, .' p ,. p~''" ' , ' ,' ' , pp :~: ' , , , , , .

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, POPULAR CULTURE AND VIOLENCE 322 . INVESTIGATING POWER: THE THIRD SEX: ASIAN-AMERICAN MEN IN POPULAR CULTURE

African nativity or descent, ir was unwilling to abandon the principle of racial qualification for citizenship, , , , by the frontier ro a heterosexual culture represented by As the white VictOrian bourgeois family rook the VictOrian family. irs The urban revolUtion of the 1830s and 1840s had ...AMERICAN place as the social norm, the relations of desire with the Oriental (male or female) offered an brought aboUt an explosion of new sexual possibili- alternative TURE (albeit a tabooed one) to the social order ties. In the cities now burgeoning with immigrants represented free people of color by the racially exclusive, presumptively heterosexual , professional men, and dandies rory girls and working- , fac- nuclear family. Against an emergent heterosexual and class boys, no longer under the watchful eyes of parents and village dimorphic order, Oriental sexuality was constructed , entered into new DISCUSSION QUESTIONS as ambiguous social relations in the factory, dormitory, and boarding- , inscrutable, and hermaphroditic; the Oriental (male or female) was construCted as a " house, on the boulevard and boardwalk6 1. How did the vIsIon of the modefamil change in the nineteenth-century third sex Marjorie Garber In (Stephanie) COOntz s view, for the emergent mid- United States? Why) What differences'exlstey d b etween the East Coast and the s term for a gender of imagined sexual possibility.'" dle class of the nineteenth century, the private nuclear West Coast? Why? The dynamics of sexuality, gender family with the True Woman as its moral center was 2. Why were the Chinese immigrants portraye as a "thitd sex ) Why were they , class, and race char shaped the Victorian family were driven by changes imagined ro provide a haven from the alienation and seen as threatening? in the capiralist order, Sexuality, like race anomie of the new competitive and chaotic public 3, What do the shott sconesd' ISCU ssed , by Lee tevea out the interseCtions of , is a socially life. constructed category of power This construct granted women a monopoly of moral- gender, sexua ICY, race, class and Danon? , formed by the social and polirical relations of a given culture at a given moment. ity, sensibility, and nurture wirhin the feminine 4. Does this attic e s e l'Ig ht on the d'telanons IpS and interseCtions among t ese mys- Sexuality does the polirical work of defining and regu- tique of True Womanhood, while in fact freeing men variables coday) How ate they similar or If~ etent coday lating desire as well as the body, determining whose from such ethical burdens in the public sphere, Home was, however bodies and what body parts are eroricized; what acrivi- , only a remporary haven, a space in which ries are sexual and with whom; under what conditions men mighr restOre rheir mental and emorional strengrh those acrivities are acceptable; what privileges before returning ro battle in the marketplace, The skills It offers a vision of t e comp ie red nation as a family, , rewards THE PACIFIC RAILROAD and punishments accompany sexual behavior; and how and techniques of crafts and farming handed down from but one that is distUrbingly biracial. The wes~ c'; now COMPLETE the erotic may be distinguished from the father ro son were supplanted by rhe inculcation of val- be teprese ~:~:::;,a non-erotic. ues needed to negotiate and survive in the marketplace. ~~ ~~e ::rr~ag Articulated by systems of race and class, with the logics n une 1869 Harper s Weekly published a lithograph teprese~te The discipline of the home "I The Illus- ears ro cross class boundar- of national identiry, and with the organization of gen- , with mother at its center WI(' h. the title "Pacific Railroa omp ere, only IS IOterraCIal but was expected ro reinforce and encourage the develop- , weanng. iddle- m class der, sexuality is organized to produce and reproduce cranon ChineseS owe man , mustachioeda , WIth a less wella The white woman ment of the competitive values needed to succeed within he VictOrian familial cultUre the social relations of production, thickly braided queue hanging beneat ak sII u cap atnt. e represents , Ot the new capitalist order, female ublic sphere emetg- Nowhere was the capitalist transformation in mid- ressed 'n Ia baggy Chinese tUnic and rrousets, srandlOg and the autOnomous and late nineteenth-century America so powerfully class in in the nation s cities; the mustachioed Chmaman arm 10 arm WIt. a hw hire woman dressed in middle- felt as within the family, Structures and meanings of fanc hat and bustled dress, e coup e represents the new. I andraCIa sexual posslbllmes and raSlonwl f the "frontier kinship changed as extended households shrank into THE GEOGRAPHY OF SEX f the "church of St, ConfuclOus, SIC threats inherent in the IOcotporanon 0 IS pose 10' rontf 0 nuclear families, Gender roles were redefined as women a hic consolida- intO rhe narion, With its caption celebtatlOg the geogr P and men both left (or were As the imaginary "frontier War and f the forced from) hearth " of American culture, a space non 0f the nation the pictUre of the weddlOg 0fEast In rhe decades following rhe Civil , farm where male fantasies of sexual , the am- and workshop ro go into the factory. By , gender, racial, and class and West is an ironic visual representatIonf the 0 ,com comp f enonthe transcontinental 0 railroad 1870, cities aggression and transgression might find expression ainst which the populated by a new working class licated anxieties that nineteenth-century Amenc became the principal backgroun ag , by free people of , the color, and by immigrants West neatly reversed the realiry of the Eastern city, of nation an t elf ideolo y of cItIzenshIp wasd e b ate, d At the same nme , created new possibilities for had about the changlOg natUre encounters across class Ar the far edge of the pastoral farm homestead with its that women renewed t elr ema ndsfortevorean , racial, and sexual boundaries unimaginable a decade or two earlier. links to the communal village, the frontier was conceived families, ' h anon was lace WI The lithograph suggests that the cransconnnenta other rights of cinzens Ip, t en In the middle decades of the nineteenth of as savage, devoid both of comforting and constraining quesrion of cltIzensh' ' hts for nonwhItes.1869 n century, raIIoa d . ironically "completes" the geographIC con- the transformation of the precapitalist household into civilization and of the actually existing capitalist rela- Charles Sumner, wh Ipose r: dical a Republican faction so I anone nation but in doing so opens up a the nuclear family established polarized middle- rions of the burgeoning cities. The symbolic emptiness det and racial contra lerlons, Massachusetts supported rheboth demand for woman class new set 0 c ass, gen , gender roles and sexual behavior in what social hisrori- of the West allowed young men to flee both the civilizing suffrage and th eenfranchIsement ' f 0bl cks urged djsciplines of their families and ruthless capitalism and ans have called the Cult of Domesticity. ongress , ro eliminate the slOg e WOtd" hite " fromw the ' The triumph Rohert , Th Third Sex" from Orientals: As;an-Am,r;cal/J In of the bourgeois family transformed American Culture to recreate themselves not as victims bur as vanguard. ee,1999 bye Temple UnwerSlty ress, natural1zanon aw 00 Although Congress amende . h lid The cult of the Western masculine hero PoPlllar Clllfllrt, opyng r from a male-dominated homosocial culture represented , first embod- the statUte ro allow the natUralization of persons 0 Reprinred wirh the permission of Temple UOlVerSlty ress, ied in the figure of Davy Crockett, valorized untamed , , ' , , ", '

