverse sexual behav- that which deviated from what was deemed proper. This analysis cannot be concluded with ior, but punish it. It is understandable why Mr. Enfield, and others, would want to kill Hyde. a firm statement of Hyde’s moral or immoral behavior but instead can mark Hyde as a social In radical vigilante style, Hyde was persecuting those who wanted to express their sexuality commentary for what a lack of tolerance may sow in a society existing with secret vices and freely beyond the constraints of societal norms. overwhelmed with an obsessive pursuit for normal. Oliver Buckton argues, in agreement with Wayne Koestenbaum, whom he quotes, “Ste- venson was aware of the significance of this anti-homosexual legislation and sought to give representation to illicit forms of masculine desire in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (24). Buckton’s awareness of homoerotic desire remains fixated between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, asserting that “the original readers of the story would not have known of Jekyll and Hyde’s shared identity” (24). As I have asserted throughout this analysis, the presence of mas- culine desire does exist in Jekyll and Hyde but not between Jekyll and Hyde. The other male characters, including Jekyll, perpetuate a cycle of homo-social desire for male companionship, and Hyde is steadfastly and violently resistant to this form of desire. Furthermore, while Ste- venson was discreet about the true relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he reveals the circumstances of their association through Dr. Lanyon in describing Mr. Hyde’s transfor- mation:

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror. I screamed…for there before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death—there stood Henry Jekyll! (50)

The change that occurs is explicit in being from Mr. Hyde to Dr. Jekyll. Dr. Lanyon fol- lowed this description with the realization that “the creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde” (51). While it would seem apparent that the homosexual subtleties in Jekyll and Hyde could be missed, the entire premise of the story centered upon Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into Mr. Hyde is blatantly conspicuous.

Buckton seeks to identify the reanimated corpse as “a figure of central importance to forms of “accost, v.” OED Online. 2012 Oxford University Press. Web. 3 Nov 2012. narrative desire in Stevenson’s fiction” (22). This corpse that Buckton searches for in Steven- son’s texts is the “corpse of Victorian realism [reanimated] through a revitalized use of Gothic Buckton, Oliver, S. “Reanimating Stevenson’s Corpus.” Nineteenth Century Literature 55.1 (2000): 22-58. JSTOR. Web. 7 Dec 2012. and sensational motifs” (23). Jekyll and Hyde becomes a display of everything real: real fear, Cohen, E.D. “Hyding The Subject?: The Antinomies Of Masculinity In The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.” NOVEL: A Forum on real desire, real hatred, and real horror. Buckton’s use of a “Victorian realism” corpse endorses Fiction 37.1/2: 181-199. Duke University Press. Web. 7 Dec 2012 the ideology of Hyde as a paradigm of social hatred, prejudice, and fear of exposure. Perhaps Joyce, Simon. “Sexual Politics and the Aesthetics of Crime: Oscar Wilde in the Nineties.” ELH 69.2 (2002): 501-523. The John Hopkins Univer- Hyde’s impetus for his violence is not his prejudice toward sexual deviance, but rather intoler- sity Press. Web. 28 Nov 2012. ance to secrecy and those who allow others to dictate how they express themselves and what Sanna, Antonio. “Silent Homosexuality in Oscar Wilde’s Teleny and The Picture of Dorian Gray and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and mold they must fit in to be a proper human being. Mr. Hyde.” Law and Literature 24.1 (2012): 21-39. Web of Science. Web. 3 Oct 2012. This analysis sought to identify Hyde’s symbolic role as a Victorian socio-legal figure and Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 5-66. Print. his prejudice against the homo-social relationships that surrounded him and that his oth- “vigilante, n.”. OED Online. 2010. Oxford University Press. Web. 7 Dec 2012. Wright | 37 38 | Wright uty Dewey Riley (portrayed by David Arquette) discuss ways to uncover the copycat killer. Motherly Love: Wes Craven’s Reassertion of gender in the Scream trilogy Randy states, “It’s our job to observe the rules” (Scream 2). The rules Randy mentions are in ref- Casey Jordan Mills erence to the conventions of traditional slasher films. This particular comment is noteworthy, | because Craven deliberately mentions the rules that must be followed within the constraints of the genre, making subtle nods to movies such as Friday the 13th, which successfully broke from the expected norm without much notice. Dewey furthers the commentary by stating that serial killers are typically white males, to which Randy replies: “That’s why it’s perfect. It’s es Craven’s Scream trilogy has garnered much attention in the film industry. Most of sort of against the rules but not really. Mrs. Voorhees was a terrific serial killer” (Scream 2). the scholarly conversations point toward the film’s postmodern elements, meta-fic- This quote serves as applause to the foundation of the genre laid by the original Friday the 13th. Wtional commentary, and revival of the slasher-film genre. Less attention, however, The quick nods and allusions to Mrs. Voorhees come to a much fuller fruition in Scream 2. has been paid to the way the film attempts to reinstate a notable motif set forth by one of Similar to Friday the 13th, the second installment in the Scream trilogy possesses a twist end- the genre’s most popular predecessors, Friday the 13th: a mother figure revealed as the killer ing, in which the killer is revealed as the mother to two of the film’s central (and deceased) seeking revenge for her deceased son. Valerie Wee notes that the Scream films “represent a characters: Jason Voorhees and Billy Loomis, departure from its predecessors” (52). While the trilogy does possess several characteristics respectively. The two mother figures are both that redefine the conventions of the genre, its reiteration of an established element should not motivated by revenge for their sons, but they The key element of the mother be overlooked. also are similar in physical appearance. Both Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 film Friday the 13th is often cited as one of the first major are middle-aged females with a short haircut. figure has become lost in the slasher films, making Jason Voorhees an iconic symbol in the horror genre. However, Jason’s The similar appearance is arguably Craven’s masculinization of the horror mother, Pamela Voorhees (originally portrayed by Betsy Palmer) is the serial killer in the first attempt in re-creating the iconic motherly kill- installment of the franchise. One of the conventions of the traditional slasher film is the gender er. In the ending of Friday the 13th, while Pa- genre. of the villain, whom Andrew Tudor describes as “a near superhuman, male, masked killer” mela Voorhees is trying to kill the Final Girl, (68). Traditionally, a male figure is behind the mask, creating a masculinized stereotype for Alice (portrayed by Adrienne King), she talks most slasher-film antagonists. Cunningham’s initial reversal of gender roles often goes un- to herself in a childish voice, imitating Jason: “Kill her, Mommy. Kill her, Mommy” (Friday the mentioned in the critical attention placed on the film genre. Wee citesFriday the 13th numerous 13th). In a similar fashion, Mrs. Loomis (portrayed by Laurie Metcalf) kills her first victim in times throughout her article, noting the box office success of the original film and its sequels Scream 2 by enticing him with the same childish voice; Mrs. Loomis whispers, “Listen, Mom- (52). In reference to Jason Voorhees, Wee also cites the film’s psychotic killer as an example my. Listen, Mommy,” prompting her victim to listen through the bathroom wall, resulting in of a “traditional villain,” with no mention of his mother. The first installment of the Scream a fatal stab to the ear. All the characteristics of Mrs. Loomis are borrowed from Mrs. Voorhees, trilogy (1996), acknowledges the little attention placed on Jason’s mother. an important development in subverting the expectations set forth by major slasher films and In the opening scene, Casey Becker (portrayed by Drew Barrymore) becomes the first retracing the genre’s original feminine footprint. on-screen victim to the franchise’s iconic killer, Ghostface. Casey is being harassed over the The females in the slasher-film genre are typically either the victims or the heroes. Citing telephone, and Ghostface declares that if she answers the questions correctly, her boyfriend a range of examples of both feminine representations, Wee discusses how the Scream trilogy will live. After a warm-up question, the villain declares that the “real” question is to name reinterprets the Final Girl, but also presents “the torture and often brutal killing of nubile the killer in Friday the 13th, to which Casey an- young women” (57). However, throughout her in-depth discussion of slasher films’ apparent swers Jason Voorhees. Ghostface deems her “complicated relationship with gender,” she fails to mention Mrs. Voorhees or Mrs. Loomis, All the characteristics of Mrs. answer incorrect and states, “[Y]ou should completely overlooking the subverted gender expectations in both films (57). This constant Loomis are borrowed from know Jason’s mother, Mrs. Voorhees was the oversight makes the ending of Scream 2 a surprise twist, which may not have been the case if original killer. Jason didn’t show up until the Mrs. Voorhees would be acknowledged more for her contribution to the slasher-film genre. Mrs. Voorhees, an important sequel” (Scream). Craven’s allusion to the Fri- Mickey Altieri (portrayed by Timothy Olyphant) is the second killer in the murder spree; he development in subverting the day the 13th franchise and commentary on the also is a representative of a replacement Billy Loomis, forming a mother-son relationship with incorrect perception of the original killer is im- Mrs. Loomis. She found him on a chat room for serial killers, stating that “all he needed was expectations set forth by major portant in showing Scream as a film that may a little guidance and nurturing,” to which Sidney Prescott (portrayed by Neve Campbell), the slasher films and retracting the not solely be a “reinterpretation of the genre’s trilogy’s main protagonist, replies: “As only a mother can do” (Scream 2). Mickey’s character familiar conventions,” but also an attempt to comments on the reveal of Billy’s mother as the killer: “Surprise twist, huh? Didn’t see it com- genre’s original feminine foot- reiterate a notion presented in one of the origi- ing, did you?” (Scream 2). This quote highlights the postmodern element of self-awareness for print. nal slasher films (Wee 54). which the trilogy is often praised; however it also acts as criticism of the fact that the element Across the Scream trilogy, references to Pa- of surprise was already presented by a famous slasher-film released 16 years before the release mela Voorhees are often made, showing that of the first Scream film. In the original Friday the 13th, after Alice successfully kills Mrs. Voor- her example bears repetition in establishing the importance of her contribution to the slash- hees, she has a nightmare of Jason resurrecting from the dead and attacking her. This final er-film genre. InScream 2 (1997), film student Randy (portrayed by Jamie Kennedy) and Dep- scene is re-created in Scream 2 after Sidney kills Mrs. Loomis. Mickey stands up, bloodied and

Mills | 39 40 | Mills screaming and lunges forward in attack before being shot to death, a final nod to Friday the 13th. Like a Fish Out of Water | While the Scream trilogy should not go unnoticed for its innovations to the slasher-film Lori Joy Peterson genre and its utilization of post-modern techniques, it would be inaccurate to not consider the retrospective elements of the films. TheScream films may be a “reinterpretation of the genre’s overfamiliar conventions,” but they are also blatant re-creations of the genre’s less familiar conventions, which were set forth in Friday the 13th, the film often cited as responsible for bringing the genre into the mainstream (Wee 54). The key element of the mother figure has be- come lost in the masculinization of the horror genre; however, close examination of the Scream films suggest an urging to move back toward the origin and return the genre to its birthplace: the mother.

hen my father passed, to use the cli- ly, I never did.) The huge squirrel is imped- chéd expression: my world turned ing danger looming around the corner (real Wupside down. I felt abandoned, or imagined). lost, scared, just numb. The mixture of these For years, I painted fruit, landscapes, emotions made me feel like I wasn’t real any and classic movie stars. It surprised me how longer. I felt like I was walking through a something so tragic change the direction of dream. my artwork. This painting was a result of just Thankfully, I still painted while dealing letting the brush go. with my loss. The paintings I produced prior Just like random turkeys at the edge of to “Like a Fish out of Water” were noticeably the forest, you never know what life will off beat. I painted a landscape with a moose bring to your corner. and a donkey together, a bunny and lizard in Friday the 13th. Dir. Sean S. Cunningham. Perf. Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby. Paramount Pictures, 1980. VHS. the desert. I stared at the piece. “This is the craziest Scream. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, David Arquette. Dimension Films, 1996. DVD. thing I ever painted.” Yet, it was comforting. Scream 2. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Neve Campell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette. Dimension Films, 1997. DVD. It captured my feelings. The bears walking Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Print. down the lane is my childhood, thinking back to my earlier life with my father and me Wee, Valerie. “Resurrection And Updating The Teen Slasher: The Case Of Scream.” Journal Of Popular Film and Television. 34.2 (2006): 50-61. MLA International Bibliography. Web 01 Nov. 2012. seeing my father one last time. (Unfortunate- Mills | 41 42 | Peterson in case a girl child is born. She then tells him to “take [his] eleven brothers out into the woods” Food, Flowers, and Femininity: Masculine Dominance in “The to await her signal—a white flag will be raised if a boy is born, and a red flag will be raised if Twelve Brothers” Jessica Jacob a girl is born (Grimm 20). This entry into the forest, a traditionally feminine symbol, is forced | and occurs out of desperation. Again, the scene is feminized and fueled by anxiety. After elev- More specifically, the threat is en days, Benjamin sees that a red flag has been raised. The numeral representation of the num- he term “fairy-tale” often invokes images of innocence, providing an arena for nostal- that with the introduction of ber eleven, 11, illustrates two phallic symbols gic perceptions of childhood. Many equate the term with scenes of purity or the lavish a female character, the boys side by side. Although there are twelve broth- Tnotion of “happily ever after.” However, many of the tales popularized by commercial ers, the group is consistently referred to using representations of the antiquated texts contain latent motifs of rape, incest, and homosexu- will suffer death: the ultimate the number eleven, placing Benjamin outside ality. Perhaps more damning, however, are the tales in which these themes are so structur- castration. In order to thwart the parameter of the brotherhood. The repeti- ally ingrained that the stories have failed to assimilate into the modern canon of acceptable, tion of the number eleven works to reinforce popularized children’s literature. Kinder-und Hausmärchen, a collection of over two hundred this castration, the abundant the phallocentrism that propels the story. Ad- German folk tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm, includes both types of tales: those that phallic representation begins ditionally, as the brothers make a new home have been assimilated into—and modified to please—a more modern audience (for instance in a hut in the woods, they immediately des- “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” and “Little Red Riding Hood”), and those that are impossible almost immediately. ignate a feminine figure over whom they can to separate from their sexual deviancy. “The Twelve Brothers,” for instance, may, upon first exert their dominance: glance, be perceived as an account of revived sibling-kinship. The language, however, exposes the violent and oppressive gender binary of the apparently incestuous relationship between a They said: ‘Let’s live here. Benjamin, you are the youngest and weakest. You can stay young girl and her twelve brothers. home and keep house while we go out and look for food.’ They went into the woods and The tale, like many others in the Grimms’ collection, contains an abundance of both mas- shot rabbits, deer, birds, and doves, whatever was good to eat. Then they brought the food culine and feminine imagery. Also similar to other tales is the unmistakable equation of mas- back home for Benjamin who had to prepare it in an appetizing way for them. (Grimm 20) culine images with power and desire, and of femininity with anxiety and/or negativity. Kay Stone observes that: The products of a patriarchal society, the boys instantly determine their worth by recreat- ing a hierarchy that perpetuates masculine dominance. By placing Benjamin in a feminine [a]s Freud notes, female symbols are those that suggest the possibility of either entry or role, the other brothers ensure that he fulfills the female’s function of housekeeper. Moreover, entrapment. These would include rooms and houses, ovens, jugs and bowls, shoes, and as the eleven brothers imprison Benjamin within the role of homemaker, they venture into forests and flowers. Such symbols do not appear randomly or without meaning. They take the woods, collectively taking on the role of hunters. This figuratively castrates the youngest their significance from the context in which they are used. (47) brother, stripping him of the power he is inherently due in accordance with the patriarchy that dictates his society. Critic Francisco Vaz da Silva asserts that “to be emasculated, and thus Both forests and flowers appear concurrently with male anxiety and/or the removal of male feminized, generally amounts to being equated to prey” rather than ascending to the “full power—a figurative castration. Additionally, critic Hans-Heino Ewers maintains that tales male status of the hunter” (9). This indicates that his brothers, who as hunters have claimed such as this one “dare to give shape to male sexual desire even when this desire transgress- their “full male status,” view Benjamin as a target. The eleven brothers also use their power as es the borders of the self and reveals itself as regressive, narcissistic, or incestuous” (78)—a a single, phallic unit to claim authority over both the hut they find in the forest and the forest notion that Hartmut Böhme attributes to “the infant’s earliest experiences with his mother, itself. By collaborating to create a single masculine group, they ascend to the role of hunter and namely when the infant encounters the almighty motherly self-object with both a tremen- are able to dominate the feminine symbols that they encounter. dous lust for delimitation and a primordial fear of being swallowed up” (qtd. in Ewers 78). Additionally, the dialogue suggests that Benjamin is marginalized by his eleven brothers, The incestuous sexual abuse might then be an exertion of masculine power over those in the as they speak (and act) as a single unit, and he speaks and acts in isolation. In fact, in every submissive feminine role—perhaps in an attempt to appropriate and dominate the “lust for instance in which the eleven brothers speak, plural pronouns (either “they” or “we”) are used. delimitation” in order to combat the “fear of being swallowed up” that is likely magnified by This fortifies the notion that the group is a representation of phallic power, as it maintains that the boys’ relationship with their mother. there are eleven men, but that they all act as one—again, the visual representation of the nu- The story begins when a pregnant queen, the mother of twelve boys, is told by her hus- merals 11 and 1 are phallic. By showing the clear separation between Benjamin and his group band that if their thirteenth child is born a girl, the twelve boys will be put to death. This im- of brothers, the text works to create a dichotomy that is reinforced by the binary opposition mediately creates a sense of anxiety for the boys, induced by the threat of a female entering of their performed gender roles—Benjamin in a feminine role, and the group of brothers in their lives. More specifically, the threat is that with the introduction of a female character, the a masculine role. Scholar Michael Jones agrees, stating “[w]ho prepares the food, serves it, boys will suffer death: the ultimate castration. In order to thwart this castration, the abundant and cleans up…all these convey roles, values, and ideas about gender, hierarchy, and power” phallic representation begins almost immediately. Before the girl is born, the queen tells the (130). Moreover, Jones asserts that “in households where the man brings home the bacon, the youngest of the boys, Benjamin, that his father has made he and his “eleven brothers” coffins woman’s role is in the kitchen preparing dinner timed for his arrival, thus symbolizing her

