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Novel Resistance: Cultural Capital, Social Fiction, and American Realism, 1861-1911

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Novel Resistance: Cultural Capital, Social Fiction, and American Realism, 1861-1911 UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI _____________ , 20 _____ I,______________________________________________, hereby submit this as part of the requirements for the degree of: ________________________________________________ in: ________________________________________________ It is entitled: ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Approved by: ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ NOVEL RESISTANCE: CULTURAL CAPITAL, SOCIAL FICTION, AND AMERICAN REALISM, 1861-1911 A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.) in the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the College of Arts and Sciences 2002 by Jeffrey W. Miller B.A., Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, 1994 M.A., University of Cincinnati, 1996 ii Abstract This study investigates how realist fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries negotiates the trichotomy of rule, hegemony, and reform. It isolates the historical issues of women in labor movements, socialism and the literary establishment, race and the post-Reconstruction color line, and utopian thought. It examines a broad range of texts, beginning with the novels of William Dean Howells, Edward Bellamy, Albion Tourgée, Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Rebecca Harding Davis. In order to effectively analyze the phenomenon of fiction’s social consequence, this study places these writers within the periods in which they wrote through a variety of non-fictional sources, such as newspaper and periodical articles, personal correspondence, and other historical data, in order to delineate the dimensions of the cultural web of social reform and to clarify the issues at stake in the discussion. Chapter One examines the designation, “social fiction” in some detail and outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the study. Chapter Two analyzes Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills and Margret Howth, concluding that Davis feels labor unsexes women, removes them from the home, and stifles their spiritual lives. Chapter Three looks at the novels that Howells published in the 1880s and 1890s and asserts that they tend to undermine and contain their radical figures within safely delineated constraints, rendering them illustrative of Howells’s own political indecision and more appropriate for mainstream consumption. Chapter Four claims that Bellamy’s Looking Backward co- opts three visions of late-nineteenth century culture that the professional and leisure classes found irresistible in order to recruit them into Nationalism, the political movement spawned by the novel. Chapter Four finds that the fiction of Tourgée, iii Chesnutt, and Du Bois engages the hegemony of southern holy honor and the violence that supported it after Reconstruction. Ultimately, the dissertation concludes that fiction is unique among cultural texts because it has the ability to distill issues with which it is concerned into archetypes in ways that are more compelling than other cultural forms. iv v Acknowledgements My dissertation advisor, Stan Corkin, has pulled me through this project in a variety of ways. First, he fostered the genesis of this project without imposing his own ideas and inclinations upon my work. Second, his criticism has always been, and continues to be, astute and concise, and my writing is better because of his input. Although his influence is apparent in this project, I appreciate that he allowed me to develop and grow the project on my own. I’d also like to thank Tom LeClair and Lee Person for providing excellent suggestions as this project neared completion. I’d like to thank Helen Schwartz and Missy Kubistcheck, two of my undergraduate professors at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, for encouraging an interest in literature strong enough to inspire me to attend graduate school and for providing models for teaching that still guide and motivate me. A writer is only as good as his editors, and several colleagues read portions of this project and provided helpful advice. Ann McClellan, Doug Connell, Samantha Jones, and Scott Hermanson were some of the notable personages who read when called upon. I’d especially like to thank Ann and Scott for providing models of professionalism and scholarship that I very much admire and respect—following their lead has helped me immensely as I worked through this project. A good portion of this project was written while I was a visiting instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin. I’d like to thank my colleagues there for allowing me the luxury of hiding in my office when needed. My office neighbors, Anna Clark and Neil Graves, were especially careful about letting me work even as they made me feel vi welcome. Todd Butler for provided professional advice and much-needed moral support, for which I am thankful. I would also like to thank Maxwell House for offering a fine product at a reasonable price. My parents, Bill and Marie Miller, never once asked what I would do with a Ph.D. in English. They knew it was something I believed in, so they believed in it. Over the last thirty-five years, they have supported everything I’ve ever done, and there really isn’t any way I can thank them enough or let them know how much I love them, but I’ll try anyway. Mom and Dad, thank you and I love you. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to my twin boys, Adam and Ben, who came along before this project really got off the ground, and spent their toddler years wondering why Daddy had to go to work so often. They also hold the distinction of being the only two people I know who never once asked, “how’s that dissertation coming?” For this, and for their incessant energy, unending curiosity, and undying love, I am thankful. There is no way I can fully acknowledge how much my wife, Robbin, has supported and furthered this project. Although she probably never has been much interested in its content, she recognizes its importance in my life, and so has made room for it in hers. She knew when to give me intellectual space and when to give me words of encouragement. For every long day and late night I put in at the library or office, Robbin had an equally long day or late night, finishing jobs I never had time to start. Most importantly, she never lost sight of our real priorities, and she continues to make my life better every day. CONTENTS ONE: Social Fiction and American Realism………..………..…..2 TWO: “A Desolate, Shabby Home”: Rebecca Harding Davis and Domestic Ideology………..………………….17 THREE: “He Is a Red-Mouthed Labor Agitator: William Dean Howells and the Left………………………….…...57 FOUR: Classifying Utopia: Edward Bellamy, Nationalism, and Looking Backward……………….…………………97 FIVE: Redemption through Violence: White Mobs and Black Citzenship in Tourgee, Chesnutt, and Du Bois…138 CONCLUSION………………..…...………………………..…..194 WORKS CITED…………………………...……………………204 2 CHAPTER ONE Social Fiction and American Realism *** “what is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Re-Maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, and with every pulsation a new life?”1 “So this is the little lady who made this big war…”2 *** Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that she was “the little lady who made this big war.” His implication, that the literary sensation of the nineteenth century, Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, had somehow incited or provoked the American Civil War, may at first seem to be an exercise in hyperbole or political grandstanding, but perhaps Lincoln’s remark contains more than a grain of truth. After all, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 10,000 copies in its first 1 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Man the Reformer” Essays and Poems (146) 2 Abraham Lincoln, upon being introduced to Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1863 (qtd. in Douglas 19) 3 week and 300,000 by the end of its first year; furthermore, it had fueled a cavalcade of anti-slavery sentiment which didn’t do anything to ameliorate North-South relations during the tumultuous political debates of the 1850s. When Henry Lloyd Garrison, the fiery abolitionist leader, heard that the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law had inspired Stowe to pen her novel, he declared, “So does a just God overrule evil for good” (Mayer 420). As the end of the nineteenth century approached and Stowe’s legend grew, a writer in the Century was able to claim that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “a novel which had its share in changing the Constitution of the United States” (Burton 699). Is it possible, then, to attribute the thirteenth amendment to a work of fiction, even one as popular as Uncle Tom’s Cabin? How much was Stowe reading and describing the political and social strife which led to the War, and how much was she exacerbating it or even creating it?3 Using Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a model, it is possible to transform these specific questions about the novel into a more general inquiry about the relationship of fiction to culture. In other words, what is the relationship of a novel with the society in which it was written? Are particular types of novels more closely tied to the respective cultures from which they came than others? What about novels that are written specifically in protest of a particular circumstance or institution, or novels written by political or social activists? Are they more “social” than other novels? These questions are all worthy of pursuit, and the object of this study is to begin to unpack the issues behind some of these questions through an investigation of American “social fiction” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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