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Destabilizing Sexuality and Gender Constructs of the New Negro Identity in Harlem Renaissance Literature

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Destabilizing Sexuality and Gender Constructs of the New Negro Identity in Harlem Renaissance Literature University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 6-1-2012 "A Shade Too Unreserved": Destabilizing Sexuality and Gender Constructs of the New Negro Identity in Harlem Renaissance Literature Renee E. Chase University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Chase, Renee E., ""A Shade Too Unreserved": Destabilizing Sexuality and Gender Constructs of the New Negro Identity in Harlem Renaissance Literature" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 121. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/121 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. “A SHADE TOO UNRESERVED”: DESTABILIZING SEXUALITY AND GENDER CONSTRUCTS OF THE NEW NEGRO IDENTITY IN HARLEM RENAISSANCE LITERATURE __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Renee E. Chase June 2012 Advisor: Dr. Maik Nwosu ©Copyright by Renee E. Chase 2012 All Rights Reserved Author: Renee E. Chase Title: “A SHADE TOO UNRESERVED”: DESTABILIZING SEXUALITY AND GENDER CONSTRUCTS OF THE NEW NEGRO IDENTITY IN HARLEM RENAISSANCE LITERATURE Advisor: Dr. Maik Nwosu Degree Date: June 2012 Abstract Much of the Harlem Renaissance artistic movement was directly intertwined with the New Negro social movement of the time. Race leaders spoke to and influenced artistic trends, while artists often engaged with the New Negro race issues and social debates through their works. Wallace Thurman, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston used their own fictional works to explore the New Negro construct being promoted. In examining the constructed nature of this New Negro identity, these artists strove to destabilize the social “norms” upon which the identity was based. As they thematically and stylistically explored such social constructs through their fiction, Thurman, Larsen, and Hurston simultaneously gave voice to those perspectives unrepresented within such restrictive constructs. This project examines these authors’ subversion of such social constructs through the frameworks of intersectionality and contextual dialogue. ii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Maik Nwosu, for his invaluable help. His feedback and support throughout this writing process were a key part of this project’s success. Additionally, I would like to thank my other readers: Dr. Clark Davis, Dr. Eleanor McNees, and Dr. Frédérique Chevillot. I greatly appreciate their involvement and support during my dissertation process. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their constant encouragement in helping me to achieve this goal. Specifically, I would like to thank Rob Gilmor and Charly Hoge for their friendship and their selfless hours of feedback during dissertation revisions. iii Table of Contents Introduction: The Social Construction of the New Negro Identity..................................... 1 Chapter One: “More civilized and circumspect than she”: Controversy and Deconstruction of Norms in Wallace Thurman’s Infants of the Spring and The Blacker the Berry............................................................................................................................ 49 Chapter Two: “She still intended to hold fast to the outer shell”: Social Subversion through Rhetorical Layering in Nella Larsen’s Passing and Quicksand ........................ 100 Chapter Three: “The eye which must know by now that she knew”: Intersections of Rhetoric, Perspective and Audience in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” and “Muttsy” .. 157 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 206 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 213 iv Introduction: The Social Construction of the New Negro Identity After the Civil War, Black1 cultural leaders in the United States strove to combat rampant racism and to create a respected place for Black Americans within the surrounding hostile white social structure. They promoted an assertive Black identity, the New Negro, that attempted to counteract the pervasive racial stereotypes of the time. This New Negro identity was typically illustrated as a strong, cultured, educated man. Although Black leaders had been advocating socially “respectable” Black identities to combat racial stereotypes for hundreds of years, the movement gained further support after the Civil War. The 1919 Red Summer2 further emphasized the need for a strong, public socio-political stance within the Black community—a stance popularized by the promotion of the New Negro as a heroic, idealized identity. This socially-constructed New Negro became part of a cultural discourse, often directed toward the growing middle and upper class Black population. Black leaders promoted their own versions of the New Negro, arguing for the importance of such an identity in the further advancement of the race. Propaganda for and debate over the New Negro identity appeared in essays, 1 Throughout this paper, I use the capitalized “Black” rather than “black.” As the spelling “negro” shifted to “Negro” after the Civil War to represent the term’s shift from a description to an identity, this same capitalization as representing communal identity is seen in cultures, races, and communities across the U.S. Although lower-case spelling is currently more common than capitalization for the Black identity, my decision to utilize the capitalized Black spelling in this paper serves to parallel the capitalized Negro identity explored in the paper. 2 The name for the race conflicts during the summer of 1919, with riots and lynchings throughout dozens of cities including Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. 1 autobiographies, newspaper articles, magazines, and even novels, as the intellectual exchange began to trickle into popular culture. By the 1920s, many Black artists considered the New Negro identity too restrictive, arguing that it did not reflect the lives of the majority of the population. As a result, Harlem Renaissance writers often chose to challenge this identity in their works by portraying characters that were the antithesis of the restrictive New Negro proposed by cultural leaders. Wallace Thurman’s character Paul in Infants of the Spring, Nella Larsen’s Irene in Passing, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Delia in “Sweat” are only a few examples of this broader trend among Harlem Renaissance writers. Authors argued that while these characters may engage in “immoral” or “uncultured” behavior, such characters reflect a reality of Negro life often glossed over by the idealistic portrayals of the New Negro. While such “immoral” characters were typically popular among general readers, many critics condemned the writers for perpetuating negative stereotypes of Black Americans. However, just as the pervasive racial stereotypes were fictitious, the New Negro identity also promoted a restrictive and artificial portrayal of African American lives. Each person had his or her own idea of the New Negro identity; therefore, although each social leader promoted his own definition as universal, a single agreed-upon identity could never be reached. The Harlem Renaissance artists I explore in this project used their works to counter the common argument for a unified (and thus inherently restrictive) New Negro identity. By challenging such identity restrictions, these artists 2 undercut any proposed “natural” racial or gender identity, instead exploring the social construction and enforcement of such roles. In this project, I examine the techniques of three Harlem Renaissance writers, Wallace Thurman, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston, all of whom consistently challenge and complicate the socially constructed New Negro identity through their works. These authors are particularly significant in their incorporation of queer sensibilities within their texts as they interrogate the New Negro’s assumed gender norms. However, they are by no means unique in their interrogation of the New Negro construct. Instead, my hope is that my analysis of these authors’ works can be usefully applied to the works of other Harlem Renaissance authors, offering new ways of reading and engaging with the material. While each chapter focuses on an individual author’s texts, I simultaneously examine the ways these authors’ techniques are in dialogue with the other authors’ works and with the broader Harlem Renaissance community. Through their texts, these authors explore the complexities and interactions of multiple controversial social issues. Therefore, it is essential to engage in literary analysis that celebrates these complexities and interrelationships rather than simplifying or avoiding these issues. In this introduction, I discuss the historical context of gender and sexuality social trends leading up to and during the Harlem Renaissance. I then explore the New Negro debate occurring during the late 1800s and early 1900s, including a discussion of women’s roles and debates within the New Negro movement.
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