Jacob | 43 44 | Jacob obligation as homemaker and his as breadwinner” (142). In this case, the “woman’s role” is much love for each other that they [cannot] stop kissing and hugging” (Grimm 21). When the fulfilled by Benjamin, who has food waiting when his brothers return home: “[w]hen night eleven other boys find that there is now another feminine character, they are “overjoyed, and fell, the brothers returned from hunting and their dinner was on the table” (Grimm 21). they [throw] their arms around her, kiss her, and [feel] a deep love for her” (Grimm 21). These But Benjamin’s feminine role is not solely to conduct domestic chores. The language sug- instances work to introduce the incestuous relationships, before connoting their depth. Overt gests that they have also placed him in the position of sexual object. Take, for instance, the displays of affection such as these have been referred to as “inevitably erotic,” (Schmidt 44) aforementioned fact that Benjamin always has food waiting for his brothers when they re- and work to sexually objectify the boys’ sister even further. turn from hunting. According to the Oxford English Dictionary to “hunt” is to “engage in After witnessing the “spoiling” of the girl by her brothers, it is important to return to the the chase” of something, or to “eagerly search for [something] with desire and diligence” first symbol that the brothers associate with their sister: “a flag red as blood” (Grimm 19). The (“hunt”). As the brothers try to find the object of their desire, they ultimately return home to word “flag” can be used as “an opprobrious term applied to a woman” (“flag”). If a woman Benjamin, who satisfies their appetite. Highly noteworthy, then, is the abundance of meat that has been disgraced or shamed, she may be referred to as a flag. The violent, incestuous rape of the brothers bring home for consumption, because “for centuries, red meat has been associ- the girl is certainly capable of incurring disgrace or shame. Furthermore, the flag is described ated with strength, power, aggression and sexuality” (Jones 139). In fact, “health manuals in as “red as blood” shortly before the boys make an oath that if they “run into a girl, her red the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries recommended a diet low in meat for adolescent blood will flow” (Grimm 19). These images imply a defloration, as well as the menses that is boys as a means of combating masturbation” and a diet of red meat was associated with “sex- associated with females and femininity. They foretell the fact that the girl will reach puberty ual precocity” (Jones 141). This equation of meat with virility, power, and aggression further while living with her brothers. More importantly, they indicate the sense of violence that the illustrates the predatory and dominant nature of the eleven brothers in their control over Ben- brothers associate with femininity. Essentially, the first image equated with the princess, the jamin. “flag red as blood,” foreshadows the incestuous ravaging that will link the girl to her brothers The introduction of the sister provides a new character to fulfill the feminine role. The first and will disgrace her—labeling her a flag. description of the young girl states “[s]he had a golden star on her forehead” (Grimm 20). Sub- The introduction of the sister does not, however, remove Benjamin from his feminine role. sequently, when she meets her brother Benjamin for the first time, “he [is] filled with wonder Rather than join his brothers’ masculine unit, Benjamin remains in his feminine role, continu- by her great beauty…and by the star on her forehead” (Grimm 20). The term “golden” may ing to satisfy his brothers: “The eleven boys went into the woods, caught game, deer, birds, be used to describe something that is valuable or coveted. The word “star,” in one entry in the and doves, so that they would have enough to eat, and Benjamin and his sister made sure that Oxford English Dictionary, refers to “a natural object resembling or likened to a star; e.g. the everything was cooked in a tasty way” (Grimm 21). Again, the eleven brothers (as a single open corolla (or corolla and disk) of a flower. The corolla of a flower is described as “the whorl unit) take the role of hunter and bring back meat to fuel their power and sexuality. Benjamin of petals forming the inner envelope of the flower, and generally its most conspicuous part; remains in his feminine role, in part because changing the number of the masculine unit from usually coloured and delicate of texture” (“co- eleven to twelve would compromise its phallic power. Interestingly, Benjamin never argues rolla”). The star-shaped corolla of the flower, his emasculated role or his inability to ascend to the role of hunter. indicative of the virginal vagina, is further de- This equation of meat with Perhaps more disturbing is the implied willingness of the young girl to satisfy her broth- scribed as “delicate.” Many of the definitions virility, power, and aggression ers. She conducts her domestic duties, “making sure that there [is] always food on the table for “delicate” are suggestive of feminine sex- when the brothers return home” (Grimm 22). This indicates that she is always waiting to satis- uality as it culturally pertains to heterosexual further illustrates the fy their appetites. After ensuring that her brothers are gratified, she “[makes] the beds up with males: “delightful, pleasant; characterized by predatory and dominant clean, white linens” (Grimm 22). This suggests that the beds have, in some way, been soiled. pleasure or sensuous delight; exquisitely soft, Furthermore, the specification that the new linens are “white” implies an attempt to regain slender, or slight; a thing that gives pleasure; nature of the eleven brothers purity. Immediately following this line, the text reveals that “[t]he brothers were completely so fine or tender as to be easily damaged, in- in their control over Benjamin. content, and they lived together in perfect harmony” (Grimm 22). It does not, however, indi- jured, or spoiled” (“delicate”). Delving deep- cate that the sister is contented, nor that she is living harmoniously. er, the term “spoiled” refers to something that The story does, however, progress to a point at which the young girl begins to gain agen- has been “pillaged, plundered, or ravaged” (“spoiled”) and to “spoil” something can mean cy over her sexuality, though she is still being sexually objectified by her brothers. This is “to disrobe or unclothe a person” or “to ravish or violate a woman” (“spoil”). Therefore, the suggested when the only mention of vegetables or herbs in the story occurs; when the girl is “golden star” on the girl’s forehead is symbolically suggestive of her specialness, and is also moving toward a sexual awakening: “[t]he princess gathered firewood, found herbs to cook indicative of her vagina, which is coveted by her brothers. Moreover, her “delicate” corolla— the vegetables with, and stirred the pots on the fire so that there was always food on the ta- her vestal vagina—in the presence of these eleven hunters, is anything but safe. Not only does ble when the brothers returned home” (Grimm 22). Jones contends that “milk and eggs have this suggest incest, it also suggests that the brothers are metaphorically, if not actually, plun- feminine associations, as do vegetables that contain seeds (the ovaries of plants) and that are dering their young sister. While startling to modern readers, “many of the tales speak directly round, smooth, small, soft, sweet, and juicy” (139). Furthermore, he states that “[s]pices… to and about the erotic elements of love,” which James McGlathery maintains have survived also excite[d] the sensual nature rather than moral character of a young woman” (141). This the many revisions of the tales, and are not restricted by the familial relationship of characters indicates that the sister was beginning to experience sexual excitement, likely as a result of (qtd. in Schmidt 44). hormonal changes upon reaching puberty. The act of “stir[ing] the pots” suggests mastur- The more explicit aspects of incest appear when the brothers are introduced to their sister. bation. Though the tool used to stir the pots is likely to be viewed as a phallic symbol, when Immediately upon discovering that Benjamin is, in fact, the girl’s brother, the two “[feel] so examining the possibility of masturbation, the tool may be considered “a symbol for the girl’s

Jacob | 45 46 | Jacob own finger” (Caccavo 133). The pot would then represent the girl’s vagina, and the stirring is accused of playing “godless tricks…in secret” and is sentenced to be burned at the stake would indicate self-gratification “in preparation for the future possibility of sexual intercourse (Grimm 23). The “godless tricks” can be read as another reference to her illicit masturbation. and motherhood” (Caccavo 133). The text demonstrates that the self-gratification is indeed in In this case, her roused sexuality leads to her imminent death. However, “preparation…for intercourse,” as it indicates that the reason the girl stirs the pots is to pro- vide satisfaction for her brothers’ appetites. Additionally, the word “stirred,” when used as an [j]ust after she had been bound to the stake and at the moment when flames be- adjective, refers to something that has been “moved, agitated, [or] excited” (“stirred”). When gan to lick at her clothes with their red tongues, the seven years came to an end. Sud- used as a verb, “stir” can mean “to be roused or excited, as feeling, passion,” “to excite to ac- denly there was a whirring sound in the air and twelve ravens came flying through tivity [or] stimulate,” or even “to show signs of growth; to bud” (“stir”). This again indicates the air and swooped down. When they touched the ground, they turned into that the act of stirring the pot, alongside the only reference to vegetables, is a representation of her twelve brothers, whom she had disenchanted. They stomped on the fire, put the young girl’s pubescent sexual awakening and concurrent masturbation. out the flames, and released their sister. They all hugged and kissed. (Grimm 23) In accordance with the theme of oppressive male dominance, however, the young girl’s re- alization of her sexuality does not go unpunished. As Stone asserts, “[t]he restriction of wom- Because the seven years have expired, the brothers return to reclaim their dominance over en at puberty can also be interpreted as a reaction of men to the threat of female sexuality” their sister. They, unlike their sister, are capable of putting out the fire—a power that Ruth B. (47). More specifically, “[s]exuality is also portrayed as harmful to the heroine herself. There Bottigheimer asserts is gender specific. Males often are able to combat flames in Kinder-und are many symbolic hints that women should not become too familiar with their own bod- Hausmärchen, while “[n]ot a single woman enjoys a similar immunity to flame” (Bottigheimer ies” (Stone 47). Immediately after the implied sexual awakening, the girl leaves her brothers 28). This gender specific power over the element works to reinforce the males’ supremacy and while “everyone [is] sitting at the table, eating” the “fine meal” that “Benjamin and his sister dominance over the female. Additionally, the flames are sexualized, described as “lick[ing]” had prepared” (Grimm 22). The reference to the meal again illustrates the fact that Benjamin at the girl with their “red tongues.” To “lick” and his sister are responsible for indulging their brothers. At this juncture, the sister decides means to “pass the tongue over (something), she wants to “do something nice for her brothers” and escapes to her “little garden” outside Though the sister’s sexual e.g. with the object of tasting, moistening of her “enchanted house” to “pick flowers” (Grimm 22). The garden and flowers are, again, awakening negatively affects the surface, or removing something from it” representative of the girl’s vagina, and “picking flowers” is also symbolic of defloration. Ad- (“lick”). The flames are molesting the girl, both ditionally, the “house” is also a vaginal symbol, and the word “enchanted” indicates that the her brothers, it ultimately “tasting” and “moistening” her, while simulta- “house” is “charmed [or] enraptured” (“enchanted”). This language illustrates another exam- works to strip her of the neously removing her power. ple of the girl’s aroused sexuality and self-gratification. The fact that she views it as a favor for Interestingly, though the sister has re- her brothers again illustrates Caccavo’s assertion that the young female’s masturbation is used resulting agency she would mained entirely silent for seven years in or- in preparation for sexual intercourse. At this point, have gained. der to save her brothers, she is credited only with “disenchanting” them, while they are de- just as she was picking the flowers, the twelve brothers turned into twelve ravens and flew scribed as “releas[ing]” her. This implies that, up over the trees, and the house vanished. The poor girl was left all alone in the wilder- not only are the males the heroes, they also hold the power to “release” their sister. Because ness. As she turned around, she caught sight of an old woman next to her who said: “Dear she has been claimed by another phallic power, the king, the brothers relinquish their domi- child, what have you done? Why didn’t you leave those twelve white flowers alone?” nance of their sister to her husband. After all, they are still able to exert their dominance over (Grimm 22) Benjamin, who never abandoned the submissive feminine role. The recurring themes of food, forests, and feminine domestication work to cloak the more Essentially, she is blamed for spoiling the twelve boys. As punishment for the realization of latent motifs of masturbation, homosexuality, and incest while reinforcing the gender binary her feminine sexuality, the girl is left alone and unprotected in the wilderness. She is then of the tale’s male-dominated society. By placing the power with the phallic unit, the text effec- made responsible for restoring her brothers to their human form by remaining silent and not tively emasculates Benjamin and oppresses his sister. Moreover, by incorporating punishment smiling for seven years. Because the female’s realization of her sexuality posed a threat, her for the female in the instances in which she is responsible for the males’ castration, “The Twelve power of speech was restricted. As “all domination begins by prohibiting language” (Barthes Brothers” acts as somewhat of a deterrent or precautionary tale for females approaching a rec- 68), the most effective way to narratively strip the girl of her power was by forcibly silencing ognition of their sexual proclivities. Ultimately, the equation of femininity (or feminine sex- her for an extended period of time. Though the sister’s sexual awakening negatively affects her uality) with anxiety or punishment adheres to the patriarchal construction of phallocentrism brothers, it ultimately works to strip her of the resulting agency she would have gained. This and works to perpetuate the cultivation of a gender dichotomy that subtly subdues one sex. again demonstrates Stone’s ideals that women are likely to be subjugated when they threaten men’s power and that in these tales, female sexuality is likely to prove self-destructive. As the story continues, the girl is sitting alone in a tree, and is discovered by a king who “set[s] eyes on the beautiful princess with the golden star on her forehead” and becomes “so enchanted with her beauty that he call[s] up to her to ask if she [will] be his wife” (Grimm 23). The girl is once again recognized for her “golden star” and is thereafter claimed by another dominating patriarch. As time passes, her sexuality is revived, and it is not long before she

Jacob | 47 48 | Jacob Barthes, Roland. S/Z: An Essay. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc., 1974. Print

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Caccavo, Penny. “The Forbidden Room: A Pair of Fairy Tales as Developmental Metaphor.” Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women. Ed. Elaine V. Siegel. New York: Brunner/Mazel Inc., 1992. 130-51. Print.

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Grimm, Wilhelm, and Jacob Grimm. “The Twelve Brothers.” The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. Maria Tatar. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 18-24. Print.

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Jones, Michael Owen. “Food Choice, Symbolism, and Identity: Bread and Butter Issues for Folkloristics and Nutrition Studies (American Folklore Society Presidential Address, October 2005).” Journal of American Folklore 120.477 (2007): 129-177. Project MUSE. 1 Nov. 2012. Web.

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Jacob | 49 50 | Divoky Divoky | 51 52 | Divoky Remnants of a Mythology | Grasping Agency through the Role of the Mother in Heather Divoky The Awakening and The Scarlet Letter | Jamie L. Joyner

gyptian, Greek, Roman, Norse, Chi- their offspring are the stars, in others, they uring the Victorian era, a new protagonist was introduced in the American novel—a nese, and even Mesoamerican mythol- are virgin goddesses. Their primary function female protagonist depicted as a mother who was seen as other in society. The role of Eogies were all passed down through was to open and guard the gates of the sun Dthe mother and patriarchy’s oppression of her sexuality can be studied in Edna Pontel- written manuscripts. While many of these god’s palace, and in some tales guard a giant lier in The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet mythologies were pillaged and destroyed monster hidden in our constellations. They Letter. The woman’s sexuality in the maternal role is essential in the resistance of the phallo- by various conquerors—notably those found were beautiful, strong, and, in my case, in- centric societal norms because it awakens the woman’s ability to exist outside of the institution in connection with Christendom—their tra- spiring. of motherhood. Both protagonists can be analyzed through Virginia Woolf’s theory of finan- ditions were much harder to completely Creating these three pieces not only al- cial and spatial independence in A Room of One’s Own, and the conclusion can be reached that break. Their tales were not as easily forgotten lowed me to revisit the origins of my heri- agency gained by embracing or rejecting the role of the maternal allows the mother to break thanks to the written word, and historians of tage, but I also geeked out on how awesome free of patriarchy. Furthermore, the mother’s plight to gain agency encourages the novels’ the time fought to save these physical mani- Slavic myths are. It’s my way of visualizing audiences to take action in regard to women’s rights. festations of cultures because they were part the remains of legends that are somehow Virginia Woolf’s theory in A Room of One’s Own can be used as a lens to analyze the efforts of history. But what happens to a mythology connected to me, deepening my connection of the protagonists to exist outside of patriarchal norms by creating a space of their own. The in which tradition was strictly oral and told with the past of my people. Like most of my sense of establishing one’s own space is pertinent in being able to exist outside of societal only through stories preformed in front of an work, exploring the mysterious and reimag- norms. Edna Pontellier attempts to establish a room of her own by shedding her identities as audience? ining it, as I have done with the three Zorya, wife and mother. Through her rebellion against the institution of these roles, she is able to gain The Slavs’ mythologies were a vast col- is my attempt at not losing something that is agency throughout The Awakening. Her rebirth as an individual begins to plant seeds with- lection of fascinating stories passed down almost gone. in the minds of nineteenth-century readers that will one day give birth to feminism. Hester from generation to generation via the oral Prynne can be labeled as other throughout her emotional journey within Hawthorne’s novel. tradition. When conversion to Christianity Her ability to exist outside of patriarchy allows her to maintain full agency in the novel. Hes- quickly spread over the Slavic territories, ter’s success in navigating the phallocentric provides an authoritative role model for women. these mythologies dwindled to no more than Each achieves this sense of agency by either shedding or wholly embracing her role as mother. a few sparsely remembered accounts. As a Virginia Woolf presents her theory that women should be capable of having their own historian myself, this agitates me, and as a space in which to create in her book A Room of One’s Own. The book was originally a speech person with Czech heritage traceable as far that Woolf had written for “Newnham and Girton colleges” in London (Gordon vii), and was back as Slavic history extends, it breaks my meant to inspire young women to become more than domesticated housewives. Woolf writes heart. What remains of these rich faerie tales that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” in order to create (4). According to are uncovered through old legends, arche- Mary Gordon, Woolf’s theory implies that “genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is en- ological findings, and the odd manuscript cumbered by fear…and without money freedom is impossible” (viii). A woman must possess written by missionaries of the time. her own income, independent from the masculine. Sally Alexander describes A Room of One’s Fairly well documented, these three Slav- Own as Woolf’s “wish for freedom of mind, independence of property and body from fathers ic Goddess allowed me to not only connect and husbands, professors and judges, all men of power and wealth who would tell women back to a piece of where I came from, but also what to do” (275). Yet Woolf’s theory hinges on the fact that women must have money in order piqued my interest as an art historian, and, to maintain a private space. If there is no income—there can be no agency. of course, an artist. The Zorya were the per- In The Awakening, under the watchful eye of patriarchy in her husband’s home, Edna be- sonifications of the Evening, Midnight, and gins painting, which is her gateway to agency. Although the room is described as her own, her Morning stars. Respectively, they are called access is restricted based on her status as wife and mother. Mr. Pontellier asserts his dominion Zorya Vechernyaya, the unnamed Zorya, over Edna when he states, “It seems to me the utmost folly for a woman at the head of a house- and Zorya Utrennyaya. They are as myste- See our Featured Artists page on our website hold, and the mother of children, to spend in an atelier [her room] days which would be better rious as they sound, with several document- for more information about Heather Divoky, employed contriving for the comfort of her family” (Chopin 55). Patriarchy implies that her ed variations of their backgrounds—in some to peruse her prints, or commission an orig- creative space is unacceptable—thus, inducing Edna’s rebellion to obtain a room of her own instances, they are married to the moon and inal. in which to refashion herself as independent.

