Encounters with the Exotic in Late Nineteenth-Century America
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2008 Celebrity and the national body: Encounters with the exotic in late nineteenth-century America Caroline Carpenter Nichols College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Nichols, Caroline Carpenter, "Celebrity and the national body: Encounters with the exotic in late nineteenth-century America" (2008). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623336. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-423p-zt32 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Celebrity and the National Body: Encounters with the Exotic in Late Nineteenth-Century America Caroline Carpenter Nichols Niagara Fails, New York Master of Arts, The College of William and Mary, 2001 Bachelor of Arts, Davidson College, 1996 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies Program The College of William and Mary May,2008 Copyright 2008, Caroline Carpenter Nichols APPROVAL PAGE This Dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Caroline arpenter Nichols illiam and Mary ABSTRACT PAGE This project uses the remarkable careers of anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, stunt reporter Nellie Bly, anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, and war correspondent Richard Harding Davis, as well as literary texts by Davis and Henry James, to frame a set of questions about the politics and implications of cultural crossover at the end of the nineteenth century. Through their work as participant observers of racial, ethnic and social Others, these reporters, reformers, and authors were gradually transformed into charismatic exotics. More than simply mediating between a mainstream (usually white, middle-class) audience and a more exotic people or place, these individuals inserted themselves into the story and ultimately became its star. Putting their own bodies to work in this manner-as evidence and even spectacle-often meant transgressing the limits of what was socially acceptable for their gender, race, or class. The ensuing scrutiny and speculation, together with their efforts to manage this precarious celebrity, provide insight into the complex cultural tensions underlying America's emergence as a modem nation and imperial power. As a white man who appeared to "go native," Cushing struggled to reaffirm his status as a serious scholar and dispel rumors that he had succumbed to the intoxicating pleasures of playing Indian. The divergent personas he adopted to describe his experience living as a Zuni suggest that the role of a Smithsonian scientist in primitive drag was an inherently unstable one at this moment. By blurring the boundary between "savage" and "civilized," Cushing threatened to disrupt the self-Other dichotomy which lay at the heart of America's emerging relationship to the exotic. Despite the titillating social dislocations that her undercover stunts entailed, Bly, unlike Cushing, maintained a coherent performance of self and emphatic bodily presence. By filtering all experience through the lens of her own consciousness and asserting her middle-class femininity, Bly forged what I term personality armor, enabling her to float through the metropolis as an untainted observer while mesmerizing readers with a seemingly unabashed display of self. Davis' work chronicling America's burgeoning empire posed little threat to his social standing, instead linking him to the gentlemen explorers who populated his fiction. While deeply implicated in the nation's outward imperial drive, Davis also sought to reassert boundaries, particularly those that protected the male body. To see him, as I do, as a proto Boy Scout, allows us to appreciate how freighted his early adventures were with the burden of future expectations. Seizing upon the new visibility of spectacle lynchings, Wells adeptly manipulated the mechanisms ofthe exotic to "other" the white South before an external, international audience during and after her two British lecture tours. In addition to advancing the anti lynching cause, the tours marked a turning point in Wells' sense of her own authority as a public figure. Her reception abroad as an American Negro lady, an oxymoron in the Jim Crow South, paradoxically emboldened her to adopt tactics more suited to a race man. TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication .......................................................... ii Acknowledgments ................................................... iii List of Illustrations ................................................... iv Introduction: Bodies, Boundaries, and the Politics of Cultural Cross-Over ................... 1 Spectacle, Celebrity, and the African American Body: Ida B. Wells' Anti-Lynching Crusade ................................... 28 Intimacy, Erasure, and the Other: Frank Hamilton Cushing's Volatile Performance of Self. ................... 116 At Home in the City and the Colony: Nellie Bly's Personality Armor ........................................ 181 A (Boy) Scout for American Empire: Richard Harding Davis and His Kit . 269 Conclusion: Cultural Cross-Over in the Age of Terror ................................ 323 Bibliography ...................................................... 330 Vita ............................................................. 346 To Tyler, my fellow traveler. Of all the places we've been and all we have yet to see, the best spot in the world will always be the one next to you. 11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Contrary to its reputation as a solitary endeavor, a dissertation is rarely completed without incurring a variety of personal and professional debts. My committee members, Maureen Fitzgerald, Arthur Knight, and Lynn Weiss, have been a source of guidance and support throughout this sometimes tumultuous process. As director, Lynn's enthusiasm for the project provided much needed sustenance when my own was flagging. Rich Lowry, my original advisor in the Program, set me on this path years ago with an independent study on travel and tourism, where my interest in the relationship between home and away, self and Other, first took shape. He was instrumental in conceptualizing this project and his fingerprints are visible throughout. I have also benefited immensely from the friendship and intellectual companionship of other students in the Program, especially Tim Barnard, Seth Bruggeman, Amy Howard, Helen Wang, and Andrea Westcot. Their smart questions, nudging encouragement, and personal examples have made the journey more stimulating and more fun than seemed possible. Jen Blanchard and Roxane Pickens, my fellow Scribbling Women, deserve special mention in this category. Your loving support put this tiara within reach! Finally, to my friends and family who watched this curious initiation rite from the outside: thank you for your patience. Thank you for asking (not too often) how the dissertation was progressing. Thank you for listening to me sort out my ideas. Thank you for occasionally distracting me from whatever I was supposed to be reading. Thank you, Dad, for reading nearly every chapter and keeping me focused on the big picture. Thank you all for your faith in me. 111 List of Illustrations 1. Thomas Eakins, Frank Hamilton Cushing, 1895 ....................... 3 2. Frank Hamilton Cushing, Studio Portrait, 1879 ........................ 4 3. Title Page of An Eye for An Eye ................................... 50 4. Frank Hamilton Cushing in Zuni Attire ............................. 168 5. Nellie Bly Bids Fogg Good-Bye, Advertising Card .................... 258 6. Robert Clay from Soldiers ofFortune ............................... 291 IV Introduction: Bodies, Boundaries and the Politics of Cultural Cross-Over In 1905, the Brooklyn Museum opened a new exhibition devoted to the American southwest. Its centerpiece was a collection of some 6,500 objects from the Zuni pueblo in present-day New Mexico. Designed by Stewart Culin, the Museum's inaugural curator of ethnology, the display reflected Culin's desire to convey anthropological information while giving visitors an evocative sense of the region. Objects were consequently arranged in a visually pleasing manner, surrounded by watercolors depicting the southwest; Zuni costumes were presented on mannequins based on plasters casts of a pueblo resident. Looming over this suggestive scene was Thomas Eakins' monumental portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing, a Smithsonian anthropologist who had spent nearly five years living among the Zuni (figure 1). Cushing's contributions to Anglo knowledge of Zuni culture were substantial, but his prominent place in the gallery derived more from his unusual method of research than its considerable results. Unlike his peers, Cushing immersed himself in the daily life of the pueblo, adopting the traditional Zuni diet, language, and mode of dress in an effort to more fully understand their culture. Eakins' 1895 painting, which places the anthropologist in a makeshift kiva, a sacred underground chamber, surrounded by