124 INVESTIGATING POWER: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, POPULAR CULTURE, AND VIOLENCE THE 'CHIHO SEX: ASIAN-AMERICAN MEN IN POPUI.AH CUI.TUHE savagery in the young single male, in service ro an a mardegr adeder lower- class0 statUs, Chastity and THE SILENCED PRESENCE onward march of civilization. The frontIer provided moral order formed the ideal in WhICh VICrofIan ml , OF CHINESE WOMEN urgent concern, Chinese prostitUtes were said to co! ground for an anti-familial narratIve that reconfigured die-class women were to fulfill the true natUre of theIr stitute a particular threat to the physical and alienation and isolation as independence and self-suffi- The unbridled sexual energy of men, celebrated In During the middle and later decades of the nineteenth development of young white boys, In San Franciscomor: clency,on the frontier that loneliness could be the myth of the Western hero, was to be suW' Imate century, thousands of Chinese and later Japanese women Public Health Committee investigating conditions i hammered and honed into the "savage skill 0 competI- to the psychic demands of the marketplace or brought were brought to the U~ited States Chinatown in 1870 professed shock that boys as , often under brUtally tive individualism that was required for survIval and into the service of class reproduction WlthlO the ptlva- as ten could afford and did regularly use rhe serviceYOun, coercive conditions, to labor as prostitutes. In the 1870s success in the capitalist city. tized family, Sexuality was harnessed to reproductIOn; of the lowest level of Chinese prostitUtes, and '80s, the figure of the Chinese or Japanese prostitUte 16 In a Carroll Smith-Rosenberg nOtes that the mythIC fron- the pleasure of the erotic, especially the autoerotIc and as a conduir of disease and social decay was sensational- lar environment in which theories of national culrunpopu, tIer Croc10kett could w freely 11actUalize hirpself homoerotic, was to be strictly suppressed. ized in newspaper acCOUnts were freely combined with theories of germs and socia; , magazine articles and his historical mission imagined as largely WIt, h out The cult of domesticity, only partIally su~cessful cial inquiries into rhe social hygiene of the new, andcities otli- of hygiene it was asserted by some public health authori- women, particularly without mothers.' Literary cnrl~ as an ideology of sexual repression , suc~eeded 10 con- the West, Renewing fears of moral and racial pOllution ties that Chinese prostitUtes were the racially special Eve Sedgewick observes that it is preCIsely on the regis- srructing the bourgeois family as a pnvate sphere of Chinese carriers of more virulent and deadly strains of venereal " prosritution became a significant political ter of the homosocial that the boundaries between the chastIty' Onan the piety.other hand, a publIc sphere of issue in California and a major weapon of those suPPOrt- disease, The genetal public tended to ignore the reality heterosexua an the homosexual are contested. The sexualized activity also flourished. ProstItUtIOn In vafI- ing the prohibition of Chinese (and later other Asian) and focus on the sensational acCOunts that fueled the 10mosoCIa' I an thus be understood as the liminal range ous forms, from the informal exchange of sexual favors immigration to the United Srates, The first perception of a social crisis. aCt limiting of alternatIves, between c heterosexua I, and h mosexual lOrfts nd meals to glthe exchange of cash , grew ro Chinese immigration was the Page ACt of 1870 While highly visible as a symbol in the popular II I OpposItIOns,The Western imagery IS' often descnbed be commonpI ace' n Imid-century Amencan cItIes. n ostensibly prohibited " , which discourse of urban social crisis Chinese Japanese, and Mongolian , the Chinese woman is as homosocial-that is ro say, domInated by same his 1858 study of prostItUtIOn 10 NewY. or k the social women" from being brought to or entering the United an almost invisible and absolutely voiceless figure in sex relations (like male bonding) that have no sexual reIormerlIiam San er found that fully one quarter States to "engage in immoral or licentious nineteenth-centUry popular entertainment. Unlike the , as Sedgewick argues, although the aCtivities." figure of ' component, Yet of his male respondents had visited prostItUteS, The Page Act, on the presumption of bad charactet and John Chinaman" ,aboUt whom much is sung, homosocial is constitUted by that which is not sexual In the transition from the male-domlOated homoso- immoral purpose the figute of "China Mary , required all Chinese women who " as Chinese women were and is distinguished from the homosexual, it does not cial world of gold rush California to the serrIed domes- wished to come to the United States ro submit to lengthy often called, is virtually absent in popular songs, One exist independenrly of the erotic, but rather IS deeply tic Victorian discipline of California of the 1870s, the and humiliating interrogations of their characrer prior to looks in vain for the Chinese prostitute as the subjeCt of infused with desire: To describe the West as homosoCIal Chinese represented a third sex-an alternatIve or being issued a visa in China, The Page Act effectively some of the several hundred lewd or bawdy songs docu- is not to deny its sexuality. The land itself was femI- imagined sexuality that was potentially subversIve and closed off the immigration of Chinese wives of immi- mented from the period, Perhaps the songs in which nized in the metaphor of the virgin land, and the west- disruptive to the emergent heterosexual orthodoxy, The grants already in the United States. BUt it did little to she appeared have vanished; more likely they did not ward movement was imagined in terms of masculIne Oriental in America could be imagined as an erotIC Stop the illegal trade in women exist,., , , which was proteCted by penetratIon uesta 10In Western frontIer Imag- threat ro domestic tranquility for two related reasons. corrupt officials on both sides of the Pacific. The Chinese proStitUte could not be made a sub- ery, whether