Divoky | 53 54 | Joyner As Edna paints, she yearns to possess a space that is predominantly her own, and as she that can be seen as requiring great discipline that most women would lack during this time in develops her talents with the paintbrush, she begins to cultivate her identity as woman. Ed- history. na’s choice of the paintbrush is extremely telling in her attempts to grasp agency within her Through her manipulation of societal norms, Hester is able to maintain a room of her own journey through the implied envy of the penis—the male source of power. Edna’s awakening while forcing the phallocentric authorities to accept her sin in exchange for the creative outlet stems from her obsession with the paintbrush—a phallic symbol. The brush is an obvious male that they have termed “fashion” (Hawthorne 58). Yet what should be considered is Hester’s representation, which can then be seen as Edna’s choice in manipulating the phallocentricism chosen tool in her mastery of her art—the needle. The needle can be viewed as a transgendered that she is subjected to. Her artwork begins to change her, and her husband notes that she is object. It represents both the masculine and the feminine. The needle’s eye is a clear represen- “not herself” when she is painting (Chopin 55). Patriarchy critiques Edna’s transformation as tation of vaginal imagery, which also correlates with the notion of giving birth. The woman is a wayward choice deviating from the ideal woman. But according to Nikol Lohr, “painting...is giving birth to art through the vaginal opening of the needle. However, the needle’s point can sexy because it fuses vision and skill into a creative superpower” (qtd in Hosegood 151). Edna be considered to be a phallic representation, and it can be implied that Hester has penis envy. takes control of her own talents and applies them to the canvas of her choice. She no longer Psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray defines penis envy as the “woman’s resentment and jealousy at cares if society does not approve of her self-expression. For the first time in her life, she has being deprived of the…sexual advantages, reserved for men alone” (51). Through Irigaray’s attained agency through her own creativity in her manipulation of the phallic paintbrush. definition of penis envy, it can be understood that Hester is envious not of theactualpe- This creativity leads to Edna’s financial security as she begins to sell her paintings. Edna nis, but of its sexual freedom. Hester has been acquires financial agency from her husband through her artwork. She states, “I am beginning punished for displaying her sexuality. This to sell my sketches” (Chopin 76), which allows her to pay for her room of her own. Accord- Through the needle, [Hester] leads to Hester’s manipulation of the needle. ing to Denise Marshall, Edna’s ability to maintain her own financial independence reinforces can transcend traditional Through the needle, she can transcend tradi- Woolf’s ideology that “as women are less and less secured by men and in domesticity, they tional gender roles within puritanical society, become more and more secure in themselves. gender roles within puritanical and she can exist in a gray area in which she Their identities become more pronounced as society, and she can exist in a is capable of earning the finances that Woolf the conventions break up” (160). Woolf’s the- [Edna] no longer cares if so- states are necessary to sustaining feminine in- ory of financial stability leading to agency is ciety does not approve of her gray area in which she is dependence. seen through Edna’s use of her creative talent. capable of earning the Although both protagonists gain the finan- Similar to Edna, Hester is also trapped self-expression. For the first cial independence promoted in Woolf’s theory within a loveless marriage; however, Hester time in her life, she has at- finances that Woolf states are through their manipulation of phallic symbols has lived alone without her husband for many necessary to sustaining of power, they must also construct and main- years. Her husband has gone missing, and it tained agency through her own tain a room of their own that is separate from has been assumed that he is dead. This implies creativity in her manipulation feminine independence. patriarchal traditions. In order for this space to that Hester has already experienced the agency function as Woolf argues, both women must be that Edna could not due to her husband’s pres- of the phallic paintbrush. capable of shedding patriarchally prescribed ence in the beginning of the novel. The Scarlet gender roles, and be willing to embrace their maternal identities. It is, ultimately, through her Letter opens with Hester being released from role as mother that each woman finds freedom from the bonds of the institution. prison after the birth of her daughter, Pearl. Because Hester’s husband is not present, it is Edna Pontellier finds herself imprisoned within the roles that patriarchy has dictated for known that she has sinned with another man. Hester is ostracized from puritan society due to her since childhood. She is trapped within a marriage that she does not want, and she has her refusal to admit who the father of her baby is. Cast out of her home and lifestyle, Hester been incorporated into the role of mother, even though she cannot mold herself to fit its re- must fashion a space of her own in which to raise her daughter. But in order to maintain an quirements. Her awakening begins as she realizes that she does not have to conform to her independent feminine space, according to Woolf, she must be capable of financially sustaining husband’s wishes, as she “perceive[s] that her will ha[s] blazed up, stubborn and resistant” to it. his commands that she go to bed (Chopin 31). In this moment, Edna begins to awaken from Like Edna, Hester gains financial agency through her own creative artistry in needlework. patriarchy’s hold over her. It is in this first feeble moment of resistance that Edna realizes that, Although Hawthorne describes needlework as “the only [art] within a woman’s grasp” (57), as a woman, she has lacked agency throughout her life. Hester’s talent with her needle is extremely desirable to the patriarchal society that has con- But she has also lacked agency within her role as mother. Motherhood has often been demned her. Frederick Newberry describes Hester’s artwork as being “worthy of the monarch viewed as an institutional role implemented by patriarchy, which Adrienne Rich defines as “a and nobility in England [and that] it is in demand for the highest orders of Puritan society” familial-social, ideological, political system in which men…determine what part women shall (236). Hester is able to financially support herself and her child through her creativity. Adri- or shall not play” (57). It can be argued that Edna views motherhood as what Rich defines as enne Rich describes Hester’s needlework as “a gesture of such defiance” (160); it is with this the “institution,” which “has alienated women from [their] bodies by incarcerating [them] in creative defiance that she is able to construct a space outside of patriarchal dictatorship—one them [their bodies]” (13). Edna is described as being detached from her children. It appears that societal norms cannot touch. Betsy Hosegood describes a woman’s creativity through to the reader that her children are merely more independent than most, but still her husband needlework as the “supreme power of the producer whose creative efforts are the result of attempts to force her into the role of the devoted mother. However, Chopin describes Edna joy, imagination, and discipline” (152). Hester secures her own space through an artistic effort as “not a mother-woman” (9), and it is immediately implied for the reader that Edna does not

Joyner | 55 56 | Joyner live up to patriarchy’s imposed definition of mother. Sara Ruddick defends mothers like Edna Rich’s idea of institution, which leads her to choose death. Within the broken shards of her when she writes, “not all women are mothers, nor is maternal thinking the whole of women’s falsely secured agency, Edna denies patriarchal constraints in her final moments, choosing thought” (236). Edna is not consumed with her maternal role. She chooses to maintain an iden- death over a life of imprisonment. tity that holds true to the woman she was prior to giving birth. While Edna chooses death over the institutional maternal, Hester maintains her agency as Rich describes Edna in her book Of Woman Born as being “an ‘inadequate’” mother, mere- she seeks to redefine the mother’s role by living. Hester uses her daughter, Pearl, as a symbol ly, because she feels “unequal to the mother role” (237). Chopin explains Edna’s imbalanced of her agency throughout the novel. It is through Pearl that she maintains the ability to exist version of the maternal as being “fond of her children in an uneven, impulsive way…she did outside of the patriarchal tradition in her community. However, patriarchy will never allow not miss them except with an occasional intense longing” (19). Her refusal to smother her a woman to hold onto something that provides such a blatant amount of resistance to socie- children with unnecessary attention leads patriarchy to judge and condemn her as a woman tal norms. Therefore, the patriarchal traditions demand that Pearl be taken from Hester. The who is incapable of following societal norms and the role that “God” has given her. Lucia Governor threatens to take Pearl away when he states, “It is because of stain which that letter Valeska discusses the effects that the mater- indicates, that we would transfer thy child to other hands” (Hawthorne 76). Due to the terrible nal role has on women who are not meant to sin that Hester has committed, patriarchy does not see her as a fit role model for the child. mother: “motherhood was the primary and… It is through this disconnet Adrienne Rich explains that “[t]hroughout patriarchal mythology, dream-symbolism, the- only route to social and economic” stability within the facets of herself that ology, [and] language…the female body is [seen as being] impure, corrupt, the site of dis- (74). This forced entry into motherhood led to charges, bleedings, [and] dangerous to masculinity, a source of moral and physical contam- a detached form of parenting as is evident with allows Edna to transition into ination, ‘the devil’s gateway’” (34). Hester’s womanly body now threatens patriarchy’s hold Edna when she exclaims, “I would give my life her own space, free from the over societal norms, because she has successfully constructed her own space outside of the for my children; but I wouldn’t give myself” phallocentric. Patriarchy must dismantle her agency and strip her of the power she holds out- (Chopin 46). She recognizes that she cannot impositions that the side of patriarchal constraints. Yet Hester continues to manipulate the phallocentric when she give her self to her children, that her identity as phalocentirc authority exclaims, Edna is more essential than the title of mother. Valeska explains that a new mother will take enforces. God gave me the child…in the requital of all things else, which ye have taken from me. She back her identity “if [her] community will not is my happiness!—she is my torture…Pearl punishes me too!...Ye shall not take her…I will provide [her] with the freedom [she] need[s] not give her up! (Hawthorne 78) to rebuild [her] life” (75). Edna takes her freedom into her own hands in order to construct her own identity, which leads to a disconnect from her children. It is through this disconnect By deferring to patriarchal religious beliefs, Hester is able to maintain her agency while assert- within the facets of herself that allows Edna to transition into her own space, free from the ing her maternal instincts to defend her child. Thus, Hester gives the male representatives a impositions that the phallocentric authority enforces. false sense of power over her by implying all of the things they wish to hear. Edna’s awakening leads to her moving into her own home—separate from her husband Hester continues to embrace the maternal role throughout the novel. Her ability to contin- and children. As she constructs the space that Woolf deems necessary in order for a woman ue to mother outside of Rich’s theory of the institution leads to the ultimate sense of freedom. to create, Edna begins to evolve into the woman that she has longed to be. Chopin shows the Yet Hester is seen as this other woman due to the fact that she has “collaborated” with an un- reader Edna’s ascension into agency when she writes, known man. This act of sexual collaboration, according to Woolf, leads to “the act of creation” (104), which gives birth to Hester’s maternal role. It is through her sexual “awakening” that the pigeon-house pleased her…There was with her a feeling of having descended in the she is able to navigate outside of the patriarchal society. She embraces her role as mother as social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step which she raises her daughter alone. Ann Ferguson suggests that patriarchy has been weakened due she took toward relieving herself from obligations added to her strength and expansion to “the increase of single mother-headed families” (12), which has also led to the mother being as an individual…No longer was she content to “feed upon opinion” when her own soul “both the domestic [parent] and breadwinner” (12). Through Ferguson’s ideas, Hester can be had invited her. (89) viewed as the breadwinner through the income that she earns, yet she is also the domestic parent as well. Yet through her success in attaining agency, Edna begins to shed the role of mother. As Edna Her ability to navigate both parental roles allows her agency within the puritanical so- grows into a free individual within her independent space, it is clear, based on her infatuation ciety in which she lives; this agency can also relate to the needle as her chosen profession. It with different male suitors, that she has not freed herself from patriarchal imprisonment. As is through the transgendered freedom of the needle that Hester is able to embrace her dual she crafts her space, she continues to base her room of her own around the phallus. When identities as both mother and father. Andrea O’Reilly refers to this freedom in motherhood Robert, the man who Edna loves, denies his love for her, she loses her false sense of agency, as “a site of empowerment and as a location of social change” (18). Hester’s maternal role is a and falls into depression. Yet even in her inability to break free, she continues to refuse to source of empowerment for feminine readers in the nineteenth century, as well as the starting conform to the institution of motherhood at the end of the novel by deciding that “she would point for radical social change in women’s roles. This tiny seed of evolution has been planted never sacrifice herself for her children” (Chopin 108). Edna breaks patriarchy’s hold over her within the reader’s mind, and Woolf implies that the change needed depends on women such by shedding her identity as mother, which leads to her inability to cope with the loneliness as Hester and the influence they can give to future generations (110). Hester has embraced that she experiences without her children. However, Edna continues to view motherhood as her role as mother and has found agency in which to exist independently outside of the male

Joyner | 57 58 | Joyner dominated familial structure. Even though both protagonists choose different paths in their maternal journeys, both Poetess Felicia Hemans:Challenging Socially Constructed Promotion women are prime examples of the possibilities for women when they attain Woolf’s theory of Female Fragility in “The Homes of England” Sadie E. Campbell of spatial independence in A Room of One’s Own. Edna rejects motherhood as institution and | gains agency through her artistic talents. Through the income earned from her art, she is able to maintain her own home independent of her husband’s reach. Through her own room, she is able to become sexually independent in her choice of partners, which also leads Edna to her downfall. Edna’s inability to exist outside of the phallocentric, ultimately, leads to her death. n Felicia Hemans’s poem “The Homes of England” from Records of Woman with Other Poems, However, in her final moments, she chooses death over the imprisonment that motherhood the poetess addresses early nineteenth-century’s socially constructed promotion of female would entail, which allows her chosen identity to prevail over patriarchy. Ifragility—branded by patriarchal forces as female weakness—and challenges English soci- Hester embraces her entry into motherhood and uses it to construct her own agency. She ety’s lack of appreciation with regard to women’s valuable contributions. Although Hemans maintains her own home free from patriarchal influence through the income generated by her uses a cautious and indirect methodology to address and challenge societal and cultural mo- needlework. Although Hester is not seen as sexually active throughout the novel, it can be im- res, nonetheless, she draws critical attention to the dichotomy between an era of immense plied that she has gained sexual independence through giving birth to Pearl. Her willingness productive power and women’s marginalization in a patriarchal society. More specifically, to hold onto Pearl at any cost shows her ability to manipulate the men in power who would Hemans contests social structures and the under-appreciation of domesticity and, resultantly, strip her of the agency that Pearl represents. Hester’s role exemplifies Woolf’s idea that one inspired beneficial transformation in women’s personal and national identities. In terms of woman who creates outside of phallocentricism can influence the awakening of all women. female empowerment, Hemans invites women to ponder the antithesis between the negative Hester shows that through the maternal, one can achieve agency outside of the institution. It effects of apathetic acceptance of their undervalued domestic roles and the positive effects of is in this aspect that Edna failed. If she had embraced her role as mother, she might have lived heightened recognition as to women’s importance within the domestic sphere, thereby chal- in a room of her own, free of phallocentricism. However, Edna’s battle cannot be overlooked; lenging traditional beliefs and defying stereotypical interpretations of female fragility. The po- for it was through her maternal role that she was able to transcend patriarchal norms. The role etess confronts the lack of deserved recognition towards women in “The Homes of England” of the maternal must be valued as the root of social change for women in nineteenth-century and, even though Hemans’s approach is decidedly reserved in tone, her feminist message is literature. It is through these mothers that feminism was born. no less compelling. If we understand feminism to be a concept which, in part, prizes the need for women to be credited for their unique abilities and strengths, Hemans underscores the ad- mirable qualities of gentleness, sensitivity, and compassion in “The Homes of England” and, in doing so, promotes women’s value, both in the past and present. Alexander, Sally. “Room of One’s Own: 1920s Feminist Utopias.” Women: A Cultural Review 11.3 (2000): 273-88. Academic Search Complete. Hemans was a feminist without the fanfare and an activist without the anger; the poetess Web. 12 September 2012. incited a poetical discourse, a discourse that questioned societal and cultural values in a subtle Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. New York: Norton, 1994. Print. way, a genteel probing into females’ roles in British domesticity and the influence of feminini-

Ferguson, Ann. “Motherhood and Sexuality: Some Feminist Questions.” Hypatia. 1.2 (1986): 3-22. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 Septem- ty. Through her poetic contributions, particularly the poem “The Homes of England,” Hemans ber 2012. undermines the patriarchal ideology of the early nineteenth century and helps women define

Gordon, Mary. Foreword. A Room of One’s Own. By Virginia Woolf. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1981. vii-xiv. Print. their subjectivity and discover their agency; additionally, by the same poetic impartations, the poetess demonstrates that all feminist acts—however they are presented or communicat- Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 3rd ed. Ed. Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richard Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: Norton, 1988. Print. ed--are concurrent with feminist activism. When the structure of the poem is analyzed in a systematic way and the language is ex- Hosegood, Betsy. “Whip Your Hobby into Shape: Knitting, Feminism and Construction of Gender.” Textile 7.2 (2009): 148-63. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 December 2012. amined, its composition reveals how Hemans aligns females’ experiences with self-confidence and, in equal measure, rejects patriarchal ideology with its harmful potentiality to disempower Irigaray, Luce. This Sex which is not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. Print. women. There are numerous examples of word choices and sentence fragments in Hemans’s Marshall, Denise. “Slaying The Angel and The Patriarch: The Grinning Woolf.” Women’s Studies 15.1-3 (1988): 149-77. Academic Search Com- five-stanza poem to strongly suggest that women’s private emotions were in opposition with plete. Web. 12 Oct. 2012. their public sentiments. The second stanza is a premier example of the ways in which Hemans Newberry, Frederick. “Tradition and Disinheritance.” The Scarlet Letter an Authoritative Text: Essays in Criticism and Scholarship. 3rd ed. Ed. uses a synthesis of ingenious word choices and pertinent sentence fragments to transpose in- Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richard Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: Norton, 1988. 231-48. Print. ternal opinions to external awareness: O’Reilly, Andrea. “Outlaw(ing) Motherhood: A Theory and Politic of Maternal Empowerment for the Twenty-first Century.” Hecate 36.1 (2010): 17-29. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 October 2012. The merry Homes of England! Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Norton, 1976. Print. Around their hearths by night,

Ruddick, Sara. “Preservative Love and Military Destruction: Some Reflections on Mothering and Peace.”Mothering . Ed. Joyce Trebilcot. What gladsome looks of household love Totowa: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984. 231-62. Print. Meet, in the ruddy light!

Valeska, Lucia. “If All Else Fails, I’m Still a Mother.” Mothering. Ed. Joyce Trebilcot. Totowa: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984. 70-78. Print. There woman’s voice flows forth in song, Or childhood’s tale is told, Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1929. Print. Joyner | 59 60 | Campbell Or lips move tunefully along ulate, in poetic form, that if a “woman’s voice” is not appreciated, their gender is trivialized Some glorious page of old. (9-16) and, without full recognition, their femininity is minimalized (13). A woman’s voice was virtually ignored during the British Industrial Revolution, an era It is immediately obvious to readers that the first line of all five stanzas begins with a refer- when, as stated by E.J. Hobsbawn in The Age of Revolution, “the shackles were taken off the ence to a home: the “stately Homes of England,” the “merry Homes of England,” the “blessed productive power of human societies, which henceforth become capable of the constant, rapid, Homes of England,” the “Cottage Homes of England,” and the “free, fair Homes of England,” and up to the present limitless multiplication of. . .goods and services” (28). The “productive thus indicative of Hemans’s intent to focus exclusively on women positioned in domestic en- power of human societies” vehemently discouraged women from seeking personal fulfillment virons, environs that are capitalized to highlight the immensity of their importance. outside the home (28); indeed, women’s entire social existence was deliberately constructed To better appreciate the significance of Hemans’s works and her literary appeals for the to prevent them from attaining the same level of maturity and rationality as men in issues recognition of women’s contributions in domestic environs, it is important to understand the other than domesticity. Without male encouragement and support, women’s voices barely historical and cultural contexts when “The Homes of England” was published in 1828. As con- rose above a whisper outside the familial home, but Hemans moves to project an efficacious firmed by Jerome J. McGann inThe Romantic Ideology, the need “to elucidate the subject matter message on behalf of all women when she writes that a woman’s voice “flows forth in song” historically [and] to define the specific ways in which certain stylistic forms intersect and join with “lips [that] move tunefully along,” “solemn, yet sweet,” and, as a consequence, the poet- with certain factual and cognitive points of reference” is crucial (82); the result is a comprehen- ess raises reader’s awareness that women’s voices, together with their insights and opinions, sive explanation as to why Hemans addresses and challenges societal and cultural mores re- flows rather than bursts and surges rather than floods (italics mine, 13, 15, 21). garding attitudes towards English women “in hut and hall,” yet fell short of the endorsement Hemans’s harmonious tone throughout the poem contributes to the overall message re- to venture outside the realms of domesticity and why they remained “[a]round their hearths garding the need for women to be recognized and appreciated for their uniqueness, and the by night” as poeticized by Hemans in “The Homes of England” ( 34, 10). tone also strikes a congenial chord with readers: no biting sarcasm is used, no vulgar attack The impact of the British Industrial Revolution (1780-1850) penetrated economic, techno- is delivered, only transparent images and poetical representations of women who live near logical, political, and social barriers in ways that cannot be underestimated; it was the most “shade and sunny gleam,” close to “glowing orchards,” or next to “silvery brooks” (Hemans important shift involving mass production in European history. However, this historical shift 6, 29, 27). Further, Hemans taps into reader’s emotions with the inclusion of certain adjec- sharply contrasted with English society’s injustices and the virtual indifference regarding tives, such as “sunny, “glowing,” and “silvery” which evoke moods of cheeriness, warmth, women’s worth and prompted Hemans to craft a number of her poems in an effort to high- and sweetness, as when a “woman’s voice flows forth in song” (6, 29, 27, 13). To complement light the incongruities between the celebration of industrial power and the failure of society to the tone and emotive language used, Hemans’s stylistic modus operandi in “The Homes of appreciate women for their unique and valuable contributions. Hemans offers a female per- England” is to compose an even-numbered eight lines for each stanza, a deliberate tactic by spective of society’s injustices towards women during the era of the British Industrial Revolu- Hemans to accentuate conformity in the poem’s structure, which parallels patriarchy’s expec- tion in “The Homes of England,” and the poet- tations regarding the behavior of women in the early nineteenth century. ess’s astute interpretation is achieved through As a woman writer, Hemans was aware that she was obliged to follow society’s expecta- Hemans was a feminist a number of strategies, which are outlined as tions and adopt a conventional, restrained tone in poetic language as much as she was aware without the fanfare and an follows. of the need for a poetess’s decorum in a male-dominated society, and her poetry resonates Throughout most of the five, eight-line with the expected characterizations of submissiveness. Margaret M. Morlier in “Elizabeth Bar- activist without the anger. regular stanzas of the poem, Hemans’s vo- rett Browning and Felicia Hemans: The ‘Poetess’ Problem” explains that: cabulary is saturated with sycophantic adjec- tives that portray idealistic and pastoral descriptions of England’s “pleasant land” where the [f]emale writers could be politically destabilizing at a time when Britain was working Homes are “stately,” “merry,” “blessed,” “free,” and “fair” (4, 1, 9, 17, 33). But the second through class problems of its own [and] had to learn new ways of resistance in the inter- stanza seems isolated from the others; rather than references to the landscape, wildlife, et cet- stices of power-knowledge, new arts of writing in a double sense. Hemans responded to era, Hemans writes of a home’s occupants who gather “[a]round their hearths by night” with these cultural values in general by assuming the role of the ‘poetess,’ one who was both a “gladsome looks of household love” and adds that, within the “merry” homes, a “woman’s writer and feminine. (71, 72) voice flows forth in song” (10, 11, 9, 13). The domestic scene portrayed in this stanza differs from the elaborate pastoral descriptions in the first, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas, and the Hemans accordingly wrote poetry not only to entertain male and female readers but also to implication in the localization of the second stanza—and, in particular, the sentence fragment gently remind her audience of the female fragility endorsed by a patriarchal society and the “woman’s voice flows forth in song”—is to encourage society to value women’s presence in ramifications of passivity. As a poetess, Hemans was noted and respected for her reserve in the home and to illustrate how women’s influence is not limited to domesticity but reaches poetical works and critics and readers alike applauded her for writing in a dispassionate style beyond the home into society (Hemans 13). That is, women’s influence in society emanates far removed from the Romantic mode of exposed desires and intense emotions. As reported from the traits associated with femininity, all of which augment the stability and cohesion of by critic, Francis Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review of 1829, Hemans’s poetry: the home, neighborhood, state, and nation. At a time in history when industrial advancements were acclaimed and traditional barriers were torn down and replaced with innovative ideas, [is] singularly sweet, elegant, and tender—touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather women’s place in England remained stagnant and their voices predominantly muted, which than vehement and overpowering; finished throughout with an exquisite delicacy, and prevented them from fully and actively participating in society. Hemans’s intent is to artic- even severity of execution, informed with a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain

