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Modernism from the Margins: Unruly Women and the Politics of Representation

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Modernism from the Margins: Unruly Women and the Politics of Representation Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Spring 5-10-2013 Modernism from the Margins: Unruly Women and the Politics of Representation Lindsay Byron Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Byron, Lindsay, "Modernism from the Margins: Unruly Women and the Politics of Representation." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/107 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MODERNISM FROM THE MARGINS: UNRULY WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION by LINDSAY BYRON Under the Direction of Elizabeth West and Barbara Ladd ABSTRACT Nella Larsen, Anzia Yezierska, and Evelyn Scott were New York neighbors and liter- ary contemporaries in the 1920s, yet they moved in very different social circles. From Larsen, the award-winning psychological novelist of the Harlem Renaissance; to Yezierska, the Jewish immigrant composing in Yiddish-English a boot-straps story of Americanization; to Evelyn Scott, the genteel-born Southern woman penning high modernist tales of scandal, these very different women nonetheless shared a common quality: they were all rule- breakers, pariahs in their hometowns, interlopers wherever they dare tread, who all penned controversial autobiographical works documenting their experiences as cultural outsiders in modern America. Finding no community, race, or class with which to align the- se authors and their life stories, contemporary critics defaulted into accusation of false- hood, immorality, and insanity. Their works could not possibly be true or sane, I argue, be- cause they could not be classified. INDEX WORDS: Women writers, Modernism, Americanization, Immigrant literature, Har- lem Renaissance, Autobiography, Identity politics, Feminism MODERNISM FROM THE MARGINS: UNRULY WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION by LINDSAY BYRON A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2013 Copyright by Lindsay Byron 2013 MODERNISM FROM THE MARGINS: UNRULY WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION by LINDSAY BYRON Committee Chairs: Elizabeth West Barbara Ladd Committee: Calvin Thomas Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2013 iv Dedicated to us—the Byron Family. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Elizabeth West for many years of guidance and friendship, Barbara Ladd for always believing in me, and Calvin Thomas for being in my corner when- ever I needed support. I would also like to acknowledge the Toco Hills Avis G. Williams public library to be an excellent place for writing dissertations. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................................ v INTRODUCTION: CHANGING SUBJECTS ............................................................................ 1 The Rise of Identity Politics .............................................................................................. 5 Postmodern “Autobiography”: Fictions of Self ........................................................ 10 Oppositional Feminist Subjectivity through Autobiography .............................. 13 Chapter Breakdown .......................................................................................................... 16 CHAPTER 1.UNFINISHED ENDINGS: THE MEANINGFUL AMBIGUITY OF NELLA LARSEN’S NOVELS................................................................................................................... 19 Uncovering the Truth about Nella Larsen ................................................................. 23 The New Negro Movement and the Politics of Representation ......................... 37 Disappearing in Quicksand ............................................................................................. 48 The Problem of Passing ................................................................................................... 58 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 68 CHAPTER 2.“NOT A JEWESS AND NOT A GENTILE”: CATEGORIZING ANZIA YEZIERSKA ................................................................................................................................ 70 Choosing sides in Bread Givers ...................................................................................... 92 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 106 CHAPTER 3.EVELYN SCOTT’S ESCAPADE: AN UNCONVENTIONAL NARRATION OF A CONTROVERSIAL LIFE ............................................................................................. 109 vii Masculine Modernism ................................................................................................... 118 A Sick Subjectivity ........................................................................................................... 123 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 134 CONCLUSION: MALLEABLE IDENTITIES ...................................................................... 139 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... 144 1 INTRODUCTION: CHANGING SUBJECTS Nella Larsen, Anzia Yezierska, and Evelyn Scott were New York neighbors and liter- ary contemporaries in the 1920s, yet they moved in very different social circles. From Larsen, the award-winning psychological novelist of the Harlem Renaissance; to Yezierska, the Jewish immigrant composing in Yiddish-English a boot-straps story of Americanization; to Evelyn Scott, the genteel-born Southern woman penning high modernist tales of scandal, these very different women nonetheless shared a common quality: they were all rule- breakers, pariahs in their hometowns, interlopers wherever else they dare tread, who all penned controversial autobiographical works documenting their experiences as cultural outsiders in modern America. Each of these writers, in works classified to some degree as autobiographical, con- struct textual selves that, while all self-consciously subversive, enact this subversion in ways unique to the diverse (and complexly interrelated) cultures of their origins and sub- sequent exile/flight. Thus, while each unruly women in their own right, Yezierska, Larsen, and Scott conceive of and depict unruliness in quite different ways. Examination of the contours of these differing depictions provide insight into the ways that ethnically-, geo- graphically-, and class-specific hegemonies intersect and circumscribe the discursive realms of possibility for a variety of culturally-marginal modern American unruly women. Importantly, these depictions proceed from the perspectives of the women themselves. Tellingly, these authors’ autobiographical texts have been met with accusations of inauthenticity and/or immorality from both literary critics and their wider audience. Though these three writers lived and wrote in a common timeframe and published in con- temporary literary markets, each emerged from different cultural experiences of modern 2 America, and had very different things to say, in very different ways. Accordingly, the accu- sations of inauthenticity and immorality that critics and the wider public have brought against these works attach themselves to different kinds of perceived wrongs—for exam- ple, Larsen’s claims of Danish family, Yezierska’s dedication to art over motherhood, and Scott’s pride in her adulterous affair represent a few of the transgressions that people writ- ing about these women and their works take to task. Doubting readers of Larsen, Yezierska, and Scott’s texts find such self-depictions at best factually-ambiguous and at worst immor- al. The uniqueness of these sites of contestation in reference to the specific authors’ histori- cal and cultural contexts reveals much about the specific rules governing expectations of— respectively— the Black bourgeois award-winning novelist-of-manners of the Harlem Re- naissance, the Jewish immigrant composing in Yiddish-English a boot-straps story of Amer- icanization, and the genteel-born Southern woman penning experimental Modernist works. Suffice to say, each of these women defies expectations, and I contend that the textual sites of authentic and moral contestation reflect these breaches in conduct. Despite their contemporary popularity and influence, each of these women’s works were dismissed for much of the twentieth century, forgotten only to be rediscovered during the rise in feminism and multiculturalism of the 1970s and beyond. However, signs have different meanings at different times, and many of the very textual elements that supposed- ly signaled these women’s falsehood and/or immortality—those traits perceived as unac- ceptable by their contemporaries—have since been read by feminists and multiculturalists of the 1970s
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