UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones 5-2011 “'You done cheat Mose out o' de job, anyways; we all knows dat'”: Faith healing in the fiction of Kate Chopin Karen Kel Roop University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Religion Commons Repository Citation Roop, Karen Kel, "“'You done cheat Mose out o' de job, anyways; we all knows dat'”: Faith healing in the fiction of Kate Chopin" (2011). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 971. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/2308513 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). 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For more information, please contact [email protected]. ―‗YOU DONE CHEAT MOSE OUT O‘ DE JOB, ANYWAYS; WE ALL KNOWS DAT‘‖: FAITH HEALING IN THE FICTION OF KATE CHOPIN by Karen Kel Roop Bachelor of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1975 Master of Arts University of Nevada, Las Vegas 1977 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English Department of English College of Liberal Arts Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vega May 2011 Copyright by Karen Kel Roop 2011 All Rights Reserved THE GRADUATE COLLEGE We recommend the dissertation prepared under our supervision by Karen Kel Roop entitled “„You Done Cheat Mose Out O‟ De Job, Anyways; We all Knows Dat‟”: Faith Healing in the Fiction of Kate Chopin be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English Darlene Unrue, Committee Chair John C. Unrue, Committee Member Joseph B. McCullough, Committee Member Joseph A. Fry, Graduate Faculty Representative Ronald Smith, Ph. D., Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate College May 2011 ii ABSTRACT “„You Done Cheat Mose Out O‟ De Job, Anyways; We All Knows Dat‟”: Faith Healing in the Fiction of Kate Chopin by Karen Kel Roop Dr. Darlene Unrue, Examination Committee Chair Professor of English University of Nevada, Las Vegas Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, the half-way mark of the century in which the country itself would be broken in two, Kate Chopin was destined to bear witness to the many divisions that have distinguished the United States. Especially noticeable in the post-Reconstruction period in which she wrote was the expanding chasm between the races. This dissertation argues that even Chopin‘s most seemingly orthodox Southern stories betray a quest for a theology capable of healing the physical, emotional, and spiritual ills omnipresent in the country and especially apparent in the post-Civil War South. The alternative to mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism, which Chopin indicts for furthering racial division, was the Voodoo of Louisiana and Haiti. This study shows that both her short fiction and two published novels incorporate elements of the African-based religion as tools for forging and metaphors of the interdependence of soul and body, individual and community, time and space. For Chopin‘s African American characters, the belief system serves as a source of power. Most of all, Chopin draws upon Voodoo values to question the role of art itself and to posit a more expansive notion of aesthetics than that which dominated Western thought of the late nineteenth century. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The process of writing this dissertation has been much like a Voodoo rite in which a cool, watery Rada god descends only to be followed by a hot, fiery Petro god. To maintain order amid such tumult has required the intervention of many wise priestesses and priests, otherwise known as mambos and houngans. Indeed, I owe thanks to a mambo I never met, ―Aunt Cynthy‖ who introduced my Texan mother to some conjure practices later passed on to me. Without my mother‘s stories about Cynthy, I might never have begun this literary and academic ritual. So I would like to thank Hilda Roop for giving me a glimpse into a past not that removed from the world Kate Chopin knew and recreated in her fiction. But I am also indebted to many women friends and colleagues who have encouraged me more recently as I have wrestled with the lwa. Special thanks go to the Three Graces in the Writing Center who helped me face down my own self-doubts and maneuver my way through the dissertation process: Drs. Natalie Hudson, Jacquie Elkouz, and Patrice Hollrah. Of course, this dissertation would never have come to fruition without the patient support of Professor Darlene Unrue, my committee chair. I must also acknowledge the houngans who made this dissertation possible. Although my studies ultimately took a different path, I cannot ignore the support I received at the University of Texas, Austin, where I began my doctoral work with my committee chair Professor James Duban and committee members Professors William Scheick and Donald Graham. At UNLV I owe thanks to Professor John Irsfeld, who brought me back into the fold at the university, and Professor Richard Harp, who has supported me at several academic junctures. Most of all, I would like to thank my committee members Professors iv Joseph A. Fry, John Unrue, and especially Joseph McCullough, who initiated my entrance into the doctoral program at UNLV and whose class inspired the paper that became the foundation for my dissertation. Apart from the lwa, mambos, and houngans are two individuals for whom no category seems to suffice. So I will simply say thank you to Bill, who in our lives together gave me the time and space to work, and to Walter Nowak, my Père Antoine whose spirit continues to sustain me and to whose memory I dedicate this dissertation. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv INTRODUCTION TWO EIGHTS, CHANGE OF STATES ....................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ‗NEGRO PROBLEM‘ ................... 14 At Fault: The Unhallowed Ground of Reunion and Redemption ............................... 15 The Savior‘s Sin: The Crack in ―A Dresden Lady in Dixie‖ ...................................... 73 CHAPTER 2 VOODOO LWA VS. JIM CROW LAW ..................................... 80 The Haitian Roots of Kate Chopin‘s Religious Revolution........................................ 94 The Voodoo Quest: ―And What about Explorers, Theosophists, Hoodoos?‖ .......... 120 Calling Down the Lwa .............................................................................................. 162 CHAPTER 3 AT THE CROSSROADS IN THE AWAKENING...................... 194 The Solitary Soul on the Celestial Railroad .............................................................. 198 Catholicism: The Pont to Voodoo ............................................................................ 225 The Lwa‘s Ride ......................................................................................................... 234 CONCLUSION MOSE‘S JOB .............................................................................. 277 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 285 VITA ............................................................................................................................... 320 vi INTRODUCTION TWO EIGHTS, CHANGE OF STATES In early American history, one of the most infamous theological developments originated with a bit of divination practiced by a group of teenage girls eager to know whom they would marry. The harmless event soon turned ugly as the Salem witchcraft trials unfolded in 1692, with the Barbados slave Tituba in the eye of the storm. Accused of initiating the girls‘ fits, Tituba turned state‘s evidence as a means of self-preservation and implicated other women as worshipers of Satan. While her slave and ethnic status undoubtedly contributed to her precarious position in the Salem proceedings, popular and academic assessments have often misrepresented Tituba as both an African and a Voodoo priestess. According to Elizabeth Reis, historians have finally recognized that Tituba was an indigenous woman of Barbados, but the myth that the slave practiced the African- based faith and regaled the Salem girls with stories of Voodoo has long endured.1 That Tituba was a scapegoat of Puritanism gone horribly awry is undeniable. That she has little to do with a study of the fin de siècle writer Kate Chopin might seem equally certain. Yet the seventeenth-century slave‘s experience exposed a tension between race and religion in the United States that did not relax with the hanging of the last Salem ―witch.‖ In the late nineteenth century,