Campbell | 61 62 | Campbell sober and humble tone of indulgence and piety, which must satisfy all judgments, and The nineteenth century’s ideal woman was supposed to be satisfied with a “life without ex- allay the apprehensions of those who are most afraid of the passionate exaggerations of ternal events” (22); her duties and obligations regarding household matters, marital relation- poetry. (34) ships, and parental concerns took precedence over personal ambitions at all times. A suc- cessful life meant acquiescence to a second-class existence without aspirations to be anything Despite the “humble tone of indulgence and piety,” Hemans projects a strong, articulate fe- other than an obedient wife, proficient homemaker, and an adoring mother. Denied the same male voice in every stanza of the ostensibly conservative poem, “The Homes of England” (34). opportunities as their male counterparts, women were restricted to traditional domestic roles A voice that is expressive and significant. Hemans elicits empathetic responses from female and expected to behave like “motionless lighthouse[s] by which others, the travelers [men] readers as they connect with her feminist messages woven throughout, and, at the same time, who do have a story, can set their course” (22). If women expressed desires for careers outside the poetess’s measured language reveals the internal enemies of domesticity, a domesticated the home, their desires were scorned and ridiculed by men. Hemans’s poem, “The Homes of state where women “guard each hallow’d wall” without the full credit they deserve (36). England,” dismisses men’s scorn and ridicules by its expressive language, its musicality, and The dominant patriarchal society of the the fundamental message that woman’s “lips move tunefully along,” giving voice to the un- early nineteenth century dictated that women’s derappreciated female occupants of homes across the width and breadth of England (15). In experience be strictly confined to the states of Hemans accordingly wrote po- this context, Hemans questions the domestication of women together with thought-provoking domesticity, but those states were more often issues regarding women’s inalienable rights such as civil liberties, women’s legal equality than not a means of controlling women who etry not only to entertain male with men, and economic autonomy. were strongly dissuaded to protest against and female readers but also to In 1828, only the most limited legal reforms had been enacted to support women. Several the unfairness of gender inequality. In Crit- pertinent entries in a report by Barbara Leigh Smith titled The Most Important Laws Concerning ical Theory Today, Lois Tyson verifies that “[t] gently remind her audience of Women confirm that, within the legal system in England, the law categorized men as superior his view of women as the standard-bearers of the female fragility endorsed citizens while women were viewed as inferior. Smith reports that from the beginning of the traditional values, whose presence as a non- nineteenth century through to 1856: wage-earner supervisor of hearth and home, by a patriarchal society and the was deemed necessary to maintain the moral ramifications of passivity. o A man and wife are one person in law; the wife loses all her rights as a single woman, structure of society, the dominant patriarchal and her existence is entirely absorbed in that of her husband. ideology” (103). The patriarchal ideology ruled o She lives under his protection or cover, and her condition is called coverture. that women were not entitled to any rights inside the supposed partnership of marriage or o Money earned by a married woman belongs absolutely to her husband. any legal rights outside the marital home; their fundamental requirement was to exemplify o A married woman cannot sue or be sued for contracts—nor can she enter into contracts an ornamental representation of women who coveted marriage and motherhood without as- except as the agent of her husband; that is to say, neither her word nor her deed is binding pirations to publicly voice their opinions against the accepted ideology. If women expressed in law. desires to explore opportunities outside their designated domestic domains, their desires were o A woman’s body belongs to her husband; she is in his custody, and he can enforce his belittled by men. right by a writ of habeas corpus. At the time in history when “The Homes of England” was written, women were culturally o What was her personal property before marriage, such as money in hand, money at conditioned to believe that marriage provided the ultimate fulfillment with regard to their the bank, jewels, household goods, clothes, etc., becomes absolutely her husband’s, and emotional and psychological well-being and, while many women protested internally, very he may assign or dispose of them at this pleasure whether he and his wife live together or few protested publicly. They, with “gladsome looks of household love” were to be thankful not. (4) while suppressing “[a]ll other sounds” of discontent and frustration with their restrictive do- mestic roles (Hemans 11, 23). Women were expected to fully embrace domesticity and accept Neither single nor married women were protected from despotic rules and, in fact, women the false depiction of their gender as delicate and fragile. who married to escape dominating paternal influences entered the supposed “partnership” In the early nineteenth century, the fragile state of femaleness—and its pleasing and calm- of marriage only to discover that their position in society had not changed; they had merely ing appeal to men--was considered a necessary quality in women, so that their minds and swapped their social status from daughters to wives and the same patriarchal expectations characters conformed to the socially accepted construction of femininity. The socially accepted were transferred from single to married status. The law in the early nineteenth century gov- construction of femininity and the qualities of the ideal woman are described in Johann Wolf- erned that women’s experiences were overwhelmingly formatted by domestic matters—with- gang von Goethe’s novel, Wilheim Meister’s Apprenticeship: out intellectual stimuli—and the domestication of women further marginalized them from the center of society. In stark contrast to the roar of economic and technological change in the She leads a life of almost pure contemplation . . . a life without external events—alife whose early nineteenth century, women’s voices remained hushed inside the womb of the British story cannot be told as there is no story. Her existence is not useless. On the contrary . . . Industrial Revolution; societal and cultural mores dictated that women devote their time and she shines like a beacon in a dark world, like a motionless lighthouse by which others, the energies inside the home, worshipping their husbands, taking immense pleasure in domestic travelers who do have a story, can set their course. When those involved in feeling and matters, and idolizing their children. action turn to her in their need, they are never dismissed without advice and consolation. As such, the reading of “The Homes of England” generates a double awareness regarding She is an ideal, a model of selflessness and of purity of heart. (22) women’s roles in the early nineteenth century. First, Hemans showcases domestic life and

Campbell | 63 64 | Campbell conveys how female nurturing sustains a home, whether the home is “stately,” “merry,” or how precarious, how threatened, is that sphere . . . by its opposition to the dominant ideology “blessed,” or whether the home is situated “[a]midst tall ancestral trees” or another location of the masculine public sphere” (124). Throughout “The Homes of England,” Hemans depicts that is less grand (1, 9, 17, 3). Second, the poetess highlights the fact that, while there was much the female character as one who embodies the characteristics of true early nineteenth-century progress throughout England during the early nineteenth century, women remained mostly womanhood: a female who embraces family life, is mindful of the holiness of the Sabbath, and occluded in society, habitually categorized and subsumed by their roles in households. More- demonstrates Victorian virtues. Even so, Mellor contends that: over, the noticeable absence of an identified female in “The Homes of England” is evidence that Hemans’s aim is to represent women nationwide “[o]’er all the pleasant land” during the Hemans’ celebration of home is complicated by her recognition that domestic felicity may period of the British Industrial Revolution, and the poetess’s deliberate omission of specific be merely a fiction: lost in the past, or destroyed in the present by the refusal of individ- references to any one particular social class of women substantiates her conviction for equal ual family members to sustain its affectional bonds, or relentlessly sacrificed to a more appreciation and recognition for all (4). powerful masculine code of individual ambition and personal fame. Having accepted her Although it is unfair to judge poetry as superior over prose, it is reasonable to note that, culture’s hegemonic inscription of the woman within the domestic sphere, Hemans’ po- according to Louis Untermeyer in The Pursuit of Poetry, etry subtly and painfully explored the ways in which that construction of gender finally collapses upon itself, bringing nothing but suffering, and the void of nothingness, to both Prose is consciously constructed whereas poetry is subconsciously created. It has been women and men. (142) held that the function of prose is to state and that the purpose of poetry is to suggest, that prose is the product of the reasoning brain while poetry emanates from a wordless feeling, Hemans urges male readers to forego “individual ambition and personal fame” and expand a vague emotion, a sense of pain or pleasure striving for expression. (100) their parochial lens to recognize the multitude of assets women possess and how those assets contribute to the success of a marriage, the heart of home life, the involvement in the commu- Hemans’s poetry suggests rather than states and explores rather than explains; the poet- nity, and, consequently, the power and strength that permeates a nation (142). In “The Homes ess’s reason and restraint in language and tone stirs readers’ consciousness into a mindful and of England,” Hemans’s language criticizes “her culture’s hegemonic inscription of the woman thorough interpretation of “The Homes of England,” all the while sifting through a multitude within the domestic sphere” and entreats her audience to accept the reality: women are not of questions regarding the meaning and implications of a female’s perspective regarding do- fragile and their gender does not make them less able than men (142). mesticity. In her poem, Hemans includes all women whether they live in stately or modest Since the publication of “The Homes of England,” women have, over time, challenged the homes, no matter what their socio-economic status, political or religious affiliation may be; categorization of men and women and questioned their domestic roles portrayed by Hemans consequently, the poetess demonstrates that a female’s perspective regarding domesticity is in the poem and how those roles affect their influence in society. Women have demanded not limited to one specific area of England or one type of social group: her poem is directed to equality and, for the most part, received the same in the modern-day Western world. Women all women, everywhere. have earned degrees in higher education and excelled in areas of medicine, education, sports, In the process of reading poetry, Untermeyer explains that: research, politics, and numerous other areas. Nevertheless, we cannot read “The Homes of [r]eaders must have a tolerance for the ambiguous, the more so since the most profound Hemans includes all women England” from a comfortable distance and dis- poetry does not yield its complete significance at a cursory reading. The poet, aware of the whether they live in stately or miss its message as a dusty relic of the past; its embattled world in which [she] lives and [her] insecure and insignificant part in it, cannot message is as relevant in 2013 as it was when but reflect the complexity and disorder of [her] environment. (73) modest homes, no matter what published in 1828. Patriarchal systems contin- their socio-economic status, ue to operate today around the globe in homes, The poem, “The Homes of England,” is a premier example of an expressive creation borne farms, corporations, government, sweatshops, from the poetess’s discontent with patriarchal constructions of femininity, perceived and im- political or religious affiliation and factories, and other innumerable dwellings plied inferiority regarding her gender, the discriminatory legal system in England, and the may be; consequently, the po- and workplaces. Countless women around the under-appreciation of domesticity during the early nineteenth century. world remain slaves of overbearing patriarchal Hemans uses restraint and reason to undermine early nineteenth century’s prevailing pa- etess demonstrates that a fe- forces, muted and suffering the same injustices triarchal power structures, and the poem, “The Homes of England,” dismantles socially con- male’s perspective regarding as women in the past. When we read Hemans’s structed, gendered emotions and publicizes women’s voices as rational and influential, there- “The Homes of England,” we are reminded of by protesting against the cultural norm. As evidenced by the content and form of the entire domesticity is not limited to the inescapable oppression suffered by wom- poem, on the one hand, the poem glorifies domesticity and follows the culturally expected, one specific area of England or en in the past and how their collective cries for conservative tones of nineteenth-century submissiveness merged with national patriotism. On equality and recognition compel us to listen the other hand, the poem applauds the strengths and purpose of women who are positioned one type of social group: her and respond with action and “lips [that] move in the home; the poetess accentuates the controlled emotions of the female character featured poem is directed to all women, tunefully along” (15). in the poem and, thus, showcases her sensibilities. In this context, as claimed by Anne K. Mellor in Romanticism and Gender, Hemans’s poetry everywhere. “locates ultimate human value within the domestic sphere. At the same time, it emphasizes just

Campbell | 65 66 | Campbell Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Wilheim Meister’s Apprenticeship. Trans. Eric A. Blackall. New York: Suhrkamp, 1989. Print.

Hemans, Felicia. Records of Woman with Other Poems. Ed. Paula R. Feldman. U. of Kentucky P, 1999. Print. Semiotics of “Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours” |

Hobsbawn, E.J. The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848. London: Phoenix, 2000. Print. Dr. Patricia Turrisi

Jeffrey, Francis. Rev. of Records of Woman with Other Poems and The Forest Sanctuary with Other Poems by Felicia Hemans. Edinburgh Review. 1829. Print.

McGann, Jerome, J. The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation. U. of Chicago P, 1983. Print. ’ve drawn cartoons all my life. Please in place of a connection with their own moth- Mellor, Anne K. Romanticism & Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print. don’t think that’s a claim to artistry. It’s ers or teachers as role models of adult wom- Morlier, Margaret, M. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Felicia Hemans: The ‘Poetess’ Problem.” Studies in Browning and His Circle. 20. more of an admission that I can’t live en. Baudrillard designates simulacra such as (1993): 70-79. Print. I without parody, mockery, irony. Moreover, Disneyland or “the matrix” in the film The Smith, Barbara Leigh. A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women; Together with a Few Observations I feel a need to keep duplicates of everything Matrix, on which he was a consultant, as “hy- Thereon. 2nd ed. London: Holyoake. 1856. Print. important, and drawings serve that purpose per-real.” My cartoons are deliberately ideal- Tyson, Lois. A Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York: Garland, 1999. Print. for me sometimes. As a duplicate, my car- ized versions of one or another feature of re- Untermeyer, Louis. The Pursuit of Poetry: A Guide to Its Understanding and Appreciation With an Explanation of Its Forms and a Dictionary of toon is a representation of something it refers ality that expose and exaggerate its features. Poetic Terms. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000. Print. to. But to what does it refer? “Wormhole Adventure” references an initial Simulacra are those things that are meant reality as its source but not without warping to be duplicates of other things, but are suffi- the reader’s confidence in the truth of that ciently stylized as to be distinct things them- source. selves with a character and form of their own. Inasmuch as a model attempts to capture Given enough public attention, they begin to essential structural features of that which it substitute for that first reality upon which models, “Wormhole Adventure” isn’t much they are based. Those who adopt the stan- of a model.2 You are expected to suspend dards and features of a stylized duplicate of many of your usual expectations about the reality in favor of the duplicate’s initial refer- world, and in fact, there would be noth- ences to a first reality are likely to lapse into ing much worthwhile or humorous about forgetfulness of the “Wormhole Adven- initial source. That You are expected to suspend ture” if it didn’t thwart initial reality ceases to your expectations serve as reality to the many of your usual expecta- while also (falsely!) simulacrum-infected. tions about the world, and in reassuring you that Jean Baudrillard has nothing on the oth- written extensively fact, there would be nothing er side is terribly dif- about simulacra and much worthwhile or humorous ferent from here. But simulacrum, citing how can that possibly Disneyland as a case about “Wormhole Adventure” be? The characters that in point.1 Disneyland if it didn’t thwart your especta- travel back and forth is not “real” in the are more ordinary same sense that the tions while also (falsely!) reas- than not. I wanted to things it first signi- suring you that nothing on the push the fabulousness fied are real—pirate of the duplicate reality coves, castles and so other side is terribly different of “Wormhole Adven- on. Yet it is not “unre- from here. ture” as far as possible al” or nonexistent. It beyond it being recog- has quite an effect on its visitors who often nizable as a duplicate while still retaining fa- come away with the conviction that Disne- miliar features that a reader would instant- yland is more real than their hometown in ly recognize from our everyday ordinary Iowa. Little girls develop a normative con- world. Pointy Object Creature is an excep- nection with the forms of Disney princesses tion, having come to our (ordinary) world by

