H.D.: the Politics and Poetics of the Maternal Body
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2012 H.D.: The Politics and Poetics of the Maternal Body Aliki Sophia Caloyeras University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the American Literature Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Caloyeras, Aliki Sophia, "H.D.: The Politics and Poetics of the Maternal Body" (2012). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 618. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/618 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/618 For more information, please contact [email protected]. H.D.: The Politics and Poetics of the Maternal Body Abstract This dissertation reads the work of modernist poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) through the lens of the maternal body, which was systematically repressed and concealed in the first half of the twentieth century despite the very public nature of women's reproductive issues in this period. H.D.'s era was one which saw the changing legal status of women, the medicalization of childbirth marked by its movement from the home to the hospital, the entry of women into the medical profession, the mainstream popularity of eugenics, the development of the psychoanalysis, and the rise of the technology of film. H.D.'s life and work provides a unique opportunity to bring together these major events of twentieth-century history with literary studies, not only because of H.D.'s connections to the Imagist movement, avant-garde cinema, and psychoanalysis, but also because of her personal experiences as a childbearing woman, a bisexual mother, and a patient of Freud. While her personal and social situation kept her on the fringes of modernist literary history throughout her lifetime, the variety of her pursuits positions her as a quintessential modernist figure. Through my sustained investigation of H.D., I argue that the childbearing woman, in all her functional physiological capacities, can be a central author figure. On the broadest level, my work interrogates the relationship between the medical and technological advances of the early twentieth century and the literature of the modernist period. By focusing primarily on H.D., I demonstrate how modernist literature grows out of an individual poet's continual personal contact with the changing technologies and medical institutions of her time. This interface between poet and culture is very much informed by H.D.'s social and biological status as a woman. Each of my chapters takes as its theme a particular possibility of female reproduction: stillbirth, birth, abortion, and pregnancy and lactation. I not only demonstrate how the socio-historical situation of the poet-as-childbearing-woman shapes the production of H.D.'s modernist writing but also I reveal how these themes exist as pervasive anxieties in modernist culture. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Bob Perelman Keywords birth, medicine, modernism, poetics, pregnancy, technology Subject Categories American Literature | Film and Media Studies | Literature in English, North America | Women's Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/618 H.D.: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF THE MATERNAL BODY Aliki Sophia Caloyeras A DISSERTATION in English Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Supervisor of Dissertation ____________________________ Bob Perelman, Professor of English Graduate Group Chairperson ____________________________ Paul Saint-Amour, Associate Professor of English Dissertation Committee Bob Perelman, Professor of English Charles Bernstein, The Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature Tim Corrigan, Professor of English and Cinema Studies H.D.: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF THE MATERNAL BODY COPYRIGHT 2012 Aliki Sophia Caloyeras In memory of my father, Peter Basil Caloyeras 1930-2006 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to express my deepest appreciation to my committee—Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein, and Tim Corrigan—for encouraging me to write what I wanted to write, even and especially when it seemed to go against the grain of critical trends. I would not have written a single-author dissertation nor would I have pursued my interest in birth and mothering had it not been for their open-mindedness and support. I am also indebted to my intellectual foremothers, the H.D. scholars whose foundational work has inspired me to carry on their legacy, as well to the members of the H.D. Society Listserv. I am humbled to be a part of this brilliant community of scholars. This project could not have been completed without financial support from the Penfield Fellowship, which allowed me to conduct research at the Wellcome Centre in London, and from the Stuart Curran Research Fund for travel to the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Additionally, I’d like to thank the many librarians at the Wellcome Centre, the Beinecke, the Morgan Library, and the Royal Free Archive Centre at The Hoo, who helped me uncover elusive historical documents related to H.D.’s births. I also want to extend my deepest appreciation to Anita Mastroieni and Deanna Cheung at the Penn Graduate Student Center for their moral support and for putting me in touch with Jan Allen, who welcomed me at her dissertation write-in events at Columbia University. I cannot go without thanking my fellow graduate students at Penn—particularly, Mearah Quinn-Brauner, who read and re-read long drafts of various chapters and patiently provided constructive and reassuring feedback when I felt at my lowest and iv most discouraged. I might have given up if it weren’t for her. I also want to thank the women who have inspired me by example in balancing mothering and scholarship: Kathy Lou Schultz, Jane Malcolm, and Jill Shashaty. Special thanks, too, to Sarah Kerman, Shonni Enelow, Andrew Lynn, and Eugene Vydrin, for providing friendly, thoughtful feedback on an early chapter draft, and to Shannon Hunt for her expert help with proofreading and formatting the complete document and bibliography. I am equally grateful to Jackie Abrams for help in translating a mysterious German letter in the Bryher Papers, and to Josh Goren for suggesting, on our walk back from a Pavement concert in the fall of 2010, that I write out a list of “bold statements” about H.D. as a way to hone in on the purpose of this project after returning from family leave and completing the archival research stage. It is commonplace for authors to thank their metaphorical midwives, who help bring their writing to birth, but I want to express my deepest gratitude to my real midwives and doulas, who cared for me and saw me through two pregnancies and births: Georgia Rose, Terry Richmond, Karen Jefferson, Martine Jean-Baptiste, and Jennifer Mayer. These women stood by me during the most transformative, joyous, and difficult experiences of my life, the births of my children. They have empowered me and inspired me to write about birth and mothering. In addition, I am immensely grateful to the women who have supported and mentored me in my adult life: Rachel Zucker, Laura Fink, and my sister, Alexandra Caloyeras. These women—as feminist mothers and ethical human beings—have not only been my role models, but they have also been shrewd and thoughtful interlocutors, v allowing me to define the philosophies through which my intellectual work has developed. More than anyone else, they have listened to me, made me feel valued, and made my work feel important. I also want to express heartfelt thanks to my “other sister,” Wen Wen Hsu, my brother, Basil Caloyeras, and my mother, Beverly Caloyeras, for their constant love and continual understanding. They have sustained me in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. When I was a child, my mother went back to school to get her bachelor’s degree in political science. The sound of her typewriter lulled me to sleep on many nights, and it echoes in the background of this dissertation. There were a number of “allomothers” who cared for my children while I was working on this project. I want to thank Mary Biggs and the entire staff at Basic Trust Infant and Toddler Center for the loving care they have given to Elias and Olympia on a daily basis and, specifically, for making space for them to go in on many extra days whenever I had a deadline to meet. I am especially grateful to my children’s primary teachers and regular babysitters—Andrew Doucet, Billy Doucet, John Parker, Joy Harden, Julia Rundbaken, Rafiyah Coaxum , and Zack Leighton—who have fed, held, played with, napped, taught, watched, worn, and loved Elias and Olympia over the years. These men and women have truly become our extended family, and I am thankful that my children have bonded with them and have come to love them as such. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family, Daniel, Elias, and Olympia Shiffman. When Elias and Olympia were born, Dan and I agreed that my job would be to nurse our children on demand for as long as they wanted, and that his job would be vi “everything else.” For many years, while I was working on this project, it seemed that my job was the dissertation, and Dan’s job was everything else. He has picked up a lot of slack, and words cannot express my gratitude. I simply would not have been able to do this without him. vii ABSTRACT H.D.: THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF THE MATERNAL BODY Aliki Sophia Caloyeras Professor Bob Perelman This dissertation reads the work of modernist poet H.D.