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Nineteenth-Century New Orleans in Literature

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Nineteenth-Century New Orleans in Literature The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts SOCIAL LIVES: NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEW ORLEANS IN LITERATURE A Dissertation in English by Erica Stevens © Erica Stevens, 2016 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2016 ii The dissertation of Erica Stevens was reviewed and approved* by the following: Sean X. Goudie Associate Professor of English Committee Co-Chair Christopher Castiglia Liberal Arts Research Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Committee Co-Chair Hester Blum Associate Professor of English Jonathan Eburne Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English Debra Hawhee Professor of English Head of the Department of English *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Social Lives: Nineteenth-Century New Orleans in Literature is about two major subjects: the idea of the social in the nineteenth century and New Orleans in literary imagination. These two subjects intersect for both obvious and less-obvious reasons. New Orleans is, of course, the nation’s depository and hub for fun, freedom, and cultural exchange. I argue that connotations of celebration, as in a “social event,” are not divorced from what we see as sociological interaction. Thus, many of my readings of texts emphasize moments of excessive pleasure and desire, or meditations on collectivities in carnivalesque action. I pair a desire for Otherness in local-color writing with the discourse of “social equality,” or, for another example, antebellum quadroon balls with postbellum prognostications of large-scale racial “miscegenation.” In other words, I argue that New Orleans shows us how social order and sociality’s affects overlap and influence one another throughout the nineteenth century. Social Lives contributes to the fields of aesthetics, transnationalism, and African- American literature especially where they intersect with notions of publicity or collectivity. A large body of scholarship posits a pure form of (social) interaction as prior to and more real than any recognizable or named social order. My intervention involves exploring the way that nineteenth-century texts theorize the idea of the social before the professionalization of sociology. My dissertation finds that there are many more ways that the social takes formal shape at different scales of the local, regional, and global. Moreover, part of my interest is to emphasize New Orleans’s importance to African-American literature—not a surprising claim but one, I argue, that has not been examined as a distinctly social issue, as opposed to the many studies of cultural traditions in the city. This new understanding of New Orleans’s social lives engages iv issues surrounding slavery and the “Negro Problem” in the nineteenth century, showing how New Orleans helped writers to understand their aesthetic and political projects. The “social” looks different in each of the project’s chapters in order to capture its mobility and ambiguity in reference to structure, relation, interaction, or entertainment. My archive challenges the narrative of “Americanization” as a contested and teleological process in the nineteenth century. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures vi Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Social Lives 1 Chapter 1: Contrast and the Creole 26 Chapter 2: Social Equality and Local Charm 97 Chapter 3: Charles Chesnutt and the Event 170 Chapter 4: Toward New Orleans 225 Coda: Get Down 279 Bibliography 284 vi List of Figures 1: The Statue on Display at the Dusseldorf Gallery in New York City 52 2: New Orleans Slave Auction, 1839 64 3: Davidson, B. Palmer, A Secret of the Vieux Carré 105 4: A Secret of the Vieux Carré 106 5: Cable’s Notes for an Unpublished Essay 108 6: Ulysses S. Grant as a Tobacco Grub 153 7: “The Carnival--'White and Black Join in its Masquerading” 153 8: Handbook of the Carnival (New Orleans: John W. Madden, 1874) 154 9: Harper’s Weekly: New Orleans Massacre, 1866 158 10: Cable Collection, Correspondence 283 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not be possible without a lively social life and a supportive group of collaborators. My committee pushed me to find my voice amongst critics and historians I’ve long admired. I am forever grateful to Sean Goudie, who knows when to be tough and when to be kind. He cared deeply for my work, and he cared enough about me to keep me working. Christopher Castiglia, over four engaging seminars, taught me how to ask the right questions. He was always a pleasure to meet with, talk with, and socialize with. Hester Blum has encouraged me to trust my material. She gave me unforgettable advice about how to navigate archival trips and how to navigate the academic world as a woman. Jonathan Eburne reminded me to explore but to be exact in every word. I have received a great deal of material support; this project wouldn’t have been possible without travel grants and a dissertation fellowship from the Center for American Literary Study, as well as the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. The support I received from the Research and Graduate Studies Organization at Pennsylvania State University was essential to writing this project. Debra Hawhee was a champion of mine in these regards, and I thank her for seeing my project as valuable. This dissertation was always inspired by the frantic conversations I had with friends and colleagues. Some of my happiest times have been standing in circles with best friends and acquaintances (a relationship forever underrated, I say), all of us bursting with energy, laughter, and ideas. It was an honor to find a group of such intelligent and fun people, many of whom read drafts in stages I would only ever show to people I could really trust: Michelle Huang, Ryan Marks, Jason Maxwell, Eric Vallee, Ting Chang, Juliette Hawkins, Colin Hogan. Lisa McGunigal, Jace Gatzmeyer, Michah Donohue made up my official dissertation group, but, of viii course, we were true friends. My group at Penn State’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services were my anonymous support in the last year of writing. They were daring saviors, and they gave me my joy back. Such counseling could also always be found at Zeno’s, where I spent six years with the best staff and the best beers. Susan Weeber has always affirmed me and has written me so many encouraging sentiments as she was writing an inspiringly smart dissertation. I can only tell her exactly what she told me: I don’t think I could have done it without her. Jacob Hughes described and summarized my dissertation for me before I ever wrote a word of it; he knew my social mobility was best described in a look of “weariness or scorn” and gave me courage to keep going. Sarah Salter was my mentor since day one of graduate school. During our dog walks, she let me talk out every idea and generously made me think I was capable. She was my partner through ups and downs, through conferences, through drafts, through our fun life together. Matt Weber, I fought for you and you fought for me, and now we’re just happy together, despite this whole continent between us. I thank Matt for showing me (and my family) his love and kindness. He was there for me in the final hours of writing, putting aside his own work to help me with mine. I’ve had fun in New Orleans with a lot of people, but I can’t wait to go back there again and again and again with him. I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to my family, three beautiful and strong women. Natalie and Lorna know that I could never love anyone as much as I love my sisters. I hope that in the coming years I’ll be able to help you as you’ve helped me these past years since I’ve left our Texas home. My mother, who has been through far too much, who gives far too much, I owe everything. She wrote in a birthday card some years ago, “I feel closer to you because of this ix independence you possess.” Thank you for your respect and for letting me go away to New Orleans years ago (and for helping me stay there when I thought I couldn’t). Because his girls miss him every day, I dedicate this dissertation to my father’s memory; his love of good times lives in these words and every single day it took to write them. 1 Introduction “New Orleans like HooDoo is all over place and time.”1 – Ishmael Reed, “Shrovetide in Old New Orleans” In 1804 Louisiana Governor William C. C. Claiborne wrote to President James Madison, “I fear you will suppose that I am wanting in respect in calling your attention to the balls of New Orleans; but I do assure you, Sir, that they occupy much of the public mind and from them have proceeded the greatest embarrassments, which have hitherto attended my administration.” 2 Frivolity, as well as Claiborne’s apology for speaking of such things, both point to the unexpected problem of fun in the acquisition of Louisiana. Claiborne’s “embarrassment,” or difficulty, refers to the nationally reported “War of the Quadrilles” in which French and American music battled on the dance floors. A creole New Orleans editor complained that Claiborne had attempted to “introduce dances with which we were unacquainted, which resulted in a battle, and broke up the public amusements for the whole season.”3 By publishing the schedule of dances in local newspapers, government officials who oversaw these balls hoped to create compromise and prevent any rowdy requests for patriotic songs. Claiborne’s “wanting in respect” for bringing this issue to Madison speaks to the ability for frivolity to cross over into the political—and its ability to remain frivolous.
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