Campbell | 67 68 | Turrisi Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours by Dr. Patricia Turrisi Turrisi | 69 70 | Turrisi reverse wormhole, but so far, no one who has stalker who writes flowery “Dear Diary” Long Island gang.” These compendiums of De-constructing Eco Tourism read the cartoon seems to have figured that entries chronicling his various pursuits. Un- everyday news items would go out to em- out. Those who have read “Wormhole Ad- fortunately, from time to time, he disappears ployees and be handed to potential inves- Eco-tourism and adventure tours appear venture” in advance of its publication seem for a few months, usually after being caught tors and community boosters. Part Two pays as if they are a marriage made in heaven, the to have forgotten everything The Disvoery red-handed burning down a shopping mall homage to the writers and readers of those one being travel to unspoiled places and the Channel ever taught them about wormholes.3 to get the attention of a salesgirl for whom early zines, who knew not how they came off other being a variation on “roughing it.” But They did not seem to be able to conceive that his love is unrequited. The crisis in the plot to mocking, capering posterity, that is, me. mockers find such ostensible harmonies irre- the same wormhole that’s a portal from here trajectory always devolves upon a loathsome The main index sistible. I saw a riot of to another world is also a portal from there interruption in the stalker’s life-world. An- of the work, indicat- [A]ccompanied by a slew of opportunity here, my to our world, more evidence that my sim- gela, the pre-teen who crushes on super-cute ing the focus of all early scholarly train- ulacrum becomes a normative reality once lepers, is a recurring character in two series, its parts, is the term commercial adaptations: ing having taken place someone enters it. The wormhole concept “The Cousins from Burgaw” and “Tales of “eco.” I first encoun- eco-water bottles; eco-coun- in archives such as the stands triumphant as a tourism gimmick, re- the After School Club.” She’s a little young tered “eco” as a pre- Houghton Library, placing its scientific denotation, which now for her age and somewhat narcissistic, which fix in the 1980s, when tertops; eco-clothing, -shoes, where no one gets in appears as a phantom of false memory. allows her to reveal her opinions without in- I discovered it was -cups; eco-hair and baby without reference let- hibition. possible to have an ters from others who Signification in “Wormhole Adventure Eco So, let’s get started on the analysis of oth- academic specializa- grooming items; air, water, have gotten in, and Tours” er signs and symbols. The form of the cartoon tion called “eco-fem- soil, and fuel products that are once in, one is forbid- is a magazine advertisement in the first part inism.” Forgive me den to use indelible There are a few reasons why you need a and an I-don’t-know-what in the second part, my plodding sensi- eco-friendly, eco-safe, eco-ef- writing instruments or narrative guide to the cartoon at hand. On a possibly a set of post-mortem reflections by bility if I’ve gotten ficient and eco-hipster—cul- expel bodily fluids of minor scale, it contains “in-jokes” that you the staff who are responsible for publicizing this wrong. I took any kind. Contrarily, couldn’t possibly understand without guid- the ads. The first part is the sort of thing that “eco-feminism” to be minating in that bonanza of anyone at all qualifies ance, and which, once known, may add al- might have shown up in a full-page color concerned with show- inscrutable inconsistancey, to go on an eco-tour, most nothing to your experience other than spread in LOOK magazine circa 1970, or that ing how feminism as say, to the Galapagos a feeling that this piece on semiotic was a you might find today inEsquire , only consid- a position is especial- eco-tourism. Islands, merely by bit pedantic in places. These are nonetheless erably smoothed over in content and style. If ly conscientious about forking over a sum of significations of initial references to reality it were to be re-made with actual multime- the earth, which is feminine, while her ex- money to the tour agency. The worldwide as interpreted by the author, and an integral dia enrichments, I still can’t imagine how it ploiter/destroyers are not. My thought at the significance of the effluvia of little known part of the semiotic triad of represented-in- would appear online in any known format. time was, then why did I have to learn the nineteenth-century philosophers kept un- terpreter/interpretation-representation. On It’s really something that you could only say history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics der lock and key at Harvard compared to the one hand, I, the interpreter, am the one the way I have said it, all the while assuming to the present to earn my Ph.D. specializa- that of wildlife extant on the Galapagos Is- who draws (literally, and, through the narra- that it’s credible that wormholes exist, that tion if you are getting away with having one lands accessible to any yahoo with a credit tive, here) the relationship between the rep- people matter-of-factly travel through them, simplistically derivative idea to earn yours? card is analogous to an empty toner fluid resented and the representation. However, and that business as usual advertises worm- Plowing through and past twentieth-centu- canister compared to the Ark of the Cove- though I created a representation (of some- hole tourism and makes money doing it in ry fin de siècle post-modern tropes in popular nant. Though again, I might be a plodding thing) in the form of my cartoon, and my in- an economic market that doesn’t bat an eye culture, we see “eco” appearing in scientif- idiot, but I’m incredulous that eco-tourism terpretation of the represented is implicit in at its absurdity. ic contexts as an index of ecological systems is considered legitimate. Isn’t tourism per the cartoon, I plan to make it explicit to you As for the second part, I’ve always been and functions. Just so, and then these were se responsible for mega-hotels on tropical as well. Your interpretation of my interpre- fond of company newsletters and small town accompanied by a slew of commercial adap- beaches that have made blighted the land- tations will eventually belong to the frame- newspapers that would report such things tations: eco-water bottles; eco-countertops; scape? Where do the eco-tourists buy souve- work of signification as much as mine does as “The Turrisi family recently entertained eco-clothing, -shoes, -cups, eco-hair and nirs? What do they eat? Where do they sleep? at this moment. family guests from Canastota, New York in baby grooming items; air, water, soil, and Stash their luggage? Deposit their Big Gulp® When you draw cartoons often enough, their Long Island home. The brothers, Al and fuel products that are eco-friendly, eco-safe, cups? some of their characters and motifs have Dominick, went deep sea fishing on June 7, eco-efficient and eco-hipster—culminating Moreover, from childhood on, I had ex- the potential to become self-referential. For returning home to a dinner of roast beef and in that bonanza of inscrutable inconsistency, perienced “roughing it,” that is, “adventure” example, the reviewer who says “OUT- mashed potatoes with their wives and the eco-tourism. with the cynicism appropriate to having STANDING SERVICE” is a character I’ve Canastota children, Lucille, age 9, Arlene, a relative standpoint. My dad and I would drawn many times. He’s a witty, urbane age 6 and Craig, the new baby, joining the depart for eighteen-hour fishing trips on a

Turrisi | 71 72 | Turrisi thirty year old Chris Craft in tsunami-like letin on what to bring on his tours, a bulle- mindfulness whatsoever toward the threat in the pancreas that produce endocrines conditions armed with a couple of jelly tin that urges you to bring “Cash (You nev- level of discarded plastic, boasting that the such as insulin and are entirely out of sandwiches and some bait. His pal from er know when the natives will hold a yard micro-plastic is packaged in a plastic bottle place on the loose anywhere (as far as work, a fellow named Gus, kept his boat sale!)” So much for non-interference in pris- hand selected by Bonnie, as if Bonnie were we know!) Junk DNA is that mysterious in the same marina. We never saw Heart of tine environments! somehow delighted to be part of this retail stuff that scientists found in the human Darkness so much as leave its berth; though The newsletter reports a reviewer’s enterprise.7 In truth, Bonnie is an inexhaust- genome but don’t know why it’s there. Gus and family would sometimes spend comment, “Why don’t you have gift shops ible advocate for a growing organization of We don’t know why it’s in the genome an especially sparkling Sunday afternoon on both sides of the wormhole? I would’ve scientists and citizens committed to docu- and likewise don’t know why it’s in the dressed to the nines aboard her, sipping loved to get some Inca gold statuettes!” menting the problem and educating the pub- “multiverses.” Dangling participles, in aperitifs and nibbling cocktail snacks. My Wormhole Eco Tours does not take this as lic. In the next line of the gift shop section, we my experience, occur everywhere and apartment in grad school was “roughing an opportunity to educate their customer on are offered a blister-pack kit for children that have probably been with us since before it.” Driving to and fro on Route 80 between the historical significance of Inca gold. My includes “Colors From Nature c. 1840 CE.” the origin of anything. The Riemann Gal- grad central Pennsylvania and New York non-cartoonist persona, the socially mal- Outside the context of the cartoon, one might axy is a math joke. I’ll explain it to you was “adventure” as those of you who know adroit scholar, would have tried to urge the expect eco-tourism proponents at a minimum when you’re older. that road will attest. The title, “Adventure reader to study a work such as Bernal Diaz to acknowledge the historical predation of Eco Tours,” in my cartoon is the sign of the del Castillo’s The Conquest of New Spain natural and cultural environments. Inside • Rick-Don Omphalos is a portman- fool, of the opera buffa, characterized by its to learn more.4 On their sixteenth-century the cartoon, wormholegifts.com predictably teau character derived from my cat and everyday settings, local dialects, and simple travels (as Conquistadors!), Spanish adven- (it’s the final frame) adds insult to injury. a friend I took classes with as an under- vocalizations. Its cast of characters returns turers confiscated gold Aztec religious idols graduate. He’s a good person (like my to the set of Hairspray when the tourist sea- and sent them to Spain by the ton. Hernán My personal pet peeves are fairly narrow friend in college) but not very bright (like son winds to a close. While I take ecologi- Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, as reported by in that I don’t anticipate others joining me in my cat.) He’s reassuring because it’s bet- cal considerations in unspoiled places (the Diaz, led a religious campaign to convert apoplectic meltdown when I name them. I ter to have a good person who’s not very remaining few, if indeed, such things ever “New Spain” to Catholicism and away from could be wrong though! These are just a few: bright as a guide than its inverse. His per- really existed at all as they are imagined) idol worship, cannibalism and sodomy. sonality is a committee choice made by rather seriously, it’s hard for me not to view Diaz is silent on the issue of Cortés’ soaring • Pre-Big Bang Latent Multiverses are various parts of me who vie for domina- as a few pence short of a pound those com- career potential as a result of the riches he simply “possible worlds,” and so are the tion of the whole. He almost counterbal- mercial exploiters of tourists who put deli- is sending to the queen. To a philosopher places Wormhole Adventure advertis- ances the character of some tour guides cate environments at risk through their very and as someone who relishes topics and is- es, only less overtly so. Novice philoso- I’ve known, a few of whom were down- presence. sues that are treated through interdisciplin- phers who have fallen in love with the right wicked, and honors others who In the interest of avoiding playing the ary study, the challenge of understanding mystique of quantum physics and some have kindly and sincerely tried to teach fool myself by making this essay longer the conquistadors’ mixed motives is a gift. not-so-novice philosophers who try to something meaningful to incorrigible than the cartoon it references, here are the Not so for Wormhole Adventures. Instead, wiggle out of the problem inherent in skeptics such as myself. I should point answers to the final question: what kinds of the editorial board of the Wormhole Adven- asserting self-contradictory statements out that the source of my skepticism lies smug and wrongheaded ways of thinking tures Eco Tours Newsletter responds by di- have developed the strategy of claim- in my convictions about how learning did you parody? “Wormhole Adventures” recting the reviewer to the online gift shop ing that “A can be true in one possible really takes place, convictions Don-Rick talks the talk of solicitude toward the envi- whose featured gifts include a plastic jar of world while not-A is true in a different does not share. The wrong-headedness ronment, but it screams out the fact that it micro-plastic bits from the Pacific garbage possible world.” Arguing that you and I that Rick-Don signifies is the belief that doesn’t walk the walk at all. Their approach patch, one of seven gyres of plastic flotsam can conceive of both possible worlds and one can learn about matters of significant is wrong, wrong, wrong. And you don’t and jetsam accumulated and spreading in that makes them both part of our single weight without effort or without immer- even have to read between the lines—the oceans and seaways around the world. actual conceptual world where contra- sion in a topic or culture. The profession lines spell it out. The significance of these plastic islands diction matters doesn’t seem to impress of a trained, certified wormhole scout/ For example, there never was a colonial is the subject of Bonnie Monteleone’s Mas- anyone. So, Wormhole Adventure Eco tour guide is so pretentiously pretentious power or a CEO of a spoiler corporation who ter’s 2011 thesis in Graduate Liberal Stud- Tours dares these intrepid would-be that only a man who wears a pocket vest, didn’t claim they were leaving the world ies and her exhibit, “What Goes Around quantum physicist-philosophers to go carries a carved walking stick and advis- better off for their efforts. Rick-Don Ompha- Comes Around.”5 The scientific, political there and try it out for themselves! Mean- es you that “It’s the thoughts that count!” los, the rock star of scout/tour guides in this and health aspects of the Pacific Ocean gar- while, all sorts of random stars are shoot- wouldn’t know that. His advice is so piece, announces, “Be culturally and ecolog- bage patch are also documented in Captain ing through the Multiverse site. Drawing general, it’s obvious he’s not yet found a ically aware and you can never go wrong” Charles Moore’s book, Plastic Ocean.6 The the “multiverses” was just plain fun. The deep well of pertinent knowledge. as the last word in his Trekkers’ Corner bul- rhetoric of the cartoon gift shop indicates no islets of Langerhans are clusters of cells

Turrisi | 73 74 | Turrisi • Indifference to the fate of the natu- for the most part. On the whole, oblivious- ral environment is a wholesale kind of ness to the world beyond one’s doorstep An American History of Wilderness Perception | wrongheadedness that I hope will be doesn’t seem to affect the survival po- Caleb Stewart reversed one day. But it’s only a symp- tential of the species. As a species, we’ve tom of a greater kind of stupidity that of never been better off— theoretically. We ignoring everything except what you be- inhabit the entire globe, we’re omnivo- lieve might affect you immediately in the rous and there is plenty of food here, we short run. The causes of indifference to have long life spans and reproduce freely ilderness, though perennially existent on Earth since the beginnings of time, is only thinking out the consequences of this or in almost any environment. We go where deemed wilderness because that is the word that has evolved in the English language that belief, decision or action, and taking we want and do what we want. Theoret- Wto define a “wild or uncultivated state” (“Wilderness”). But just as its definition has responsibility for them are complex and ically. In actuality, nothing is guaranteed evolved, so cultural perceptions of wilderness have steadily evolved for millennia and rapid- difficult to address. Higher education for anyone in perpetuity. In actuality, ly in the past three centuries. Now defined by the United States Congress in the Wilderness calls alertness to consequences “critical most of us usually are skating on thin Act of 1964 as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,” thinking” and we do our best to produce ice, but something in the human mental the wilderness concept is a subject of heated political and philosophical debate, concerning it in our classrooms and research, and, composition fakes people out and makes environmentalists and business owners, Native Americans and big-game hunters alike (U.S. to meliorate its destructiveness through them believe everything is fine. I’m not House 121). The United States of America, that nation described by Theodore Roosevelt in service to the community. Critical think- made that way. Something is missing in The American Wilderness as of “endless variety and beauty,” was once deemed the final fron- ers know that that thing you’re ignoring me that others seem to have. Call my lack tier of the world, and still today, noted environmental historian William Cronon has stated today will bite you tomorrow. Until now, paranoia, but I don’t trust Wormhole Ad- in The Trouble with Wilderness that the “frontier is … peculiarly American,” confirming Roos- humanity has had so very much going for venture Eco Tours any farther than I can evelt’s assertion that “American wilderness [has] a character distinctly its own” (Roosevelt 63, it that nature has forgiven our stupidities throw it down a wormhole. 65; Cronon 474). Thus, the United States is unique in its identification with wilderness, even though debate rages in modern society as to what place that wilderness should occupy in the nation. To attempt to settle this question of modern American civilization, if one is to trace the history of cultural perceptions of wilderness in the United States, an answer can be found. Though many would begin with the Puritans’ views upon arriving in the New World, America had been inhabited for thousands of years before even Columbus hoisted his sails. In fact, as William Denevan illustrates in his essay The Pristine Myth, though Columbus spoke of a “‘Terrestrial Paradise,’ beautiful and green and fertile,” in reality there “were between 40-100 million Indians in the hemisphere” as estimated by modern scholars, and they “had modified forest extent and composition, created and expanded grasslands, and rearranged microrelief via countless artificial earthworks” (Denevan 414-416). Deneval continues to ex- plain how with fire, Native Americans “maintained open forest and small meadows but also

1— Baudrillard, Jean. “Disneyworld Company” Paris, France: Libération. March 4, 1996. encouraged fire-tolerant and sun-loving species” (419), with agriculture “led to severe land Baudrillard, Jean and Sheila Faria Glaser (trans.). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press. December 1994. degradation in some regions” (424), and with hunting possibly “caused the extinction of some large mammals in North America during the late Pleistocene” (426). These facts defy the gen- 2—Colapietro, Vincent M. and Thomas M Olshewsky. Peirce’s Doctrine of Signs: Theory, Applications, and Connections. Berlin and Boston: De eral “noble savage” view in which Native Americans are perceived as having never altered Gruyter Mouton, 1996. the biomass. Nonetheless, many ecologists, such as Dave Foreman in his article “Wilderness Peirce, Charles Sanders. Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking. Edited with a Commentary by Patricia Turrisi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. pp. 49-57. Areas for Real,” would still argue that “tribes are better caretakers of the land than are gov- ernment agencies,” which are responsible for wilderness protection today (Foreman 402). And 3—Hawking, Stephen. Stephen Hawking’s Universe. United Kingdom: Discovery Channel. 2010. there is solid reasoning behind such an assertion in how the Native Americans have always viewed and still view wilderness today. Chief Luther Standing Bear, writing Indian Wisdom 4— Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The Conquest of New Spain. Penguin Classics. J. M. Cohen (trans.) (6th printing (1973) ed.). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1963. in 1933, described his tribe’s views of wilderness in stating that “the Lakota was a true natur- ist—a lover of Nature” (Bear 202). Contrasting the Indian views of wilderness with those of 5—View it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Qx-KM1UA8 the white man, he argued that the two “sense things differently because the white man has put Monteleone, Bonnie. “Plastic Ocean Art Show” YouTube.com. You Tube. 10 July 2011. Web. distance between himself and nature… Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his sur- roundings; the other sought the dominance of surroundings” (204-205). While the European 6—See: http://www.nccoast.org/Article.aspx?k=8e434a33-e20c-45a4-8e2e-275ffd70fa3e for an overview. settlers strove to conquer the wilderness and erect civilization, Native Americans possessed Maloney, Skip. “The ‘Plastic Ocean’ and Bonnie Monteleone.” NCCoast.org. North Carolina Coastal Federation. 13 February 2013. Web. an early version of what would today be called a biocentric standpoint, in which man is equal

7—Bonnie Monteleone has given me permission to parody her work in “Wormhole Adventure Eco Tours.” with all other species of the wilderness, and all are given rights. Standing Bear stated, “The an-

