Feeling the Spirit: Spiritualism, Literary Aesthetics, and the Reformation of the Senses in Nineteenth-Century America

Feeling the Spirit: Spiritualism, Literary Aesthetics, and the Reformation of the Senses in Nineteenth-Century America by Tracy Lynn Fritz A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Samuel Otter, Chair Professor Kristin Hanson Professor Richard Cándida-Smith Spring 2012 Feeling the Spirit: Spiritualism, Literary Aesthetics, and the Reformation of the Senses in Nineteenth-Century America © 2012 by Tracy Lynn Fritz 1 Abstract Feeling the Spirit: Spiritualism, Literary Aesthetics, and the Reformation of the Senses in Nineteenth-Century America by Tracy Lynn Fritz Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Samuel Otter, Chair This dissertation attempts to explain how nineteenth-century American Spiritualist literature may have made readers feel like they were hearing voices, touching the dead, seeing celestial spaces, or enjoying other sensory proofs of the afterlife. Spiritualists believed that, while all human beings possessed faculties designed to perceive the dead, few of them knew it and, consequently, these special senses atrophied as a result of disuse. One of the main goals of the movement was to help people activate their dormant senses and develop their experiential potential. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how the movement’s literature may have functioned as an effective instrument of sensory education. To describe the affective potential of these texts, I draw on cognitive poetics, a constellation of contemporary theories and techniques that offer insight into how stylized language might produce particular psychological and physical responses. Attending to the possible mechanisms through which Spiritualist literature might appeal to bodies and minds, I argue that, though these texts have received little critical consideration, they offer timely examples of a sensual aesthetic to the growing number of scholars who are interested in the potential power of language to incite and shape sensory impressions. Focusing on the Spiritualist trance poetry of Lizzie Doten, Sarah Gould, and Jennie Rennell, chapter one argues that the style of their texts may trigger an altered state of consciousness, a condition characterized by sensations of openness, fluidity, vulnerability, and heightened affect that reproduces the salient features of a supernatural auditory experience. I assert that, while nineteenth-century doctors and scientists warned that hearing disembodied voices was a symptom of disease, auditive mediums insisted that the perception of spirit speech was actually an indicator of good health and attempted to normalize these sensations by reproducing them in readers, who, in turn, might feel connected to each other on the basis of their shared bodily responses. This chapter also compares trance poetry to the poetry of Lydia Huntley Sigourney, one of the most popular sentimental writers of the period. It foregrounds the stylistic similarities between their two genres and considers the potential of sentimental poetry to incite collective experiences. Chapter two contends that séance reports maximize a reader’s ability to infer weight, form, and texture so that the experience of reading about materialized spirit 2 bodies approximates the perceptual act of touching them. Regarded as emotional, sensual, and animalistic, touch has long been at the bottom of the Western sensorium; but, through their published testimony, Spiritualists, I claim, sought to cultivate and legitimize this denigrated form of bodily knowledge. In chapter three, I argue that the prominent Spiritualist, medium, and writer Thomas Lake Harris expands the possibilities of the vision epic, transforming it into a lesson on how to see. Considering Harris’s An Epic of the Starry Heaven in relation to Joel’s Barlow’s The Columbiad , Emerson’s philosophy of sight, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass , I assert that Harris’s poem encourages the reader to experience the act of seeing as both an emotionally-informed communal process and a powerful means of creating collective realities that exceed national and even planetary boundaries. If Spiritualist texts trigger simulations of contact with the dead, the writings of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, I argue, seem designed to deny the reader imaginary access to the other world. Chapter four describes what I call the aesthetics of desensualization in Phelps’s The Gates Ajar , “Since I Died,” “The Room’s Width,” and “The Presence.” In conclusion, I argue that, by using cognitive poetics to analyze a collection of texts which seem to have been designed to make readers feel, my dissertation suggests both a methodology and a potentially