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Androgynous Democracy: American Modernity and the Dual-Sexed Body Politic

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Androgynous Democracy: American Modernity and the Dual-Sexed Body Politic ANDROGYNOUS DEMOCRACY: AMERICAN MODERNITY AND THE DUAL-SEXED BODY POLITIC By AARON SHAHEEN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2005 Copyright 2005 by Aaron Shaheen ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation owes its completion to so many wonderful people, not least the five leading ladies in my life: my wife Amanda, my mother Julie, my sisters Lisa and Kelly, and my cat Brontë. Amanda, like my late father, has shown me the true virtues of patience, love, and diplomacy. She has kept me funded, fed, and free-spirited throughout the dissertation=s drafting. From my mother Julie I have learned a strong work ethic, tenaciousness, and a love for the unanswerable question. I am constantly in awe of her inner strength and selflessness. Lisa and Kelly never let me take myself too seriously. I find it particularly heartening to know that though they respect me as their equal, I will always be their ABear.@ Finally, Brontë has given me the unconditional love that only a cat can. As I write these acknowledgments now she is perched atop my lap, swiping at my fingers as they move rather gracelessly across this keyboard. My committee chair David Leverenz has been both friend and mentor. Even when I took a semester off to attend to family matters he never missed a beat. Working with him made transferring to the University of Florida a true joy. I hope that after a full career in academics I will still be as puzzled, as surprised, and as dazzled by American literature as he has been throughout his career. Susan Hegeman was one of the first people I met when coming to Florida. Not only has she been a supportive and terrific committee member, but she gave me my fist assurances that my graduate future existed in Gainesville. Kenneth Kidd and Louise Newman have likewise given me tremendous support, iii optimism, and critical commentary. I am so very fortunate to have assembled such a genial and generous cast of individuals to serve on my committee. I also wish to thank the members of the Acoterie,@ Jessica Livingston and Andrew Reynolds. As much as I have benefitted from their remarkable critical commentary, I have benefitted even more from their compassion. When my father fell ill, they were ready to take over my teaching responsibilities at a moment=s notice. I owe them more than I can ever put into words. There are few individuals living whom I would ever place above them. And of course there are so many others to thank: Pamela Gilbert and Sid Dobrin, who gave me time off of teaching to attend to more urgent family matters; Anthony Szczesiul, who also helped convince me of Florida=s virtues; Todd Richardson, whose love for Emerson and Whitman is addictive; Kristin Boudreau, who taught me not to be afraid of Henry James; Tanya Oswalt, assisted by Jeff Rice, for formatting the dissertation for its electronic submission to the Graduate School; Marsha Bryant, who taught me how to talk competently about my dissertation project; the editorial staff at ATQ for publishing an earlier version of chapter 2; the many friends in Gainesville who, upon hearing of my father=s passing, flooded my family with food, love, and compassion; all my terrific relatives, friends, and colleagues in Salt Lake City, Utah, Columbia, South Carolina, and Athens, Georgia; and the late Lee Davinroy, who put the bug in my ear nearly ten years ago that graduate study south of the Mason-Dixon might be an option worth considering. But no acknowledgments page is ever complete without its necrologyCthe names of those we remember, sometimes simultaneously, with sobs and laughter: Uncle Tommy iv (1946-2000), whose untimely passing still casts a pallor over the family; Nana (1909- 1999), whose family history quickly transformed itself into myth in my young imagination; and Papa (1910-2002), whose financial support and trust in my ambition never waned until he drew his last breath. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my father Dale (1940-2004), another Shaheen taken so early, who taught me that life is too short to do labor you despise. How does one describe the love of a man who, while at death=s doorstep and bound to a wheelchair, insisted on traveling nearly 2500 miles to see his son one last time? These words by Whitman, which I read to myself the morning he died, are never far from my lips: Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you. Thankfully, the ghosts of those who leave us still walk beside us, or else they show up, beautifully resurgent, in the grass under our boot-soles. I dedicate this dissertation to his memory. v TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION: HUMAN FORMS AND THE DEMOCRACIES THAT HAUNT THEM ......................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 A GENEALOGY OF THE AMERICAN ANDROGYNE FROM THE PRE- NATIONAL TO THE MODERN PERIOD..........................................................23 1.1 Androgyny and Nationalist Paradigms in Colonial and Antebellum America......................................................................................................23 1.2 Postbellum Androgyny: Sexology, New Women, and Commercial Culture........................................................................................................42 1.2.1 Sexology and the Pathologizing of Androgyny.............................43 1.2.2 The New Woman ...........................................................................47 1.2.3 The Rise of Commercial Culture ...................................................51 2 ATHE SOCIAL DUSK OF THAT MYSTERIOUS DEMOCRACY@: RACE, SEXOLOGY, AND THE NEW WOMAN IN HENRY JAMES=S POSTBELLUM AMERICA..................................................................................57 2.1 Transcendentalism=s Ambivalent Son........................................................57 2.2 The Bostonians: Crossbreeding Discourses and Unstable Women ...........61 2.3 The Androgynous Vox Americana: James=s Early Twentieth-Century Writings......................................................................................................88 3 INCORPORATED ANDROGYNY: REFORMULATING THE MODERN LIBERAL SUBJECT IN FRANK NORRIS AND CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN..............................................................................................................105 3.1 Corporate Personalities ............................................................................105 3.2 Androgynous Atavism: Norris=s Epic-Romance of Private Citizenship..112 3.3 Utopian Matriarchies and the Deconstruction of Androgyny in Charlotte Perkins Gilman.........................................................................133 vi 4 REACTIONARY AND RADICAL ANDROGYNES: TWO SOUTHERNERS ASSESS THE DEPRESSION-ERA BODY POLITIC .......................................157 4.1 Bleeding Red in Dixie..............................................................................157 4.2 John Crowe Ransom=s Southern Nationalism: The Androgynous Godhead and the Threat of the American Welfare State .........................165 4.3 Grace Lumpkin=s Feminist-Proletarian Dilemma: Pseudo-Masculinity or Female Effacement? ............................................................................187 5 ARTICLES AS PART OF THESIS OR DISSERTATION RACE, GENDER, AND DEMOCRATIC SPACE IN W. E. B. DU BOIS AND MARITA BONNER .............................................................................................................208 5.1 The Androgynous Roots of Black American Citizenship........................208 5.2 The Souls of Black Volk: W. E. B. Du Bois=s Curious Urban Chauvinism ..............................................................................................215 5.3 New Negroes, New Androgynes: Democracy in Marita Bonner=s Urban Spaces ......................................................................................................227 EPILOGUE: FROM ROSIE THE RIVETER TO SECOND-WAVE FEMINISM AND BEYOND ...................................................................................................247 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................262 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................281 vii Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ANDROGYNOUS DEMOCRACY: AMERICAN MODERNITY AND THE DUAL-SEXED BODY POLITIC By Aaron Shaheen December 2005 Chairman: David Leverenz Major Department: English AAndrogynous Democracy: American Modernity and the Dual-Sexed Body Politic@ explores how late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American writers used the concept of androgynyCas it was understood within the specific artistic, religious, scientific, and economic discourses of the timeCto design their ideal formulation of the modern body politic. I argue that within these contexts androgyny has come to symbolize both democracy=s self-destructive impulses and its potential for gender, racial, and social
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