University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository English Language and Literature ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2-1-2012 The Other Vanishing American: Disappearing Farmers in American Literature, 1887-1939. Carolyn Kuchera Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds Recommended Citation Kuchera, Carolyn. "The Other Vanishing American: Disappearing Farmers in American Literature, 1887-1939.." (2012). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/engl_etds/14 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Language and Literature ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i Carolyn Kuchera Candidate English Language & Literature Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Dr. Jesse Alemán (co-chair) Dr. Gary Scharnhorst (co-chair) Dr. Gary Harrison Dr. Peter Carafiol (Portland State University) ii THE OTHER VANISHING AMERICAN: THE DISAPPEARING FARMER IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1887-1939 BY CAROLYN KUCHERA B.A., English, Minnesota State University Moorhead, 2001 M.A., Literature, Portland State University, 2006 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ENGLISH The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico December 2011 iii THE OTHER VANISHING AMERICAN: THE DISAPPEARING FARMER IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1887-1939 by Carolyn Kuchera B.A., English, Minnesota State University Moorhead, 2001 M.A., Literature, Portland State University, 2006 Ph.D, English, University of New Mexico, 2011 ABSTRACT Beginning in the late nineteenth century, literary depictions of farmers borrow from the established trope of the “Vanishing American” Indian to portray farmers as disappearing before the forces of modern civilization. I argue that writing about farmers from this era ought to be approached as a type of extinction discourse: the rhetoric surrounding the decline of a race or culture. Extinction discourse, whether applied to the American Indian or to farmers, fuses mourning over a passing way of life with celebration of civilization’s progress. Farmers are portrayed as primitive figures, as fundamentally incompatible with modern civilization, in all of the fiction included in this study: Joseph Kirkland’s Zury (1887), Hamlin Garland’s “Up the Coolly” (1891) and “The Silent Eaters” (1923), John T. Frederick’s Druida (1923) and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). While the works vary in their valuations of primitivism, alternately favoring the nostalgic or the progressive impulse, the farmer vanishes nonetheless. For the purposes of this study, iv “vanishing” signifies not so much a sociological fact as a representational act performed in response to a perceived loss. Literary constructions of the vanishing farmer are performative: they help produce the condition (disappearance) that they subsequently describe. The rhetorical origins of industrial agriculture are rooted in this disappearance. The developing reactions to the farmer’s “disappearance” and the varying rhetorical forms of those reactions are the focus of this study, which is contextualized through historical and sociological information. The divergent ideologies of nostalgia displayed in the fiction illustrate particular modern anxieties, while shadows or traces of Indian presence within these texts reveal a buried legacy of removal within Western expansion. This analysis also shows how portrayals of vanishing farmers often preserve the racialist logic of extinction discourse, wherein race contributes to extinction. The conclusion suggests a future direction for the literary analysis of farmers, arguing that they can be most productively approached as ghosts through Jacques Derrida’s theory of the “trace” and Toni Morrison’s notion of the shadow. With its focus on the decline, and sometimes disparagement, of agrarian America, this dissertation counters the dominant critical narrative that associates American virtue and civilization with rural values. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 1 RURAL PRIMITIVES ................................................................................................................................................ 6 EXTINCTION DISCOURSE ........................................................................................................................................ 10 THE IDEOLOGY OF NOSTALGIA ............................................................................................................................ 12 HISTORY: PATTERNS OF SETTLEMENT AND DISPLACEMENT, AND THE RESULTING ‘CIVILIZING MISSIONS’ .............................................................................................................................................................. 15 THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE .................................................................................................... 23 DEFINING THE FARM NOVEL ........................................................................................................................... 25 CHAPTER 1: THE INCORPORATION OF THE RURAL OTHER: TRACING THE RHETORICAL ORIGINS OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE IN JOSEPH KIRKLAND’S ZURY ........................................................................................................................... 30 INTRODUCTION: “STRANGE MATINGS” ....................................................................................................... 30 ZURY'S DUAL HISTORICAL CONTEXT .............................................................................................................. 38 NEW SAVAGES ...................................................................................................................................................... 46 “A LITTLE QUEEN AMONG THE ROUGH PEOPLE”: ANNE SPARROW AS MISSIONARY ................. 51 ZURY’S VANISHING ............................................................................................................................................ 54 THE RHETORICAL ORIGINS OF INDUSTRIAL FARMING ........................................................................... 60 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................................... 70 CHAPTER 2: NOSTALGIA AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY IN HAMLIN GARLAND'S FICTION ON FARMERS AND INDIANS ........................................................... 72 (ALMOST) HOMECOMINGS ............................................................................................................................... 78 CAUGHT BETWEEN HEART AND MIND: SPLIT IDENTITIES ..................................................................... 83 REPRESENTATIONS: RESTAGING THE 'WRETCHEDLY FAMILIAR' ........................................................ 88 LOOKING THROUGH "BABY EYES": THE NOSTALGIC GAZE ................................................................... 90 DETERMINED VANISHINGS ............................................................................................................................... 96 CHAPTER 3: RURAL VANISHINGS: READING THE MODERN PASTORAL AS EXTINCTION DISCOURSE WITH JOHN T. FREDERICK’S DRUIDA .......................... 109 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................... 109 MODERN PASTORAL VANISHINGS ............................................................................................................... 112 MELANCHOLIC TRACES OF THE AUTHOR .................................................................................................. 119 READING DRUIDA AS A MODERN PASTORAL ........................................................................................... 121 THE DOCTOR’S DRUIDA .................................................................................................................................. 126 THE PROFESSOR’S DRUIDA ............................................................................................................................ 130 MELANCHOLY OBJECTS AND EXTINCTION DISCOURSE ....................................................................... 135 DRUIDA’S BUD ................................................................................................................................................... 137 FREAKISH DIFFERENCE ................................................................................................................................... 138 NOSTALGIC VISION ........................................................................................................................................... 140 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................................... 142 CHAPTER 4: PRIMITIVE (MIS)READINGS IN THE GRAPES OF WRATH ............................. 144 REMOVALS ............................................................................................................................................................. 150 EXTINCTION DISCOURSES