i DISABLING SEX EDUCATION: SCIENCE, NARRATIVE, AND THE FEMALE BODY IN FEMINIST MEDICAL FICTION, 1874-1916 by STEPHANIE PEEBLES TAVERA DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Arlington May 2017 Arlington, Texas Supervising Committee: Kenneth M. Roemer, Supervising Professor Stacy Alaimo Desiree Henderson Neill Matheson ii ABSTRACT Disabling Sex Education: Science, Narrative, and the Female Body in Feminist Medical Fiction, 1874-1916 Stephanie Peebles Tavera, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2016 Supervising Professor: Kenneth M. Roemer This dissertation offers a feminist disability theory approach to women’s medical fiction during the Comstock Law Era. I argue that, in responding to Comstockian censorship, women authors of medical fiction resisted sexed and gendered narratives in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sex education discourses, but in so doing, they recast the female body within disability rhetoric. Using feminist body theorists such as Judith Butler, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Emily Martin, and Elizabeth Grosz, I frame each work of feminist medical fiction within a specific historical nexus before discussing how the authors–Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, Annie Nathan Meyer, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman–rescript the scientific vocabulary at their disposal to shift the concept of disability from one female body to another. I find that although their coding techniques were successful, many authors of feminist medical fiction imitated the very rhetoric of disability they resisted in paternal scientific narratives, and which we have inherited in twenty-first century reproductive health and sex education discourses. iii Since nineteenth-century women authors of medical fiction anticipate contemporary feminist theorists and disability theorists, studying a genealogy of disability rhetoric in reproductive health and sex education discourses at the fin de siècle opens up a space for imagining how we might rescript scientific narratives in present-day sex education. I call this theoretical move “dismodern feminism,” following Lennard J. Davis’ concept of “dismodernism” which argues for placing disability at the center of postmodern theoretical discourse. Instead of simply using disability as the vector or lens through which postmodernity examines and defines subjects, I suggest using the disabled female body as a starting point for theorizing an intersectional approach to reproductive health and sex education. Authors of feminist medical fiction initiate this conversation not only because they engage disability rhetoric in their literary works by displacing disability from scientific definitions of the female body, but also because this very displacement has cultural implications for actual impaired bodies then and now. Moreover, many of these women authors of feminist medical fiction are well-known figures from nineteenth-century social reform and the American literary canon: Rebecca Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, Annie Nathan Meyer, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Yet, their medical fiction texts remain largely unknown and understudied among scholars and students. My project seeks to recover these texts which offer a more nuanced approach to early feminist activism and theory, and further, theorize a dismodern feminist sex education approach which draws from historical and contemporary fiction and nonfiction. iv Copyright by Stephanie Peebles Tavera 2017 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For their dedicated time and attention to my work, I must first and foremost thank my supervising committee: Kenneth Roemer, Stacy Alaimo, Desiree Henderson, and Neill Matheson. The courses I have taken with each of you molded my external life, or professional work–my research and writing–and my inner life, or thinking process. Thank you all for helping me to ask questions differently, approach research creatively, and write narratively. Special thanks to Ken Roemer, whose patient guidance I am certain I tested in multiple ways. As someone who has suffered anxiety for most of her adult life, I could not have accomplished this journey without multiple pillars of support. I have been blessed with exactly what I needed. Thank you to my husband, Esteban Tavera Morales, for his patience and unconditional love. This year not only marks one milestone–my doctoral completion–but also another, ten years together in a supportive relationship. Here’s to many more milestones together. I must also thank our compassionate son, Aidan. He is always ready to offer me a hug when I need it most. To my parents, Steve and Christine Peebles, who have supported me in various ways–financially and emotionally– throughout my entire educational career–and my life. I have been a member of three