the Davy Crockett narratives or the songs First, during the later decades of the nmeteenth cen- The perception of Chinese prostitution as a wide- jeCt of popular entertainment in the nineteenth cen- of the California gold rush, the land may have been a tUry, more t an 00 Chinese women were brought spread threat to the nation tury because such publicity would unveil the complex s moral and physical woman, but it was a place where boys could be boys. for the most part forcibly, to the Unlte~ States as pr~s- well-being was greatly exaggerated. At the peak of homosocial exchange between Chinese men and white Imagined as a space where desires that crossed clas tItutes.he Chinese rostitUte embodied the avaIlable Chinese prostitution in the late 1870s men that made possible the profitable exchange of , Lucie Cheng racial, and sexual borders were unfettered, the Wests and mute but proletarianized sexualIty that mlrrore reports, some 900 Chinese women in San Chinese women s bodies as a commodity. In China freedom from the familial rendered it vulnerable to the the exoticized female long displayed In the Weste worked as prostitutes." The number of ChineseFrancisco (or Chinese girls could be bought from their often desti- homophobic accusation, That is, the Western homo- lIterary eraOrientalism, ItIon If0 not contaIned y other Asian) women who worked as prostitUtes other tUte parents for as little as $40 and resold to brothels in sociality engendered and restrained the transgressIve race this ima e of female sexuality, uO1nhlb,ted alb elt ' than on the West Coast San Francisco for as much as $2500. The huge profits , however, was quite small. Impu ,lse ' it also sometimes transformed 10nglOg lOto coerced, threatened to undermine the Image f0 ht Although New York' involved in this illegal but low-risk trade created a web \Vr s Chinatown gained notoriety aggressIOn. y 1870s as the number 0 westenng slon essTrue man as the moral center of the chaste for prostitution of exchange between Chinese merchants , opium smoking, and gambling, the , brothel Own- women increased, the male-dominated homosoCIal cu - and obedient socialw' order, Second, thousands of C lOese social reformers Helen Campbell and Thomas Knox ers, and tong members on the one hand and white sea tUre of the West began to be displaced by the V IctofIan immigrant men, displaced from earlier employment ~ reported that only three of the prostit'fites in the quar- captains, immigration officials , policemen, and politi- Cult of Domesticity, Domesticity establIshed an manufacturing, agricultUre, or mining, entered the ne ter were Chinese, while the overwhelming number cians on the other, The exchange was not limited to increasingly binary and natUralized code of gender and middle-class family as household servants. ThIs entry of prostitUtes who worked there were white. the merely economic, bUt extended ro a shared sexual sexuality in an attempt to restore order to sexual behav- into the domestic sphere nOt only displaced female labo Butler found that only three of the " Anne desire for the bodies of Chinese women. This exchange several hundred (more often than not , female, Irish immIgrant workers of commodity and desire created a e doctrine of True Womanhood overtUrned the proStitUtes working in Denver in 1875 were classified homosocial bond Protestant republican view that womens sexua Ity was b t by opening up possibilities for relatIons of IntIma as "OrientaL"" that was both forbidden and unspeakable. a natural source of evil. VictOrian moralIsts regarded ' desire across race and class , also threatened to dIs- Nevertheless, the image of the Chinese prostitUte When the Chinese woman was portrayed at all sexual passion in women as unnatural, devIant , and rupt the patriarchal hierarchy of the family, as a source of pollUtion was considered a matter of she was portrayed as victimized , passive, and silent, The Chinese woman in California , whether a prostitute , ' . " ' ,'' ' " " .. , " , " , "

CULTURE AND VIOLENCE INVESTIGATING POWER: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION , POPULAR , THE THIRD SEX: ASIAN-AMERICAN MEN IN POPULAR CULTURE 327 lerce, I e his editor Harte, was politically sympathetic In a subsequent interview Dunfer f, f a merchant, was invariably represented "L s other hired or the WI eo lores adows bourgeois familial society, represented here by religion to the C lOese" The Haunted Va ey hand a little cuss named Gopher in short stOries and magazlOes, hsuc as The Overland " (as Whiskey Jo and politics, lr is the church (here f the themes of the uncertain and the un now- called him), tells another story. In his version Bierce is forecast- or in travelers'descriptions of ChlOese ,rEi' I ~ I , Ah Wee ing his lifelong feud with what he called " Monthly, :~~~h~t would become the hallmarks of Bierce s betrer- was a woman. Gopher had fallen in love with Ah Wee organized ornia as a silent and isolated figure, The vOICe ess hypocrisy and had rescued her from prostitution but had subse- ) that introduces taboo into the homosocial inese woman in AmerIcan popuIar cultUre known fiction. idyll. Nostalgically, Dunfer recounts that he had hired nesso t e The Haunted Valley" is a gothic tale of murder an quently lost her to Dunfer in a card game. Gopher had served the purposes not only of her explOIters ut a so 0 on a sexual masquerade. followed Dunfer and Ah Wee to the valley so that he Ah Wee in the days before the onset of politics and reli- For the soCIal punty reformers, transracial desIre t at tUrns . her would- e rescuers.." osed to lOterraCIa , gion, when he "had no nice discriminating sense of my (I use the term transraCIa , as could be near her, After some time, Dunfer had himself the mute Chinese woman bound to sexua duty as a free W' ite citizen; so I gOt this pagan as kind t 1e Ima here to indicate that the reader is given no lOdlCatI fallen in love with Ah Wee, As Gopher recounts the enslavement ' h no doubt accurately descrI e many of a cook and turned off a Mexican woman. , w IC " lhat the desire is reCIprocate, ". Revealed throug a stOry Dunfer killed Ah Wee by accident when he came " Dunfer inese rostitutes 10 nlOeteent -centUry claims that it is when " but not a , the story revolves around ~wo m across Gopher and Ah Wee in what he had thought 1 got religion over at the Hill , 10. d ee d ~eries of interviews ca served as synecdoche for all prostItUteS t a and they talked of running me for the legislature hood was ders, one that has occurred before it opens an one was a sexual embrace. Immediately after striking rhe , it for all women whose passionless TrueW, oman was given for me to see the light -rhat is ~s- occurs during the course of the stOry, fatal blow with his ax, Dunfer had discovered , the errot of merc of redatOry male sexuality, The vOicele narraror- , to his his racial transgression. Despite the pressure to dismiss at t e he claIm The Haunted Valley" begins with the horror, that the embrace had actually been an innocent nessf