Turrisi | 75 76 | Stewart imal had rights—the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages” (Emerson to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness” (203). Though the Native Americans did in 29-30). But what was it that Emerson found in the wilderness so dear? Thoreau would not fact modify their landscapes and alter the biomass to ensure their survival, they nonetheless hesitate to assert that it was “absolute freedom and wildness,” which he declared nature to be managed to retain a respect for the wilderness. the source of in his writing “Walking” (31). The Transcendentalists viewed wilderness not as However, Native Americans would not remain the stewards of the American wilderness just a source of sublime beauty, but as a natural source of all that is good in the world—“from for much longer once European imperialism reached the Western Hemisphere. As settlers the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind” (37). Thoreau also landed on the coast of the New World, many of them shared religious goals, and early Amer- directly declared America to be a source of wilderness for the world. “The heavens of Amer- ican views of the wilderness reflected this intense religious sentiment. Cronon argues that to ica appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon the early settlers of America, the word wilderness was most closely associated with its roots looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider,” and he goes in the King James Bible, where it referred to “places on the margins of civilization where it on, describing the nature of America on a grand scale not even comparable to that of the Old is all too easy to lose oneself in moral confusion and despair” (Cronon 473). Reflecting this World (35). He describes himself “as a true patriot” and states that “the founders of every State idea, J. Baird Callicott, in his essay “That Good Old-Time Wilderness Religion,” sums up the which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild view of Roderick Nash that to the Puritans, “the North American ‘wilderness’ was the brood- source” (36-37). Therefore, he declares the West, namely America, to be “but another name for ing ‘antipode’ of the Garden of Eden” (Call- the Wild” (37). Transcendentalists saw in America a wilderness that could serve as a source of icott 389). Therefore, it was the goal of these freedom for humanity. Declaring that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World,” Thoreau This distinct separation was settlers to eradicate wilderness and “replace made a statement regarding the American wilderness that has had a resounding impact to it with those shining cities on hills” (389). But this very day (37). And this was the effect that the Transcendentalists had on the cultural per- originally embodied by the the principles of this same view, based upon spective of American wilderness. Cronon described the effect: “Seen in this way, wild country wilderness as the evil and man the Biblical references that “wilderness was became a place not just of religious redemption but of national renewal, the quintessential where Christ had struggled with the devil and location for experiencing what it meant to be an American” (479). as good, but as time endured his temptations,” also served as the As the world transitioned from the nineteenth- to the twentieth-century, this experience progressed, and man actually foundation for the environmentalist who sees had several different manifestations. For some, it was the source of “a certain vigorous indi- beauty in nature and wilderness (Cronon 473). viduality” that Aldo Leopold described in “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use” as the defini- began to master nature, the As American settlers continued to build their tion of American culture (79). To others, such as John Muir, whose perspective Michael Nelson view shifted, and man became civilizations, they learned how to successfully defines in the “cathedral argument” of his “Wilderness Preservation Arguments,” the “wil- survive in the new country. Once survival was derness was the highest manifestation of nature and so was a ‘window opening into Heaven, the evil within the wilderness, no longer the primary goal, wilderness was no a mirror reflecting the Creator’” (168). John Muir preserved the notions of the Romantics and which was God’s glory. longer seen as an enemy, but instead began to the Transcendentalists in his writings, imbuing the wilderness with spirit and describing it as be seen in a positive reflection of the same Pu- a location of sublime beauty. In “Our National Parks,” written in 1901 as the U.S. government ritanic view—that “the image of God sharply first began to establish national parks, he described a common tree as “brave, indomitable, segregates man from nature” (Callicott 390). This distinct separation was originally embodied and altogether admirable” (Muir 55). He declared that “wildness is a necessity” and “moun- by the wilderness as the evil and man as good, but as time progressed, and man actually began tain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, to master nature, the view shifted, and man became the evil within the wilderness, which was but as fountains of life” (48). Describing landscapes as “divine sculpture and architecture,” God’s glory. Jonathan Edwards, known mostly for his fire and brimstone speeches, was one Muir believed that wilderness needed to be preserved in order to preserve the American for- of the first to express in writing, in “The Images or Shadows of Divine Things,” how nature ests, which belonged to all alike and existed for the benefit of the people, provided by God reflected God’s glory: “How much of a resemblance is there of every grace in the field covered (49). He was staunchly opposed to meaningless destruction of the wilderness, such as logging with plants and flowers when the sun shines serenely and undisturbedly upon them” (24). and mining for profit, and this caused him to turn to the government for support of nature. Even as Edwards penned these words in 1758, these views of God’s glory in the wilderness “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand were beginning to define the Romantic movement of art and literature in the second half of straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools—only Uncle Sam the eighteenth-century. can do that” (61). Reflected in the establishment of national parks, which America had the As Romantic literature took hold in Europe as a response to the Renaissance, in America it claim of being the first to create, this was the beginnings of a legacy of government preserva- gained expression through such writers as James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne. tion of wilderness in the United States. The idea of a distinct frontier and unique American wilderness shone through these writers’ As for the other primary wilderness view of the time, that of the vigorous individuality, work. Cooper’s tales focused on heroic simplicity in fervent landscapes described majestically, this is best witnessed in the works of Theodore Roosevelt. In “The American Wilderness,” while the wilderness served as a powerful symbol in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. But more written in 1897, he too had a great appreciation for the “endless variety and beauty” of all the important to the American cultural perception of wilderness was the later stage of Romanti- different regions of wilderness in the North American continent, but Roosevelt focused more cism, in which Transcendentalism took hold—producing such writers as Henry David Tho- on the virility that the wilderness inspired in “the most adventurous hunters, the vanguard reau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. In “Nature,” Emerson stated that “within of the hardy army of pioneer settlers” that he describes as “the heralds of the oncoming civili- these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign” and this is why he was able to say “in zation” (63, 66). He praised the “most daring hunters and explorers” and the “hard, dogged,

Stewart | 77 78 | Stewart border farmers” who he describes as “a masterful race, good fighters and good breeders, as the idea that though America has a “historic tendency to draw dichotomies between wild vs. all masterful races must be” (67). Citing examples of such legendary figures of the American tame, or natural vs. unnatural,” the fact remains that “no area on Earth remains pristine or West as Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, and Kit Carson, Roosevelt provides the wilderness as fully free of human influence” (544-545). There was quite a bit of disagreement between vary- a source for honing warriors and hunters. “Hunting in the wilderness,” he states, “is of all ing branches of ecologists and controversy between biocentrism and anthropocentrism, but in pastimes the most attractive, and it is doubly so when not carried on merely as a pastime” general, all agreed that the wilderness needed preservation from mankind, whether “civiliza- (74). Roosevelt argues that wilderness is a necessity to America in order to hone in men the tion needs wilderness,” as Edward Abbey claimed in “Freedom and Wilderness,” or “the only “qualities of hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution” (74). These traits define the principles of thing we have to preserve nature with is culture,” as Wendell Berry argued (Abbey 229; Berry not just virility, but a rugged individuality that many have seen as defining the culture of the 143). Both could see the basic human need for wilderness: “the reason to preserve wilderness United States of America. is that we need it,” as Berry put it, or “we need wilderness because we are wild animals,” as Reflecting a combination of the virile individualist standpoint and the sublime beauty per- Abbey put it (Berry 146; Abbey 229). spective, American culture retained a fairly consistent view of wilderness through the begin- So in general, over the past half century, American ecologists have had quite a bit of dis- ning of World War I, which attracted interest to the wild forces of war for a decade, drawing agreement amongst themselves as to the best interest away from the wilderness. However, as industrialism continued to shape the world, manner in which to preserve wilderness, but creating a global economy based on capitalism, the American cultural view of wilderness yet The view is that some form of all agree that wilderness needs to be preserved. again shifted. Essentially, as Carl Talbot argues in his essay “Wilderness Narrative and Capi- Yet there are still others in American culture talism,” national parks were created as “museumized nature” in order to “function as a salve wilderness needs to be pre- who see no need for wilderness preservation for a spiritually battered workforce,” resulting in the organization of nature to “meet the spa- served both for the good of but would rather be able to exploit natural tial, economic, and psychological needs of capitalism” (326). When the workers of American resources from the wilds for the good of hu- civilization were not laboring to expand civilization and increase consumption, they could nature and humanity. Ameri- manity. In a democracy like the United States, venture to the wilderness, which had become “a valuable commodity” itself, “traded on the can wilderness is a symbol of there will always be such varying views, and international market” in the form of mass tourism (329). This new wilderness was shaped by it is meant to be so. But overall, the general culture in every aspect, and increased wilderness management along with new national parks freedom, represented in the cultural view today reflects the fears of Abbey only served to bundle wilderness up as a package to be sold, overseen by culture to ensure wilderness of nature. that “if the entire nation is urbanized, indus- that the “wilderness experience” was enjoyable to the consumer. The majority of the American trialized, mechanized, and administered, then populace therefore viewed wilderness as a retreat from the daily societal norms of industrial our liberties continue only at the sufferance of life. the technological megamachine that functions both as servant and master” (229). The view However, following World War II, as the world was launched into the nuclear age—with is that some form of wilderness needs to be preserved both for the good of nature and hu- fully globalized economies and with humanity possessing more destructive capability than manity. American wilderness is a symbol of freedom, represented in the wildness of nature, ever before in history—wilderness took on another meaning. As Wendell Berry wrote in his like the permissive society that Abbey describes democracy as—“a confused, chaotic mess” essay “Preserving Wildness,” “We are now, to ourselves, incomprehensibly powerful, capable where “to be alive is to take risks” (230). Our history shows us that the wilderness has played of doing more damage than floods, storms, volcanoes, and earthquakes” (142). He declared a major role in the evolution of American culture and, as Marvin Henberg argues in “Wilder- that “stripped of the restraints” of culture, humans are monsters, and that this was evidenced ness, Myth, and American Character,” “wilderness understanding depends on…the imprint by the world wars of the first half of the twentieth century (142). In response to the increasing of natural history” (506). Henberg also submits that “belief in ourselves as a people shaped technology and urbanization of human culture, many environmentalists sought to protect wil- by wilderness is productive of greater good than of ill” (505). Throughout American history, derness as the last remaining vestiges of “untrammeled” nature. National parks were created the wilderness has helped shape our cultural values. Even if there has been disagreement over in greater frequency than ever before. In “The National Park Ideal,” David Harmon sums up various matters related to the wilderness, it has served as “a symbolic means of uniting us in the arguments of Roderick Nash that explain why national parks were a uniquely American celebration of something larger than ourselves” (505). idea: “‘the nation’s unique experience with nature in general and wilderness in particular,’ the But what can the history of American cultural views of wilderness teach us in dealing presence of a democratic ideology, and ‘the existence of a sizable amount of undeveloped land with the wilderness debate of the current generation? Imagining that one single solution could at the moment when the first two influences combined to produce a desire for its protection’” solve a problem which spans an entire democracy would simply be illogical and a utopian fan- (219). The national park system in America was only one response to the growing concern tasy. However, if there is one concept that remains true in a democratic republic such as that of environmentalists over the expansion of cities and civilization in general. The rise of deep of the United States, it is that solutions can be reached through compromise. Aldo Leopold, in ecology led many, such as David Johns in “Deep Ecology and the Third World,” to put forth his essay “The Land Ethic,” defined something as being “right” when it “tends to preserve the the viewpoint that “the Earth can support a limited amount of biomass and the more of it that integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community” (9). In order to preserve the integrity, is composed of humans or turned to human use, the less is available for other life and that hu- stability, and beauty of the biotic community, one of the most important considerations of mans do not have the right to so alter the composition of the biomass that there is a resulting humanity must be necessity—as Berry states, “Everything depends on our right definition of destruction” (248). Rather, he argued, to preserve wilderness, there would need to be fewer necessity” (145). Therefore, human society must consider what is really necessary in light of humans and less consumption. On the other hand, other ecologists, who also supported wil- what resources have already been taken from the wilderness to sustain industrial civilization. derness preservation, such as Donald Waller in “Getting Back to the Right Nature,” put forth Civilization must find a way to coexist with the wilderness. In considering the varying stages

Stewart | 79 80 | Stewart of American cultural history related to wilderness and the varying arguments of modern ecol- ogists, there have been many opposing views that have the potential to be combined to form Fred Chappell’s Backsass: Commentary on Space, Place, and a an ideal. Abbey stated that he believed “It is possible to find and live a balanced way of life Culture in Transition Brian Caskey somewhere halfway between all-out industrialism on the one hand and a make-believe pasto- | ral idyll on the other” (234). When the Native Americans were the only settlers of the United States, with several million inhabitants, they altered the biomass to ensure survival, but did so in such a way that the majority of people do not even realize it today. They managed to have civilization surrounded by wilderness—coexistence of civilization and wilderness. That is the hen Fred Chappell’s poetry collection Backsass was published in 2004, it was widely goal. Abbey finds this idea in the “independent city-states of classical Greece” to “the small regarded as a humorous, satirical commentary on contemporary society. While the towns of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America,” and views such models of civilization Wbook is conversational in tone and makes careful use of humor as a literary device, as a “return to happier equilibrium between industrialism and a rural-agrarian way of life” a close analysis reveals a collection that is layered and complex, and which firmly establishes (234-235). However, perhaps reverting to old forms of civilization and backtracking in human Chappell as an important voice in the ecopoetry movement. Backsass uses many of the poet’s progress isn’t necessary. Perhaps humanity can preserve wilderness while still progressing poignant personal experiences, along with a sophisticated understanding of Tuanian concepts civilization. Berry presented the idea that “the landscape of harmony [is] safer far for life of of space and place, to make scathing indictments of America’s rejection of healthy, sustainable all kinds than the landscape of monoculture” (151). Creating a landscape of harmony between environments as well as subsequent movements toward dehumanization and loss of identity. civilization and wilderness must be the goal of American culture concerning the wilderness in Born and raised on a farm near Canton, North Carolina during the Great Depression, Chap- our future. “Whereas the monocultural landscape is totalitarian in tendency, the landscape of pell was able to observe his family’s pre-industrial, traditional mountain culture as a young harmony is democratic and free” (151). If the American cultural history of the wilderness has boy and to compare it to its post-industrial aftermath (Hovis, “True Dirt” 389). Chappell’s taught us one thing, it is that harmony between civilization and wilderness is possible. birthplace is known as the home of the Champion Fiber and Paper Company, a large logging and pulp-making operation that clear-cut many of the forests in Canton and the surrounding

Bear. C.L.. “Indian Wisdom” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, countryside in the early part of the twentieth century. George Hovis, a Chappell scholar who 1998. 201-206. Print. has explored the persistence of the yeoman farmer as a cultural icon, provides a sense of the Berry, W. (1985). Home Economics: Fourteen Essays. San Francisco: North Point, 1987. Print. mammoth scale of Champion’s operations and ——(1991). “Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Ath- ens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 227-238. Print. the impact it had on Western North Carolina. Callicott, J.B. “The Good Old-Time Wilderness Religion.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The He wrote in The North Carolina Literary Review Backsass offers a warning to University of Georgia Press, 1998. 387-94. Print. that at the lumber industry’s peak, “southern Cronon, W. “The Trouble with Wilderness or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and the reader about a world that M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 471-99. Print. Appalachia was providing almost forty per- Denevan, W.M. “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. cent of the nation’s timber” (Hovis, “Classical is in a state of flux. For Chap- Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 414-42. Print. Edwards, J. “The Images or Shadows of Divine Things.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The Ecopoetics” 98). pell, his poetry reflects his view University of Georgia Press, 1998. 23-25. Print. The impact of industrialization on North Emerson, R. W. “Nature.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, that society is busily rejecting 1998. 28-30. Print. Carolina’s yeoman farmers can be directly Foreman, D. “Wilderness Areas for Real.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of measured by the declining size of farms in op- traditional, pastoral values and Georgia Press, 1998. 395-407. Print. eration, and a simultaneous reduction in the Harmon, D. “ Cultural Diversity, Human Subsistence, and the National Park Ideal.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and has begun a blind descent into M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 217-230. Print. amount of land available for farming. Accord- Henberg, M. “Wilderness, Myth, and American Character.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens, ing to Hovis, the environmental devastation the unchecked loss of identity Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 500-10. Print. and pollution created by Champion reduced Johns, D. M. “The Relevance of Deep Ecology to the Third World.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 246-70. Print. the size of the average farm by more than half that accompanies modernism. Leopold, A. “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The Universi- during a 50-year period, from 187 acres to 76 ty of Georgia Press, 1998. 75-84. Print. ——(1948). A Sand County Almanac. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949. 167-190. Print. acres, while the available farmland declined “Wilderness.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. by 20 percent over this same span of time (“Vale” 99). Conversion to a market economy, de- Muir, J. “Our National Parks.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, creased farm production, and related socio-economic changes in the region had an immediate 1998. 48-62. Print. Nelson, M.P. “An Amalgamation of Wilderness Preservation Arguments.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nel- impact on Chappell’s family, as Chappell’s parents each had to take menial jobs in order to son. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 154-98. Print. make ends meet. Chappell, in an interview with Gene Hyde in Southern Quarterly, said, “We Roosevelt, T. “The American Wilderness: Wilderness Hunters and Wilderness Game.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott had to have other occupations in order to keep our farm. That is, you had to have ‘paying jobs’ and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 63-74. Print. Talbot. C. “The Wilderness Narrative and Cultural Logic of Capitalism.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. as well as the farm, or you’d have to sell your farm” (87). Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 325-33. Print. George Hovis says that Chappell “witnessed the disappearance of the old verities, an ex- Thoreau. H.D. “Walking.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998. 31-41. Print. perience that leaves him dislocated, alienated, full of epistemological uncertainty, and longing Waller. D.M. “Getting Back to the Right Nature.” The Great New Wilderness Debate. Ed. J.B. Callicott and M.P. Nelson. Athens: The Universi- for some touchstone of truth by which to reorient himself” (“True Dirt” 391). Chappell’s ex- ty of Georgia Press, 1998. 540-67. Print. periences as a young man allowed him to see, first-hand, the impact of rapid industrialization U.S. House. 88th Congress, 1st Session. Pub. L. 88-577, The Wilderness Act. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1964.

Stewart | 81 82 | Caskey not only on his immediate surroundings, but on his family and traditional culture as well. And ciety’s constant, relentless pursuit of financial gain has resulted in a linguistic loss of contact so, Backsass offers a warning to the reader about a world that is in a state of flux. For Chappell, with nature. Chappell’s protagonist was born in ‘Haint Holler’ by Hellfire Creek (3), but: his poetry reflects his view that society is busily rejecting traditional, pastoral values and has begun a blind descent into the unchecked loss of identity that accompanies modernism. now come the real estaters In “Help Help,” a poem in which both language and humanity’s place in nature are ques- and their minion politicos tioned, Chappell’s speaker announces his discomfort with a bold statement: it is no more Haint Holler no more Hellfire Creek but Sweetwater Brook (5-8) I am a prisoner of landscape everywhere I turn there is untutored raw nature Chappell goes on to say, “it is like that all or the brash handiwork of humankind The senseless renaming of over” (10). The landscape once inhabited by or some distressing hybrid of the two (1-4) traditional Appalachians, which bore the liter- traditional placenames might al and figurative names that they applied to it, There is an obvious disconnect on display here, as the persona realizes that he is confused make them more palatable to such as Snakeden and Frying Pan Gap, have and disoriented by the manner in which nature and commercialized, modernized society are been “linguistically erased and subsequent pushed together in the jumbled landscape. He continues: real estate developers, politi- connection made less possible by suburban cians, or retirees from Florida, sprawl” (Hovis, “Classical Ecopoetics” 105). seeking freedom, I have been launching Chappell firmly places himself in opposition these notes in poem bottles for many years but it also erases a valuable to the modernization of Appalachia in “The setting them adrift in the void linguistic and emotional con- Gentrifiers Are In Pursuit,” but he also issues but now (5-8) a challenge to the reader’s blind acceptance of nection between man and artifice. The senseless renaming of traditional In lines 5-8, the speaker describes his search for a language that he can use to communicate nature. placenames might make them more palatable with nature. The search for a universal language is a common theme in posthumanist thought, to real estate developers, politicians, or retirees which is predicated on “the recognition of nonhuman entities as potential interlocutors” (Gil- from Florida, but it also erases a valuable lin- crest 40). For the speaker, however, this is a dead end; his “poem bottles” (6) simply sail off guistic and emotional connection between man and nature. into “the void” (7) without any sort of response. He can achieve no satisfaction by attempting “The Gentrifiers Are In Pursuit” ends by suggesting that hell will be turned into a theme to communicate directly with nature. Frustration mounting, the speaker continues: park (19-20), and that people will be renamed as well, completing the theft of man’s identity in this new, prettified world. Chappell is provoking the reader here by asking, hypothetically, I begin to fear there is no void what kind of identity a man can retain if the history and experience and the culture of the place only a Concept of Void that defines him has been completely erased and renamed. Clearly, Chappell is drawing upon thought up by some science geek (9-11) his own Appalachian experience to illuminate what he perceives as a dangerous disconnect. J. Scott Bryson, in The West Side of Any Mountain, argues that ecopoets pay close attention to J. Scott Bryson has defined space as the “extent to which the world is ultimately unknow- the places in which they reside, which in turn leads to “an increased awareness of the ecolog- able,” and place as the locations and objects that define the world around humanity (8). Chap- ical interconnection between all of the inhabiters of that particular space” (22). As Chappell pell questions the existence of both space and place in lines 9-11, probing the rift between correctly points out, if place does not exist—or if it’s been renamed and has therefore had its human and non-human nature and allowing the increasingly isolated speaker to become what identity replaced—then a real connection cannot exist. cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan calls an “islanded self.” Islanded selves are “divorced not Chappell further explores the concept of identity loss and dehumanization in a pair of only from an indifferent natural world but from the rest of humanity as well” (Bryson 96). companion poems, “Backward” and “Bringing In The Oaks,” in Backsass. In these two poems, For Chappell’s speaker, the resulting sense of placelessness is so discomfiting as to be almost he applies a lighter touch, using a bit of comedy to intentionally heighten the impact of the fi- overpowering. nal stanzas. In the first poem, “Backward,” the speaker reveals his own lack of understanding “Help Help” also allows Chappell to subtly trace “postmodernism’s debt to existentialism by pointing out the supposed foolishness of the trees: and demonstrate the antithetical relationship implicit between ecocritical literature and any language and literature that so persistently denigrates the possibility of a vital linguistic rela- the Deciduous have got it backward tionship between people and nature” (Hovis, “Classical Ecopoetics” 106). Unlike Emerson and others, Chappell’s vision of the possibilities that exist for humanity’s engagement with nature all winter they stand around naked is not optimistic. then in March the dogwoods put on green vests “The Gentrifiers Are In Pursuit,” another poem in the collection, continues to explore the theme of the inherent tension that exists between traditional values and a growing sense and the willows slip into filmy negligees of alienation, isolation, and disconnection from those ideals. In this poem, contemporary so-

