“Strange Homecomings” Place, Identity Formation, and the Literary Constructions of Departure and Return in the Works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway by Matthew David Klauza A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama May 14, 2010 Keywords: Jewett, Twain, Hemingway, Home, Place, Travel Approved by Miriam Marty Clark, Chair, Associate Professor of English George Crandell, Professor of English Alan Gribben, Professor of English, Auburn University Montgomery Abstract This dissertation considers place identity theory to examine three American authors’ constructions of place. It examines the literature of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway for what it might reveal about their changing attitudes toward home, specifically examining the literary manifestations of a “homecoming” when these authors’ returns force them to confront simultaneously a changed place and feelings of dislocation. Recognizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in transportation and their effects on the traveler’s understanding of place, this study also addresses how recent contributions by place identity theorists inform a writer’s attachment to place and the effects of travel on that attachment. Each chapter examines how the author connected to his or her hometown and how travel from it affected the writer’s understanding of the place, before exploring the literary effects of this experience. Sarah Orne Jewett’s association with Berwick, Maine, is complicated by travel away from it, as evident in her stories “A Native of Winby” and “A Spring Sunday,” among others. Mark Twain’s departures and returns from his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, challenge his association with place, and evidence of his deteriorating place identity spans his major works from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer through No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger. Ernest Hemingway’s service in World War I affected his association with Horton Bay, Michigan, and its surrounding areas, informing his Nick Adams stories, particularly “Fathers and Sons” and “Big Two- ii Hearted River.” Ultimately, this dissertation addresses the extent to which place and changes to a writer’s sense of place can influence literature. iii Acknowledgements I am so very grateful to my wife, Tracy, and my children, Jakob, and Ava. Their excitement, encouragement, support, patience, and love fill my life. I would also like to thank Dr. Miriam Marty Clark, Chair, and Dr. Alan Gribben and Dr. George Crandell, committee members, for all of their help in the direction, research, and writing of this dissertation. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Sarah Orne Jewett, Loss, and Re-Imagined Realism .......................................9 Chapter 2: Mark Twain, Homesickness, and Hannibal ...................................................69 Chapter 3: Ernest Hemingway, Lost Places, and Lost Generations ..............................137 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................185 Appendix 1 .....................................................................................................................203 Appendix 2 .....................................................................................................................204 v INTRODUCTION In The Small Town in American Literature, David M. Cooke and Craig G. Swauger observe that nineteenth-century writers saw the small town as a desirable place in which to live and work and bring up a family; it provided a security, a feeling of belonging. However, many writers in the last part of the nineteenth century and from that time on … began to see the frontier and, later the small town, as a place where people led the same dreary lives of people living elsewhere. The nostalgia associated with the small town began to fade. (vii) This time period marks a shift in which writers looked homeward not with pride but with varying feelings of sympathy, embarrassment, and sadness. This change in perspective was influenced by developments in transportation and mobility that provided easier means for people to travel away from their homes. Despite these comings-and-goings, little attention has been given to the literary effects of returning to a place. My goal is to examine the works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway for what they might reveal about their changing attitudes toward home, brought about by their departures and returns. At this time, America was moving in new and different ways. Two key elements in this movement were westward expansion and industrialization. Until approximately 1880, most movement in the United States was long-distance, westward migration (Weinstein, Gross, and Rees 41). Beginning near the end of the century and continuing 1 through the 1920s, industrialization called for urbanization, and a pattern of migration toward urban areas emerged (41). Fueled by an influx of people from rural areas (and also immigrants from foreign countries), cities such as New York and Chicago experienced considerable growth (Wiebe 12). Boston became a major financial center (15). Western cities such as Denver and Kansas City emerged as people moved west in increasing numbers (12). Nineteenth-century developments in transportation aided in this movement, providing a greater percentage of the population with unprecedented ease of access to newer areas of the country and the world. Riverboats turned the Mississippi and its tributaries into a transportation artery. The number of riverboats increased by five- hundred percent between the 1830s and the 1840s, transporting people throughout the Midwest (A. Lee 85).1 By the 1850s, people found that they could travel from New Orleans to Louisville in only five days (85). Similar expansions in railroads followed. For example in 1850, there were 9,021 miles of railroad track in operation (Firestone 127). Only two decades later, in 1870, there were 52,922 miles (127). By this time, passengers could travel from New York to San Francisco by train in six days, compared to the grueling four to five months by wagon just twenty-five years earlier (“America in Motion” 43). Essentially, American geographic accessibility was expanding: North and South with river traffic and East and West with the railroads. This movement continued into the twentieth century. “For the first time in human history,” writes Rebecca Edwards, “an ordinary person could cross an ocean in two weeks with reasonable safety, and the continent of North America in half the time” 1 According to Terence Lee, in 1846, there were 1,190 steamboats in operation on the Mississippi (85). Twelve years earlier, in 1834, there were only 230 (85). 2 (Edwards 54). Steamships made transatlantic travel easier and more affordable. The increasing availability travel ensued into the 1920s (48). Europe became much more accessible to Americans, and a lucrative currency exchange rate provided a much more comfortable way of life than in the United States (American Decades 36). Paris in particular became a desirable destination, especially for authors such as Gertrude Stein, Robert McAlman, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound (American Decades 36). Parisian publication opportunities abounded, and writers from diverse backgrounds made their way there. In addition, artists, tourists, and even laborers turned toward there as well (American Decades 36). Ultimately, people were moving—world- wide, including travel within and from the United States. This new American mobility creates several questions related to the central topic of this study, the relationship between author and place. How did authors such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway come to understand their homes? How did that understanding affect their self-perception? How did travel away from those home places affect their understanding of home, and by extension come to understand themselves? How did returning to a changed home as a changed person challenge their understanding of the place and their identity? And most importantly, how did this entire experience impact their literary works? This new-found mobility called for fresh considerations of place. The accessibility to travel increased space from home, both in the literal sense—opening new territory for settlement—and in the abstract sense of conceptualizing home. Alan Trachtenberg describes the railroads’ role in this increase: “The American railroad 3 seemed to create new spaces, new regions of comprehension” (59).2 The same could be said for the developing transportation in general; this new means of transportation and mobility caused a change in perspective for travelers. Efficient travel to and from home forced new conceptions of it; people suddenly were able to view home from afar, having ventured to new places and having seen their homes objectively. From that perspective, individuals began to re-conceptualize their home. “Home” was no longer a central place. It became a place from