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The Poets' Labor THE POETS’ LABOR: INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE PLACE OF POETRY IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA Robin Rudy Smith A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature in the Graduate School. Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Eliza Richards Beverly Taylor Jane Thrailkill Tim Marr Michelle Robinson © 2017 Robin Rudy Smith ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Robin R. Smith: The Poets’ Labor: Industrialization and the Place of Poetry in Antebellum America (Under the direction of Eliza Richards) The Poets’ Labor: Industrialization and the Place of Poetry in Antebellum America argues that, in the three decades prior to the Civil War, particularly in the 1840s, male newspaper poets and the first generation of female industrial workers used poetry to represent and manage Americans’ increasing anxieties about industrialization. Recent work on nineteenth-century American poetry has demonstrated verse’s social and cultural importance to antebellum Americans but it has neglected the way that rapid industrialization shifted Americans’ understanding of poetry and its relation to labor. To better understand the shift, this study employs an historicist-formalist methodology: by combining close-reading with an historical consideration of a poet’s occupational context - especially a poet’s experience of the changed sounds, pace, and social relations of that workplace due to industrialization - I uncover these poets capturing the new sounds and pace of labor through formal devices such as rhythm, rhyme, and repetition. Gender made a tremendous difference in how industrialization was perceived by antebellum Americans, therefore the four chapters examine the neglected poetry of two groups, female textile workers and male newspaper poets, who experienced major shifts in the way they worked due to the formation of the factory and the introduction of the steam-powered printing press. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the first generation of female industrial workers iii turned to poetry to demonstrate their humanity and mastery over the dehumanizing effects of industrial labor, and male professional poets wrote poetry to demonstrate the opposite, that is, the extent to which poetic production had become rote and mechanical in an industrial age. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks to Eliza Richards for her insightful suggestions and the time she devoted to help shape this project. I also appreciate the support and encouragement of Beverly Taylor, Jane Thrailkill, Tim Marr, and Michelle Robinson. Thanks also to Jennifer Putzi, who introduced me to Lucy Larcom and her contemporaries as an undergraduate at The College of William and Mary, and to the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of English and Comparative Literature, who supported the research for this project with research and dissertation completion fellowships. In writing this dissertation, not only did I have the example of the Lowell mill women to inspire me, I was lucky enough to find my own community of brilliant women in graduate school whose friendship has left an indelible mark on me and on this project: many thanks to Elissa Zellinger, Kelly Ross, Jamie Jones, Meagan Blair, Christy Clemons, Alexis Seccombe, Emma Calabrese, Kym Weed, and Leslie McAbee. I have also been fortunate in the wonderful friends I found in the former mill town of Carrboro, NC: Joe Fletcher, Elena Rue, Hannah Prentice-Dunn, Tobia Giachetti, and Alan Kinlaw (whose editorial help I truly appreciate). Much of what I learned about myself as a writer I learned while working with the wonderful folks at the UNC Writing & Learning Centers: without the coaching and support of these colleagues, I’m not sure I would have completed this project. For the love and encouragement of my dad, Richard Smith, my sister, Alison Smith, my aunt, Robin Dennis, and v my partner, Steven Horton, I’m forever grateful. Finally, I could never have done any of this without my mom, Chris Rudy Smith, who taught me to write and who has always been the most patient and supportive reader I could have hoped for. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 Works Cited in the Introduction ....................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 1: Commodity Poems: American Reworkings of “The Song of the Shirt” and the Industrial Legacy of Thomas Hood ...........................................................23 Part I: Hood and “The Song of the Shirt” ......................................................................... 25 Part II: American Responses ............................................................................................. 33 Part III: “The Song of the Dicky” ..................................................................................... 36 Part IV: “The Song of the Editor”..................................................................................... 39 Part V: “The Song of the ‘Jour’” ...................................................................................... 42 Part VI: “Tale of a Shirt” .................................................................................................. 45 Works Cited in Chapter 1 ................................................................................................. 51 CHAPTER 2: Bringing Poetry Into the Factory and Bringing the Factory into Poetry: Working-Women’s Poetic Strategies .....................................................................54 Part I: Noise ...................................................................................................................... 56 Part II: Pace ....................................................................................................................... 70 Part III: Social Isolation and Alienation ........................................................................... 74 Works Cited in Chapter 2 ................................................................................................. 87 CHAPTER 3: The “Iron Harp” and “Machine Poetry”: Poetry in the Age of Mechanical Production ..........................................................................................90 vii Part I: The “Iron Harp” of A.J.H. Duganne ...................................................................... 91 Part II: The Humor and Anxiety of “Machine Poetry” ................................................... 106 Works Cited in Chapter 3 ............................................................................................... 125 CHAPTER 4: Creating a “Democratic Neighborhood” Through Poetic Exchange: Lucy Larcom’s An Idyl of Work .........................................................................128 Works Cited in Chapter 4 ............................................................................................... 157 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................159 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1. Image accompanying “William Williams, alias Black Bill. My Crank Man” from the New York Sunday Mercury, 29 Dec. 1842. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society…………………124 ix INTRODUCTION The Poets’ Labor: Industrialization and the Place of Poetry in Antebellum America argues that, in the three decades prior to the Civil War, particularly in the 1840s, male newspaper poets and the first generation of female industrial workers used poetry to represent and manage Americans’ increasing anxieties about industrialization. Recent work on nineteenth-century American poetry has demonstrated verse’s social and cultural importance to antebellum Americans (Cohen 12). However, it has neglected the way that rapid industrialization shifted Americans’ understanding of poetry and its relation to labor. To better understand the shift, this study employs an historicist-formalist methodology: by combining close-reading with an historical consideration of a poet’s occupational context - especially a poet’s experience of the changed sounds, pace, and social relations of that workplace due to industrialization - I uncover these poets capturing the new sounds and pace of labor through formal devices such as rhythm, rhyme, and repetition. Because of the formal devices unique to poetry and the social value of poetry in antebellum society, writers turned to verse to manage the seemingly deleterious effects of industrial labor, sometimes even incorporating the new and threatening industrial sounds and rhythms into their work. Unlike the explicit portrayal of the harms of industrialization in later realist novels such as Life in the Iron Mills or The Silent Partner, these poets represent industrialization indirectly in their poetry, thus demanding the modern reader pay close attention to the formal features of the poems and the way they convey the new sounds and pace of 1 industrial labor. Furthermore, this study focuses on poetry because its significance to workers in the antebellum era is an understudied part of American literary history. Because the productions of the nineteenth-century
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