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Neighborhood Novels in American Literature NEIGHBORHOOD NOVELS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE by Monica Zaleski A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Fall 2014 © 2014 Monica Zaleski All Rights Reserved UMI Number: 3685164 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 3685164 Published by ProQuest LLC (2015). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346 NEIGHBORHOOD NOVELS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE by Monica Zaleski Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Susan Goodman, Ph.D. Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee Approved: _____________________________________________________________ John Ernest, Ph.D. Chair of the Department of English Approved: _____________________________________________________________ George H. Watson, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Approved: _____________________________________________________________ James G. Richards, Ph.D. Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: _____________________________________________________________ Susan Goodman, Ph.D. Professor in charge of dissertation I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: _____________________________________________________________ A. Timothy Spaulding, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: _____________________________________________________________ McKay Jenkins, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it meets the academic and professional standard required by the University as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Signed: _____________________________________________________________ Robert M. Dowling, Ph.D. Member of dissertation committee ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My warmest gratitude goes first to Susan Goodman, whose countless readings and critical insights have guided this project from its inception. Her mentoring refined each word and thought to its conclusion. I am also indebted to Tim Spaulding, McKay Jenkins, and Rob Dowling for their good-spirited advice and words of encouragement while serving on my committee. My close friend and colleague Melanie Scriptunas deserves special mention here; we parsed ideas and tarried over sentence structures and impending deadlines while working through our dissertations in tandem. I wish to acknowledge my family; the life journeys of my parents, Magda and Mark (Karol) Ostaszewski, endowed me with a curiosity for those who seek and make a better home far from their birthplace. Their courage and perseverance serve as the core inspiration for all of my endeavors in life. I am thankful for the constant stewardship of my big brother, Mark, who can coax a thriving plant from any seed he wishes to, and promises that the following words will bloom again for another reader (his wife, Jill). Above all, this dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Mike, for his unwavering love and support, and for the gift of time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….vi Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................1 2 A DISTRACTINGLY REGULAR CITY OF MYSTERIES..................................17 Philadelphia's Visitors…...................................................................................25 From City Sketches to the Philadelphia Novel.................................................37 Lippard's City....................................................................................................46 Frank Webb's Garies in Philadelphia................................................................59 A City of Homes...............................................................................................63 Fleeting Scenes Spliced into the Still Life........................................................68 A City of Firsts to the Last................................................................................73 3 NEIGHBORHOOD TOURISM IN BOSTON.......................................................77 You Are Where You Live: “A critical fastidious and reluctant Boston”.............................................................................................................94 Unyielding Ground: Lapham's Back Bay......................................................100 Doubtless She Exaggerated; The World Slowly Changes..............................110 4 NARRATING NEW YORK.................................................................................129 The Purlieus of Greenwich Village and the Hazards of How the Middle Half Lives....................................................................................131 Tenement Sketches and the Worries of Writers.............................................141 Sporting in the Tenderloin.............................................................................153 Southern Hostility and Southern Hospitality.................................................175 The Geography of Nowhere..........................................................................183 Justice and Heredity: Joe Hamilton's Fate....................................................193 A New Home to the World.............................................................................196 5 CONCLUSION....................................................................................................198 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................205 v ABSTRACT The first urban capitals that emerged in the United States remain among the ranks today: Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Novels that portray the development of neighborhoods within these cities comprise the focus of my dissertation during a crucial period of American literature that saw a push toward internationalism and a consequent re-imagining of what constitutes the American identity. As seats of the nation's economic and cultural production, nineteenth-century American cities became exponents of modernity and ubiquitous subjects of literary endeavor. An analysis of narrative methods and genre, Neighborhood Novels in American Literature traces numerous forms of writing the city, including travel accounts, journalism, and sociological studies, that authors incorporated into quintessential, and lesser known, city novels. Walking narratives set in distinctive neighborhoods prove crucial to showing the adjustment to life in the big city. The Philadelphia novels of George Lippard and Frank Webb reveal how remarkably integrated the city is through an awareness of its social geography; the neighborhood alternately festers with greed, corruption, and scandal among its loftiest ranks and stands as a bastion of civility for an insurgent middle class during a period of social conflict that distinguishes this period of Philadelphia history. As antecedents to the social reform impulse evident in novels of realism at the end of the century, Lippard's The Quaker City (1844) and Webb's The Garies and Their Friends (1858) have other patterns in common with their descendants. Narrative tours of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York dramatize and also lend eyewitness authenticity to their fictional retelling. vi The eye of a tourist, a returned expatriate, a journalist, a literary magazine editor, and a musician, all guide the reader on walking tours throughout the expanding purlieus of Boston and New York, as well. Conceptualizing the state of American cities as transformational, rather than monumental, the novels of William Dean Howells, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and James Weldon Johnson also recognized that neighborhoods, defined by race and class, as well as geography, provided microcosms of culture central to what Henry James foresaw as “the dauntless fusions to come.” In Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), An Imperative Duty (1892), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890); in Dunbar's Sport of the Gods (1901); in Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex- Colored Man (1912), migrants to and settlers in Boston and New York neighborhoods changed the cultural landscape of the city as much as those neighborhoods changed the lives of the characters themselves; this group of writers would find in the American cityscape the great untold story of the new century. Neighborhood Novels in America Literature is also a study of genre. Adapting forms such as the travel narrative,
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