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The Wild Child: Children Are Freaks in Antebellum Novels

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The Wild Child: Children Are Freaks in Antebellum Novels City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2013 The Wild Child: Children are Freaks in Antebellum Novels Heathe Bernadette Heim Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1711 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The Wild Child: Children are Freaks in Antebellum Novels by Heather Bernadette Heim A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2013 Heim ii Heim © 2013 HEATHER BERNADETTE HEIM All Rights Reserved iii Heim This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Hildegard Hoeller_______________________ __________ ______________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Mario DiGangi__________________________ ___________ ______________________________________ Date Executive Officer Hildegard Hoeller______________________________ William P. Kelly_______________________________ Marc Dolan___________________________________ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Heim Abstract The Wild Child: Children are Freaks in Antebellum Novels by Heather Bernadette Heim Advisor: Professor Hildegard Hoeller This dissertation investigates the spectacle of antebellum freak shows and focuses on how Phineas Taylor Barnum’s influence permeates five antebellum novels. The study concerns itself with wild children staged as freaks in Margaret by Sylvester Judd, City Crimes by George Thompson, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Our Nig by Harriet Wilson. Barnum’s influence was pervasive. The novels I investigate span a period of fourteen years before the Civil War, and offer a view of the kid show presented by the freaks in each text. Touching into spectacle, authors construct narratives and stage freaks in order to solidify boundaries that define insiders and outsiders. These works offer entertaining and didactic freaks to be gawked at and probed. As is usual with freak shows, the viewers/readers provide as much information about society and spectatorship in nineteenth century America, as do the freaks themselves. v Heim Dedication To my husband Thomas Heim and to our daughter Katelyn Marissa, thanks to you both for your love, support, and encouragement. I could not have done this without your patience and understanding. To my mother Kathleen T. Harley, your love of reading has shaped my career, and I wish you were here. I am forever grateful to my aunt, Monica Heffernan, for her unwavering belief in my ability to complete this dissertation. Heartfelt thanks go to my brother Bernard E. Harley whose insightful one-liners lightened the load. vi Heim Acknowledgements I wish to thank Professor Hildegard Hoeller for her guidance through this project. She worked hard to support and encourage me in every facet of this dissertation. I am grateful to Professor William Kelly for his support and inspiration. To my readers, Professors Marc Dolan and William Kelly, I am thankful for your advice, constructive ideas, suggested readings, and unbridled enthusiasm for the project. I am also indebted to Professor David S. Reynolds and to his entire spring 2011 Dissertation Workshop class. Everyone in this class offered vital support and encouragement, which was instrumental in getting my prospectus approved. The staff of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts offered kind assistance during my time there, and special thanks must go to Laura Wasowicz, who met with me and guided me through the expansive stacks; I am lucky to have had access to her extensive knowledge of children’s literature. The Morgan Library proved to be a rich source of information and was instrumental in advancing my research. I am grateful to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. The staff was as welcoming as the museum was informative. vii Heim Table of Contents Introduction: The Wild Child as Freak in Antebellum Novels……………….. 1 Chapter One: Margaret: Redemptive Freak in the Peaceable Kingdom…….... 16 Chapter Two: Monstrous Freaks: Jack the Prig and the Image in City Crimes… 71 Chapter Three: Pearl: The Freak Mirrors Society in The Scarlet Letter…………. 116 Chapter Four: Topsy-Turvy Sideshow Freaks in Uncle Tom’s Cabin………….... 179 Chapter Five: Freaky Frado: Sideshow Freak and Showman Are One…………. 224 Conclusion: Child Freaks: What Can They Teach?………………………………. 268 Bibliography:………………………………………………………………………. 278 viii Heim Introduction: The Wild Child As Freak in Antebellum Novels This study of the wild child as freak in nineteenth-century American literature focuses on subversive children in novels to investigate how the penchant for spectacle influences authors’ characterization of children in the texts. This work explores antebellum fiction through the lens of the wild child as sideshow entertainment. Until he or she is tamed, the wild child is viewed as a freak, in the Barnumesque sense, by a society addicted to carnivalesque entertainment and sensational newspaper stories. I offer a window through which the spectacle of the wild child can be viewed as an attempt to investigate the following questions: How is the wild child part of a larger conversation about freaks and sideshow exhibits in nineteenth-century American culture? How is the freak child a foil for the cherished child of the cult of domesticity? How does the wild child personify America? My methodology is historicist, as Bardes and Gossett explain: “Characteristically, fiction both confirms and enlarges historical knowledge gained from other sources” (4). Critical theories of gender, race and spectacle will be explored to uncover how and why the wild child is staged as if one of Phineas Taylor Barnum’s freaks in the following novels: Sylvester Judd’s Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal, Blight and Bloom (1845), George Thompson’s City Crimes (1849), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859). Children are freaks in these antebellum novels, and the respective authors stage a wild child to spark interest in the text. The authors ensure either a healing, a disappearing, or an escape act for the freak. Margaret’s freakishness results is a democratic society, Jack and the Image are forgotten freaks, Pearl and Topsy are Christianized then exiled, and Frado through her own enfreakment supports herself. 1 Heim Although the wild child in late nineteenth-century American fiction has attracted ample critical attention with such characters as Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jo March to name a few, the prominence of this figure in pre-Civil War fiction has been largely neglected. This work explores how authors implement Phineas Taylor Barnum’s successful entrepreneurial strategies to exhibit a wild child as freak in their respective texts, and then empower the freak with redemptive qualities so that she/he, in most cases, becomes a model citizen and a catalyst for the reader’s redemption. The wild child in antebellum novels is viewed as an outcast, orphan, cultural other, and freak for various reasons such as: poverty, aberrant behavior, race, gender, and dubious parentage. This child is purposely staged as a freak, much like Ragged Dick is in Horatio Alger’s later fiction.1 These freaks attract readers to the text, entertain them, and as the respective child in the text is educated, the readers are entertained, instructed, and elevated as the wild child progresses along the path of salvation. Since many of these fictional texts were read by the whole family as how to behave, how to live, and how to succeed texts, what the child is being taught can be seen as what is valued in nineteenth-century American culture. Novel reading is the glue “holding America together,”2 and the wild child in these texts can be studied as the naughty child that provides freak show entertainment within the didactic framework of the text, which is a mini portable museum. As Susan Stewart in On Longing states: “Hence for us the miniature appears as a metaphor for all books and all bodies” (44). The freak children are presented in novels, which are miniature American museums. 1 Hildegard Hoeller, "Freaks and the American dream: Horatio Alger, P. T. Barnum, and the art of humbug," Studies in American Fiction 34.2 (2006): 189-214. 2David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography (New York: Vintage, 1996) 309. 2 Heim P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York brought in crowds who enjoyed the acceptable educational venue of the museum, but who also wanted to see exotic, primitive, freak show exhibits where the sideshow intersected with educational artifacts.3 Americans were flocking to Barnum’s Museum,4 at that same time American novels were being voraciously devoured by a literate society. It is not hard to see that what was bringing visitors to the museum,5 an educational institution that also displayed freaks, was attracting a similar audience to the novel wherein the wild child provided a parallel freak show experience. Barnum was quite proud of his American Museum and stated: “No one could go through the halls, as they were when they came under my proprietorship, and see one-half there was worth seeing in a single day; and then, as I always justly boasted afterwards, no one could visit my Museum and go away without feeling that he had received the full worth of his money” (Struggles and Triumphs 118). Similarly, novelists exhibiting their respective freaks promised entertainment and enlightenment to their patrons—readers.
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