Intersections of Transatlantic Modernist Literature and Visual Media
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 4-30-2018 Composing Women: Intersections of Transatlantic Modernist Literature and Visual Media Meredith Zaring Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Zaring, Meredith, "Composing Women: Intersections of Transatlantic Modernist Literature and Visual Media." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2018. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/198 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COMPOSING WOMEN: INTERSECTIONS OF TRANSATLANTIC MODERNIST LITERATURE AND VISUAL MEDIA by MEREDITH ZARING Under the Direction of Audrey Goodman, PhD ABSTRACT This dissertation explores transatlantic modernist literature’s methods of representing the material female mind and body in light of photographic and cinematic composition and analysis. The ongoing and often concurrent transatlantic development of photographic and cinematic technology invites a broad historical trajectory: from stop-motion photography to cinematography to the transition from silent to sound film. As photography and film manipulate time and space by halting and resuming perpetual motion, so my investigation crosses time and space, freezing provocative moments and posing enlightening encounters. Through interdisciplinary associations, I aim to reframe and reanimate our critical perception of the multiplicitous modernist scene. Each chapter thus views literary works from the primary era of cinematic development, the 1920s and ’30s, through the proverbial lens of visual media works or analyses, such as stop-motion photograph series or feminist film theories. Rather than attributing a literary method to a media technique, or vice versa, I investigate their various intersections and deviations, their various possibilities and limitations. These explorations ultimately discover the potential of modernist narratives to engage the compositional methods and subjects of photography and film in the expression of otherwise unsanctioned, unseen, and unspoken female identity. INDEX WORDS: Modernist novel, Feminist film theory, Narrative voice, Female embodiment, Willa Cather, Zora Neale Hurston COMPOSING WOMEN: INTERSECTIONS OF TRANSATLANTIC MODERNIST LITERATURE AND VISUAL MEDIA by MEREDITH ZARING A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2018 Copyright by Meredith Anne Zaring 2018 COMPOSING WOMEN: INTERSECTIONS OF TRANSATLANTIC MODERNIST LITERATURE AND VISUAL MEDIA by MEREDITH ZARING Committee Chair: Audrey Goodman Committee: Marilynn Richtarik Mary Hocks Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2018 iv DEDICATION To Lucille “Granny” Zaring and John “Pa” Zaring, who always wanted me to become a doctor. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To the people who supported me during this endeavor, I offer my sincerest gratitude and these humble acknowledgements. Dr. Audrey Goodman was a truly considerate professor, director, and mentor throughout my graduate studies. Dr. Marilynn Richtarik was an enthusiastic teacher, an invaluable editor, and a generous host. Dr. Mary Hocks enhanced my interdisciplinary perspective at the beginning and the end. Dr. Stephen Dobranski made me a better scholar and writer. Dr. Pearl McHaney was an encouraging professor and an inspiring art collector. Dr. Emily Bloom was an influential early contributor to this project and a kind advisor. Marta Hess, Lori Howard, and Deborah Hull were GSU English department colleagues who became dear friends. Marta found me jobs and made me laugh. Lori taught me how to copyedit and shared in my joys and sorrows. Deborah stole my desk and my heart. Elizabeth Schwarze, John Gentry, and Dr. Danielle Benveniste Stevens provided extraordinary kindness and care at the GSU Student Health Clinic and Counseling Center. Amy Jaynes was in the arena with me. The credit belongs to her, too. My parents gave me a room of my own, a home, and everything else. They instilled in me a profound love and respect for education. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ V LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... VIII INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1: FREEZING THE FEMALE FRAME.................................................. 13 1.1 Eadweard Muybridge: Staging a Modernist Narrative .................................. 14 1.2 William Faulkner: From Running Men to Arrested Women ........................ 26 1.3 Djuna Barnes: Composing the Female Encounter ........................................ 35 CHAPTER 2: ANIMATING THE FEMALE FORM ................................................. 48 2.1 The Film Star, the Paper Doll, and the Dressmaker ...................................... 49 2.2 Zelda Fitzgerald: Reimagining the Paper Doll ............................................... 65 2.3 Willa Cather: Rewriting the Female Form ..................................................... 74 CHAPTER 3: PROJECTING FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS................................... 92 3.1 Dorothy Richardson: Silent Film and the Female Voice ............................... 94 3.2 Nella Larsen: Reclaiming Silent Subjectivity ................................................. 94 3.3 Jean Rhys: Narrating the “Film-Mind” ....................................................... 119 CHAPTER 4: SYNCHRONIZING THE FEMALE VOICE ................................... 128 4.1 African Americans and Women in the Transition to Sound ........................ 130 4.2 Zora Neale Hurston: The Anthropologist ..................................................... 143 4.3 Zora Neale Hurston as Author ...................................................................... 153 vii CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 166 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 169 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 “The horse in motion” .................................................................................................... 15 Figure 2 “Nude man running at full speed” .................................................................................. 16 Figure 3 “Semi-nude woman dancing (fancy)” ............................................................................ 18 Figure 4 “Nude woman turning around in surprise and running away” ....................................... 19 Figure 5 “Nude woman stumbling and falling on the ground” ..................................................... 20 Figure 6 “Nude woman crawling” ................................................................................................ 20 Figure 7 “Two nude women dancing a waltz” .............................................................................. 21 Figure 8 “Two women walking, meeting and partly turning” ...................................................... 22 Figure 9 “Two nude women shaking hands and kissing each other” ........................................... 22 1 INTRODUCTION In The Secret Agent (1907), Joseph Conrad’s demonstrably male narrator describes the primary female character’s epistemology in visual—even cinematic—terms, anticipating the complex associations between twentieth-century modernist narratives and visual media technology, particularly in the composition of female minds and bodies. Set in 1886 London, the novel tells the story of Adolf Verloc, an agent of pornography and anarchy who elicits his wife Winnie’s simple-minded brother in an attempt to bomb the Greenwich Conservatory, inadvertently killing the young man. Winnie comes to realize that her husband is responsible for her brother Stevie’s death in an extended, cinematic scene, which includes the “freezing” of time, the conflation of seeing and understanding, the obstruction of the male gaze, and the silent projection of the female memory. Unable to translate this visual knowledge into language, for which the male narrator/writer takes full credit, Winnie ultimately kills her husband and herself, dramatizing turn-of-the-century depictions of women as psychological and cultural threats. Although Winnie cannot express herself productively, her visual epistemology suggests the potential of modernist narratives to engage the compositional methods of cinematic technology in the literary expression of female experience. As Winnie comes to knowledge through a prolonged series of images, repeated descriptions of her eyes reflect her thinking in visions and suggest the conflation of seeing and understanding. In a state of “frozen contemplative immobility,” she stares at “a whitewashed wall with no writing on it,” processing Stevie’s death through the visual memories of her life with him (198). The narrator describes this scene in cinematic terms, aligning Winnie with 2 feminized