Reframing the Plantation House: Preservation Critique in Southern Literature
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WEBB, CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY, Ph.D. Reframing the Plantation House: Preservation Critique in Southern Literature. (2015) Directed by Dr. Scott Romine. 238 pp. This dissertation contextualizes southern narrative critiques of plantation house preservation through the historic preservation movement, from its precursory development in the 1930s through today. Examining literary representations of plantation houses as historic relics in the contemporary moment, I demonstrate how a range of twentieth- and twenty-first century southern writers critique or challenge its architectural preservation. The southern plantation house has been coded in American popular culture as an exemplar of architectural heritage and a symbol of southern history, both of which beckon its preservation. Various modes of preservation, from nineteenth-century plantation fiction’s reminiscence of family homes and heroes to twenty-first century’s thriving tourism industry, figure the plantation owner’s house in romanticized ways that celebrate its architectural aesthetics, present its history through a narrow register of racial relations, and promote its nostalgic embrace. I argue that against prevailing tendencies toward various uncritical ethos of preservation, William Faulkner, Walker Percy, Alice Randall, Attica Locke, Allan Gurganus, and Godfrey Cheshire reframe the plantation house within complex historical and cultural contexts that counter the developing historic preservation movement’s popular following by illuminating the mythologies undergirding the iconic white-columned architecture and their perpetuation through its preservation. Through an interdisciplinary approach, Reframing the Plantation House combines architectural history, historic preservation, and a significant level of textual literary analysis to reveal counter-narratives that unsettle an assumed historical integrity and cultural significance associated with extant plantation houses. Beginning in the 1930s with the first federal initiatives to preserve architectural heritage as a precursor to the preservation movement, I argue that Faulkner’s narratives reframe ruined plantation mansions within historical and cultural contexts that substantiate their ruination and abandonment. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 heralded piquing restoration sentiments and popular historicism. Against this cultural drive, I argue that Walker Percy aligned plantation house restoration and the desire for historical authenticity with parodic fantasy. Slave histories have been predominantly silenced in plantation mythology and tourism. Contemporary writers Alice Randall and Attica Locke each address this selective history as I argue that they reinscribe symbols of slave history within plantation architectures and narratives. An enduring desire to preserve the plantation house without also preserving the traumas of slavery remains today, which Allan Gurganus and Godfrey Cheshire illustrate and attempt to remedy through narrative. REFRAMING THE PLANTATION HOUSE: PRESERVATION CRITIQUE IN SOUTHERN LITERATURE by Cynthia Montgomery Webb A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2015 Approved by ______________________________ Committee Chair © 2015 Cynthia Montgomery Webb For Daniel, Isaac, and Grams. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation written by Cynthia Montgomery Webb has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair __________________________________ Scott Romine Committee Members __________________________________ Christian Moraru __________________________________ Risa Applegarth __________________________________ Patrick Lee Lucas ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee __________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful for the guidance and encouragement of many dedicated professors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro who have invested their time and insights in my own education and development. I am particularly indebted to Scott Romine for his generous resourcefulness and patient support of this project from its inception. This dissertation owes its genesis to his hand in introducing me to the vast array of southern literature and studies. I thank Christian Moraru for his infallible readings and commentary, which have inspired my work in countless meaningful ways. Risa Applegarth has been such an attentive and honest reader whose welcome insights will continue to guide my writing for years to come. Patrick Lee Lucas has been an invaluable guide into the forays of architecture and preservation. I am especially thankful for his continued enthusiasm and dedication to this project through its completion. Fellow graduate students and peers have challenged, encouraged, and inspired me throughout this process. I am especially thankful to Scott Gibson and Andrew Pisano for their support as writing partners, friends, allies, and also for sharing the immeasurable encouragement and kindness of Kristina Pisano and Cristina Jacome with me. I hold profound gratitude to my family. While only my name appears on the title page, they are each honorary recipients of the degree to be conferred. I thank my husband, Daniel, for his inexplicable patience and unwavering support; most especially, I thank him for lending me his perseverance when my own waned. My exceptional parents, Jeff and Jean Montgomery, have offered steadfast encouragement. My mother has been iv nothing short of heroic in her selfless contribution to our family and home these last two years. Last, but not least, I am grateful for my son Isaac, who has granted me the greatest educational experience of a lifetime. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: REFRAMING THE PLANTATION HOUSE .....................1 II. THE “NECESSITY FOR RUINS” IN WILLIAM FAULKNER’S YOKNAPATAWPHA COUNTY .................................................................29 III. “A PASSION FOR OLD ‘AUTHENTIC’ THINGS”: PSEUDO-AUTHENTICITY IN WALKER PERCY’S LANCELOT ...................................................................................................85 IV. “DON’T BRING YOUR PAST INTO THIS HOUSE”: RACIALIZING THE PLANTATION HOUSE IN ALICE RANDALL’S THE WIND DONE GONE AND ATTICA LOCKE’S THE CUTTING SEASON .........129 V. PRESERVATION AND THE SENTIENT TRAP IN ALLAN GURGANUS’S PRESERVATION NEWS AND GODFREY CHESHIRE’S MOVING MIDWAY .............................................................183 VI. CONCLUSION: THE NEW OLD HOUSE .....................................................223 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................228 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: REFRAMING THE PLANTATION HOUSE Considered the grandest of Mississippi’s antebellum plantation houses, the late- Greek Revival mansion at Windsor Plantation faced destruction in a fateful and consuming fire in 1890. Its remains, a palatial colonnade of twenty-three Corinthian columns joined by decorative iron balustrades, have been visited by thousands of tourists who wander off the nearby Natchez Trace to view its skeletal ruins.1 Intricate details of the columns delineating Windsor’s monumental and imposing footprint have been preserved and reproduced countless times in photographs, often evoking Rome’s fallen monuments. Many photographs and narratives exemplify the “golden haze of memory,” to borrow Stephanie Yuhl’s phrase, that surround Windsor Ruins. Such depictions invoke a hauntingly gothic mood implying that the magnificent columns, as legendary ruins of an extinct culture, recall a golden age of splendor tragically ruined. In 1938, a recent college graduate named Eudora Welty, who would later become a renowned and prolific writer, traveled her home state of Mississippi as a publicity agent with the Works Progress Administration. The job entailed traveling, photographing, and most importantly “writing of people who were making do in the teeth of the Depression” (R. Price ix). She chronicled much of this experience through photography, as much for the WPA as for herself. Welty took numerous snapshots of individuals, architectures, and landscapes. Of the experience, she says “it gave me the blessing of showing me the real 1 State of Mississippi, not the abstract state of the Depression” (Welty, One Time 3). In 1970, she published One Time, One Place, her first of several photography collections from these years. Reflecting back on her early days with the WPA, she said “I could see a picture composing itself … Practice did make me see what to bring out and define what I was after” (R. Price xiv). Welty took numerous photographs of Windsor Ruins during her travels, yet one particular black and white photograph proves to be especially illuminating.2 Taken from a distance, the iconic columns are minimized, compacted, and nearly fade into the blank background. The shadows of nearby trees darken the columns’s fluted lines. The Corinthian capitals, blackened over time, resemble the tips of wooden matchsticks. The positioning of the frame, which allows the columns to obscure trees in the distance, creates the visual illusion of treetops rising out of the capitals. The foregrounded landscape, shadowed with contrasting shades of light and dark, leads the eye to an area of lightness near the lower right corner