University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository English Language and Literature ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2-1-2016 The Gothic rP esence of Poland in Nineteenth- Century American Literature Jill Noel Walker Gonzalez Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Walker Gonzalez, Jill Noel. "The Gothic rP esence of Poland in Nineteenth-Century American Literature." (2016). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/32 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Language and Literature ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i Jill Noel Walker Gonzalez Candidate English Language and Literature Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Jesse Alemán, Chairperson Peter L. White Kathleen Washburn Thomas Napierkowski ii THE GOTHIC PRESENCE OF POLAND IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE By JILL NOEL WALKER GONZALEZ B.A., English, Columbia Union College, 2003 M.A., English, La Sierra University, 2006 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy English The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December, 2015 iii Dedication For my great God who has enabled me to do what I thought I couldn’t do. Soli Deo Gloria. For Piotr and Joanna Jamroziak who taught me to love Poland. Kocham wam i kocham Polskę. For my parents, Javier, and my mother-in-law who supported me and encouraged me through the entire process. And for Ian who kept me laughing. iv Acknowledgements One of the first things that Dr. Jesse Alemán told me when I arrived at the University of New Mexico was that, as my advisor, he would support me in whatever way he could. He lived up to those words in a way that no one else in my entire educational experience has. From offering me a graduate assistantship during my first year of my doctoral studies at UNM when I did not have a teaching assistantship, to telling me that I was “brilliant” at a time when I was questioning whether I even belonged in a doctoral program, to encouraging me to stick with it and take the comprehensive exams, to giving me countless suggestions and pieces of advice on everything from writing to conferencing to applying for jobs, Dr. Alemán went well out of his way to help me succeed. In many ways, I have him to thank for getting through the last five years, and I hope that one day I will be able to offer the kind of encouragement and support to graduate students that he has offered to me. Dr. Alemán also once told me that it was Dr. Hector A. Torres who had seen something worthwhile in my application for PhD studies. I owe an enormous debt of thanks to Dr. Torres for having had the opportunity to study at University of New Mexico. Though I was not able to meet him or take any of his classes, I look forward to a day in the hereafter when I will be able to shake his hand and thank him for changing my life. I would also like to acknowledge the other members of my dissertation committee. Dr. Kathleen Washburn has been an inspiration to me. Her Native American literature courses inspired me to choose Native American literature as one of my areas of focus. Both her courses and her feedback on my dissertation chapters have challenged me to sharpen my thinking, skills, and knowledge when it comes to theory. Dr. Peter White has also been an invaluable help to me, pointing out to me key connections during my dissertation research v that I had overlooked. I have appreciated his laidback attitude, his insights on early American literature before I took my comprehensive exams, his attempts to make conversation with me in Polish (unfortunately, I have forgotten so much), and his kind offer to help me with any Polish texts I should need to read for my dissertation. Finally, I am thankful for the guidance Dr. Thomas Napierkowski has offered me on both my dissertation chapters and on possible venues for publication and conferencing. I have appreciated the time he has taken to talk through comments with me and to encourage me. I hope to meet with him again at a future Polish American Historical Association conference. Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the archivists who work in the Fixman Room, the Institute Archives and Special Collections of the Folsom Library at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. The kindness of Jenifer Monger and Tammy Gobert, as well as their dedication to making their archives as accessible as possible to researchers, helped me tremendously to find materials to strengthen chapter four of my dissertation. vi THE GOTHIC PRESENCE OF POLAND IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE By Jill Noel Walker Gonzalez B.A., English, Columbia Union College, 2003 M.A., English, La Sierra University, 2006 Ph.D., English, University of New Mexico, 2015 ABSTRACT The references to Poland in United States print culture indicate that Poland is a significant presence in the nineteenth-century literary imagination. Though often idealized, Poland emerges as a gothic presence registering anxieties about culture, imperialism, slavery, the Other, economic ruin, and identity. Using Roland Barthes’ theory of cultural code, this dissertation looks to nineteenth-century United States newspapers to consider American readers’ cultural knowledge about Poland. The coded history of revolution beneath each reference to Poland indicates that Polish revolution is the mechanism that reveals American anxieties about instability, imperialism, class inequalities, and violence—all of which put pressure on America’s mythic history of revolution, freedom, and equality as they’re expressed in literature. In Charles Brockden Brown’s “Somnambulism: A Fragment” (1805), the reference to Silesia and allusion to Poland is code for Poland’s 1794 revolution against partitioning powers Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The allusion registers fears of outside threats to the sovereignty of the young, vulnerable United States. As code for the major 1830-31 revolution against partitioning powers, the Polish character in Edgar Allan Poe’s vii “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845) indicates American anxieties about the nation turning into an imperialistic aggressor similar to the nations that partitioned Poland because of its aggressive actions toward Mexico. For a nation struggling with its own imperialistic tendencies and increasingly quarreling over slavery, references to Poland in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—code for the 1846 Polish revolution—reveal further anxieties about imperialism and human servitude. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the U.S. struggled with nativist attitudes toward Catholics and immigrants, Polish characters in E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Missing Bride (1855) and Louisa May Alcott’s “The Baron’s Gloves” (1868) point to Poland’s final nineteenth-century rebellions and betray anxieties about the threat and/or taint of the Polish Catholic immigrant Other. Finally, in Anthony Walton White Evans’s 1883 biography, Memoir of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the financially broke and physically broken Thaddeus Kosciuszko, revolutionary hero of both Poland and America, registers concerns about economic ruin and psychological fragmentation that following crashes like that of the Panic of 1873. viii Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 Working with Cultural Code ....................................................................................... 10 Poland as an American Gothic .................................................................................... 17 Revolutionary Poland.................................................................................................. 22 U.S. Imperialism & Poland As Cautionary Tale......................................................... 26 Poland Underground ................................................................................................... 33 From Beau Ideal to Foreign Other .............................................................................. 37 Charting Uncanny Poland ........................................................................................... 41 Chapter 1: Hostile Take/Taking-Over: De-Coding Poland in the Gothic Fiction of Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allen Poe..................................................... 48 Silesia and Poland as Body Politic.............................................................................. 50 Silesia and Poland Behind Brown’s “Somnambulism” .............................................. 53 Poland Behind Poe’s “Valdemar” ............................................................................... 67 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 78 Chapter 2: “Three Pirate Powers” and “Fast Fish”: Poland as Specter of Empire and Slavery in Melville’s Moby-Dick .............................................................................. 80 Reading “Unfortunate” Poland Behind Moby-Dick .................................................... 83 Reading Polish Serfdom and the Amber Trade Behind