University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 10-30-2009 Coffins,lo C sets, Kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing Of Home In Gendered Spaces Nicole Spottke University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Spottke, Nicole, "Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing Of Home In Gendered Spaces" (2009). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/33 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing Of Home In Gendered Spaces by Nicole Spottke A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Laura L. Runge-Gordon, Ph.D. Pat Rogers, Ph.D. Gurleen Grewal, Ph.D. Shirley D. Toland-Dix, Ph.D. Date of Approval: October 30, 2009 Keywords: Clarissa, Richardson, Leapor, Crumble Hall, Morrison, Bluest Eye, Paradise © Copyright 2009, Nicole Spottke To Mom and Dad, for introducing me to the idea of home and to John for joining me in the adventure of creating our own. Acknowledgments My acknowledgments date back to my master’s work at the State University of New York College at New Paltz. Sincere thanks to Carley Rees Bogarad whom I greatly mi s s ; I count myself blessed to have had her in my life, for it was she who saw something special in me when I didn’t. To Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and H.R. Stoneback for fostering that something special—I would never have gone this far without their believing in my abilities as a teacher, student, and scholar. To my colleagues at Valencia Community College, West thanks for patiently enduring my endless conversations beginning with, “my dissertation…” and to my deans Kim Long and Karen Borglum for making sure I had time off to take my exams and partial summers off to write. Thank you to the Aphra Behn Society, The Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS), and the Irving Deer family for your financial gifts and awards. My dearest friends, thank you for still being my friends even after my disappearance for months at a time. My family in Maine, the Jackson and Edwards fa mi l ies, but especially Chris and Lily, many thanks for sharing their home by the lake, a most perfect place to write. My professors, colleagues, and staff at the University of South Florida (USF) deserve my utmost respect for their support and guidance. I know I’ve said “thank you” hundreds of times, but one more to Lee Davidson is most appropriate for her patience with me throughout my PhD work and the dissertation process. I do apologize for any grief I have caused her along the way. I am grateful to Dr. Lynn Worsham for working with me even when she was no longer teaching at USF. Her guidance during the early stage of my Paradise chapter helped place this work in sharper focus and set the foundation for this dissertation. I extend deep gratitude to my dissertation panelists for giving of their time and supplying me with further thought and insight: Pat Rogers for suggesting various titles for further reading to include in both the Leapor and Richardson chapters, Gurleen Grewal for recommending I work on the Paradise chapter for publication, and Shirley D. Toland-Dix for encouraging me to question my arguments more, organize them more methodically, and make sure I have specifics for full development. Lastly, to my mentor, teacher, proofreader/editor, Laura L. Runge-Gordon, I thank her for sharing her “safe haven” with me in the summer, answering my every question, and for giving of her time for the reading over of multiple drafts of each chapter as well as the versions of those chapters for conference presentations. I blame her, especially, for drawing me away from the nineteenth-century and into my now beloved eighteenth-century British literature. Table of Contents Abstract iv Preface vi Introduction 1 The “Temporal Home” 6 The “Social Home” 7 The “Personal Home” 8 The “Physical Home” 12 The Texts 15 Notes 22 Chapter 1 Remodeling the Fragmented Estate: A Study of Home Space in Mary Leapor’s “Crumble Hall” 23 “Life’s Great Blessing”: The Importance of Friendship in Developing a Sense of Home 24 Of Unwanted Creatures… 29 Of Rooms and Furnishings… 37 “Its People First We Sing”: Reclaiming the Community in “Crumble-Hall” 45 Work, Rest, and Play… 53 Of Sir Wary’s Destruction and Mary Leapor’s Construction… 57 Notes 59 i Chapter Two Six Foot Seven and a Half by 25 and a Quarter Inches of Physical Space, an Infinity of Personal Space: Constructing Home in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa 67 Of Parlors and Closets: Clarissa’s Familial Home Space 68 Boarding House or Brothel? Clarissa’s London