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William Dean Howells and the Seductress- from 'Femme Fatale' William Dean Howells and the seductress: From "femme fatale to femme vitale" The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Prioleau, Elizabeth S. 1992. William Dean Howells and the seductress: From "femme fatale to femme vitale". Harvard Library Bulletin 3 (1), Spring 1992: 53-72. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42662022 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 53 William Dean Howells and the Seductress: From Femme Fatale to Femme Vitale Elizabeth S. Prioleau illiam Dean Howells and the seductress seem an unlikely pair. By tradition, W sirens inhabit the wilder shores of romanticism, not the level plain of real- ism with its "mixed characters," 1 "usual" 2 situations, and complex moral dilemmas. At one point Howells equated coquettes who try to arouse "vivid and violent emotions" 3 with "effectism." Howells coined "effectism" to refer to the cheap, emotional appeals of romanticistic fiction. Nonetheless, coquettes and temptresses 4 pervade his work and comprise some of his most memorable characters. A con- temporary critic, Thomas Perry, said of them: "[Howells's] accomplished experts in the gay science ... are not simply arch or mischievous or appealing but much more ... his coquettes [are] admirable because here as everywhere, Mr. Howells describes what he sees and his eyes are exceed- ingly sharp." 5 ELIZABETH PRIOLEAU is an His portraits of seductresses are acutely observed, vivid, and drawn with finesse. More assistant professor of English at than for their artful portrayals, however, his sirens merit attention for their develop- Manhattan College and author of The Circle of Eros: Sexuality ment over the course of his novels, from Private Theatricals( 187 5-6) to The Leather- in the Work of W.D. Howells. wood God (1916). Although Howells's minxes, with their polysided, often comic personalities, are never stencil-cut femmes fatales, they are primarily destructive until the late eighties. They reflect the orthodox Fatal Woman norms. After April Hopes, they grow increasingly complex, unconventional, and sympathetic, while the estab- lished models of feminine virtue come under mounting attack. Then, at the start of the 1900s, Howells's enchantresses metamorphose into positive heroines. Still sexu- ally intoxicating and flirtatious, they become loci of value against destructive sexu- ality, which now inheres largely in the polite, respectable world. This evolution complements and parallels an investigation into the nature of sexuality in the novels. Beginning with Private Theatricals,Howells uses his sirens for an expanding exploration of Eros. As Howells gained increasing insights into sexuality and transcended the fears of his age, the femme fatale loses her Victorian r Howells, Heroines of Fiction, (New York: Harper & rivets men to her. In nineteenth-century America such a Brothers Publishers, 1901), 2: 134. woman was automatically "dark" and fatal, but as Howells 2 Howells, "Effectism," 1889, in W.D. Howells as Critic, ed. redefined her, he made increasing distinctions between Edwin H. Cady (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, the femme fatale and the seductress/ coquette. 1973), I 59- 5 Thomas Sargent Perry, "William Dean Howells," 1882, 3 Ibid., 166. in Critical Essays on W.D. Howells, 1866-1920, ed. Edwin 4 Here coquette and temptress/femme fatale are used syn- H. Cady and Norma W. Cady (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., onymously to indicate a woman with magnetic sex ap- 1983), 21. peal who, through her conscious or unconscious efforts, 54 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN symbolic baggage and begins a very un-Victorian growth. The final coquettes break through the official angel-siren polarizations and achieve elbowroom, ethical bal- ance, and a proto-feminist state of mind. Howells's seductress theme, therefore, argues against the current criticism which allies Howells with Proper Bostonian and patriarchal prejudices. 6 Instead, his treatment of seductresses underscores his "powerful iconoclas[m]," 7 his feminism, and striking ability to grow, change, and even reverse himself When Howells began to write, the cult of the Dark Woman was at full tide. As Bram Dijkstra exhaustively documents in Idols if Pen;ersity,8 sexual fear and sexism were at such a crest that the death-dealing charmeusehad become a cultural fixture. The femme fatale, of course, has a much longer history. 9 A projection of male fears, she dates back to the mythic Great Mother, the goddess of life who is also the goddess of death. In one of her guises, she plays the seductress: "the Terrible God- dess rules over desire and over seduction that leads to sin and destruction."ro At bottom, sexuality contains impulses to promiscuity, violence,jealousy, self-loss, and bondage, but men have historically translated those dangers into feminine at- tributes. Each female personification reflects a complementary male fear. Thus the promiscuous Lilith shows men's terror of cuckoldry; the bloodthirsty Medea, his terrors of jealousy and violence; the absorptive Lorelei, of engulfment and mater- nal bondage; and Salome, self-loss in its primal form, castration. The Sphinx em- bodies anxiety in general about women's/sexuality's mystery and uncanniness. Since Howells's age placed undue emphasis on the triumphs of the controlling will over the instincts, these fears were exacerbated. II The sensitive Howells might have responded to these cultural currents in his psychically stressed youth. 