"This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, and Modernity in 19Th- Century Appalachian Murder Ballads
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2011 "This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, and Modernity in 19th- Century Appalachian Murder Ballads Christina Ruth Hastie [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, Cultural History Commons, History of Gender Commons, Musicology Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, United States History Commons, Women's History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hastie, Christina Ruth, ""This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, and Modernity in 19th-Century Appalachian Murder Ballads. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2011. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/1045 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Christina Ruth Hastie entitled ""This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, and Modernity in 19th-Century Appalachian Murder Ballads." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Music, with a major in Music. Rachel M. Golden, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Allison Robbins, Cheryl Travis Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) “THIS MURDER DONE”: MISOGYNY, FEMICIDE AND MODERNITY IN 19TH-CENTURY APPALACHIAN MURDER BALLADS A Thesis Presented for the Master of Music Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Christina Ruth Hastie August 2011 ii Copyright © 2011 by Christina Ruth Hastie All rights reserved. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Sean McCollough for his excellent course on the Music of Appalachia, which introduced me to both the murder ballads and to Barry: I thank you. I am indebted to my thesis advisor, Dr. Rachel Golden, for nurturing my academic writing and critical thinking abilities. My thanks also to Dr. Allison Robbins and Dr. Cheryl Travis for their participation in my thesis efforts. To Barry, for all of the love, support, and efforts at making me vegan dinners. Thank you for believing in me, and in my writing. I love you. This is for my family: Mamma, Gramma, and Meg: I am blessed to come from such a fine family of women. Thank you for teaching me about perseverance, dedication, and the power of prayer. I am forever grateful for all of your love and support. Thanks for sharing in my triumphs and for guiding me along the sometimes-bumpy pathways that have led me here. I love you all. “When all is said, it is to and for our daughters and their generation that we write. We want to tell them what we know. We wish them to understand what impelled us to fight to learn it—what it, and most especially, they, mean to us.”1 -Carroll Smith-Rosenberg 1 Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 7. iv ABSTRACT This thesis contextualizes Appalachian murder ballads of the 19th- and early 20th- centuries through a close reading of the lyric texts. Using a research frame that draws from the musicological and feminist concepts of Diana Russell, Susan McClary, Norm Cohen, and Christopher Small, I reveal 19th-century Appalachia as a patriarchal, modern, and highly codified society despite its popularized image as a culturally isolated and “backward” place. I use the ballads to demonstrate how music serves the greater cultural purpose of preserving and perpetuating social ideologies. Specifically, the murder ballads reveal layers of meaning regarding hegemonic masculinities prevalent in 19th-century and turn-of-the-20th-century Appalachian culture. This work also explores the biases and agendas of the early folksong projects in the United States. Examining the arguments of early scholars, I consider the American tradition in juxtaposition to the earlier British forms of music. Rejecting earlier scholarship that argues for the relatedness of British and American balladry, I find that ballads associated with, and circulating in, the United States instead reflect a new cultural idiom grounded in the beliefs of those who sought a conservative Christian aesthetic and way of life in the southern Appalachian mountains. The murder ballads witness that Appalachia, specifically in the 19th-century period of industrial change, was defined by essential tensions between cultural traditions of the past and emerging notions of American modernism. This tension is met in the songs with responses of violence against women whose life situations—marked by sexual freedom—are the very depiction of a new cultural modernism that threatens the hegemony of the past. v Table of Contents Chapter Page I. OVER HER DEAD BODY: THE APPALACHIAN MURDER BALLADS ...................................... 1 Discovering Appalachian Ballads........................................................................................................ 1 Ballads & Feminism……………………………………………………………………………………...………2 Scope and Parameters…..………..……………………………………………………………………………..6 Song Set……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….9 Methodology…………………………….………………………………………………………………………...20 Review of Literature………….………………………………………………………………………………..26 Chapter Overview…………………………...………………………………………………………………….36 II. PROJECTS OF TRADITION: BALLAD SCHOLARS AND BALLAD FAMILIES.....................40 Ballad as Construct: Problems of Origin and Definition .........................................................43 The Early Folk Project in the United States…………………………………………………………..47 Women Working in the Canon………………………………….………………………………………....53 Ballad Families……………………………………………………………….…………………………………..59 Comparing The Oxford/Wexford Girl to The Knoxville Girl…………………………. 64 Comparing The Gosport Tragedy/Cruel Ship’s Carpenter to Pretty Polly….……72 III. A HISTORY OF 19TH CENTURY APPALACHIAN WOMEN…………………..……………………78 Struggles with Love, Relationships, and Sexuality………………………………………………..81 Daily Life and Work in a Gender-Restricted Economy………………………………………….88 Appalachia, Religion, and Women’s Oppression in the Church……………………………...90 The Fibers of Her Soul: Self-Expression and Self-Assertion………………………………......97 IV. DEATH BECOMES HER: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE MURDER BALLADS………..108 The Archetypal Murder Ballads………………………………………………………………………...110 The Jealous Lover and The Banks of the Ohio.............................................................110 The Historical American Murder Ballads…………………………………………………………...117 Omie Wise…………………………………………………………………………………………….119 The Murder of Laura Foster……………………………………………………………………126 Pearl Bryan…………………………………………………………………………………………..132 Nell Cropsey………………………………………………………………………………………….140 Lula Viers……………………………………………………………………………………………..147 V. VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN POPULAR SONG…………………………………………………155 Summary and Thoughts on Continuing Research……………………………………………….156 The Glamorization of Intimate Violence in Song Today………………………………………159 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….159 LIST OF REFERENCES…………………...…………………………………………………………………………161 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...176 Appendix I: The Wexford/Oxford Girl………………………………………………………………....176 Appendix II: The Knoxville Girl………………………………………………………………………..…181 vi Appendix III: The Gosport Tragedy/The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter……………………..…….183 Appendix IV: Pretty Polly……………………………………………………………………………….….185 Appendix V: The Jealous Lover…………...………………………………………………………………186 Appendix VI: The Banks of the Ohio…………………………………………………………………...188 Appendix VII: Omie Wise…………………………………………………………………………………..189 Appendix VIII: The Murder of Laura Foster………………………………………………………...191 Appendix VIII-A: Tom Dooley………………………………………………………………………….…194 Appendix IX: Pearl Bryan………………………………………………………………………………….195 Appendix X: Nell Cropsey…………………………………………………………………………………..197 Appendix X-A: Nell Cropsey II…………………………………………………………………………....199 Appendix XI: Lula Viers……………………………………………………………………………………..201 RESOURCE INDEX OF MURDER BALLAD TUNES………………………………………………………204 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….211 vii List of TabLes and FiguRes Table Page 1.1 Murder Ballads Analyzed……………………………………………...……………………………….13 1.2 Christian Denominations in Historical Appalachia………………………………………….94 Figure Page 1.1 Variations of The Wexford/Oxford Girl....................................................................................68 1 CHAPTER I Discovering Appalachian Ballads My own foray into the field of musicological research began with an interest in ballads of Scotch-Irish origin and their various transformations in the United States. Grappling with the seemingly endless possibilities within this realm of song, I initially felt lost in a world of music steeped in centuries of rich historical tradition. While taking a graduate class concerned with the music of Appalachia, I encountered a small body of songs knows as “murder ballads.” I found myself drawn to these ballads, with their haunting lyrics and often-graphically-violent themes. In order to connect my ideas more thoroughly to