writing cohorts during my doctoral journey, a privilege not everyone can claim, and so I thank the members of each writing cohort for keeping me accountable, commiserating with me, and supporting my work: Mimi Rowntree, Sarah Shelton, and Joul Smith (The original cohort! Can you believe we’ve been studying together weekly since comps exams?); Robert LaRue and Rachel Mariboho (my dissertation cohort); and Natalya Cherry (my most recent writing buddy). Special thanks to my friend and fourth-floor officemate, Sean Farrell. Thanks also to the many colleagues, mentors, and collaborators without whom my life in academia simply would not be full and lively: Estee Beck, Penny Ingram, Peggy Kulesz, Tra Daniels Lerberg, Tim vi Morris, Jeff Marchand, Hope McCarthy, Lupita Murillo Tinnen, Sonja Watson, and Kathryn Warren. No (wo)man is an island, and I certainly could not have done this alone. Finally, I must thank the Jacob Rader Marcus Center at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio for hosting me during Spring Break in March 2015. The intensive research conducted in the AJA archives during that week provided me with material on Annie Nathan Meyer, portions of which have been used for the third chapter of this dissertation, “At ‘the Crux’ of Sex Education: Disabling Venereal Diseases in Meyer’s Helen Brent, M.D. and Gilman’s The Crux.” Special thanks to Kevin Proffitt who helped arrange my visit to the American Jewish Archives. Thank you to Gail Madden who kindly arranged my stay in the Sisterhood Dormitory at Hebrew Union College. I must also thank the University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Liberal Arts for funding my dissertation research travel and for funding multiple conferences at which I could present my research throughout my doctoral candidacy. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………………ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………….v INTRODUCTION: DISABLING SEX AT THE FIN DE SIECLE: RESCRIPTING DISABILITY DURING COMSTOCKIAN CENSORSHIP………………………………...……1 Historical Context: Comstock, Censorship, and Sex Education….…………………….....5 Theoretical Frameworks: Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, and Disability Theory…...16 Organization of the Dissertation…………………………......…………………………..35 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….40 CHAPTER ONE: DISABLING THE FEMALE PHYSICIAN: A DISMODERN PROPOSAL FOR SEX EDUCATION……………………………..……………….…….………………..….42 Repressive Fictions, or Disabling the Body of the Female Physician……………….......46 Dismodern Subjects, or Disabling the Sex Educator………………………………….....62 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….....71 CHAPTER TWO: DISABLING THE TOMBOY: DOMESTIC SEX EDUCATION IN ALCOTT’S EIGHT COUSINS AND GILMAN’S “JOAN’S DEFENDER”…………………....74 How Private Sex Education Entered Public Discourse, Or The Clarke Debates………...77 Of Corsets and Copulating…and Tomboys and Lesbians…………………………….....90 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...106 CHAPTER THREE: AT “THE CRUX” OF SEX EDUCATION: DISABLING VENEREAL DISEASES IN MEYER’S HELEN BRENT, M.D. AND GILMAN’S THE CRUX...………….108 (Dis)Entangling Diseases in Sex Education………………............................................113 viii Disabling Syphilis, or Anti-VD Campaign Seduction Narratives in Gilman’s “The Vintage” and The Crux ...………………………………………………………………116 Scaring Her to Death, or Sex Education in Meyer’s Helen Brent, M.D.………….…....128 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...…140 CHAPTER FOUR: DISABLING BIRTH CONTROL: SCIENTIFIC SEX EDUCATION AND EUGENIC FEMINISM IN GILMAN’S HERLAND……………………………….…………..143 Satirizing Sex for Serious Sex Education ……………………………………………...147 (Dis)Embodied Subjectivities in Herlandian Sex Education …………………………..163 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..….175 CONCLUSION: REPRODUCING FICTION: SCIENCE, NARRATIVE, AND THE FEMALE BODY IN WOMEN-OF-COLOR FICTION….…………………………………………..…...178 NOTES………………………………………………………………………………………….188 Notes to Introduction…………………………………………………………………...188 Notes to Chapter One…………………………………………………………………...195 Notes to Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………..202 Notes to Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………208 Notes to Chapter Four…………………………………………………………………..214 Notes to Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….221 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………223 1 INTRODUCTION DISABLING SEX AT THE FIN DE SIECLE: RESCRIPTING1 DISABLITY DURING COMSTOCKIAN CENSORSHIP In her July 2016 TedTalk, Deaf lawyer, artist, and human rights advocate Elise Roy described a challenge she faced–woodworking with a tool–which created space for greater innovation for people with and without disabilities alike. Woodworking tools, Elise explained, make a particular sound when they “kickback,” but Elise could not hear that sound, since she is Deaf. Thus, she