Caskey | 83 84 | Caskey by midsummer every last one heaves beneath Realizing that he cannot bring the trees inside—paralyzed with his own inaction—he de- a full green topcoat cides to simply console himself with the heat from his electric furnace and with his own guilt. As in “Backward,” the persona in “Bringing In The Oaks” has completely insulated himself come October they buckle up in armor plate from nature and from the natural order of things. By using a humorous tone, and by utilizing bronze and gold and vermilion absurd language and reasoning, Chappell brilliantly exposes the self-exile that many humans have chosen for themselves. The humor that Chappell uses here should not be mistaken for and clatter at one another superficiality. Chappell was quoted by Michael McFee in the Southern Literary Journal as hav- like first-term presidents rattling sabers ing said, “Comedy is much more serious than tragedy…It says more about the conditions of people, the way people live day to day. Tragedy is wonderful, but the tragic view is sometimes they’re unteachable too easy” (106). you can spend lifetimes In an interview with Gene Hyde, Chappell talking directly inside their heads and nothing changes blames this self-exile—this tragically self-cho- Chappell is not yearning to just ask the birds about that sen disconnect—on “economic imperialism,” saying that if one looks at America’s history, return to a simpler time or to so maybe they’re really not intelligent after all “the two great literary themes that are endemic idealize a less complicated What kind of brains can you have to this century would be world wars and the eating nothing but air and dirt? effect of industrialism on local culture.” He way of life. He firmly believes in goes on to say that a theme that will appear sustainablilty. that diet has not made Zimbabwe wiser (1-18) again and again in Appalachian literature is “this change of culture” (97). “Backward” dramatizes “how turning one’s back on nature leads to our dehumanization Yeoman values, and the often-ignored perspective of the small farmer, pervade much of and the loss of empathy even for our own kind” (Hovis, “Classical Ecopoetics” 107), which Chappell’s fiction and poetry, as Caroline Miles states in an article for The Southern Literary is represented by the speaker’s complete indifference toward the starving masses in another Journal. Chappell’s work is a strong affirmation of “the centrality of yeoman values in the country. The speaker’s contempt for the natural world, of course, now extends to humanity. state’s history and cultural memory” (Miles 146). Chappell’s uniquely Appalachian point of In “Bringing In The Oaks,” Chappell’s speaker has empathy toward nature but shows a view and the clear articulation of a tradition that prizes “egalitarianism, independence, and an remarkable lack of understanding of nature’s most basic processes: identification of the small family farm as the basic social unit” (Hovis, “Vale” 97) represents a central theme in his poetic work. tis a bitter cold New Year’s Eve Chappell is not yearning to return to a simpler time or to idealize a less complicated way of I sit warm inside life. He firmly believes in sustainability. Chappell has been quoted as saying that he believes electric furnace Dick Clark on TV that a poet has a duty to describe the natural order of things, the way that things have existed in any civilization that has “managed to endure for any length of time. If poets do not wish to but all I can think of are the oaks study these matters and treat of them, they shirk their responsibilities and fail their society” sycamores maples elms (Hovis, “True Dirt” 413). how they must suffer at ± 0 degrees Somewhat incredibly, at least for the work of a man who has been described by North Car- olina novelist Lee Smith as “our resident genius, our shining light, the one truly great writer I want to bring them inside we have among us” (Howard 40), Fred Chappell’s Backsass was somewhat misunderstood but there’s hardly room for even one upon its initial publication. Chappell’s homespun style, his folksy manner, and his use of humor as a literary device in many ways enhances, but also obscures, the real message of the wouldn’t be fair to bring in one collection. As Don Johnson says in his essay “The Cultivated Mind,” there “is no easy primi- and not the others tivism here, no celebration of the noble mountaineer living in ignorance and grace” (Bizarro also the ground is frozen 190). Instead, Chappell uses his experiences in Appalachia and his understanding of classical the shovel wouldn’t bite ecopoetics to create something greater. Backsass deftly, poignantly, and subtly points out the dangers of modern society, and the lonely road that lies ahead if man continues to isolate him- still I feel guilty about the cold trees self from the natural world. although I can do nothing except enjoy

guilt always warms me head to toe (1-16)

Caskey | 85 86 | Caskey Bizzaro, Patrick, ed. Dream Garden. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Print.

Bryson, J. S. The West Side of Any Mountain: Place, Space, and Ecopoetry. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2005. Print. Torchwood |

Chappell, Fred. Backsass: Poems. Baton Rouge, LA: Lousiana State University Press, 2004. Print. Brian Caskey

Gilcrest, David W. Greening the Lyre : Environmental Poetics and Ethics. Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2002. Print.

Hovis, George. “The Classical Ecopoetics of Fred Chappell’s Backsass and Midquest.” North Carolina Literary Review 20 (2011): 98-110. Print. Torchwood and longleaf reach skyward ---. “When You Got True Dirt You Got Everything You Need: Forging An Appalachian Arcadia in Fred Chappell’s Midquest.” Mississippi thirsting for light and space, Quarterly 53.3 (2000): 389-414. Print. their blackened trunks and blistered bark ---. Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. Print. bear silent witness. Howard, Jennifer. “Fred Chappell: From the mountains to the mainstream.” Publishers Weekly 30 Sept. 1996: 55-56. Print. Live oaks, solitary and resolute, Hyde, Gene. “The Southern Highlands as Literary Landscape.” Southern Quarterly 40.2 (2002): 86-98. Print. stand guard against the icy glint of the river­— McFee, Michael. “The Epigrammatical Fred Chappell.” Southern Literary Journal 31.2 (1999): 95-108. Print. gnarled and awkward, knees and elbows Miles, Caroline S. “Aristocrats, Yeomen, and Blue-Collar Folk: Understanding Class in the American South.” The Southern Literary Journal bracing for the smoke and heat. 42.1 (2009): 144-148. Print. Wiregrass litters the pine flatwoods and whispers softly in the winter breeze, dormant buds patiently preparing for the cleansing flames of spring.

How unfortunate that the fires engulfing the human heart are not so gentle. How unfortunate that I believed in your love and other lies.

wrote “Torchwood” after participating raged through the area. in a class outing at Carolina Beach State I wanted to evoke imagery of the trees IPark last November, while taking Ashley and other flora, which seemed to me to be ei- Hudson’s “Natural World in Poetry” course. ther growing away from the dangerous, fire- As we walked through the woods, I found prone forest floor as quickly as possible; or myself thinking about this habitat, which is in the case of the live oak, to be contorting uniquely evolved towards fire. Fire, for most themselves in order to push back against the humans, represents destruction—but it is a heat and the flames. In terms of influence, I requirement for survival here. Many of these thought quite a bit about James Arthos and highly adapted trees and shrubs cannot re- personification, and I also considered the fe- produce until fire has disrupted the habi- rocity of nature that comes through in Paul tat. Immediately after a fire quickly burns Zimmer’s poems, like “What I Know About through and consumes the old, dead fuel Owls,” but also in Donald Halpern’s “Annu- that lies on the sandy floor, the habitat flow- als.” ers out in an incredible burst of color and life. I also found myself pondering the flam- I wanted to juxtapose the cold and bril- mability of the human heart, and I wanted liant fall morning with the heat that this hab- to find a way to relate back to the possibility itat regularly experiences. We were seeing it that as humans, we wear our scars, just as the at a time when everything seemed to be al- trees do, but we aren’t evolved toward heart- most frozen, waiting for release, and yet still break and we don’t always recover quickly. bore the scorch marks from the last fire that

Caskey | 87 88 | Caskey Death Transcends the Artist | Gregory Hankinson

n 1956, the last year of Jackson Pollock’s follow that a belief in God must exist, but life, he did not paint. The abstract expres- rather a recognition for a subliminal world Isionist had reached professional success only found in death. This also does not re- over the past decade, but was drowning in quire a heaven, or even dualist perspective, alcoholism and solitude that frequented his but a relinquishment of curiosity to the artist. adult life. On August 11, 1956, while driving The connection these people have to intoxicated, Pollock crashed his Oldsmobile death derives from both self-loathing and into a tree—killing himself and one of the narcissism. Artists’ self-loathing does not other two female passengers. An artist’s ob- stem from an emotional inaptitude, as many session with self-destruction stems from a people may say. It is rather an acknowledg- sense of self-loathing, admittedly, but more ment of the flaws of existence. Narcissism importantly— the self-destruction is a result in art is prevalent because of the aesthetic of an artist’s obsession with his or her own appeal that must exist through apprecia- death. tion. Inevitable narcissism was the only way In 1969, a young professor named John Hemingway made it to the end of his life. Kennedy Toole attached one end of a hose to Consequently, he shot himself. his exhaust and the other inside the window All you must do is seek the works of of his automobile. Toole had recently fin- these artists and realize that as devastating ished his novel A Confederacy of Dunces and as many of their lives are, there also exists was erratic at its rejection from publication an obsession with mortality that leads to and the exhaustion of professional failure. self-destruction. The last words of Aldous After taking his own life, Toole’s mother Huxley before his death were, “LSD, 100 mil- found a manuscript for Dunces and demand- ligrams.” Clearly, such artists see death dif- ed its publication. Toole received the Pulitzer ferently. Prize posthumously. A paradox must exist in an artists’ mind Similar cases run amok: Kurt Cobain in finding the role of death in aesthetics. (suicide), Jim Morrison (drug overdose), Jimi Does an artist seek out art to find death? Hendrix (drug overdose, practically), Elvis Or, does an artist seek out art to defy death? Presley (overdose), Frida Kahlo (overdose), An artist’s interpretation of death remains Alfred Maurer (suicide), Mark Rothko (sui- an integral part of their metaphysical lives. cide), Hunter S. Thompson (suicide), Virgin- Art can develop a fascination with existen- ia Wolf (suicide), Sylvia Plath (suicide). The tial thoughts, curiosities of death, and possi- obsession with death for artists is not a result bly hasten death for the far more inquisitive of the unsuccessful nature that some artists artists. In defying death, there remains an- experience within their lifetimes. The answer other consideration of an artist’s obsession. is more existential. Although an artist’s life may be brief, a mas- Jean Anouilh has said, “Beauty is one of terpiece has the ability to live on for eternity. the rare things that do not lead to doubt of An immortality of the artist survives with the God.” Whether beauty is found in art, music, works they created. For example, although or literature, the result is never a disillusion- Michelangelo has been deceased since 1564, ment of the divine, but instead a reinstate- The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel main- ment of humanity. It does not necessarily tains its permanence and demands respect.

Hankinson | 89 90 | Hankinson With the creation of a masterpiece, an artist Punishment, or Welles’s Citizen Kane. These finds the fountain of youth and the fear of artists have discovered what I have attempt- A Cup of Coffee | death can subside. ed to capture in my work, an immortal mas- Toni Whiteman My work may bring my existential capa- terpiece. bilities closer to death in a fundamental way, Perhaps my work will not survive to but my work has the ability to create immor- the end of my life or much thereafter, but if tality. My painting The Tree represents the it does, my existence will remain with that Tree of Life. The black paint dripping down work, until the day that age tarnishes the tis- Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?—Albert Camus a yellow backdrop represents the material sues that define me and the prospect of ac- organic decay washing into the earth, while quiring immortality dies forever. Until this Chinese: 咖啡, Czech: kava, Philippine: kape, Dutch: koffie, German: kaffee, Irish: caife, the tree grows untarnished toward the light. day, my search for the fountain of youth will Turkish: kahve, Indonesian: kopi, Vietnamese: cà phê, Hungarian: kávé Just as in death, neither elegance nor continue, and possibly one day a young art- beauty is present in my work. The harsh re- ist will come to discover my Tree of Life, and Introduction ality that artists have defied runs rampant in simultaneously uncover the secret to immor- Picasso’s Guernica, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and tality. cup of coffee as an object of fancy is actually two objects—coffee and the coffee cup— both endowed with their own powers, intrinsically linked. The object, the cup of cof- Afee, has influenced human behavior around the world for centuries. Contrary to the long-standing belief that humans are in control of the things they invent, in the case of coffee, it is the object that has choreographed, changed, and enhanced human behavior. Coffee woke us up in the dark ages and sent us into modernity. Coffee consumption has changed the course of history. It has done so from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the present, first by integrat- ing itself into our earliest memories through embodied cognition, nonverbal communication, and metaphor and then by creating the desire to congregate for discourse and community. Coffee has evolved as a cultural object along with the human race and technological develop- ment. More so, it is loved.

History

ike the tree of knowledge story in Genesis, the fruit of the Rubiaceae bush too became an agent of knowledge. There are many stories describing the origins of the coffee drink, Lbut the favorite comes from the heart of Africa as told by Morton Satin in his book, Coffee Talk (Morton 38). One day Khaldi, a young goat herder, who lived in the highlands of Ethiopia in the kingdom of Kaffa, noticed the how energetic his goats behaved after eating berries from a certain bush. He discovered that the berry had the same effect on him and brought a handful to the imam of the monastery in the village. The monks tried the beans but found the taste unpleasant and threw the remaining beans into the fire, only to discover Coffee woke us up in the dark its alluring aroma. Giving it another try, they ages and sent us into too were energized and pleased they had dis- covered a drink that would allow them to stay modernity. awake during their nightly prayers. From the very beginning the stimulating effect of coffee gave energy and joy to congregations of spiri- tual seekers. Travelers brought the bean from the monasteries of Ethiopia to the mosques of Yemen by the eleventh-century. Arabs began to cultivate and roast and crush the seeds before soaking the grounds in water and serving it in a vessel—a cup. The drink especially enamored Sufi dervishes, as it gave an inspired fervor to their spinning spiritual dances. In the thirteenth-century, coffee spread through the East with Islam. The call to Mecca brought thousands of Muslim pilgrims each year to Arabia. It was there they first learned