the Chinese woman seemed0 to confi rm t ' h "Whiskey , an his Ah Wee, he resists. "If! made him sling his kit and h d' eneral journalist s InterVIew WIt ' " Jo Dunfer attempt by Gopher to brush a wasp away from the to the passionless true natUre of woman 00 10 face mosey, somebody else d take him and mightn d 0f the Chinese of the sleeping Ah Wee. t rreat old-timer who is Known for hIS atre him well," Dunfer asserrs his love of strong dnn, e IS re uted to have mur- Alrhough he had not contradicted Dunfet's prepos- , revealing some concern for the well-being of his Chinese hireling. dered his Chinese cook and Ire 109"Ah Wee some terous stOry to the jury, Gopher admits ro having poi- Dunfer FICTIONS OF DOMESTICITY Dunfer is willing to tell hIs stOry ro the soned Dunfer to avenge Ah Wee s view of the "nub of the problem" has some years ear ler. s death. After this now histOrical merit. In the 1850s ~g t0 the complicated tale is told and 1860s , California The Haunted Valley" by AmbtOse oun Eastern reporter as a way of exp IalOI " , however, the reportet elicits was still a largely male terrain, Until the arrival of Two short stOnes, " b of the (Chinese) problem. The rea- the admission that Gopher has himself gone mad, Ah Toy" by Mary Mote, wh' IC h te II newcomer t e nu BIerce an Poor Ah Wee IS thath W, large numbers of white women from the East Coasr lOese, and son Dunlerfor killin gIves This is no simple ghost tale. In the middle of the the stOry 0 between whites an in the mid- 1870s , the gender ratio in California was d' fused to chop down the trees on t e eSlre h' h story, the reader is led to Ah Wee s flower- its tragic consequences, exemplify the ways 10 w put on aIrs a decorated twelve men to one woman, Between 1860 and 1882 SIte 0 an innew the manner ca inI which '" Dun~ erh d gravestOne with its inexplicable inscription the discourse of desire was overdetermined by race, s with its thousands of Chinese workers who had been dismissed cted This shallow rationale for homlCId e, ab sur d meagre bUt sufficient identification of the and class in the transition from the homosoclal frontle lOSt deceased; as railroad builders and driven from the mines and of it was one that had been accepted wIth rhe impudent candor of he heterosexual family. Although "The Ha nte on t~ e face ' confession; the brutal anath- farms tOok up independent employment in to t full faith and credit by the locaI ' Jury,which had acqult- ema, the ludicrous change of sex and sentiment." The service d "P or Ah Toy IS a industries as launderers Valley" is a classic GothIC ta e an , tailors, and restaurateurs red Dunfer of any wrongdoing, The intervIew comes to inscription is an invitation to revisir the story offered , or omestIC fiction both stOries addtess the boundanes of worked for wages as domestics and cooks. d whites nd as Dunfer recoils in tertOr when he sees by Whiskey Jo in his cups. When Dunfer says ar the race, lassc nd ender char divide lOese an an a rup While the study of the anti- roug a knot- Chinese movement in an eye black as coal" looking at hIm, th beginning of the interview in late nineteenth century CalifornIa, You young Easterners are California generally has emphasized its economic ratio- a mile and a half too good for this country, and you stOries were published twelve years apart. hole in the barroom wall. nales The reporter , Ralph Mann s study of the anti-Chinese move- which began publishlOg I~San On his way back to the city, the young don t catch on to our play," and asserts that his story The Overland Monthly, decorated ment in Nevada City and Grass Valley comesAh Weeacrosss neatly kept and flower- will explain the "nub of the (Chinese) problem," the demonstrates FranCIsco1868 with Bret Harte 10 as its first e Itor ha s more that it was the arrival of white women and the estab- grave an overs that the stOry IS per derisive comment should be a warning to us that to was considered the premier literary magazlOe 0f the lishmenr of families rhat precipitated the movement in compiicated than Dunfer has let on, The gravestOne accept, on faith, Dunfer s glib rationale for murder is to \X1est. , ' . The Overland Monthly was aimed pnncIpally at those two gold-mining communities, The naively recapitulate the racism of the jury, establish- a middle-class audience, reads: menr of family life reconstructed bachelor life in rhe , attennon The triangle of desire between Dunfer The Overland Monthly paid extraordi ~ary , Gopher, and mining towns around a new more hierarchical Ah Wee- Ah Wee turns on the social f the Chinese in CalifornIa; of the Chinaman racialized and sexualized rela- to the presence 0 and moral order, Many of the setvices that Chinese Aig unnone, Wikt last Wisky Jo, This mnnument IS tions of capital. In direct competition for Ah Wee eighty-two pieces of short fiction that the maga~lO , the immigrant men had provided he saim to keep is memmery groan, An object of desire, are Dunfer and Gopher. The primitive , such as laundering and ublished thtOughout its histOry, siXty-nlOe lOVO ve ewre te cooking, were now petformed by families e a woroin to Slesrials nottet take on aytesl"k I e pun on their respective surnames parallels rhe stage of , or by white Chinese characters.. . . IqUSIZ women who provided services to bachelor populations ego primitive accumulation of capital that their relationship Wires, Dammum! She was a good to supplement their family represents. For Whiskey Jo Dunfer incomes. Other, hereto- , the petty capital- fore welcomed services provided by the Chinese reporter retUrnsthe 0 Haunted ist, the economic structure of primitive accumulation , such hen the young as gambling, prostitution THE HAUNTED VALLEY" d' d On hIs wee and its homosocial culture that allow him to control , and opium smoking, were Valley it is Jo Dunfer who as Ie, declared morally unacceptable and provided justifica- covere ave a crudely carved sign simply says , Jo both Gopher and Ah Wee are ideal. For Dunfer The Hauntethe first vaiece of shortey, fiction that , the tion for the control, segregation, and finally removal of Dunfer, Done For. nub of the problem" comes with the introduction of Ambrose Bierce published (in March 1870), shows t at the Chinese residents of these communities, , ,'".., ,

