The Rhetoric of Identity in Four California Social Protest Novels
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: AMERICANS IN THE GOLDEN STATE: THE RHETORIC OF IDENTITY IN FOUR CALIFORNIA SOCIAL PROTEST NOVELS. Elisa Leigh Warford, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Directed By: Professor Jeanne Fahnestock Department of English Professor David Wyatt, Co-chair, Department of English This dissertation examines the rhetorical strategies of four California social protest novels of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries: Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don (1885), Frank Norris’s The Octopus (1901), and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). I argue that among these four texts, those that succeeded rhetorically—Ruiz de Burton’s and Steinbeck’s—did so by making it possible for their mostly white, middle-class audiences to identify with their characters along class, race, and other demographic lines. The rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke help explain the complex ways these novels invite audience identification with some characters while creating distance with others. I also examine the roles of sentiment and naturalism in each text’s rhetorical success or failure. Although these novels were all written or read as social protest fiction, there exists no full-length analysis of the rhetorical strategies these writers employ. In their arguments over California land ownership and the land’s potential wealth, the novels reveal much about how American identity was constructed during this period. Chapter One argues that in The Squatter and the Don, Ruiz de Burton encourages identification by blurring racial lines and emphasizing her characters’ social class, presenting the Alamar family as entrepreneurial Americans who can pass for white and who blend easily with upper-crust New York society. Chapter Two focuses on the ways Jackson creates Native American characters in Ramona who possess some traits of “American” identity such as whiteness, domesticity, and work skills. Jackson’s characters, however, remain too exotic for the reader to identify with them, and thus her novel has been read as romance rather than protest. Chapter Three argues that The Octopus is too deterministic to succeed as social protest against the railroad monopoly, but that Norris is arguing instead for a global expansion of U.S. capitalism. Chapter Four demonstrates how The Grapes of Wrath aligns the migrants with America’s white middle class. Steinbeck enables identification by emphasizing the Okies’ Anglo heritage and their willingness to work; like Ruiz de Burton, he also employs an effective balance between sentiment and naturalism. AMERICANS IN THE GOLDEN STATE: THE RHETORIC OF IDENTITY IN FOUR CALIFORNIA SOCIAL PROTEST NOVELS By Elisa Leigh Warford Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 Advisory Committee: Professor Jeanne Fahnestock, Chair Professor David Wyatt, Co-chair Professor Martha Nell Smith Professor Shirley Logan Professor Sandra Cypess © Copyright by Elisa Leigh Warford 2006 Dedication To Darren and Sara Sue ii Acknowledgements My director, Jeanne Fahnestock, always treated me like I had something important to say, even when I felt like I didn’t, and helped gently shape the direction of this dissertation by giving insightful, constructive criticism at every step of the way and by reminding me to keep my focus on the writers’ rhetoric. She is a model professor, one who teaches through example, and one whom I will strive to emulate. David Wyatt, my co-director, gave freely of his time in office chats about California literature and history, and I’m grateful for his introduction to me of the story of my home state, from all the way out here in Maryland. Lene and Abeba Tsegaye, the gracious owners of Kefa Café, plied me with chai lattes and warm smiles; their cheerful space became my office through sweltering summer days and frigid winter ones. My father, Stan Warford, gave me advice from his experience as a doctoral student and professor, and my mother, Ann Warford, gave unwavering emotional support and a psychological perspective on the project. They and my sister Goose offered love and encouragement the whole way through. My husband, Darren Crowe, has supported and enriched my life as a graduate student from the beginning; he helped me keep going in more ways than I can mention here. Sara Sue, who came along late in the game, inspired me to redouble my efforts and to keep it all in perspective; my life is immeasurably better now that she is around. iii Table of Contents Dedication..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements......................................................................................................iii Table of Contents......................................................................................................... iv Introduction: Real Estate, Railroads, and Rhetoric...................................................... 1 Audience ................................................................................................................... 6 Rhetorical “Success”................................................................................................. 9 The Rhetoric of Identification................................................................................. 10 Familial Substance.............................................................................................. 13 Directional Substance......................................................................................... 15 Generic Substance .............................................................................................. 17 Summary of Chapters ............................................................................................. 26 Chapter 1: Continental Characters in Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don .. 30 Introduction: Fictional Romances and Non-fictional Struggles ............................ 31 Racial Divisions: Harte’s and Atherton’s California.............................................. 40 An American Don: Class Hierarchy and Identification......................................... 47 Making Connections: Identification Through Region ........................................... 62 The Rhetoric of Genre: Historical Romance, Sentimentalism, and Naturalism.... 70 The Limits of Historical Romance ...................................................................... 71 Sentimentalism in The Squatter and the Don...................................................... 80 Naturalism in The Squatter and the Don ............................................................ 84 Conclusion: The Reviews and Her Rhetorical Success ......................................... 88 Chapter 2: Assimilation and Identification in Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona ......... 94 U.S. Indian Policy and Jackson’s Indian Policy ................................................... 101 The “Sugared Pill”—Too Sweet? ......................................................................... 109 Ramona’s Effects and Sentimental Identification................................................. 123 Chapter 3: Frank Norris’s The Octopus: Epic Capitalism ...................................... 130 The Octopus as Social Protest Novel.................................................................... 134 Norris’s Literary Criticism.................................................................................... 140 From West to East: Naturalism and the “Course of Empire” .............................. 142 “The Song of the West”: The Octopus as Norris’s Western Epic........................ 156 Epic Capitalism..................................................................................................... 164 Chapter 4: The Grapes of Wrath : Steinbeck’s Sentimental Harvest ....................... 168 Background: Sowing the Seeds ........................................................................... 172 Identification Through Race, Class, and Religion................................................ 177 “And That Feeling Must Go into It”: Sentimental Domesticity in The Grapes of Wrath..................................................................................................................... 186 “This Book Wasn’t Written for Delicate Ladies”: The Grapes of Wrath and Naturalism............................................................................................................. 195 The “Giving of the Breast” ................................................................................... 202 The Effects of the Novel and Its Aftermath.......................................................... 207 Epilogue .................................................................................................................... 213 The Rest of the Story ................................................................................................ 213 Endnotes .................................................................................................................... 197 iv Works Cited .............................................................................................................. 222 v Introduction Real Estate, Railroads, and Rhetoric How does one in the novel (the novel which is a work of art and not a disguised piece of sociology) persuade the American reader to identify that which is basic