Mediating Moore: Uncertain Origins and Indeterminate Identities in the Work of C
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Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) 1-1-2010 Mediating Moore: Uncertain Origins and Indeterminate Identities in the Work of C. L. Moore Jennifer Jodell Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Recommended Citation Jodell, Jennifer, "Mediating Moore: Uncertain Origins and Indeterminate Identities in the Work of C. L. Moore" (2010). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 784. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/784 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY University College Liberal Arts MEDIATING MOORE: UNCERTAIN ORIGINS AND INDETERMINATE IDENTITIES IN THE WORK OF C. L. MOORE by Jennifer Lynn Jodell A thesis presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Liberal Arts December 2010 St. Louis, Missouri Acknowledgments I would like to thank my adviser, J. Andrew Brown, and my committee members for their valuable input and guidance. I am also indebted to Stephen Haffner, Richard Bleiler, and the REH society for their referrals to primary source materials, as well as to Carole Ann Rodriguez for her patience in the face of my many questions. Additionally, I am grateful to Judith Hack and Kenneth Polonsky for their moral support and many years of academic inspiration. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments......................................................................................................................................... ii Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................4 Chapter One: Contested Origins, Contested Terrain: Re-visioning the Work of C. L. Moore.....................19 1.1 Significance to the Genre............................................................................................................19 1.2 Innovator Versus Imitator...........................................................................................................22 1.2.1 Sex, Style, and “Shambleau”...............................................................................................22 1.2.2 Generic Experimentation and Characterization .................................................................28 1.2.3 Allusion and the Restoration of Complexity .......................................................................34 1.3 A Parenthetical Presence............................................................................................................36 1.4 “Origins” in Masquerade ............................................................................................................41 1.5 Weird Sisters: Female Participation in “Contested Territory”....................................................43 1.6 The Erasure of Female Authorship and Agency..........................................................................49 Chapter Two: Partial Perceptions and Liminal Identities: “Indeterminacy” in the Work of C. L. Moore .........................................................................................................................................................62 2.1 C. L. Moore as Cyborg Author.....................................................................................................62 2.2. “The Bright Illusion” (1934) and Earth’s Last Citadel (1943) ......................................................67 2.3 The Mask of Circe (1948) and “The Children’s Hour” (1944) .....................................................86 Chapter Three: Mediating the Gendered Subject: “Blank Beings” and Constructed Identities...............108 3.1 “Readability” and Mediated “Being” ........................................................................................108 3.2 “The Prisoner in the Skull” (1949).............................................................................................113 3.3 Doomsday Morning (1957).......................................................................................................127 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................151 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................................................180 3 Introduction C. (Catherine) L. (Lucille) Moore, one of the earliest female science fiction writers, is widely regarded by SF writers, editors, and fans as one of the field’s most influential founding mothers. And yet, while one might expect several general studies of Moore’s work, most Moore criticism consists of two very disparate feminist SF analyses, with one thread grounded firmly in her earliest work in the pulps and the other focusing solely on her mid-career short story, “No Woman Born” (1944). Interestingly, while the latter and more recent analytical thread seems to regard Moore as an insightful commentator on themes such as gender and identity, the former-- which deals mainly with Moore’s work in the 30’s—suggests that Moore’s “voice” as a female author was compromised early on by the decade and medium in which she made her debut. Such criticism presumes that Moore began her career as an intimidated and imitative “female pulp writer,” a presumption which is then used to challenge the authenticity of Moore’s authorial (and female) “voice.” Not only is it believed that female pulp writers such as Moore “learned” early on to “pass” as men (i.e., through the use of “male” pseudonyms and a male “point of view,” content, and writing style), critics have also asserted that successful female SF writers unconsciously mimicked (or even internalized) the conventional expressions of misogyny that “marked their historical moment” 1 in order to please their presumably all-male pulp audiences. Moore, in particular, is often used to open discussions of both types of mimicry. For such critics Moore is emblematic of the “few female writers” who “dar[ed]” to write SF during a period “almost exclusively dominated by men” (Gamble 30); in fact, even among general SF historians, Moore’s use of initials rather than an identifiably female byline is possibly the most widely cited example 2 of the “need” for female pulp SF authors to pass as men due to “commercial necessity.” 3 When reviewing such criticism, teasing apart the two forms of alleged 4 mimicry (intentional and internalized) can be problematic, as the two are often conflated. Regardless, if at least one of these two forms of mimicry is taken as a given, one expects to find an “inauthentic” female “voice” in female-authored SF pulp fiction, one that presumably served patriarchal ends and one perhaps of no more value to feminist critics than that of a cautionary tale. It is apparently with the goal of establishing such a cautionary tale that Moore’s early fiction was first examined by feminist critics such as Natalie Rosinsky in the late 70s. Although by this time Moore had been praised by feminist critics for her female warrior, Jirel of Joiry, a “strong heroine” she created in the 30’s (Rosinsky, “Alienated,” 68), Rosinsky argued that the rest of Moore’s early fiction was sexist and that it could no longer be “excused” simply because it was written during a period when the “male point of view…was a necessity for anyone who wished to publish” (68). 4 In order to explain Jirel’s existence as well as explore the origins and manifestations of Moore’s sexism, Rosinsky closely examined Moore’s first text, “Shambleau” (1933), a story involving a macho male hero and a Medusa-like villain (Shambleau). Rosinsky implied that since Moore had, in The Best of C. L. Moore , commented that both Jirel and Shambleau were “versions of the self” she would have liked to have been (Moore, “Best,” 308), an attempt to resolve the two disparate characters might provide insights into Moore’s psychology and, presumably, her sexism. Finding that “Shambleau” presented gender-related “dilemmas” which are never “resolved” and a Medusa who is never embraced “completely,” Rosinsky argued that Moore’s writing betrayed an “uncertainty” that was evidence of “self-alienation” (Rosinsky, “Alienated,” 70, 72). A self-alienated woman, Rosinsky argued, has no positive image of Woman upon which to draw and is left to view herself through the models provided by misogyny; in Moore’s case, Rosinsky argued, Moore seemed to be drawn to the figures of the “good” and “bad” woman. 5 Rosinsky then “resolved” Jirel by suggesting that Jirel’s positive characteristics were a side effect of Moore’s internalization of these stereotypes, while Shambleau’s depiction supported equally “conventionally misogynist views” (72). Indeed, Shambleau—sexually aggressive, uncontained, unknowable—seemed to Rosinsky to embody the misogynistic stereotype of the “bad woman,” the terrifying and irresistible woman that patriarchal ideology can only interpret as monster--or, in this case, monster, alien, animal, and Medusa in one. Although “Shambleau” did not fall “neatly” into the category of a text produced from the “male point of view” (68), as it betrayed an alienated woman’s