ABSTRACT Title of Document: ANXIOUS JOURNEYS: PAST
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ABSTRACT Title of Document: ANXIOUS JOURNEYS: PAST, PRESENT, AND CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY IN AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING Donna Packer-Kinlaw Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Directed By: Professor John Auchard Department of English Travel writing ostensibly narrates leisurely excursions through memorable landscapes and records the adventures associated with discovering new scenes. The journey presumably provides an escape from the burdens of daily life, and the ideal traveler embraces the differences between home and another place. Yet, the path can sometimes lead to distressing scenes, where visitors struggle to situate themselves in strange and unfamiliar places. Americans, in particular, often demonstrate anxiety about what sites they should visit and how such scenes should be interpreted. The differences between their ideas about these spaces and the reality can also foment anguish. More, American travelers seem to believe that personal and national identities are tenuous, and they often take steps to preserve their sense of self when they feel threatened by uncanny sites and scenes. Thus, their travel narratives reveal a distinct struggle with what is here identified as the anxiety of travel. This dissertation identifies its triggers, analyzes its symptoms, and examines how it operates in American-authored narratives of travel. While most critics divide these journeys into two groups (home and abroad), this dissertation considers tension in both domestic and transatlantic tours. This broader approach provides a more thorough understanding of the travel writing genre, offers more information on how this anxiety functions, and helps us to formulate a more specific theory about the roles of anxiety and travel in identity construction. It also invites a reassessment of destination and what constitutes a site, and makes it easier to recognize disguised anxiety. The first chapter examines Willa Cather’s articles from her 1902 journey to England and France, and is especially concerned with Cather’s anxiety over history, culture, other women, and the prospect of interpreting travel itself. The second chapter explores Theodore Dreiser’s A Hoosier Holiday as a dual text that reveals both Dreiser’s impressions of 1915 America and his nostalgic desire to recover his lost boyhood. The third chapter analyzes Henry James’s subject position as a tourist in The American Scene, tracks his touristic gaze, and studies his approach to tourism, both in Europe and in his natal land. ANXIOUS JOURNEYS: PAST, PRESENT, AND CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY IN AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING By Donna Packer-Kinlaw Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Professor John Auchard, Chair Professor R. Gordon Kelly Professor Peter Mallios Professor Michael Olmert Professor David Wyatt © Copyright by Donna Packer-Kinlaw 2012 Acknowledgements I have been very fortunate in my college career. So many wonderful professors have encouraged me, and I owe a special thanks to each of them. I would especially like to say thank you to my advisory committee at the University of Maryland. John Auchard, the director of this dissertation, generously extended his knowledge, patience, and unyielding support. From his James seminar to his final comments on this project, he has been a wise and courageous mentor. Because of him, I am a better writer and scholar. Peter Mallios has an infectious enthusiasm for literature, and I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with him. I am so glad that he asked tough questions and helped me to see my subject in fresh ways. David Wyatt offered sage advice and helped me to discover new directions for this project. Michael Olmert offered his support and humor, and he provided a fresh perspective on things. And last but not least, Gordon Kelly kindly offered his insight, and I appreciate his careful reading and attention to this project. I am grateful to the English Department at the University of Maryland for providing me with such a tremendous opportunity for personal and professional development. I have always felt supported here. Others, too, have encouraged me along the way. There is not enough room to name them all, but I must say a special thank you to Erin Sadlack, a dear friend and fellow Terp who offered encouragement and wisdom when I thought I couldn’t continue and who cheered me on when I saw that I could. Keith Newlin introduced me to the world of Dreiser, and that changed everything for me. He is a wonderful professor and mentor, and his pep talks helped me more than he will ever know. My sisters are sources of inspiration and support, and I am thankful for each of them. My mother, though she is no longer with me, guides me from above. Scott Kinlaw, my best friend and husband, possesses a never- ending patience that still amazes. He listened to me even when I talked in circles, and he remained by my side in my most anxious moments. Best of all, he has shared my joys and sorrows throughout the years. My daughter Ainsley is a constant source of happiness. Nearly every day she asked me, “Mommy, did you finish your dissertation today?” Now I can finally say, “Yes, dear, it’s all done.” This is dedicated to you. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments...............................................................................................................ii Table of Contents................................................................................................................iii Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: "Poverty and decrepitude," "Boat-women," and "the stormy years": Class, Gender, and History in Willa Cather's European Travel Writing .....................................34 Chapter 2: "Dualism in A Hoosier Holiday: Nostalgia and Progress, National Character and Personal Identity..........................................................................................................94 Chapter 3: "European Eyes, American Sites: The Problem of Tourism in Henry James's The American Scene.........................................................................................................156 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................220 Bibliography....................................................................................................................232 iii Introduction The Anxiety of Travel When Theodore Dreiser and Franklin Booth planned their 1915 trip from New York to Indiana, Dreiser voiced concern over how their route would affect his ability to write distinctively not just about the journey, but about the road itself and the sights along the way. Although the main-traveled roads through central New York offered the most convenient passageway, Dreiser wanted to avoid the beaten path. In his opinion, “there isn’t a thing you can say about the Hudson River or the central part of New York State that hasn’t been said a thousand times before” (Hoosier 21). He longed to discover new roads—and forge a new path to Indiana—and he convinced Booth to seek an alternative path to their destination. When Mark Twain toured Rome in 1867, he also worried about the possibility of seeing something new. He wanted to have an original encounter with the ancient city, but in The Innocents Abroad he expresses doubts about the likelihood of that happening: “What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover?” (191-92). Disconcerted, he answers, “Nothing” (192). Although Twain’s anxiety appears to emerge from a desire to see an authentic, untouched Rome, his concerns, like Dreiser’s, may also be related to his intent to write about travel. Their shared apprehension is over what might happen if it becomes impossible “to make a book out of” the journey, as Dreiser once put it (Hoosier 21). In his study of eighteenth-century European travel writers, Dennis Porter suggests that this nervousness emerges because the individual suffers from “a sense of 1 belatedness,” as if one has arrived too late to add anything significant to a particular site’s extant narratives (12). Struggling to “prove” his or her “self-worth,” according to Porter, the writer feels pressure to “add something new and recognizably” original “to the accumulated testimony” of one’s “predecessors” (12). Consequently, “to the anxiety of travel itself is added the anxiety of travel writing” (12). Porter claims that the problem may “be resolved by choosing to play the iconoclast rather than the rhapsodist, that is to say, by denigrating what others had praised” (12). Dreiser uses this technique in A Traveler at Forty when he argues that touring the ancient churches of Florence can become “a little wearisome, not to say brain-achey, when contemplated en masse” (338). In his opinion, churches like the Santa Maria Maggiore, with their “hodge-podge of history, wealth, illusion, and contention, to say nothing of religious and social discovery” are little more than “intricate jewel-boxes; nothing more” (338).1 At the same time, this unease can be related to genre. The narrative styles and various techniques