Residence 86 Of Wombs and Coffins: Clarissa’s Final Resting Place 100 Notes 115 Chapter Three Primers, Disinheritance, and the Need for “Ancestral Tradition”: Voicing Home in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye 118 Of Storefronts and “Old, Cold, and Green” Houses: Aberrations of Home and Community 119 Rapists and Protectors, Silencers and Singers: Parental Influence in Home Development 128 Psychotic Breakdown versus Narration: Voicing a Home of One’s Own 140 Notes 150 Chapter Four The Rapture of Holy Women Dancing in Hot Sweet Rain: A Space for Spiritual Enlightenment at Home in Toni Morrison’s Paradise 156 Living the American Dream: The Inequality of the Traditional Home 159 Why the Need for an Alternative Religion? 165 Let the Rituals Begin 168 Dancing with the Goddess 176 Paradise Reconsidered 179 ii Resurrections and Home Preservations: A Conclusion but not an Ending 182 Notes 185 Conclusion 190 Notes 195 Works Cited 196 About the Author End Page iii Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing of Home in Gendered Spaces Nicole Spottke ABSTRACT Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents uses anthropologist Liz Kenyon’s categories of home, Gaston Bachelard’s theories on the importance of imagination and metaphor in home building, as well as literary criticism, sociology, and feminist theory to examine values of “home” in various literary works of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This dissertation’s focus on the struggles within traditional home spheres highlights the female characters’ need of a protected space. Yet these characters realize they must allow for connections with various individuals to bring about such a safe space. Through the creative act of writing, Mary Leapor’s Mira in the poem, “Crumble Hall,” Samuel Richardson’s title character in Clarissa, and Toni Morrison’s Claudia MacTeer in The Bluest Eye and the convent women in Paradise, each oppressed within the home sphere, gain full access to all that the idealized home entails in constructing their individual homes; they rewrite space into a home of their own. The chapters herein are organized from lower-class to higher-class female characters beginning in the eighteenth century with Leapor’s servant narrator and moving up to Richardson’s higher-class character, followed by Morrison’s twentieth century iv impoverished youth in The Bluest Eye and variety of women both impoverished and well- off residing together in a convent in Paradise. v Preface A colleague once said, “I didn’t choose my topic; my topic chose me.” A lot of us scholars, especially women scholars who are moved by and moved to write about what we read, find truth in her words. My topic is a white house with black shutters. A peach tree in the front yard; a pear tree in the back—both cut down by my father when the squirrels were winning the war of the fruit. We lived there, my older sister, younger brother, mom and dad, the dog that wandered in through the back yard gate, a guinea pig, cat, various fish. We lived there in the house at the top of the hill, at the top of Independence Avenue. The house alone, however, did not make home; neither did just my family, but rather, the house, the family, community, and my neighborhood—they all created for me a sense of home. Growing up there was much like Toni Morrison’s description of her home, the place on which she modeled her first writing, The Bluest Eye: “I felt a very strong sense of place, not in terms of the country or the state, but in terms of the details, the feelings, the mood of the community, of the town” (qtd in Taylor-Guthrie 10). Like Morrison, I did not know much about the world around me, about my country. Although independence is an inherent part of what makes us these United States, I knew little about what the word “Independence” meant, aside from the word printed on green street signs at both ends of the hill. Yet, the people around me were a microcosm of the world and country—or, at least, the best our world and country can be. The older folks who lived up vi and down the street: our adopted Aunt Annie and Uncle Mel, our frequent babysitters; Mrs. Thobin calling her cat every evening at dusk; The Morse’s and their granddaughter, my first friend; Mr. Duncanson passing his beautiful roses over the fence, “careful of the thorns”; The Deckers who drove my mother to the Catskills to pick up my father’s car, abandoned when he had his heart attack; and the younger couple, the Lay’s, who moved in a few years after my family, with their son, Graham, just my brother’s size.