, AND VIOLENCE 28 . INVESTIGATING POWER: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, POPULAR CULTURE THE THIRD SEX: ASIAN-AMERICAN MEN IN POPULAR CULTURE POOR AH TOY" Dunfer s rhetorical and somewhat cynical questions physical description is limited ro Dunfee's exclamation ~ercome by frustrated passion that "Ah Wee had face like a day in June, and big black , Ah Toy attempts to What was I ro do) What d any good Christian do, kiss Fanny s hand and ro profess his love for her dest eyes in By contraSt to the unknowable gothic of " especially one new ro the business?"-make it clear that eyes-I guess maybe they were the damn aunted Fanny recoils in horror s eyes are physical V:a 11ey, " ary Mote s "Poor Ah To , saying that her brother racial trangression in the realm of employment is framed this neck 0' woods." Only Ah Wee " see rst g ance would kIll Ah Toy if he found OUt what 26 The regime of the bourgeois markers of difference. , ' , to 0 ff,er a dIdactic and straightforward caUtionary tale Ah Toy had as a moral transgression, done, Shaken, Fanny tells Ah To Ah Wee aboUt the potentIally disastrous consequences of mis- e must eave nuclear family, reproductive and heterosexual, extends s masquerade as a man works ro protect ar once, She hires another Chinese servant communlCa one its reach by defining the boundaries between accept- the interracial couple as long as it is assumed that :lOn between white mistresses and Chinese ong ~ervants, HlsrorIan Glenna Matthews Wah, ': oproves ro be an incompetent,h Nevertheless able nonsexual homosociality and deviant same-sex the homosocial relations that sustain it are not erotic. nOtes that the Fanny IS dIstraCted and can no longer sustain an inter- servant problem " dominated th relations. In this case, the accusation against Dunfer However, the introduction of the bourgeois family with e pages 0 womens est 10 the household' magazlOes between the I870s and the s management, and Ah Wee is overtly a charge of economic racial,: its heterosexual orthodoxy brings with it the threat of First World A dramatic change for the better in the condition War. Matthews wrItes that in the transgression, the employment of a Chinese, In light the homophobic accusation, and the sexual masquerade I -nlOeteent cen- of the household makes Fanny suspicious of Ah Toy tury, the "help" of neighboring farm gitls who were of Dunfer s affeCtion for Ah Wee, however, the effect b,comes as threatening as the exposure of racial rrans- renewed presence, She believes she more often than not hears 1m slOglng of the accusation is homophobic panic. Ah Wee s mas- gression, Thus the threat of the Chinese servant as an , considered part of the family wa and she thinks she feels dIsplaced by immigrant (often Irish someone touching her cheeks querade as a man is no longer necessary and sufficient ambivalent sexual object reasserts itself. servants at nIght. She sends her brother on a fruitless search for cu rural, llOgUIStlC ro protect the relationship, Ah Wee must "take on ayres Although Ah Wee s sexual identity is what Dunfet I ' , reli ious and cla IILrences were Ah Toy that seems to reveal only the extent to which pronounced, No one was going ro call " like Wites" if the relationship is to survive. and Gopher must both keep secret so as not ro reveal Bridget " as Fanny has been driven ro distractio , ir she was frequently so ersonified a r emotlona This intervention of the bourgeois family into the their (racially and/or sexually) transgressive desires rep lCan 10 e- entanglement with Ah Toy. s fate. Ah pendent dependent, She was Catholic homosocial frontier explains Bierce s insistent descrip- is race and not sex that determines Ah Wee , pootly educated ~he nen morning, however put and hIghly vulnerable."" For thousands of , Gong Wah finds Ah tion of the valley not in pastoral terms but as a "twisted Wee s death is a warning ro other Chinese nor ro " ddle-c ass Toy s body 10 the barn. Ah Toy has hanged himself and w I'11re amllIes , finding a substitUte and blasted heath , a unnaturally foreboding place." It on ayres as White" after all. It is race that asserts itself II n get meant left a note stating that he cannot bear to be apart from tUrnlOg ro a male Chinese setvant, also explains his suggestive choice of the word "her- in determining the value and outcome of this relation- MIss Fanny and that he desires to be buried on the L Poor Ah Toy maphrodite" ro describe Dunfer s dwelling. " The ship. . , , The stOry finally rurns on the establishment by " tells the sad stOry of the relation ~o as to e WIth her forever. This enraordinary request :tween a young white middle- overtly racial and covertly sexual dilemma also explains bourgeois society of an immutable difference between class matron, Fanny IS granted, Fanny goes on to marry Captain Ward SIddons, and her Chinese Dunfer s effort ro build a new cabin far back in the Ah Wee s Chineseness and Dunfer s and Gopher servant Ah anny returns often to visit the grave of Ah To ' Ut ons arrIves 10 California shortl woods as an attempt ro reconstruct a pastoral utopia in Whiteness, Ah Wee s permanent status as the subordi- dd after the en 0 th e C IVI ' WTwar to rake over the household dutie , Poor Ah Toy " is at one level a domestic fiCtion that the face of heterosexual and racial discipline, nate objeCt of desire is determined by race. Ah Wee is reIterates the taboo on interclass and interracial inti- , Ah ecease sIster-in-law who has l Gopher, the hired man, is described as misshapen won " after all, in a poker game. On the face of it efit Roberr I ons a macy wIdower wIth two young children. Finding the Irish : LIke Charles Notdhoff, Mary Mote serves up a and deformed, while Dunfer, the petty capitalist, is Wee s race, nOt her sex, is the principal social marker of warnl~g to female employers of Chinese household ser- s Chineseness female housekeeper unsuitable an described as looking like he had not worked for some difference and transgression, It is Ah Wee try109 a senes 0 vants. ' They should not succumb ro their own image ImperfeCt Chmese servants, Fanny is sent Ah Toy, the time, and as a prodigious consumer of tobacco and ro which the people upon the Hill object. It is this racial of the Chl~ese as childlike, They should be careful nOt object in the first instance which makes necessary Ah young cook and houseboy of a close family friend drink, Gopher s body is deformed both by his eco- ro let, theIr own "natural" kindness be mistaken for , Ah Toy ptoves to be an excellent domestic s nomic exploitation and by his frustrated desire for Ah Wee s sexual masquerade. As it tUrns oUt, the question ;rvant affecnon, FlOally they should be careful not to allow 10 every res~ect, a quick learner and a patient worker Wee, The erotic rivalry between Dunfer and Gopher of Ah Wee s sex is made moot by the jury s unquestion- servants to assume positions within the private realm under Fannys tutelage, For some rime is intense but, given their class telations, one-sided. It ing acceptance of Jo Dunfer s silly plea; the public value , domestic ordet of t~e famIly as surrogate family members, and tranquillity are restored and or ends only in the death of Dunfer and can be measured of Ah Wee s life is measured only by Ah Wee s race, ' , , LOY ecomes a Poor Ah Toy member of the household. When he falls ill after news " reverses the power relations of by the terse bitterness of the crude grave marker that It is Ah Wee s eyes, the very same eroticized body socIal hlsroty: the least sociall of the death of his mother owerfiul the splOster Gopher has made for his erstwhile master, Bierce uses parts that Dunfer exclaims are the " damnd' est eyes , Fanny cares for him as a omemaker aQd the Chinese servant chIld , much