Hankinson | 91 92 | Whiteman Cafe Commons (right) about the wine of Araby, rich in aroma and earthy in taste—simulta- photographed by Toni neously relaxing and stimulating, and with them the desire for coffee Whitman spread throughout the East. By the 1400s, convocation over the cup of coffee was a ubiquitous feature of the entire Ottoman Empire, now a cul- ture of coffee drinkers. Beyond the personal satisfaction attained by drinking the dark kava, gathering with other coffee drinkers became popular. And just like today, people drink coffee with other people whether they know them or not. It creates a common bond. In the centers of trade—the cities of Mocha, Cairo, Constantinople—a merchant or scholar would seek out the local coffee houses upon arriving. It was a place for socializing, engaging in serious dis- course, gossiping, getting the news of the day, listening music, playing chess, or watching performers. Coffee houses became known as “schools for the wise” and eventually in England as “penny universities” (Morton 186). Contrary to religious gatherings, the public gathered in coffee houses for the warm aroma, the hum of human activity, and the joy of companionship. But most threatening to the increasingly alarmed ruling class and religious leaders, was the exchanging of ideas that coffee provoked. The first coffee house opened in Constantinople in 1475. The lure of the coffee house was created by the rich pungent scent of brewing coffee and by the rugs of crimson silk and wool on the floors adorned with a rich mosaic of colored cushions. The coffee was served on small wooden tables displaying beautifully embossed metal trays, adorned with jewels crafted by artisans, offering cups of porcelain held in metal zarfs. The coffee house became a place for or- gies, music, storytelling, and business deals. It was not long before powerful rulers tried to lock the doors of coffee dens and drive off the coffee merchants, but wiser men prevailed. “When Khair Bey, the governor of Mecca, banned cof- Roman Catholic clerics fee in 1511 because he feared it might encour- witnessing the small cheerful age resistance to his rule, the sultan executed him on the grounds that coffee was actually animated groups of people blessed” (The Roast and Post). By then, word gathering on street corners, of the lavish Turkish coffee houses had spread through Europe and spawned a global coffee called it the “Drink of Satan.” house culture. The Arabs leaders introduced coffee to the rulers of Europe in order to encourage trade between their countries. But they were careful to hold a monopoly over the popular seed by first roasting the bean and killing the seed, before shipping. It was not until the Dutch seized hold of the coveted seedlings and brought it to Europe that the West’s cultivation of coffee began. To soften relations, the mayor of the city of Amsterdam gave the gift of a coffee seedling to King Louis XIV of France. Then a French Naval officer stole a branch from the garden of the King and made his way to Martinique. That seed was the progenitor to 20 million coffee trees (Morton 139). From the 1600s, Europe- an colonialism created slave-run plantations that grew coffee and other tropical products all around the world. In England, slavery was the economic backbone of the colonialist until the Anti-Slave Act of 1807—banning slavery across the colonies. In a battle over Venice in 1683, the defeated Turkish soldiers left behind a stockpile of cof- fee. Had it not been for the Ambassador Franz George Kolschitzky, who had lived in Turkey for many years and was familiar with the coffee house life, the coffee beans would have been dumped into the river. Kolschitzky had been of great service to the Venetians during war, and when he asked for the beans, they gave them to him. They also gave him a home, which he in turn opened as the first coffee house in Venice (Morton 127). The invigorating drink was sold by street vendors around the city. Roman Catholic clerics witnessing the small cheerful Whiteman | 93 94 | Whiteman animated groups of people gathering on street corners, called it the “Drink of Satan.” They pret the intentions of others’ through their hands. We hold hands; we touch and are touched, petitioned the Pope to prohibit the drinking of coffee. Pope Clement VIII judicially asked for caressed and loved by the hands of others. John Bargh and Lawrence Williams discuss cog- a taste. He found it so enjoyable that he baptized it and said, “Coffee is so delicious it would nitive embodiment, and they attest, “In this way, the feelings of warmth when one holds a be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it” (Morton 110). Blessed by the Pope, coffee hot cup of coffee or takes a warm bath might became a cultural phenomenon in Venice and across Italy. activate memories of other feelings associated Some of the finest and most elegant coffee houses in Italy built during this time still serve The movements of the hand to with warmth (trust and comfort), because of customers today. The Venetian proprietor Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened Café Proco- grasp and hold a cup trigger early experiences with caretakers who provide pe in Paris in 1686. It was the first literary coffee shop. It is said that Voltaire and his friends warmth, shelter, safety, and nourishment” met there. Legend has it that a lieutenant in the French Army had to leave his hat as collateral the unconscious memories (Williams 1). The human hand is our naviga- for his unpaid bill. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte (“The History of Coffee”). first planted in the limbic parts tor through the system of objects, conveying Today, coffee drinkers outnumber tea drinkers in the United States, but that was not al- messages from the outside world to our brains. ways the case. In December of 1773, a band of patriots protesting high taxes and the British of the brain during infancy, How things feel, our desire to hold, whether monopoly on tea slipped aboard the British trade ships docked in the Boston Harbor and transmitting feelings of something is hot or cold, smooth or prickly, during the night dumped 342 chests of tea into the bay. In retaliation, King George of the Brit- comforting or dangerous, is revealed though ish Empire closed the harbor and thus sparked the spirit of rebellion in the American colonists, comfort. our hands. One necessary quality for the trans- who called for independence from Britain. Thereafter, tea was deemed unpatriotic, and coffee mission of the value of the cup of coffee is that became the drink of choice for the Americans. it must be hot. The cup is the agent that transmits the feel of warm liquid to our hands. Throughout history, coffee has stimulated the mind and soothed the soul. There is some- In George Lakoff’s The Metaphors We Live By, he explains that our language and actions thing about coffee that calls people together to drink either in solitude or with the company are conduits for communicating what is mostly nonverbal. It is the metaphor about meeting friends and colleagues. Coffee shops create a place of belonging, where local farmers meet for coffee, the coffee clutch, the coffee break, my morning coffee, grab a cup of Joe, don’t talk to discuss crop yields and intellectuals meet to discuss politics and literature. In Satin’s book to me until I’ve had my coffee that awakens the memory that warms the heart. The metaphor Coffee Talk, he writes, “Because of caffeine’s ability to keep drinkers awake and mentally sharp, is, both linguistically and physically an action: the agent that maps the significant cognitive the discussions would often revolve around intellectual subjects: politics, the arts, science, and link to a cup of hot coffee. He concludes that it is in the repetition of the metaphor that we find economics” (139). He continues to say the infamous reputation that grew universally around meaning and self-knowledge (234). In the theories of cognitive embodiment, as investigated the drink often caused dictators and monarchs and religious leaders intending to hold on to by Williams and Bargh, it is in the memories and the unconscious mind that we hold the hid- their power to eventually ban and try to close the houses to prevent revolutions from brewing den meaning of drinking coffee that is embedded in the action. The movements of the hand to along with the coffee (139). grasp and hold a cup trigger the unconscious memories first planted in the limbic parts of the Coffee has traveled from feudalism to imperialism, from slave-driven plantations, to small brain during infancy, transmitting feelings of comfort. farmers, to large corporations and back to the mountainsides where the farms are in the shade The cup is—according to a study by Jochen Reb and Terry Connolly, Possession, Feelings and the owners practice “fair trade.” Coffee is the second most traded product in the world, of Ownership and Endowment—the medium by which all the powers of cognitive embodiment after fossil fuel. It is grown in tropical regions around the world along the equator between and metaphor are transmitted. They demonstrated why any cup and even paper cups become the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic Capricorn. It is reported even today, at the website for bestowed with this power. They concluded, “These feelings of ownership that appeared to social justice for cocoa and coffee growers, that farmers in the Ivory Coast refuse to pay their lead individuals to include the object into their endowment and to shift their reference point workers, and instead beat and intimidate them—most are children between nine and sixteen accordingly” (Reb 107). Even though we have a favorite coffee cup the mystical powers can be years old. transferred through any substituted medium: Those growing it continue to make slave wages, while those selling it in coffee shops in Zurich and Paris, New York, and Seattle make fortunes. Today’s Fair Trade organizations are We found a significant effect of possession, but not of factual ownership, on monetary val- helping farmers get their fair share of the profits. uation of the object. Moreover, this effect was mediated by participants’ feelings of owner- The coffee bean is a simple seed, easily grown, that triggers such a desirous effect that first ship, which were enhanced by the physical possession of the object. Thus, the endowment men, and then women, demanded the right to enjoy a cup of coffee at a reasonable price, and effect did not rely on factual ownership per se but was the result of subjective feelings of with that the freedom to congregate away from the judgmental eyes of the clergy and out of ownership induced by possession of the object. (Reb 107) reach of paranoid monarchs. If a person holds a cup that is not theirs, but is clearly in their possession, they transmit to the The Meaning of the Object cup all the feeling carried with ownership and the mystical power of drinking coffee. Even more specific to the case drawn here is a study by Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler, wherein n addition to the many technological uses of the human hand is its ability to reveal the in- Thaler coined the term “endowment effect” (1325). In this study, subjects were given a coffee tensions of the human heart. These first lessons in nonverbal communication are conveyed mug and offered the chance to sell it. Interestingly, the subject estimated the value of the mug Ito us in our earliest moments of life. As infants, we are fed by the warm breast of mothers they held to be twice the value of the mug they were not holding. and cradled in their hands, and we hear the soft tones of their voices. We quickly learn to inter-

Whiteman | 95 96 | Whiteman I would take a moment to inhale the aroma of the coffee, let the steam touch my face, feel the warmth of the cup in my gloved hands, and then I would take the first sip. It was the perfect start to the promise of a good day. At home today I have a white ceramic cup, about two inches high, medium or standard circumference, with a stenciled blue Japanese landscape on it. The bottom of the cup is em- bossed: USA. I like all of those things about it. But most importantly it is the right weight and feel. It is smooth and fits perfectly in my hands. It is the one. It represents my well-being and allows for a moment of reflection. I think about what is ahead. I take it outside with me to walk the dog. I meditate for a moment, as I take in the sun or the rain. I start my day caffeinated and focused. Part of the magic of the morning ritual is that it can be recreated any time during the day when I stop for a cup of coffee. This ritual gives structure to my life. Recognizing the uni- versal quest for this morning ritual was how Howard Schultz, the entrepreneur who founded Starbucks, grew his business. Howard Schultz did not create the desire for coffee; rather, he tapped into a universal phenomenology created by drinking coffee. The phenomenology of coffee drinking could be described by ambiance, smell, emotion, personal, or communal intention. In a world where most people feel alienated from their community, the coffee house is a sort of church where people partake in a daily ritual, receive a morning blessing, and sometimes in just a few mo- ments prepare mentally and emotionally for the day. According to a National Coffee Drink- ing Study found online, 68% of Americans have a cup of coffee within the first hour that they awake (Live Science).

Wings of Desire

n the film Wings of Desire, released in 1987 by German filmmaker Wim Wenders—Peter Falk, who plays himself, is seen standing by a food trailer next to a chain-linked fence on Ithe street. It is a typical cold gray morning in Berlin. He orders a cup of coffee. When the The Chess Players (above) photographed by Toni Whiteman barista hands him a paper cup of coffee, he takes it with both hands and brings it to his lips. The Personal He stops to breathe in the aroma of the roasted beans, to take in the warmth, then takes his first sip, and sighs in contentment. The significance of this scene in the story is not revealed until n the early 1990s, I lived in New York City on Staten Island. I worked in the financial dis- later in the film. The significance of the behavior as a gesture is relevant because 500 million trict in Manhattan, not far from Wall Street. Early in the morning, I would ride the train people around the world indulge in the same ritual every day. Ifrom Oakwood Heights to St. George Station where I—and a thousand others—would dis- Near the end of the film, we see Peter Falk standing at the same food trailer with a cup of embark to climb the fifty or so stairs up into the coffee, talking to himself. He is not actually talking to himself but to an angel played by Bruno Staten Island Ferry terminal. Every morning Ganz, whom he cannot see. He knows the angel is there because an angel is presence is often we moved en masse, rolling from one building In a world where most people felt by a feeling of unjustifiable calm and comfort. In this scene, Falk tells the angel that he to the other. Some of us would break off and feel alienated from their com- knows he is there watching him. He tells the angel that he too was once an angel, but chose to enter a deli, and we understood the rule that return to the world as a mortal, to feel things in his hands, like a cup of coffee. Only a mortal we were, without stopping, to yell our coffee munity, the coffee house is a can know the immense pleasure of holding a hot cup of coffee on cold winter’s day. order to the clerk and follow the line around sort of church where people the store to the other side of the counter and Conclusion pick up our coffee. It was greatly appreciat- partake in a daily ritual, re- ed if you had the exact change. I would drop ceive a morning blessing, and hilosopher, Jean Baudrillard may well have tapped into one of the universal phenomena my change, pick up my coffee, and move on associated with the consumption coffee in his book The System of Objects when he said, to board the ferry. Even during the coldest sometimes in just a few mo- P“This discursive system of objects is analogous to the system of habits” (100). Baudril- days of winter, I preferred to stand outside on ments prepare mentally and lard goes on to say about habit, “Moreover, any object immediately becomes the foundation the back deck, wrapped in garments of thick of a network of habits, the focus of a set of behavioral routines. In everyday existence the two wool. Holding my coffee, I waited. When the emotionally for the day. are inextricably bound up with each other” (100). There is a welcomed routine that the coffee boat was safely en route and moving steadily, drinker is privy to. It is a routine of behavior that is comforting. On the matter of ritual, George Whiteman | 97 98 | Whiteman Lakoff wrote, “Each ritual is a repeated, coherently structured, and a unified aspect of our ex- perience. In performing ritual, we give structure and significance to our activities, minimizing Notes on Our Contributors | chaos and disparity in our actions” (234). It is this shared ritualistic experience, defined by Spring 2013 metaphor and awakened by cognitive embodiment that connects people everywhere when they stop for a cup of coffee.

Sadie E. Campbell | I am a graduate student in the MALS program. My reading interests are varied and include the works of Stephen King, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, World War I poetry, and the poetry of Sandra Cisneros, Felicia Hemans, Christina Rossetti, Pablo Neruda, Paul Muldoon, Billy Collins, and Sharon Olds.

Brian Caskey | Brian has a BS in Biology from Stetson University. He lives in Asheville, NC with his wife, Stacey and daughter, Allison. He also owns and operates a tutoring and test prep facility. Brian is currently pursuing a Master’s in Liberal Studies at UNC Wilmington.

Heather Jo Divoky | Heather graduated from Appalachian State University with a degree in Art History. Although she loves the history of art and considers herself a scholar, Heather also is an active participant in the art world as both a traditional artist and a graphic designer. Her aesthetic philosophy is often informed by history, past and current, though she main- tains a whimsical, magical style uniquely her own. With bursts of color and incredible detail, Heather’s inspirations are varied and often (though not always) include Mesoamerican Art, Outsider Art, and the Art Nouveau period. Currently, she is exploring the use of wire, textiles, and looking into the shoe making process, and integrating it into her marker, pen, and colored pencil practice. Her favorite food is a good, homemade macaroni and cheese, and she would never turn down a hike in the woods.

Lauren B. Evans | Originally from Anniston, Alabama, I graduated from the University of Al- abama with a BA in English in 2012. I am currently in my second semester in the GLS program at UNC Wilmington. Alone Together (above) photographed by Toni Whiteman Joel Randolph Finsel | Joel is the author of Cocktails & Conversations from the Astral Plane. See Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. 1968. Trans. James Benedict. New York: Verso, 1996. Print. more of what he’s up to at www.joelfinsel.com.

Choco Java Social Justice Network. Choco Java Social Justice. Wordpress. Jan 19, 2012. Web. 31 March 2012. Gregory Hankinson | Greg graduates from UNC Wilmington in May 2013 with a bachelor’s “The History of Coffee.” Go Coffee Go. GoCoffeeGo. 2013. Web. 31 Mar 2013. degree in Philosophy. He plans on attending medical school upon wrapping up a minor in Jochen, Reb and Terry Connolly. “Possession, Feelings of ownership and the Endowment Effect.” Judgment and Decision Making 2, April chemistry and mastering the MCAT. 2007. 107–114. Print.

Kahneman, Daniel, Jack L. Knetsch, Richard H. Thaler. “Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem.” Journal of Jessica Jacob | Jessica is currently participating in the Master of Arts program at UNC Wilm- Political Economy 98.6 (1990): 1325-48. Print. ington for English Literature and Composition. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta-Interna- Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago Press, 1980. Print. tional English Honor Society, as well as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. As an undergraduate,

Lorenzettie, Daniel and Linda R. Lorenzettie. The Birth of Coffee. New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2000. Print. Jessica studied abroad in Wales, and participated in a Wentworth Travel Fellowship in Greece and Italy in an effort to expand her knowledge of both literature and the world’s cultures. She Live Science. “Coffee Facts for National Coffee Day (Infographic).” LiveScience.com. Tech Media Network. 2013. Web. 31 March 2013. plans to continue this expansion, beginning with traveling throughout Germany for a second Morton, Satin. Coffee Talk, The Stimulating Story of The World’s Most Popular Brew. New York: Prometheus Books, 2011. Print. Wentworth Travel Fellowship in the summer of 2013. Ultimately, she hopes to continue to pair

The Roast and Post Coffee Company. “The Early Years.” RealCoffee.co.uk. The Roast & Post Coffee Co. 2013. Web. 9 April 2013. travel with literature to broaden the boundaries of her intellectual curiosity.

Williams, Lawrence E. and John A. Bargh. “Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth.” Science 322.24 (2008): 606-607. Science online. Web. 3 April 2013. Jamie L. Joyner | Ms. Joyner is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English Literature at UNC Wilmington. She is a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the English department, as well as Wings of Desire. Dir. Wim Wenders. USA Orion Classics, 1987. Film. Whiteman | 99 a CRLA Master Certified Writing Tutor. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta-International En- artist is to be around fellow artists and art lovers and that you never stop growing as an artist. glish Honor Society. Her research interests include Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Kate Her artwork is currently displayed at Checker Cab Gallery, Figments Gallery, and Caper Fear Chopin, Adrienne Rich, and Edith Wharton. She intends to further her study of the maternal, Native in Wilmington, NC. and its underlying influence within literature, particularly in nineteenth century literature. Renee L. Sloan | Renee is a graduate student in the English program at UNC Wilmington. Dylan Linehan | Born and raised in Wilmington, NC, Dylan is a fifth-generation musician She recently earned a BA in English with a concentration in literature, and a BFA in Creative whose musical heritage includes traditional Appalachian and Celtic roots. Dylan spent some Writing. Prior to returning to school to pursue her education, she worked in the newspaper of her childhood traveling around North Carolina with her parents, who performed old-time industry as a graphic artist and writer. She plans to graduate with her MA in Spring 2014, and music and folk songs written by her mother, Karen. Dylan began studying classical piano at then return to graduate school to earn an MFA in creative writing or a PhD in English. When age seven with Mary Paterson who inspired her to pursue her musical dreams from an early she’s not in class, Renee enjoys sharing her love of books with her five-year-old son. age. Dylan continued her studies through late high school and college with one of North Car- olina’s finest classical piano performers, Domonique Launey. Dylan also credits her favorite Caleb Stewart | Hailing from a small town nestled in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of composers Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Chopin (to name a few) as some of her Virginia, Caleb is currently pursuing degrees in Film Studies and Creative Writing at UNC greatest teachers and inspirations. Dylan’s first album Pericardium was recently released in Wilmington. He is heavily involved in organizations across campus and throughout Wilming- March, 2013. It is a collection of songs written from the heart over the last five years. She cur- ton, but also tries to make time for family and friends. Until now, his writing has never been rently studies voice with the incomparable Marina De Ratmiroff. Dylan’s music is an original published, but he is working on a novel tentatively titled Mark of the Beast. blend of rock-opera-pop, with a strong base of classical elements. She has scored several stu- dent films and has recently scored her first feature filmDon’t Know Yet, written, produced, and Vallie Lynn Watson | Vallie Lynn Watson’s debut novel, A River So Long, was published by directed by her father, Terry Linehan. Luminis Books in June 2012, and her Pushcart-nominated work appears or is forthcoming in dozens of literary magazines such as PANK, decompE, and Gargoyle. Watson teaches creative Kelsey Ann Linehan | Kelsey is a recent graduate of East Carolina University School of Art writing at Southeast Missouri State University and is learning to fly hot air balloons. and Design, where she received a BFA in Photography. She has been passionate about visual arts since childhood, starting with a love of collage. Kelsey credits her grandfather with spark- Zachariah Weaver | I was born in Michigan and raised on cartoons and comic books. I try to ing her early interest in photography. She recalls an enchanted evening watching him capture create things that could never exist, in hopes that humans will stop taking the world so seri- movement of the moon and stars using long exposures. Kelsey spent the spring of 2011 based ously. I am currently based in Wilmington, NC where I have worked as a proud member of out of Certaldo Alto, Italy (Tuscany), studying photography, book arts, and history of the Thrive Studios since 2009, and Art Slab since 2012. You’re apt to find me hanging out at Anvil Renaissance art period. Her most memorable assignment was stalking Italian strangers and & Ink Tattoo on Castle St., making art with an amazing group of wisecrackers and little rascals. secretly photographing their portraits. She is most at home exploring the road less traveled with her camera. Her interest in photography ranges from nature to portraiture and fash- Toni Whiteman | Toni has returned to school to work on a Masters of Liberal Arts after many ion. On weekends, Kelsey can be found adventuring in junkyards, dilapidated buildings, and years in the film and television business. coastal landscapes seeking the perfect shot of the uniquely odd. Her work has been exhibited in diverse locales from Greenville bars to Italian castles. Her photographs are on permanent JoAnna C. Wright | JoAnna is currently pursuing her Masters of Arts in English at UNC display in Koury Hall at UNC Chapel Hill. Kelsey loves playing outdoors—especially on the Wilmington. She is presently serving as Secretary for the Graduate English Association and north end of Carolina Beach! is a member of the International English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta, for which she also served as secretary as an undergraduate at UNC Wilmington. She hopes to continue her pas- Casey Jordan Mills | Casey is an aspiring essayist, academic, performer, and journalist. His sion for literature, writing, and teaching as a lecturer. interests include performance ethnography, immersion journalism, Welsh culture, veganism, literature and film, applied theatre, television and film acting, and bad poetry. Daily, he tries to imagine his life as a re-creation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Lori Joy Peterson | “Art to me is like what words are to poetry. I use paint to express my views of the world. What I like about painting is I can put what’s in my head on paper. Art is my way to communicate and express my feelings and thoughts on nature, life, people, and animals.” Lori is an acrylic and watercolor artist. She has taken acrylic and watercolor classes with Betty Brown and Ronald Williams as well as drawing courses at Saint Mary’s Adult School. Lori has been honored to be a volunteer at the Cameron Art Museum. Her works have been displayed at UNC Wilmington’s Warwick Center, Tres Chic, Time Warner Cable’s Shipyard Office, in The Starving Artist Magazine, and in To the Bone Magazine. She has participated in the Battle- ship Arts Fest and the Community Arts Center Arts Fest. Lori believes the way to grow as an Thank you for reading.