Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2019 The oM ckery of Things: Material Culture and Domestic Ideology in the Detective Fiction of Anna Katharine Green Claire Meldrum [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the American Material Culture Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Meldrum, Claire, "The ockM ery of Things: Material Culture and Domestic Ideology in the Detective Fiction of Anna Katharine Green" (2019). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2153. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2153 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Mockery of Things: Material Culture and Domestic Ideology in the Detective Fiction of Anna Katharine Green by Claire Elyse Meldrum BFA York University, 2001 MA Brock University, 2008 DISSERTATION Submitted to the Department of English and Film Studies in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy in English Wilfrid Laurier University © Claire Elyse Meldrum 2018 i ABSTRACT The Mockery of Things: Material Culture and Domestic Ideology in the Detective Fiction of Anna Katharine Green examines how a popular genre author like Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) uses objects to articulate middle-class identity and social constructions in late-nineteenth-century America. During the nineteenth century, the home as both a physical space and an ideological signifier was a central tenet in American middle-class identity. “Home was not just an idea,” Andrea Tange notes, but rather “an idea that was explicitly rooted in a material object: a house that was properly laid out, carefully decorated, meticulously managed, thoroughly cleaned and thoughtfully displayed” (5). Focusing on these domestically situated objects – clothing, household furnishings and domestic architecture – this dissertation considers how such items, which have tended to be read in support of domestic identity, instead function in Green’s detective fiction as a covert critique the period’s prevailing ideologies of gender, class and consumption. Considering these tangible goods in this novel way also serves to illuminate the real-world shifts and social changes that occurred in America over the fifty year period between the end of the American Civil War and its entry into the First World War. It popular fiction like Green’s offers the opportunity to critically trace the consequences of the period’s widespread valorization of domesticity and the home, the changing place of women in society in nineteenth-century America and the implications that new access to material culture offered for social mobility, class identity and criminal culpability. The first chapter, “Dressing Up: Social Climbers, Wrong-Doing and Fashion,” considers how clothing and dress are used as a means of communicating social status in four of Green’s detective fiction texts: A Strange Disappearance (1879), Behind Closed Doors (1888), That Affair Next Door (1897), and “The Ruby and the Caldron” (1905). It examines how clothing and dress are used by socially ambitious characters in attempts to improve their social standing through the adoption of their aspirational sphere’s sartorial presentation. While wide range of period texts deal with the question of whether the upward social movement of individuals, until recently, little attention has been paid to the figure of the social climber in detective fiction and how issues of social transgression were often linked thematically to the investigation of criminal investigation central to the genre. The focus on clothes – material objects that have an immediate and direct connection to the physical self – redirects the focus from questions of motivation for the social transformation towards an investigation of the means by which particular material objects either facilitate or impede personal trajectories. In Chapter 2, the focus turns from personal adornment, class climbing and the contributions of objects to the formation of identity towards the domestic space proper. But rather than to continue to focus on women, and explore their depiction either within the nineteenth-century American home, “‘Nature Warped By Solitude’: Male Hoarders, Moral Character and Interior Design” instead considers male patterns of ownership and consumption within the domestic sphere, through the figure of the hoarder and miser and examines the links between domestic disorder and criminality in Green's detective fiction. In a period which lionized the collection and display of objects and which viewed the home as both proof of moral sanctity and a buttress against moral corruption, the resistance to such socially sanctioned practices which is revealed in Behind Closed Doors (1888), Dr. Izard (1895) and The Millionaire Baby (1902) highlight the unspoken social expectations which typically governed domestic practices in the period. This chapter will also show how Green’s writing communicates a belief in the characterological import of the home and its furnishings and how private spaces are discussed in her fiction within the context of detective fiction norms. ii The third and final chapter of this dissertation considers the architecture and constructed spaces that acted as the physical and psychological perimeter of the family home itself. While private and public spaces became increasingly demarcated along gender lines during the nineteenth century, such that this divide was supported by distinctive material cultures that worked to normalize such separation, Chapter 3 will demonstrate that it is too simplistic to say that private domestic spaces are inherently feminine while public spaces are masculine and offers a challenge to the binary social divisions that American society was attempting to maintain in the face of challenges from figures such as the ‘New Woman’. Analyzing the physical architecture of the homes that appear in The Leavenworth Case (1878), Dark Hollow (1914) and the short story "Missing: Page Thirteen" (1915), “Mapping Family Secrets: Spatiality, Trauma and Domestic Architecture” will show the strategies Green employs to obliterate the positive associations normally attributed to private domestic spaces. A comparative analysis of homebuilding guides and these texts will show how Green transforms traditional architectural language to reformulate the private nineteenth-century home from sanctuary to prison, operating as an architectural mask to disguise and contain family secrets. Green’s deconstruction of built space functions as a critique of the affluent upper class, who she depicts as morally corrupt. Her exposure of their disguises aligns with the wider fears of the unidentifiable that existed in the modern world and demonstrates how the old world values of money, breeding and reputation no longer function as infallibly as they did within the more deeply stratified societies like that of England. Finally, this chapter will consider how the threats that her characters face manifest themselves architecturally: doors that will not open, or are locked to exclude and hallways that cannot be traversed without being surveilled. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The huge commitment that a doctoral degree represents isn’t something that is ever undertaken lightly or completed in isolation. Reaching the finish line requires the contributions of many people and I am delighted to acknowledge their help, support, and advice in the timely completion of this dissertation. Firstly, to my supervisor, Dr. Ken Paradis, who has been unfailingly supportive and always provided thoughtful advice not only about my dissertation but about my career and my larger research goals, as well. If an advisor can make or break a graduate student’s experiences, then I can attest to Ken’s having made mine a rewarding one. I am a better scholar because of his efforts. Secondly, to my dissertation committee members Dr. Philippa Gates and Dr. Kate Carter. Your comments and insights made my writing richer and gave me new perspectives to consider with every draft. Finally, to my family and friends, who have perfected the art of appearing fascinated by the minutiae of my research, and have even gone so far as to make interested noises in the appropriate places as they listened to me ramble on about nineteenth-century detective fiction for years on end. Thank you. You made this degree possible. When I needed to attend a conference or tackle a writing deadline, my mother, Judy, and my mother-in-law, Phyllis, never hesitated to step in during my absence and knowing they were there, looking after my family, made a world of difference. When I monopolized the computer with my research, and cut into their Minecraft time, my children, David and Andrew, never complained. Much. And for clear-sighted advice and quiet but unwavering support, my husband Jay always delivered. Or he arranged for pizza delivery, which is frankly the same thing. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF FIGURES v INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Dressing Up: Social Climbers, Wrong-Doing and Fashion in Behind Closed Doors, A Strange Disappearance, That Affair Next Door and