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New Orleans Review Spring 1988 Editors John Biguenet· John Mosier Managing Editor Sarah Elizabeth Spain Design Vilma Pesciallo Contributing Editors Bert Cardullo David Estes Jacek Fuksiewicz Alexis Gonzales, F.S.C. Bruce Henricksen Andrew Horton Peggy McCormack Rainer Schulte Founding Editor Miller Williams Advisory Editors Richard Berg Doris Betts Joseph Fichter, S.J. John Irwin Murray Krieger Frank Lentricchia Raymond McGowan Wesley Morris Walker Percy Herman Rapaport Robert Scholes Marcus Smith Miller Williams The New Orleans Review is published by Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, United States. Copyright© 1988 by Loyola University. Critical essays relating to film or literature of up to ten thousand words should be prepared to conform with the new MLA guidelines and sent to the appropriate editor, together with a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The address is New Orleans Review, Box 195, Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. Fiction, poetry, photography or related artwork should be sent to the Art and Literature Editor. A stamped, self-addressed envelope should be enclosed. Reasonable care is taken in the handling of material, but no responsibility is assumed for the loss of unsolicited material. Accepted manuscripts are the property of the NOR. The New Orleans Review is published in February, May, August, and November. Annual Subscription Rate: Institutions $30.00, Individuals $25.00, Foreign Subscribers $35.00. Contents listed in the PMLA Bibliography and the Index of American Periodical Verse. US ISSN 0028-6400 Photographs of Gwen Bristow, Ada Jack Carver, Dorothy Dix, and Grace King are reproduced courtesy the Historic New Orleans Collection, Museum/Research Center, Acc. Nos. 1983.215.99, 1981.330.30, 1974.25.27.147, and 1980.28. The photograph of Kate Chopin is reproduced courtesy the Newberry Library. The photograph of Alice Ruth Dunbar Nelson is reproduced courtesy the Amistad Research Center. The photograph of Lillian Hellman is reproduced courtesy Robert Tobey Vineyard Gazette, Inc. NEW ORLEANS REVIEW CONTENTS SPRING 1988 VOLUME 15 NUMBER 1 Prologue Dorothy H. Brown and Barbara C. Ewell 5 Ellen Gilchrist's Characters and the Southern Woman's Experience: Rhoda Manning's Double Bind and Anna Hand's Creativity Margaret Jones Bolsterli 7 Eating Animal Crackers in the Dark Maxine Cassin 10 The Mockingbird Song Berthe Amoss 11 Scarecrow Bernice Larson Webb 14 Rereading Gwen Bristow's Plantation Trilogy Peggy Whitman Prenshaw 15 Goodbye Silver, Silver Cloud Lee Meitzen Grue 21 Soulangai Sybil Kein 32 Shaping Contradictions: Alice Dunbar-Nelson and the Black Creole Experience Gloria T. Hull 34 Conversations with Home Thadious M. Davis 38 The Mother's Balcony: Grace King's Discourse of Femininity Clara Juncker 39 Needlework Sue Owen 47 A Note from Cell Thirty-Three Arthenia f. Bates Millican 48 Kate Chopin's New Orleans Years Emily Toth 53 Negotiations Pinkie Gordon Lane 61 Lillian Hellman: Standing in the Minefields Milly S. Barranger 62 The Civil War Journal of Julia LeGrand Waitz (1861-1863) Alice Parker 69 Leaving the Country Ellen Douglas 73 Dear Dorothy Dix Carol Reuss 77 What the Old Ones Know: Ada Jack Carver's Cane River Stories Elizabeth Meese 84 A Note on "Bibliography: Louisiana Women Writers" Dorothy H. Brown 89 Bibliography: Louisiana Women Writers Dorothy H. Brown and Elizabeth Sarkodie-Mensah 91 Persimmon Day Bernice Larson Webb 99 Dorothy H. Brown and Barbara C. Ewell PROLOGUE his issue of the New Orleans Review is in some But in editing this special issue of the New Tways a souvenir-a recollection of a very Orleans Review, we have tried to share not only special event that took place in New Orleans on the achievement but also the excitement that the September 19-20, 1986. During those two exciting recovery of this tradition generated for days, most of those whose essays, poems and symposium participants. Certainly, the stories appear on these pages gathered together importance of "Louisiana" and "women" in with several hundred others on the campus of defining the authority of this group of writers was Loyola University to explore the significance of evident among those who read and discussed the phrase "Louisiana women writers." and shared their work in two panels, a reading, Significant it was. Familiar and unfamiliar, the a play, a gala autograph party, and innumerable achievements of Louisiana women writers lively exchanges between sessions. The assumed a stature and continuity that few of us identification of a heritage we could claim visibly had ever before grasped. With a dynamics that renewed the sense of community among those conferences seldom realize, a new perspective on writers present-most of whom were not on our literature was identified. Categories