the way that she had for , are the principal the figure of Gopher to represent working-class frustra- around " the physical markers of race that have " inca' old egro save agents of the story. The most socially powerful pacitated his servant for good service " which, in death , her fathers home 10 Vitginia. Ah Toy is entrusted , Robert tion , both at capitalist affection for and exploitation of S,ddons, Fanny s older widowed brother WIth the care of the family and and aptaIO the Chinese and with its own desire for the Chinese. become Ah Wee s instruments of terror. After Dunfer , in Robert Sid ons OulS Ward a sen " a former Union officer, are given little scream of fear, the young reporter "saw that the knot- IS IOvlted ro join the family at the hearth, Gopher has won and lost Ah Wee, He does not object agencyL IO thIs stOry.' In the tivalry between Ward and , ThIs Idyll of reconstructed family begins to unravel ro Dunfer s glib rationalization of Ah Wee s homicide hole in the wall had indeed become a human eye- Ah T~y for the affections of Fanny, there is nothing WIth the arrival of Ca tain Ward in the public record , for ro do so would also reveal his full, black eye, that glared intO my own with an entire SUI or ro anny. equal IO the social conteSt between the white genrle- 'ih Toy becomes Immediately jealous of Captain Ward own secret desire for Ah Wee, Instead , he waits ro lack of expression more awful than the most devilish man and the Chinese houseboy, Ward has ro do nothing "2S In this moment '"fter Ward and Fanny are en poison Dunfer. glitter. , sexualized and racialized ed orLOY angn y to gaIO the adoration of Fanny, while there is seem- onfronts Captain Ward and is As a racially subordinate object of desire, Ah Wee difference is reified in the persistence of the sign of the dismissed b Y m~ IOgly nothing that Ah Toy can do to gain her or, h' IS IOsolence, In the kitchen after his dismissal affec- has neither voice nor agency while alive. Even Ah Wee Oriental body-the inscrutable eye, non. Neverrheless , at the psychological level, Ah Toy ' . , "

INVESTIGATING POWER: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION , POPULAR CULTURE , AND VIOLENCE \0 . THE THIRD SEX: ASIAN-AMERICAN MEN IN POPULAR CULTURE 331 , his departUre, and his is a clear warning that Fanny s behavior is anachronis- Siddons leaves the family in Ah Toy rransgressive display of affection s trusted and despite his former StatUs as an enemy, as " tic, better suited to the extended pre-capitalist house- skilled hands while he travels on business, Ah Toy is a real Yankee death all have a deep effect on Fanny, the unattamable bUt a gentleman hold undet the rules of slavery, The same act In the able to claim a space withi , intelligent, accomplished , agreeable." object of his desire, ? the family sphere, On his arrival at the modern" bourgeois family has been given a different Siddons's door , Ward is described Fanny and Ah Toy are economic orphans of the as dark and handsome meaning and has different consequences, Ah Toy, solitaty in the kitchen one tainy , in sharp contrast to the more post-Civil War economy, Fanny is like many a young, evening, elaborate and feminized description of Ah Toy on his The construction of Ah Toy as a surrogate chIld donned his best silk blouse and woman from a genteel former slaveholding famlly, for , tapping at the door arrival. In keeping with Victorian conventions of gen- accomplishes several things. It symbolically shifts him timidly begged leave ro join the little circle, As the dog whom factOry work is unsuitable and marriage to the der and sexuality, which assigned emotional sensitivity, appropriate gentleman difficult, O~e of Fanny's few from an object of exchange, a commodIty, Into an Imag- and car were outStretched in lazy conteor on the rug, if not sexual passion, to the female ined family member, The reader recalls that Ah Toy it seemed hard to deny the one lone setvant admissinn , Ah Toy is rendered options, apart from teaching, for maklOg her own lIvIng as vastly more sensitive and emotionally complex than ~ had been "given" to Fanny by a friend of the SIddons, ro the hearth; so he was welcomed to a humble seat and enabling her to retain her class statUs IS to establIsh either Robert Siddons the brother , His arrival had been accompanied by a nOte: corner, where he shared the mirth and good cheer in , or Louis Ward the herself as the surrogate mother of her widowed broth- suitOr, who are depicted as civil and restrained, In emo- a deferential way: pnpping corn s family, Ah Toy, like rhousands of other Chinese , cracking nuts, and tional terms Ah Toy is much more closely aligned to " Now that ynu have undertaken the charge I am not making ingenious little immigrant men displaced from mining, railroad bulld- tOys for the children, Fanny. willing that all the sacrificesshall be yours; and farm work in the 1860s and 1870s, enters the Ward' s arrival is marked by a bold assertion of his white middle-class household as cook, houseboy, an therefore render ro you my own private and partIcular In crossing to the hearth , Ah Toy is crossing the 109, masculinity: "Fanny s smile of welcome was more elo- , Ah Toy, hoping that he will lighten your internal boundaries of race and laundryman. In entering intO domestic labor either as facrorum class, Despite his quent than speech for Captain Ward rook both her burdens as he has mine, He is cleanly, honest, faith- trusted position as remporary guardian of the house- household servants or independent servICe provIders, hands and boldly kissed her lips."'8 It is when Ah Toy ful, bur lest you disbelieve in my paragon 1 must own hold, his permission ro enter the domestic sphere of the such as laundryman or tailors , Chinese men avoIded presumes ro assert his own sense of tacial equality and that he is unduly sensitive and has been somewhat hearth relies on his status as a surrogate child. He is competition with white men but competed directly ro act in the same not, and he is conscious of the fact he is not way that the incest taboo asserts with women, particularly immigrant Insh women. ' spoiled: , the surro- itself. Refusing a large tip for the favor of walking gate master. " While it saved True Womanhood from the physICal Henceforth, in Mr, Siddons s absence, he twelve miles ro deliver the very telegram that will bring demands of the secular cult of cleanliness, the entry of Ah Toy s childlike feminine" qualities can be safely often joined the group, never presuming ro do so when Ward ro the Siddons home, Ah Toy asserts a claim to domestic sphere threatened to unsettle contained, indeed inventoried and deployed In the ser- the master presided. men into the class status. "I no T-a-r-t-a-r. I allee same gentleman.".