WEDEHASE, ERIN, Ph.D. “The Path She Had Chosen”: Mobility in Works by American Women Regionalists from the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century, (2014) Directed by Dr. Karen Kilcup, 276 pp. Through the lens of mobility studies, this dissertation reexamines contemporary and historical critical assumptions about the genre of late-nineteenth and early twentieth- century regionalism. Many regionalist scholars such as Hamlin Garland, Richard Brodhead, and Amy Kaplan argue for this literature’s idolatry of backwards, homogeneous, and culturally sluggish spaces. However, through analysis of regional characters’ mobility in texts by Sarah Orne Jewett, Helen Hunt Jackson, Sarah Barnwell Elliott, and Sui Sin Far, I make three major claims that refute this mindset. First, I argue that studying mobility in these texts generates new readings of the novels' interest in social reform. Critics such as Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse argue that regionalist texts critique social injustices by inviting privileged readers to feel for marginalized groups. However, rather than always reading the marginalized figures as passive recipients of readers’ pity, I argue that these characters use their mobility to remove themselves from unjust situations, thus themselves becoming agents of social change. Secondly, I assert that the characters’ movements bring new cultures into towns, mobilize existing cultures, and destabilize geographic boundaries, thus making regional spaces more about progress and cultural fluidity than demographic, spatial, and temporal fixity. Finally, this project builds on the concept of the global region, arguing that examples of mobility in these texts show how characters can simultaneously maintain local identities invested in reforming local communities and an increasing global worldview. My dissertation begins with analysis of Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs in which I illustrate how the narrator uses her mobility to bond with the local community. These interactions continually alter her impression of the region, establishing it as a heterogeneous space with permeable geographic boundaries. While Jewett's novel focuses on how mobility unites communities, my work with Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona demonstrates how movement generates agency for marginalized groups left out of dominant communities. Ramona’s many relocations call for Native sovereignty while her eventual immigration to Mexico creates a transnational identity that resists regionalism’s ostensible desire to locate identities in set regions. I then turn to Sarah Barnwell Elliott’s The Durket Sperret, arguing that the heroine’s movements throughout her Appalachian region undermine myths about the region's uniform poverty and instead reveal a diverse class system that subverts critical assumptions about regionalism's desire for cultural homogeneity and fixed (economic) boundaries. Finally, I assert that Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance further evidences regionalism’s interest in demographic heterogeneity and cultural multiplicity when her characters use localized movement to create complex cultural identities that a sinophobic America wanted to deny. In all of the texts examined, assumptions about the genre’s interest in nostalgia, geographic fixity, and cultural authenticity dissolve as the characters use their movement to connect with local cultures and simultaneously become citizens of the world. "THE PATH SHE HAD CHOSEN": MOBILITY IN WORKS BY AMERICAN WOMEN REGIONALISTS FROM THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY by Erin Wedehase A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2014 Approved by ______________________________ Committee Chair APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation written by ERIN WEDEHASE has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair __________________________ Karen Kilcup Committee Members __________________________ Maria Sanchez Committee Members __________________________ Scott Romine ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................1 Why Mobility ..............................................................................................7 Why These Authors ...................................................................................12 Regions as Unfixed, Yet Grounded Forces................................................25 Notes ..........................................................................................................32 II. JEWETT’S DUNNET LANDING: “A HAPPY, RURAL SEAT OF VARIOUS VIEWS” ........................................................................................33 Contextualizing Jewett’s Mobility .............................................................35 Not the Average Travel Narrative..............................................................38 Mobility in Dunnet Landing ......................................................................40 Belonging through Shared Mobility ..........................................................45 Empathetic Mobility ..................................................................................53 Expanding Regions ....................................................................................59 How Characters’ Mobility Resists Homogeneous Spaces .........................68 Notes ..........................................................................................................76 III. MOBILITY AS AGENCY AND NATIVE SOVEREIGNTY IN HELEN HUNT JACKSON’S RAMONA ................................................80 The Agency of Ramona’s Relocations ......................................................82 A Sovereign Mobility ................................................................................94 Sentimentalized Mobility .........................................................................105 The Challenge to Critical Assumptions about Regionalism ....................110 Looking Backward ...................................................................................122 Notes ........................................................................................................128 IV. MOBILIZING CLASS IN SARAH BARNWELL ELLIOTT’S THE DURKET SPERRET .......................................................136 Elliott as a Southern, Working-Class Writer ...........................................139 As Others See Us: Class in Nineteenth-Century Appalachia ...................143 Theorizing Class in The Durket Sperret ..................................................150 Mobilizing Class in The Durket Sperret ..................................................157 A Challenge to the Critical Neglect of Class in Regionalism ..................166 iii Looking Backward ...................................................................................170 Notes ........................................................................................................177 V. LOCAL MOTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY IN SUI SIN FAR’S MRS. SPRING FRAGRANCE ...........................................................184 Anxiety about the Chinese Immigrant .....................................................186 The Privilege to Move .............................................................................194 The Immobilized Character in Mrs. Spring Fragrance ...........................197 Employing Localmotion to Resist Chinese American Stereotypes .........................................................................204 Moving Towards Selfhood in Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Regionalist Literature .........................................................................213 Looking Backward ...................................................................................220 Sui Sin Far, the Local Cosmopolitan .......................................................228 Notes ........................................................................................................230 VI. REGIONAL MOBILITY IN A GLOBAL WORLD .........................................232 Uniting the Local and the Global .............................................................234 Distinguishing the Local and the Global .................................................238 Balancing the Local and the Global through Movement .........................245 Notes ........................................................................................................248 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................250 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the transportation exhibit of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, fairgoers delighted in the broad examples of land and oceanic travel. Objects on display consisted of Native canoes, Italian gondolas, Japanese warships, replicas of the Campania and Lucania, current transatlantic steamers, as well as a Brazilian boat built out of logs and capable of carrying nearly five tons of sugar ("Notes" 69.14). Viewers also found various models of locomotives in which "no home luxury is wanting," as well as farm wagons, one-seated two-wheelers, a Mexican ox-cart,