Love and Rebellion: Louisiana Women Novelists, 1865-1919 (Wetmore)

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1984 Love and Rebellion: Louisiana Women Novelists, 1865-1919 (Wetmore). Susan Millar Williams Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Williams, Susan Millar, "Love and Rebellion: Louisiana Women Novelists, 1865-1919 (Wetmore)." (1984). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4000. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4000 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This reproduction was made from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8511771 Williams, Susan Millar LOVE AND REBELLION: LOUISIANA WOMEN NOVELISTS, 1865-1919 The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col. Ph.D. 1984 University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1985 by Williams, Susan Millar All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LOVE AND REBELLION: LOUISIANA WOMEN NOVELISTS, 1865-1919 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Susan Millar Williams B.A., Hendrix College, 1977 M.A., University of Arkansas, 1979 August, 1984 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © 1985 SUSAN MILLAR WILLIAMS All Rights Reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements Many people have assisted me In completing this dissertation. I want particularly to thank the three people who guided the manuscript to Its final form. My major professor, Panthea Reid Broughton, provided expert help and counsel even while overseas. Anna Nardo faithfully covered every draft with exquisite tiny handwriting and advice, and Lewis P. Simpson was always an inspiration and an acute reader. All three were sources of encouragement and good humor, and have served me as examples of what scholars should be. I am also indebted to my employer, Jim Borck, editor of The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, who allowed me to borrow his office equipment, endured my moods, and generally kept my spirits up. Evangeline Lynch and the staff of the Louisiana Room at the Louisiana State University Library generously trusted me with rare and sometimes disintegrating materials. Diane Miller and the staff of the Arts and Sciences Text Processing Center patiently and cheerfully led me through the complicated terrain of the word-processor. And Helen Taylor introduced me to Louisiana women writers and suggested ways to approach their work; making her acquaintance was one of the unexpected bonuses of graduate study. 1 am also grateful to several friends who have made the project easier. Todd Wilson's critical reading of the manuscript in its early ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. form caused me to rethink a number of my ideas, and Jan Calloway's enthusiasm for women's studies was infectuous. Martha Regalis, Louie Mann, and Joe Boniol were always available when I needed a sympathetic listener. The love and support of my parents, Dr. and Mrs. Paul H. Millar, jr., and of my parents-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Williams, made graduate study possible. My husband Dwight has always been the very antithesis of the bad husbands described in this study; without his encouragement, this feminist work would never have been written. Hi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedication For my mother, Margaret Ann Millar. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Acknowledgement .....................................................11 Dedication.......................................................... Iv Table of Contents.................................................. ... Abstract.............................................................vl Chapter One Learning to Lose...................................................... 1 Chapter Two Learning to Live.................................................... 28 Chapter Three The Dual Life.......................................................52 Chapter Four Victims and Victors................................................ 85 Chapter Five Unwilling Sisterhood................................................ 101 Chapter Six Double Jeopardy: Tainted Blood......................................124 Chapter Seven A Feminine World Realized: Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore...............149 Bibliography........................................................ 183 Vita................................................................. 195 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract This dissertation is a study of minor Louisiana women novelists from the end of the Civil War to the passage of women's stiff rage. A large number of Louisiana women were spurred to write novels by the war and Reconstruction, motivated by both financial considerations and the need to explain their lives. They use conventional forms, like the plantation romance, but the stories they tell suggest that women were ambivalent about Southern traditions and the old order. In breaking down the social codes which both protected and repressed Louisiana women, the Civil War and the Reconstruction led Louisiana women novelists to reconsider the values they had inherited, and even, implicitly at least, to challenge traditional female roles. Although they often seem to have loved the men who perpetuated it, they rebelled against a repressive social structure. In projecting their internal resentments and anxieties in fiction, they were not essentially different from many nineteenth-century women writers. But unlike, say, women writers in New York, or in Yorkshire, Louisiana women writers lived in a defeated patriarchal society founded on the subjection of blacks and on the cult of ideal white womanhood. This society confronted them with parallels to and metaphors for their condition. While their explorations of the issues of freedom and autonomy are frequently tentative and veiled, close examination of plot and characterization reveals that women writers in Louisiana identified the condition of women generally with the suppression and dehumanization of blacks and mulattoes, especially mulatto women. Elizabeth Bisland vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Wetmore, however, the best novelist in the group of writers considered in this study, transcended the inhibited approach to the

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