\9 vice of the household. Initially, Ah Toy is descrIbed as Finally, Ah Toy the gendered division of labor, putting men in do~es- s status as a surrogate child makes Later, frusrrated by the evident permanent presence of tall, yoUthful, comely, jauntily dressed. , With a bow possible, and at the same time tic roles such as cleaning and cooklOg and asslgnlOg , unresolvable, the erotic Ward , Ah Toy attempts to use his indispensability ro supervisory and management roles to women. The this Mongolian exquisite presented a delIcately tInted tension between himself and Fanny, Establishing a sur- the domestic economy ro oust his perceived rival for , an faintly perfumed biller."" Ah Toy's fastidiousness and rogate mother/child relation between Fanny and Ah creation of the domestic male reqUIred a place for Fanny s affections from the position as honored guest. alternative masculinity, This alternative masculIOIty, sensitivity distinguish him from earlIer household ser- Toy establishes an alternative vehicle for intimacy that , and as When Ah T;y angrily confronts Ward, Fanny rebukes opposed to True Womanhood by gender and class and vants. "Evidently Ah Toy was of another ilk conforms to VictOrian codes of gender and desire and and dismisses him; moments later in the kitchen complement to his exceptional tidiness, his, bedroom thus was extremely familiar to the VictOrian woman. , a to the Western Hero by race and class, could be con- space that Ah Toy shares with Fanny, he makes the fol- was hung with cheerful paper, a dozen flamlOg lItho- In the ideology of domesticity, the constrained rela- tained by racial taboo and facilitated by the assump- lowing advance. tion that the Chinese male immigrant, bereft of famIly graphs were bestowed to adorn the walls, and a brIght tionship between disciplined husband and passionless colored matting laid upon the floor.";) wife was paralleled in importance only by rhe intimacy in the United States, would eventually retUrn to China, The yellow features of the spectaror grew ashen with Since Ah Toy s labor has restored "comfort and ~rder between mother and her male child. G, M. Goshagian Thus a critical tUrn is taken when Ah Toy is orphaned suppressed feeling, his black eyes glittered with a ro the "storm-tossed" Siddons household, attentIon to has demonstrated the central role that an obsession with by the death of his mother in China. Her death takes strange light, as he caught her hand and pressed the away the reason for his future retUrn to ChlOa; he his sensitivity is a small price to pay, When , Rober imagined incest between mother and son played in the jeweled fingers :0 his lips, in imitation of a salure he Siddons attempts to admonish Ah Toy, Fanny IS qUlc domestic ideology of the Victorians declares his permanent residence in the United State " The male child/ had seen when the captain fancied himself and Fanny to remind her brother that Ah Toy is "the very center of mother relationship established a vehicle of intimacy Me no go to my Chi ny-place, me allee tIme stay here. unnbsetved, Ah Toy s orphan statUs makes him available to assume our domestic economy."" Here Ah Toy s role in restOr- and simultaneously raised an incest taboo to suppress a permanent position within the domestic spher~ of the ing the domestic economy is seen as part of a pastOral or contain passion, Fanny recoils in horror and shameful ~ld It is the confrontation between this third knowledge. Siddons household, transforming him from SOjourner restOration; his dual role as servant and surrogate ch , alterna- Ah Toy s kiss has pierced the veil that has marked their ~ICe to permanent alien, It also makes him available as both recapitUlates the role of bonded servant or appren tive gender, figured as the male child, and the Western relationship, The single gesture of desire violates the In actualIty, a surrogate child ro Fanny and an alternative head of n the re-capitalist extended household. hero that is at the heart of the relations of desite among simogate child/mother relationship and breaks the d d Ah Toy, Louis Watd household, his role as waged servant brings the enterIng we ge , and Fanny Siddons, "Poor Ah incest raboo , exposing the seams of race, class Toy" directly compares this version of Orientalized , and This surrogacy is made manifest when Ah Toy falls capitalism into the bourgeois household itself. sexuality that SUture their relationship. , Ah Toy can enter IOto the IOtl- sexuality with Western masculinity. Fanny describes ill and "Fanny waites) on him with the womanly ten- As a surrogate child That Ah Toy has broken the incest taboo between , Robert Louis Ward derness her mother had shown to a favorite slave." This mate sphere of the family. After a short rime , a former Union officer whom she admires mother and surrogate child is made clear from Fanny , " "-' , ' ~: ''' ' ," ,, , '' , "', ' ," ," ", " y, , "' (

332 INVESTIGATING POWER: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, POPULAR CULTURE , AND VIOLENCE THE THIRD SEX: AS, IAN-AMERICAN MEN IN POPULAR immediate verbal response to his kiss, Her first words makes his desire for his white mistress impossible. Ah DISPLACING WOMEN CULTURE 8, CatroH Smirh Ro are you are a bad man."" This is the first and only Toy kills himself by the very sign of his difference: " DESTABILIZING GENDER - , sen erg, Isorderly Colldnct: VisiofIJ 'if en ,r In time Ah Toy is referred ro as an adult. Fanny s further had managed to suspend himself with the long and V'IctOf'lall America (New York: Knopf 1985) 9, SedgewIck Between Men response is to internalize the incest violation, blaming thick cue which had been rhe objecr of his pride.'"' The presence of th Inese male disrupts rhe fra ile 21- 10, Kolodny, The Land before Her: 27 herself as mother for the faillIte to successfully tUtor the Ah Toy leaves a note stating that, unlike many balances between sexes within the househ H~nry Nash S ' Land' Th A ' mlt , Oi old merrCall 1Vest as Symbol and child: "She darted from the room, white, cold, heart- Chinamen who die in America, he does not want his e rea m 0 sexualIty and in the realm of labor On Myth th I VIntage (New or, sick, to throw herself on her bed in an agony of shame remains to be sent back to an ancestral home in China t e one hand , 1950), , rhe Oriental domestic could be mad~ the II, Peiss Cheap Amnsements, and apprehension, sobbing to herself I am ro blame, I bUt wants instead ro be buried on the Siddons ranch. sIte of homoerotic and/or mulriracial alrernatives ro the Chaprer 3 12. Barbara MeH H b0 son paraphrases the note ro neasy Vlf'tne: The Politics of am to blame.'"' Gong Wah translates and ~~ergent heterosexual and monoracial orthodoxy of PlostltlltlOn alld the Americall Reform Traditioll This transgression is cathartic and transform~cive, Fanny: " (Ch'lCago He no wantee bones go back Chiney, he wan- !Cronan America, At the same time th and London' U'nlVefS!ty nfChlCago Press 1987) , so he allee time see Miss p oyment 7 LuCIe Cheng H' t " Although Ah Toy has been driven from the h~use- tee pUtree in glound here 0f t he ~a e ChlOese setvanr ro do " , Ira a, roe woman s work" , ndeorured , Enslaved: hold , his presence continues ro be felt, Although AIJ, Fanny.','6 destabilIzed the gendered natUre of labor. , , , Chmese ProStItUtes in Nineteeorh Century Ame ' Toy s successor proves incompetent, the once fastidious Gravestones mark the presence of people on the ~ of industrial and agricultural employers of Slgm 5:1 (1979), 29, fica " and "Poor Ah 14, Helen Campbell Fanny is distracted from her duties as superintendent landscape. In both "The Haunted Valley Ch BOYClOese e ChlOese ro seek employment in the home Darkness and Daylight: Li"hts Shadolt's of New Y,Or k L I e of the household, " Fanny bore herself ro Gong Wah Toy," the headstones of Chinese immigrants signify their ~ r~ open ~,mall businesses in industries most iden- ifi, A p,ctonal Record(Hartford onn,: The Hartford Publishing Company, 1898). with an icy hauteur that astonished Robert, She kept statUs as permanent resident aliens in America. Both t1 e wIth woman s work." In both " aunte 15, Anne Butler Dallghter entirely aloof from the kitchen, and refused ro correct headstones are inscribed with epitaphs that , reflecting V;a 11 ey " an Poor Ah To J, 01', Isters of Misery: Prostitlltes " the lOese ImmIgrant in th e Amerrcan West his short comings.'") the ambivalence of their aUthors reward their subjects enters and displaces a non- (Urbana: University of Illinois lOese woman (10 rhe firsr ress, 1985), 6, It is Ah Toy s racially and sexually transgressive are layered in meaning. Both mark the racial param- case, MexIcan , and in rhe second, Irish). , , . 16, Workingman s Parry of California Ami Ch' kiss, and not her engagement to Ward, that transforms erers that simultaneously created and constrained new CounCI ' nvestigaring Committee lOese Fanny from a girl into a woman, This transformation possibilities for relations of desire, conflating the sex- Chinatown Declared a Nl11sance!I (San Francisco I, March 10 1880) is beser with pain, since it flows not from an orderly ual with race, class, and gender formations. The crude 17, Ambrose Bierce NOTES The Hauored Va;ley, ~erland transition from girlish innocence to True Womanhood warning on Ah Wee s gravestone to "Celestials" not to Monthly 7:1 (July 1871), 1. Philip P. 18. William Wu bUt from exposed desire, both Ah Toy s and her own, be "putring on airs" underscores Ah Wee s subordinate Choy, Lorraine Dong, and Matinn K. H The y,lt'ow p, er,: 'l Cl' ornese Americam in Americall Coming M Fiction 1850- After Ah Toy s exile, Fanny is described as being full and vulnerable sratUs as a racial Other, The warning an:19 f enfnry American Perc,ptions of the , 940Harnden , Conn,: Archon Books 1982) 50 C om 19, Cathy DavIdson of "womanly shame and remorseful anxiety." Desite against "purting' on airs" of presumptive racial equal- Chinese (Hong Kong' Joint P bl'IS h' 109 Co" 1994). The Experimental Fictions of A 2 M ' , , Bterce: Stf'ltcf/lring the lne ;J1bros guilt, and remorse have transformed Fanny, She has ity is ironic, in the face of the "airs" of sexual identity Garber Vice Versa: Bisexllality and the Eroticism 'JJ""able lOCO n an London' of ;JOvery l' Life UnIversIty of Nebraska Press 1984)' and C become that Ah Wee is supposed to have put on in collabora- (New York: Simon & Schuster at y , 1995). Dav ). See" for example, essays in Andrew Parker et a!. son , riticalEssays on Ambrose Bierce tion with Dunfer and Gopher. Just below the warning, OStOn, Nattonallsms and Sexllalities , eds" G, K. Hall & Co. (B a changeling, for the frank, sunny girl had been dis- the "revealing" comment "She was a good egg," attestS (New York and London' , 1982), 20, Cathy Davidson Routledge, 1992), With regard to Asian A The Experimental Pictiom placed by an irritable, absent-minded , and dejected to that ambiguity of transracial (and more ambigu- meflcans 71 Ambrose B' 142 see essays by Eric Re es Mo na I awa - , lerce e Hauored Valley, woman-a metamorphosis that dumbfounded the ously, homosexual) desire that shaped the relationship JennIfer Overland TlOg, Martin Manalansan, and Alice H Mollthly 7:1 (July 1871), 91.", men to whom she was deat, she grew wan, careworn between Ah Wee, Dunfer, and Gopher in the transi- omlO aryY. 22, Ambrose Bierce Ok' h'If 0 et a. " eds" Privileging Positions: Th, Sites of Asian The Hauored Valle " 0 v'" an and strangely netvous, The truth was that she was tion between the homosocial world of the gold rush Amerrcall Stltites Mol/hiI)', vn, , no,l (July, (PuHman Wash' Was h' IOgtOn State 1871), 93, harassed by vague forebodings and by constant self- and the heterosexual world of Victorian California, On University Press 3, Ambrose Bierce,I The Devil's7 Dictionary , 1995), (New York 4, Stephanie COOntz prImed for the members of the Limited Editions ~l b teproach, the second headstone, the simple inscription "Poor Ah Th e oCla f'lglnsofPriwteLife' AH'IS ory u , Toy" both recognizes Ah Toy s subordinate class statUS of American Families 1600-1900 10 n nn, ,erso,1988), 24, Ambrose1972), Bierce 5 Th The search for Ah Toy on the Siddons ranch reveals dictated by his race and, at the same time, is an oblique d"IstlOctJon and complex telationship between the The Hauored Valley " 89 Theater I hnmosocml and the homosexual is discussed in E versinnun ,erscores the racial meaningd of the lasr as- the depth of her mixed feeling for him, "The pitiable expression of sympathy for his desires. In his suicide Kosofsky Sedgewick ve ;age wh:n It substitutes " , both unattainable for Betw,en Men' Enu/ish Lite mightn t treat him Whi condition of the wretched creatUre and his presence in note, Ah Toy stakes two claims ranreall mlghro t treat him welL" ~" for iHaleHomoSOCla ' esire (New York: Cnlumbi the valley filled her with apprehension that drove het the Chinaman in life: The firsr is on the heart of Fanny nlVerSIty 25, Ralph Mann Press, 1985): 1- 21- U' Community Change and Caucasian " for Ah Toy turns up Siddons, the second is for a place in America, The first half wild." When her "eager quest , See, for example 27, Artltudes Towards rhe Chinese: The Case ofTwn , Christine Stansell City of Women: Sex no sign of him, she admits that "I have rhought about is achieved simply by interment, the second by the and Class In New York Chinese Mining Tnwns 1850- , 1789-1860 ewYi or, k: 1870'" , 10 xp,oratlons rn that wretched boy till I am almost insane." memorial. "Fanny Siddons never retUrned to the spot; (N Knopf mem,m abor alld 1986); an at y Peissd CheapK Am/lSements:h WOI'killg Sodal History ed M'I ton aoror Ah Toy s suicide is his final gesture of resistance. He bUt Mrs. Louis Ward came more than once to see an Women and Leisftre ill Ttlm-ofthe- (Wesrport , onn, : Greenwood Press 1979) 397- ' Centftry Ne~), Y, 01 'k " 4 hangs himself in a manner rhat underscores his status humble grave whose headstone bore the brief inscrip- 26, Ambrose Bierce The Hauored Vall~ " 198 as a racially defined subordinate, the racial status that tion Poor Ah Toy.' ,~, 7, (Philadelphia: Cnontz Th, SoCIal TempleUniversity Of'lglns of P";,'ate Life,Press 27, Ibid" 88. 224-236, 28, Ambrose Bierce, " The Haumed Valley," 90,