12 6 Although Edwin H. Cady and others have shown that Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H.M. "Howells and Proper Boston never got on well together," Parshley (New York: Bantam Books, 1952); and Carl in Critical Essays, xxvi, this view persists. See Alfred Kazin, Jung, "Man and Woman," in the Feminine Image in Lit- "Howells and the Bostonian," Clio 3 (1947): 219-34, in erature, ed. Barbara Warren (Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden which he calls Howells "a slave of Corey's [the Boston Book Co., Inc., 1973), 25o-60. Brahmin of The Rise ofSilas Lapham and elsewhere] ster- w Eric Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Ar- ile elegance," 23 I. Among those who charge Howells chetype, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton: Princeton with biased portrayals of women are Gail Thain Parker, University Press, 1955), 172. "William Dean Howells: Realism and Feminism," in " For background on the exaggerated sexual fear in the Harvard English Studies, No. 4, ed. Monroe Engel (Cam- later nineteenth century, see especially Ronald G. bridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 133-61; Judith Walters, Primers for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian Fryer, The Faces ofEve: Woman in the Nineteenth-Century America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., American Novel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974);John s. Haller Jr. and Robin H. Haller, The Physi- 1976); Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (Chicago: The cian and Sexuality in Victorian America (New York: W.W. University of Chicago Press, 1983), 133, 176. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974); Peter Gay, The Tender 7 Booth Tarkington, Introduction, Centenary Edition, The Passion, vol. II of The BourgeoisExperience: Victoria to Freud Rise of Silas Lapham (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Com- (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Steven pany, 1937), xiv. Marcus, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and 8 Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century England (New in Fin-de-Siecle Culture. (New York: Oxford University York: Basic Books, Inc., 1964); Barker-Benfield, The Press, 1986). See also Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, Horrors of the Half Known Life. trans. Angus Davidson (1933; rpt. London: Oxford Uni- 12 For the definitive treatment ofHowells's troubled youth versity Press, 1970); G.J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of see Edwin Harrison Cady' s discussion in "The the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Neuroticism of William Dean Howells," PMLA 61 Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: (1946): 229-38 and The Road to Realism: The Early Years Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976). 1837-1885 of William Dean Howells (Syracuse: Syracuse 9 For my discussion of male fear and the creation of the University Press, 1956), 54-60, 66-70. Also excellent but femme fatale, I have relied primarily on Wolfgang Lederer, more psychoanalytically oriented is John W. Crowley, M.D., The Fear of Women (New York: Grune & Stratton, The Black Heart's Truth: The Early Career ofW.D. Howells 1968); Karen Horney, M.D., "The Dread of Women," (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, in Feminine Psychology, ed. Harold Kelman, M.D. (New 1985). York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1967), 133-46; William Dean Howells and the Seductress 55 Certainly by the time he began his writing career he had come under the sway of the polite, sex-phobic value system. He became "society incarnate," ultrasqueamish about sexual irregularities, and a standard-bearer for the "propriet[ies]. " 13 The "good society" 14 which he adulated as a boy mandated two drastically po- larized types of women: the Pure and the Dark Lady. Feminine purity might assume several forms. 15 The refined "society lady," the fine flower of the Darwinistic struggle, was the "heiress of all that [was] most precious in civilization." 16 She avoided "low and vulgar association," "ostentation," 17 and threaded her way through the genteel stratosphere with conformity, modesty, mandarin manners, and mincing steps. Beside her in the hierarchy was the "domestic madonna," who sanctified the home with her dependent, docile ministrations to her husband, and selfless devotion to children and sickbed. The "young girl" was another ideal. She had the dual appeal, says Dijkstra, of sexual innocence combined with an absence of "resistance to male desire," 18 and became a veritable fetish in America.
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