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University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8300338 Samuelson, Joan Wood PATTERNS OF SURVIVAL: FOUR AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS AND THE PROLETARIAN NOVEL The Ohio State University PH.D. 1982 University Microfilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Copyright 1982 by Samuelson, Joan Wood All Rights Reserved PATTERNS OF SURVIVAL: FOUR AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS AND THE PROLETARIAN NOVEL DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Joan Wood Samuelson, B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 1982 Reading Committee: Approved By John Muste Barbara Rigney Marlene Longenecker Adviser Department of English For my son, Paul, who has lived with a doctoral candidate- mother—and never once complained about the late meals, delayed promises, and lost time spent together. And for Michael, who has gone ahead ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to my excellent committee, Professor John Muste, Professor Barbara Rigney, and Professor Marlene Longenecker, for their advice, patience, and sympathies. I owe a special thanks to Professor Rigney, who worked so closely with me from the beginning of this project and who gave unstintingly of her time and much-needed encouragement. I also want to acknowledge Professor Mildred Munday, who took an interest in my topic, offered help­ ful assistance, and drew my attention to Weeds. Finally, I am indebted to Nancy Brockman, who provided many helpful services in the physical prepara­ tion of this work; to my women's studies students, who offered valuable insights; and to my family, whose love and support across a thousand miles helped me more than they can ever know. iii VITA March 29, 1947 Born—San Francisco, California 1969 B.A., The University of Houston 1972-1974 • Teaching Fellow, Department of English, The University of Houston 1974 M.A., The University of Houston 1977-1980 Research Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio State University 1976-1982 Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Theory of Fiction. Professors John Muste and Arnold Shapiro Women's Studies. Professor Barbara Rigney Nineteenth Century British Literature. Professor Marlene Longenecker Eighteenth Century British Literature. Professor James L. Battersby iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ill. VITA iv INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter I. "The Path to the Grave Straight and Plain": Edith Summers Kelley's Weeds 16 II. "The Suffering of the Dispossessed": Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth. 75 III. "Unlimn'd They Disappear": Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio: From the Thirties 123 IV. "The Secret in the Wood": Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker. 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 240 v INTRODUCTION "Consciousness is power. To create a new understanding of our literature is to make possible a new effect of that litera­ ture on us. And to make possible a new effect is in turn to provide the conditions for changing the culture that literature reflects." The American novel has always lent itself to authorial comment of social and cultural interest; since the 1880's, and with the rise of socialism, it has frequently concentrated on the proletariat's ex­ perience of reality, as differentiated from that of more politically and economically privileged classes. «*• Some novelists who have written exposes of the plight of the impoverished can rightly be called propagandists, their works having more historical than literary con­ sequence. Others, such as Theodore Dreiser, John Steinbeck, Frank Norris, and Sinclair Lewis, created works which have aesthetic merit as well as historical importance. These novelists were able to produce literature with characters so fully developed and delineated that the reader could empathize with them 1 2 and their condition. The language of such novels is impressive in its care, precision, and evocative power; the scenes are immediate and realistic; the ideas, themes, and images are the stuff of common experience, dreams, and hopes. Such writers blended the artistry of perspective, character, action, and language so that the reader is pleased and satisfied with the literary effectiveness of the work, while at the same time stirred by the message—the reminder that there exists a class of people who have not always had advan­ tages, but do have universal human needs, feelings, and desires that are often thwarted by the social circumstances in which they find themselves. We have long known and respected our male writers of the proletarian novel; but their fame has overshadowed the fact that many women writers—most of them unknown to the general public until only the last decade--have also given us novels that concentrate on men, women, and children who are struggling to survive in a shadowy world of financial, physical, and emotional deprivation, people who are representatives of a reality their creators would like to see altered. Some of these rediscovered women writers and their works include Rebecca Harding Davis' "Life in the Iron Mills" (1861), Charlotte Teller's The Cage (1907), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' 3 The Silent Partner (1871), Amanda Douglas1 Hope Mills (1880), Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers (1925), Elizabeth Madox Roberts' The Time of Man (1926), Mary H. Vorse's Strike! (1930), Clara Weatherwax' Marching I Marching! (1935), and Josephine Herbst's trilogy about the Trexler family (1930's). Many of these women writers wrote out of sheer moral passion; others were socialist reformers intent solely on revolution; still others were craftswomen who knew how to write well about their subjects, to convey them in a way both aesthetically satisfying and sociologically invigorating. But all of these women had something to say about the inequities of classism-- the disenfranchisement of the working class by the upper classes. They wrote protest literature that "roots out the essentials about the human condition rather than perpetuating false ideolqgies" concerning 2 the oppressed. They were, however, women writing about a subject that disturbed many people. Although the critics often praised their novels, the reading public — struggling with its own problems during the Depression, World War II, and the McCarthy Era--was generally unreceptive to either the ideas of these women or their dark subjects. Along with the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements of our own 4 generation has come a renewed concern for under­ privileged minorities and for the talents of women artists. Fortunately, some of those women writers, whose works languished in obscurity for decades, are now gaining recognition: their novels are being republished; their ideas are finding a new audience; and their works are being acclaimed as lost master­ pieces. Among these rediscovered American works by women are Edith Summers Kelley's Weeds (1923), Agnes Smedley's Daughter of Earth (1929), Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio: From the Thirties (1932-1937 ; published, 1974), and Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker (1954), the last a descendent of the proletarian novel of the 1920's and 1930's. I have chosen these novels for their artistic value, sociological importance, and feminist perspective. They differ from most of their contemporaries' works in that they are well-crafted novels, focussed on women, with either an explicit or an implicit feminist tone. In their apprehension of the feminine soul surviving in anguish, strength, and hope, they anticipate novels by contemporary artists such as Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and Marge Piercy. Finally, and most importantly,- they write about the oppression of women and the poor as a historical reality. Sheila Rowbotham 5 comments that "oppression is not an abstract moral 3 condition but a social and historical experience." These women writers authenticate the experience of oppression and make it both an aesthetic and a political contribution to American literature. All four writers lived some aspect of the lives they portray. Smedley and Olsen were born into the working-class experience; Arnow and Kelley adopted it.