productive area of study to scholars of nineteenth-century American literature who are beginning to explore how language might create the experiential basis for new forms of subjectivity and community. i To my husband, John Eric Fritz, whose patience, encouragement, and love made it possible for me to complete this project ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 Chapter One “Oh, Listen to the Sound I Hear!”: Spiritualist Trance Poetry and the Redefinition of Healthy Hearing 10 Chapter Two “[T]he evidence is within every man’s reach”: Séance Accounts and the Attainment of Tactile Knowledge 42 Chapter Three Spiritualism and the American Vision Epic: Harris, Barlow, Emerson, Whitman, and the Education of the Eye 78 Chapter Four Elizabeth Stuart Phelps and the Aesthetics of Desensualization: Conceptual Distance in The Gates Ajar , “Since I Died,” “The Room’s 117 Width,” and “The Presence” Conclusion 154 iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank the chair of my committee, Samuel Otter, whose feedback and guidance helped me navigate through the long and sometimes painful process of writing a dissertation. Richard Cándida-Smith and Kristen Hanson prompted me to clarify and contextualize some of my claims, and their suggestions for research and revision have made my dissertation stronger. Also, I consider it an honor to have worked with the late Jon Gjerde, whose observations informed my thinking early in this project. I would like to thank Norm Prokup, who believed in me when I did not believe in myself. The generosity of his wife, Shannon Prokup, is unmatched. She shared her home with me when I needed to escape from my apartment and provided many wonderful home-cooked meals. I am also indebted to Ian Magnus Prokup, whose cuteness, curiosity, and general good cheer distracted me from my work and lifted my mood. This dissertation is dedicated to my husband, John Eric Fritz. For the past several years, I have spent evenings and weekends cloistered in my room writing these chapters. While this kind of schedule can be hard on a relationship, he has been positive and supportive through it all. It is no exaggeration to say that this dissertation could never have been completed without him. And finally, I would like to thank Khan, who has been with me since the beginning. 1 Introduction In the “Declaration of Faith” that opens her book Poems of Progress (1871), Lizzie Doten, an auditive medium and major figure in nineteenth-century American Spiritualism, explains that the goal of the movement is to help Americans develop their experiential potential. “[I]n its very inception,” Spiritualism, she writes, “has commenced . directly at the root of necessary reform, viz., the purification and harmonious development of the human body.” The body was of vital importance to Spiritualists, because they believed that its powers of perception were being stifled by opponents of the movement who sought to “prescribe as a standard for all others the limitations of [their] own feeble consciousness.” Since they had never seen, heard, nor felt the presence of the dead, critics concluded that anyone who reported such experiences must be morally corrupt, physically diseased, or mentally ill. Spiritualists challenged this prevailing view by teaching that “mediumship”—the ability to perceive the dead and communicate with them—“is a healthy, harmonious, and natural development of human nature , and that communion with the spirit world is not interdicted, and no more impossible than any other attainment that lies in the direct line of natural law, human progress, and scientific investigation.” Mediums, Spiritualists argued, did not possess unique physical gifts. Rather, their sensitivity to otherworldly sounds, images, and impressions confirmed the truth of the movement’s main message: All human beings were equipped with faculties that could be trained to perceive spiritual stimuli. The claim that these latent senses might be activated and developed was, as Doten writes, “interwoven with all the spiritualistic literature,” and its inclusion in the introduction to her poems suggests that she, like other adherents, regarded the movement’s textual productions as effective instruments of sensory education. 1 This dissertation will attempt to explain how the rhetorical strategies used in Spiritualist texts may have made readers feel like they were hearing voices, touching spirits, or seeing celestial spaces. The Spiritualist movement began in Hydesville, New York in 1848, when two young girls, Margaret and Kate Fox, claimed that spirits were communicating with them by banging on the walls and furniture of their family’s farmhouse. As the girls recited the alphabet, neighbors listened in astonishment to

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