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University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Z eeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700- 800/521-0600 Order Number 9011135 The female world of love and racism: Interracial friendship in U.S. women’s literature, 1840-1940 Carr, Glynis, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1989 UMI 300N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE FEMALE WORLD OF LOVE AND RACISM: INTERRACIAL FRIENDSHIP IN U.S. WOMEN’S LITERATURE, lBIO-lSHO DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Glynis Carr, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1SB3 Dissertation Committee: Approved by A . Shuman B. Rigney jldviser S. Fink Department of English ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the generous guidance, support, and- encouragement of my advisers, Dr. Amy Shuman, Dr. Barbara Rigney, and Dr. Steven Fink, without whom I could never have completed this project. I am also indebted to Dr. Susan Koppelman, of St. Louis, for her continuing interest in my work. I thank Amy and Susan, especially, for combining the roles of mentor and friend. I also thank my parents, Peggy and Hudson Carr, and my daughter Jessie, for their confidence in me and for their patience. I gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support I have received from The Ohio State University, The Graduate School, The College of Humanities, The Department of English, and The Center for Women's Studies for their awards of a Presidential Fellowship in 190B-BS and numerous grants enabling me to present my research at academic conferences. Finally, I owe much to all the feminists— activists and academics alike— who have gone before. VITA July £0, 1956 ....................... Born - Columbus, Ohio 1 9 B E ................................ A. B., University of California, Berkeley. 1983-1904 ............................ University Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1 9 8 4 ................................ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 1904-19BB ............................ Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 19BB-19B9 ............................ Presidential Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 19B9 ................................ Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ........................................ ii VITA .......................................................... iii INTRODUCTION .............................................. 1 Endnotes to Introduction .............. EB CHAPTER PAGE I. THEIR SISTERS’ KEEPERS: INTERRACIAL FRIENDSHIP IN ABOLITIONIST FICTION ......... 30 Introduction .............................. 30 Abolitionist Fiction as Political , W o r k ..................................... 4B The Mechanism of Fiction ................... 57 Action Stories: Toward a Model of Women’s Literature as Problem S o l v i n g ................................... 63 The White Slave and Racism in Women’s L i t e r a t u r e ............................. 10B Images and Reality .........................1E1 Endnotes to Chapter I .................... 140 II. THE BATTLE OF IMAGES CONTINUES: SCENARIO, STEREOTYPE, AND CHARACTER IN RECONSTRUCTION AND TURN OF THE CENTURY L I T E R A T U R E ................145 Introduction .............................. 145 From Louisa May Alcott to Constance Fenimore Woolson: The Death of Abolitionism ......................... 155 White Women in the South ........ IBB Black WcrnBn Writers: ThB Emergence of a Tradition ..................214 C o n c l u s i o n .................................. 233 Endnotes to Chapter I I .................... 239 III. THE ARROGANT EYES OF WHITE WOMEN: LITERATURE FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE TO 1 S 4 0 ............. 244 Introduction ........ ............ 244 Issues of Identity and the Arrogant E y e ........................... 249 Fannie Hurst’s Imitation oF LiFe .... 2B2 Nella Larsen’s Quicksand ................ 2B5 Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun ........ 304 C o n c l u s i o n .................................. 325 Endnotes For Chapter I I I ..................320 CONCLUSION: LITERATURE SINCE 1940 ....................... 332 Endnotes For Conclusion ................ 371 LIST OF WORKS C I T E D ......................................... 372 v Introduction I Ca white feminist] am struggling now to speak [against racism], but not out of any role of ought-to; I ask that you try not to place me in that role. I am trying to speak from my heart, out of need, as a woman who loves other women passionately, and wants us to be able to be together as friends in this unjust world; and as a woman who lives in relative security in the United States, and who is trying to figure out my responsibility and my need in struggles against injustice in a way that will lead to our friendship. Minnie Bruce Pratt, 1984 Even as I witnessed the hypocrisy of Cwhite] feminists, I clung to the hope that increased participation of women from different races and classes in feminist activities would lead to a reevaluation of feminism, radical reconstruction of feminist ideology, and the launching of a new movement that would more adequately address the concerns of both women and men. I was not willing to see white women feminists as "enemies." Yet as I moved from one women’s group to another trying to offer a different perspective, I met with hostility and resentment. Bell Hooks, 19B4 □n the last day of class, I return to the possibility of feminist ideology as a space of cross-racial connection between women. From the white women, a flurry of approval. From the black women, silence— dead silence. I am the white bitch making more promises I won’t be keeping. Minrose Gwin, 1988 1 s The feminist movement, if not yet a fully realized "space of cross-racial connection between women," is at least one in which the possibility of that connection is ardently being worked for. Among those feminists whose notion of the movement is not "shallow and trivial," who see feminism as more than Just "a new road to inclusion within a white male order" CRich 1973: 279), racism— both within and without the movement— is a pressing problem. In the discourse of anti-racist feminism, friendship between women is frequently offered as an epitome of a transformed social order, as in the passage above from Minnie Bruce Pratt. Yet, historically, white and black women have not frequently or easily been friends. As Hooks’s testimony above makes plain, white women have ignored, devalued, and oppressed women of color. Even white feminists are among the racist oppressors; we have written our own ironic chapter of the long history of enmity that separates white and black women. We— women «of both races— have had enormous difficulty listening to each other, responding to criticism, recognizing the bases of interracial alliance Cor even agreeing that these exist), understanding our differences and their implications, and making common cause. This dissertation is a study of representations of friendship between black and white women in U.3. 3 women’s literature From the abolitionist era to 1940. Such representations have special significance at this moment of feminist history when the image of interracial friendship is an anchoring vision for anti- racist activists. In addition, to study these representations also leads one to confront certain pressing theoretical issues such as differences among women, solidarity among women and female self- definition, racial and sexual essentialism, and the relationship of literature to "real life," particularly the status of literary subversion as political strategy. I imagine this work as a response to the multiple challenges issued by black feminism since at least the early nineteenth century, challenges which have intensified since the 1970s. At the very least, we white feminists have been asked simply