Making Sense of American Regional Literature, 1865–1914
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MAKING SENSE OF AMERICAN REGIONAL LITERATURE, 1865–1914 Emma Calabrese 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. Chapel Hill 2018 Approved by: Eliza Richards Elizabeth Engelhardt Jennifer Ho Tim Marr Jane Thrailkill © 2018 Emma Calabrese ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Emma Calabrese: “Making Sense of American Regional Literature, 1865–1914” (Under the direction of Eliza Richards) While a recent turn toward sensory studies has increasingly led critics to examine what literary representations of the sensorium can tell us about American cultural history, scholars have yet to consider the prevalent role of sensory experience in American regional literature. This dissertation argues that, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American writers analogize acts of writing and reading to a variety of sensory experiences bearing strong associations with place. They do so in order to approximate the sensory pleasures of local life for readers across the nation at a moment of rapid industrialization when middle-class consumers felt increasingly estranged from localized cultures, folkways, and communities. Each chapter examines turn-of-the-century representations of a different sensory experience bearing strong associations with a particular U.S. region: sugar production and consumption on Louisiana plantations and in New Orleans shortly before and after the Civil War; intense visual experience in the nation’s first Chinatowns in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York; women’s perfume-making in New England; and, in the dissertation’s coda, the sensations of making and drinking Appalachian moonshine as depicted at the end of the nineteenth century and as contemporary writers continue to portray it today. Taken together, these chapters attend to how the language of sensory pleasure has allowed readers to virtually occupy spaces, inhabit cultures, and access identities not their own. The legacies of this language remain with us today, from a contemporary vogue for recovering iii craft industries among middle-class hobbyists to the appropriation of marginalized cultures across popular media. Today, as middle-class Americans increasingly grapple with the damaging effects of their own claims over regional folk cultures and industries, it is imperative that scholars trace the history of these forms of entitlement. Through the intersectional prisms of race, gender, and class, this dissertation examines expressions of regional pleasure that coopt and monetize local cultures, as well as remarkable moments of literary resistance to these processes. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express enormous gratitude to those who have guided and supported me as I have worked to complete this dissertation. First and foremost, I offer thanks to Eliza Richards, my dissertation advisor, who has read countless drafts and spent many hours helping me to conceive and execute this project. I cannot imagine having completed it without the benefit of her subtle and creative thinking and her invaluable mentorship. Thanks also to the rest of my committee members, Elizabeth Engelhardt, Jennifer Ho, Jane Thrailkill, and Tim Marr, each of whom has been instrumental in the project’s development. Thanks also to the colleagues, friends, and family members who have offered their support and cheer during a challenging few years. Among the many people who have provided a sense of community through the ups and downs of graduate school, I extend especial love and gratitude to Yik Lam, Andrew Calabrese, Bridget Bacon, Rosa Calabrese, Rachel Norman, Lina Kuhn, Laura Broom, Kym Weed, Leslie McAbee, Ocean Eerie, and Steph Bryant. A passion for literature brought me to pursue this project, but it’s all of you who gave me the confidence and perseverance to complete it. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES............................................................................................................ viii INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................. 1 Making Sense............................................................................................................. 1 Defining Regions....................................................................................................... 8 Approximating Pleasure........................................................................................... 15 Politicizing Fantasies............................................................................................... 16 Reading Local Dispatches........................................................................................ 19 Works Cited............................................................................................................. 24 CHAPTER 1: CRAVING SUGAR IN LOUISIANA REGIONALISM............................. 27 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 27 Grace King’s “Carte Blanche”................................................................................. 34 The Louisiana Planter and the Racialized Poetics of Sugar-Making...................... 48 The Future of Whiteness in George Washington Cable’s “Café des Exilés”.......... 60 Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Bitter New Orleans............................................................ 75 Works Cited............................................................................................................. 82 CHAPTER 2: VISUALIZING CHINATOWNS IN TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY PRINT CULTURE.............................................................................................................. 85 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 85 Early Chinatown Optics........................................................................................... 93 vi Storied Chinatowns.................................................................................................. 96 Sightscapes in Circulation...................................................................................... 116 Edith Maude Eaton’s Subjectivities....................................................................... 128 Works Cited........................................................................................................... 141 CHAPTER 3: FRAGRANCE, PUBLICATION, AND THE POLITICS OF DISSEMINATION IN THE WORKS OF DICKINSON, FREEMAN, AND JEWETT............................................................................................................................ 145 Introduction............................................................................................................ 145 Meaning and Olfaction in New England............................................................... 152 Emily Dickinson and the Gender Politics of Passive Labor.................................. 157 Mary Wilkins Freeman’s Poems and Potpourris................................................... 166 Sarah Orne Jewett’s Diffusions............................................................................. 185 Works Cited........................................................................................................... 198 CODA: LITERARY MOONSHINE, YESTERDAY AND TODAY............................... 204 Introduction............................................................................................................ 204 Appalachian Moonshine in History and Literature................................................ 208 Today’s Literary Spirits......................................................................................... 216 Conclusion............................................................................................................. 226 Works Cited........................................................................................................... 229 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 - Wores, T. Shopkeeper....................................................................................... 100 Figure 2 - Wores, T. Fishmonger....................................................................................... 101 Figure 3 - Wores, T. Restaurant corner.............................................................................. 103 Figure 4 - Street scene. Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton)................................................. 109 Figure 5 - Duncan, Walter Jack. Title image..................................................................... 111 Figure 6 - Evans, J.W. Shop scene..................................................................................... 112 Figure 7 - Duncan, Walter Jack. Babies and dragon.......................................................... 113 Figure 8 - Riis, Jacob. Man on the street in New York’s Chinatown................................ 122 Figure 9 - Cover of Mrs. Spring Fragrance...................................................................... 137 Figure 10 - Title page of Mrs. Spring Fragrance.............................................................. 138 viii INTRODUCTION Making Sense As industrialization led to the instantiation of class hierarchies in the U.S., an educated, affluent, and racially homogenous American middle class emerged, eager to access a rich variety of regionalized