like stage, but all of whom continue to enrich that southern regionalist, popular romance writer, tradition. We present here a sampling of the work black writer, diarist, playwright, and journalist of those contemporary Louisiana women writers, were reorganized into a new constellation, a fresh both those who participated formally in the figure by which the work of a great many talented conference as well as a selection of the many writers might be newly understood and others who could not be included. appreciated. This recognition of the diversity of Like this special issue, the symposium was Louisiana's literary heritage, and the particular underwritten by a generous grant from the richness of the contributions of its women, invites Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. anew our reflections on the force and shape of Without its innovative support and without the both regionalism and gender in defining our commitment of the several institutions cultural identity. represented by the Women's Studies Consortium This reevaluation of the full dimensions of our of Louisiana [Dillard University, Eleanor McMain literary heritage, of course, reflects and supports School, Louise S. McGehee School, Louisiana the reconstruction of a tradition of literature by State University, Loyola University, Metairie Park women and the reclamation of a female Country Day School, Newcomb College, Tulane perspective in our literary canons. Indeed, the University, University of New Orleans, and recovery of hundreds of "lost" women writers Xavier University], which originated and and the "re-vision" of many others has been a sponsored the project, the heritage that the major achievement of the past two decades of symposium identified might still lie unclaimed. feminist criticism. One of the purposes of the But the creation and realization of the symposium symposium was to involve a larger audience in remains the accomplishment of the many the processes of that reconstitution for Louisiana dedicated individuals whose cooperative spirit women writers. The selected bibliography of the distinguishes their purposes and achievements. writers featured here, which is part of a In reconstructing an overlooked element of our comprehensive work still in progress, and the literary and cultural heritage, the Consortium brief introduction to the tools of recovery sought to dramatize through the symposium a continue that effort of enabling a wider critical otherness-another perspective on our participation in and understanding of that past and present that purposely includes female, essential process of recovery and reassessment. regional, black, ethnic, working-class, and other BROWN/EWELL 5 excluded minority points of view. It is to the Women Writers.D reinstatement of those "other" perspectives, Dorothy H. Brown, Professor of English at City College, Loyola which are essential to our cultural self-definitions, University, has been Associate Editor of Explorations in that women's studies and the Consortium are Renaissance Culture since 1984 and has published in New Laurel committed. The reclaimed heritage of Louisiana Review, Xavier Review, Christianity and Literature, South women writers is the Consortium's latest Central Bulletin, and elsewhere. contribution to that redefinition of individual and Barbara C. Ewell is Associate Professor of English in City College communal wholeness. And thus it is with at Loyola University. She is the author of Kate Chopin (1986), and gratitude to all those writers and readers and her essays on Margaret Atwood, John Barth, Michael Drayton, and teachers and scholars who maintain and on feminist criticism and pedagogy have appeared in Centennial Review, Southern Literary Journal and Modern Language encourage those vital "other" perspectives that Quarterly. we present this special issue on Louisiana 6 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW L Margaret Jones Bolsterli ELLEN GILCHRIST'S CHARACTERS AND THE SOUTHERN WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE: RHODA MANNING'S DOUBLE BIND AND ANNA HAND'S CREATIVITY ince the experiences of any powerless class problems that are so painful to meet in many of Sare considered less interesting than those of the adolescent and adult women in her stories. 1 the powerful, one of the differences between the Anna Hand, in "Anna, Part I," shows that a writing done by men and women has been the woman can transcend the limitations of her tendency for women to ignore the basic facts of experience by using it as material for art. 2 Not their existence because it was not considered only is that experience, after all, her capital as a significant enough to read about. On the other writer, but she can understand what has hand, because of their superior status, men's happened to her only by making order of it in every thought, feeling