The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Spring 5-2016 "Out of the Dark Confinement!" Physical Containment in Mid- Nineteenth-Century American Protest Literature Allison Lane Tharp University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Tharp, Allison Lane, ""Out of the Dark Confinement!" Physical Containment in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Protest Literature" (2016). Dissertations. 334. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/334 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “OUT OF THE DARK CONFINEMENT!”: PHYSICAL CONTAINMENT IN MID- NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN PROTEST LITERATURE by Allison Lane Tharp A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School and the Department of English at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: ________________________________________________ Dr. Ellen Weinauer, Committee Chair Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Jonathan N. Barron, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Sherita L. Johnson, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Jameela Lares, Committee Member Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Maureen Ryan, Committee Member Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Karen S. Coats Dean of the Graduate School May 2016 COPYRIGHT BY Allison Lane Tharp 2016 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT “OUT OF THE DARK CONFINEMENT!”: PHYSICAL CONTAINMENT IN MID- NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN PROTEST LITERATURE by Allison Lane Tharp May 2016 Most scholarship on American protest literature tends to focus on the protest literature of specific, politically marginalized groups, such as black protest, women’s protest, or working class protest. My project redefines how we read nineteenth-century American protest literature by investigating the connections between the protest texts of these three marginalized groups. In particular, I argue that mid-nineteenth-century protest authors incorporate images of physical confinement and entrapment within their texts to expose to privileged readers the physical and ideological containment and control marginalized subjects encounter in their daily lives. Drawing from rhetorical theories of argumentation and audience engagement, and incorporating historical and cultural contexts, I analyze three protest texts that respond to the contentious debates of the 1850s—a decade marked by increasing tensions over issues of race, class, and gender: Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig (1859), Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Life in the Iron Mills” (1861), and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Along with analyzing these authors’ use of images of physical confinement, I also study the use of direct address and reader engagement in protest texts in order to show how authors foster an empathetic connection between privileged readers and marginalized characters. I show how protest literature further uses these formal modes to critique and advocate for change within the status quo. By drawing attention to the ii rhetorical techniques of Wilson, Davis, and Jacobs, I advance beyond the current scholarly interests in genre to investigate how these authors forge connections among such movements as women’s rights, workers’ rights, and abolition. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project would not have been possible without the valuable help and attention I received from my committee. Special thanks to Dr. Jonathan Barron, Dr. Sherita Johnson, Dr. Jameela Lares, and Dr. Maureen Ryan for the insight, suggestions, and support provided at all steps of this process. Extra thanks to my dissertation chair, Dr. Ellen Weinauer, who has been my professional rock for the last six years and without whom this project would not exist. Your future students are lucky to have you. iv DEDICATION To Colleen, for her support in all of its varieties. To Hank and Fatty, for reminding me that there is life outside of books. To Nick, for everything. My unconditional love and thanks to you all. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER II : “IN THE MIDST OF UNIVERSAL MOVEMENT”: PHYSICAL AND NARRATIVE CONTAINMENT IN MID-NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA. .... 22 The Rhetoric of Manifest Destiny................................................................................. 24 The Physical Reality of Containment ........................................................................... 34 A Woman’s Separate Sphere .................................................................................... 35 The Separation of Working Class Citizens ............................................................... 43 The Separation of Slaves and Free Blacks ................................................................ 52 A Place from which to Protest ...................................................................................... 62 CHAPTER III – “THERE IS A SECRET DOWN HERE”: PHYSICAL CONTAINMENT AND SOCIAL INSTRUCTION IN REBECCA HARDING DAVIS’S “LIFE IN THE IRON MILLS” ......................................................................................... 65 The Atlantic Monthly and Davis’s Readers ................................................................... 67 The Persuasion of Physical Containment ..................................................................... 76 Davis’s Guide to Social Reading .................................................................................. 87 vi Avenue for Action....................................................................................................... 100 CHAPTER IV – “THAT LITTLE DISMAL HOLE”: HARRIET JACOBS’S SHIFTING DIRECT ADDRESS AND PHYSICAL CONTAINMENT IN INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL ......................................................................................................... 103 The Early Chapters: Direct Address and the Reader’s Power .................................... 108 Physical and Narrative Containment: The Garret Chapters ........................................ 118 The Reemergence of Direct Address and Social Instruction ...................................... 132 Reframing Reading and Social Justice ....................................................................... 140 CHAPTER V –“THE PENT UP FIRES BURST FORTH”: HARRIET WILSON’S UNSYMPATHETIC AUDIENCE IN OUR NIG ........................................................... 144 Our Nig’s Publication and Intended Audience ........................................................... 149 Defamiliarizing the Domestic: Wilson’s Rhetorical Aim ........................................... 159 A New Domesticity: A Lack of Corrective Models ................................................... 173 Dispositions over Actions: Wilson’s Likely Success ................................................. 181 CHAPTER VI –CODA: PHYSICAL CONTAINMENT, CONTINUED ..................... 187 Gilman and Woman’s Containment in the Late Nineteenth Century ......................... 187 Protest Literature and Containment in the Twentieth Century ................................... 199 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 202 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. Jacob Riis’s “Tenement of 1863, for Twelve Families on Each Flat” .............. 46 Figure 2. Jacob Riis’s “Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement—“Five Cents a Spot” ................................................................................................................................. 47 Figure 3. Jacob Riis’s “Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters” ............................................. 48 viii CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION “All literature is protest.” -Richard Wright In “Everybody’s Protest Novel” (1949), James Baldwin condemns the genre of protest literature, claiming that it is merely “an accepted and comforting aspect of the American scene” (14). “So far from being disturbing,” Baldwin asserts, “the protest novel only ramif[ies] that framework we believe to be so necessary,” reflecting a society that is obsessed with categorization, of “life neatly fitted into pegs” (14). According to Baldwin, instead of exposing social inequality and thereby arguing against it, protest novels ultimately reify the categorization of individuals: