Innocence, Conversion, and Consumption in the Antebellum American Novel

University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 1-1-2015 Organic Angels: Innocence, Conversion, and Consumption in the Antebellum American Novel Laura Jean Schrock University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Schrock, Laura Jean, "Organic Angels: Innocence, Conversion, and Consumption in the Antebellum American Novel" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1398. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1398 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ORGANIC ANGELS INNOCENCE, CONVERSION, AND CONSUMPTION IN THE ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN NOVEL A Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English The University of Mississippi by LAURA J. SCHROCK August 2015 Copyright Laura J. Schrock 2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Midcentury American novelists variously reworked the traditional conversion narrative to reflect a marked cultural shift in attitude towards human "nature," newly conceived as innocent and inclined to salvation. This liberalized aesthetic of conversion takes shape through the trope of the "organic angel," a developmental female figure whose journey from childhood innocence to saintly womanhood merges the processes of sexual maturation and Protestant conversion. Because she purifies self-interested desire by redirecting it towards spiritual ends, the organic angel provides a symbolic reconciliation of the young nation's budding imperial capitalism with its millennial expectations. While traditional emphasis on a maternal ethos at work in sentimental fiction has obscured the thematic and generic traction of this nonmaternal female saint, my project traces her structural impact across a surprisingly diverse range of authors and works—Sylvester Judd's Margaret , Maria Cummins' The Lamplighter , Hawthorne's The Marble Faun , Melville's Pierre , Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin , and Harriet Wilson's Our Nig. At once a remarkably flexible and legibly constraining trope, the organic angel determines the relationship between narrative form and nationalist commitment; her relative efficacy as an agent of conversion measures authorial confidence in a pre-Civil war era vision of a unified, prosperous, and evangelical nation. ii DEDICATION To my father For teaching me how to close read the most important texts iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I cannot adequately thank my advisory committee for the sustained hours they committed to reading and critiquing my work, as well as encouraging, guiding, and counseling me in person. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my director Kathryn McKee for patiently fostering each step in my development as a scholar, and to Peter Reed and Cristin Ellis, each of whom came to my rescue at critical moments in the process. Special thanks to John Neff for taking such interest in the project and bringing an invaluable interdisciplinary perspective. Beyond my advisory committee, foremost acknowledgments go to my father and mother—for regular nighttime reading all through my childhood, for coming to my aid in every crisis, whether emotional, spiritual, or financial, and for never doubting that I could obtain the terminal degree in my field. A special thanks to my father for teaching me how texts work and setting high editorial standards for all my writing, and to my mother for homeschooling me for the formative first nine years of my education. Admiration and gratitude go out to my brothers Chad and Terrill, for both setting the mark high by preceding me with doctorates and always showing interest in my intellectual pursuits. I must especially thank Chad for reading my very first forays into literary production, which included countless handwritten pages in cramped script and without the relief of paragraph breaks—and for bringing his loving and wise counsel to bear on every stage of my writing and career development. iv Affectionate gratitude goes out to all my dear friends—especially Deven Jordan Busby, Robert L. Baker, Eric Schaefer, and Damaris Foping—who consoled and praised me at every turn. I wish to particularly thank my best friend Jackson Hite Anderson for making the last five years so convivial that I hardly realized I was in the most difficult stretch of my education. Douglas L. Mitchell deserves a special mention as my undergraduate professor who knowingly advised me to switch my major to English and whose class on Early American Literature inspired the specialization of my career. Further thanks to Joan Wylie Hall for the perpetual stream of good wishes and free books on sentimental literature, and to J.R. Hall for the perpetual stream of good advice, tonic water, and cupcakes. Per aspera ad astra . v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 I. AESTHETIC CONVERSION IN SYLVESTER JUDD'S MARGARET .......................26 II. NATURAL ELECTION IN MARIA CUMMINS' THE LAMPLIGHTER ..................72 III. AESTHETIC PERVERSION IN HAWTHORNE'S THE MARBLE FAUN .............116 IV. HOLY SEDUCTION IN MELVILLE'S PIERRE .....................................................165 V. RACIAL AESTHETICS IN STOWE'S UNCLE TOM'S CABIN AND HARRIET WILSON'S OUR NIG ......................................................................................................215 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................268 VITA ................................................................................................................................283 vi 1. INTRODUCTION: NATURALIZED RELIGION AND LITERARY FORM What became of the sinners? [...] What became of the angry God? — Perry Miller, Nature's Nation Had but the tale a warbling Teller All the boys would come— Orpheus’ sermon captivated, It did not condemn. —Emily Dickinson Love is this world's great redeemer and reformer; and [...] all beautiful women are her selectest emissaries. —Herman Melville, Pierre By 1850, over ninety percent of white American adults could read, and critics ambivalently conceded the triumph of the novel as the defining literary genre of the century.1 The cultural rise of the novel in the United States intersected with a conspicuous decline, not in religiosity, but in adherence to Calvinist orthodoxy. The decentralized spirituality of Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau comprised merely the esoteric, outermost ripple of this sea-change in antebellum theology, a radical reorientation of American Protestantism toward natural phenomena, including pre-socialized human nature, as a transparent ground of divine expression. Transcendentalists rarely attempted to veer from nonfictional forms, 2 but the popular version of naturalized theology widely suffused religiously-inflected activities across 1 See Michael Gilmore, American Romanticism , p. 4 and Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers , p. 44. 2See Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture , p. 47 and Myra Jehlen, American Incarnation , p. 124. 1 denominational lines, including and especially the composition of novels. This dissertation takes as its premise an inherent tension between a thoroughgoing version of naturalized theology and the literary form of sustained fictional prose narrative. It comprises the first systematic treatment of the dialectic between a theology of natural innocence and the orthodox Christian narrative of conversion, as it informs the shape of sentimental novels in the 1850s.3 Through its identification of a trope that bridges theology and literary form in 1850s sentimental novels, this project contributes to our understanding of the evolution of the American novel and the cross-fertilization of religion and literature in the antebellum era. I have termed this trope the "organic angel," and because I examine its function in the works of male, female, black, white, popular and canonical authors, my work participates in breaking down the divisions traditionally applied to 1850s fiction and adds to our reconstruction of a cultural moment whose concerns preoccupied novelists across class, race, and gender lines. And finally, because the trope of the organic angel derives from a representational sacralization of the female body, its excavation brings to light a fresh perspective on the interrelationship between constructions of gender, materialism, and evangelicalism in midcentury America. 3 See The Cambridge Introduction to the Nineteenth-Century American Novel for a definition of the novel as "a fictional prose narrative of substantial length" (1). By applying the term "sentimental" to the novels I examine, I intend to suggest neither a domestic setting nor female authorship but a formal preoccupation with reconciling human inclinations and divine will through material intermediaries.

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