Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction

232 Pages·1997·33.43 MB·English

by  Janet Beer (auth.)

KATE CHOPIN, EDITH WHARTON AND
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
STUDIES IN SHORT FICTION
Also by Janet Beer
EDITH WHARTON: Traveller in the Land of Letters
Kate Chopin,
Edith Wharton and
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Studies in Short Fiction
Janet Beer
Principal Lecturer
Department of English
Roehampton Institute, London
First published in Great Britain 1997 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills. Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-26017-1 ISBN 978-1-349-26015-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-26015-7
First published in the Uni ted States of America 1997 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division.
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-21095-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beer, lanet, 1956-
Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman :
studies in short fiction / Janet Beer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-21095-3 (cloth)
I. Short stories, American-Women authors-History and criticism.
2. American fiction-Women authors-History and criticism.
3. American fiction-20th century-History and criticism.
4. American fiction-19th century-History and criticism. 5. Women
and Iiterature-United States. 6. Chopin, Kate, 1851-1904-
-Criticism and interpretation. 7. Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937-
-Criticism and interpretation. 8. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins,
I 860-1 935-Criticism and interpretation. 9. Short story.
I. Title.
PS374.S5B44 1997
813'.4099287--dc21 97-34098
CIP
© lanet Beer 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1997
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be Iiable to
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The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 432
06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98
Für David
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Studies in Short Fiction - An Introduction 1
2 "dah you is, settin' down, lookin' jis' like w'ite folks!"
Ethnicity Enacted in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction 24
3 Without End: the Shape and Form of Desire in
Kate Chopin's Short Fiction 40
4 Kate Chopin's Short Short Stories - on the
Verge(s) of Narrative 66
5 Edith Wharton and the Coherence of the
Novella: From Initiation to Disillusion 91
6 Edith Wharton, Literary Ghosts and the Writing of
New England 116
7 The Means and Ends of Genre in the Short Fiction
of Charlotte Perkins Gilman 147
8 Charlotte Perkins Gilman' s Analogues - Reiterating
the Social Health 174
9 'The Yellow Wallpaper' on Film - Dramatising
Mentallllness 197
Conclusion 214
References and Bibliography 216
Index 220
vü
Acknowledgements
Aversion of Chapter Two, '''dah you is, settin' down, lookin' jis'
like w'ite folks!" Ethnicity Enacted in Kate Chopin's Short Fiction',
first appeared in The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 24, 1994
and a portion of Chapter 5, 'Edith Wharton and the Coherence of
the Novel1a: Frorn Initiation to Disillusion', in the Virago Press
Edition of Madame de Treymes, London, 1995.
Grateful acknowledgernent is made to Syracuse University Press
to reproduce material frorn Kessler, Carol Farley Charlotte Perkins
Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia with Selected Writings (Liverpool
University Press, 1995). Grateful acknowledgernent is also made to
Associated University Presses for permission to reproduce material
frorn Knight, Denise D. (ed.) 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and Selected
Stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (London: Associated University
Presses, 1994). Extracts frorn 'The Storm' and other stories are
reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press frorn
The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, edited by Per Seyersted,
copyright 1969 by Louisiana State University Press.
Extracts frorn Kate Chopin's Account Book are authorised by the
Missouri Historical Society, St Louis. Excerpts frorn 'Bewitched' are
reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon and
Schuster, frorn The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, copyright 1925by
Pictorial Review Co.; copyright renewed 1953 by the Hearst Cor
poration. Excerpts frorn 'All Souls' and the Preface are reprinted
with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon and Schuster
frorn The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, copyright 1937 by D.
Appleton-Century Co.; copyright renewed 1965 by William R.
Tyler. Excerpts frorn 'Friends' and 'The Angel at the Grave' are
reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a divison of Simon and
Schuster, frorn The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, edited by
Richard W.B. Lewis (New York: Scribner, 1968). Excerpts frorn 'The
Young Gentlemen' were reprinted by permission of William B.
Tyler and the Watkins/Loomis Agency.
I would like to acknowledge the help of a number of people and
organisations in the research and writing of this book and rnust
begin with Sister Bemadette Porter and the Society of the Sacred
ix
x Acknowledgements
Heart, the providing body for Digby Stuart College of the Roe
hampton Institute, who both helped in the funding of a visit to the
Missouri Historical Society in St Louis and extended the most
wonderful hospitality whilst I was there. In particular Sister Mary
Byles was the perfect guide to old and new St Louis. I am very
grateful to my employer, the Roehampton Institute, and all my
colleagues in the Department of English for allowing me leave to
work on this book. I would also like to say how much the profes
sional and personal support of Linda Thomas, Joanna Thom
borrow, Shän Wareing and Ishtla Singh has meant to me; I have
always feIt very privileged to be an honorary linguist in their
company.
I want to give special mention to my colleague, Kevin McCarron,
whose dear insights into many and varied texts, genres and
problems of composition have been of inestimable help throughout
the last four years of teaching and writing. He is, and I hope will
always remain, a very good friend. The encouragement and
support of Ann Thompson and Elaine Showalter have also been a
great and exceptional privilege during the period in which I was
working on this book. I would also like to express a debt of
gratitude to the dramatist, Maggie Wadey, for her time and
patience, to Lionel Kelly for his continuing kindness and for the
opportunities he has extended to me, to Lesley Cassie for succour
both intellectual and emotional, to Kay and Robert Bums for their
unfailing warmth and hospitality on visits to the United States and
to Katherine Joslin whose darity of thought and incisiveness on
electronic mail never cease to amaze me. My chi1dren, Tom and
Helena, throughout the composition of this book, have been
interested commentators on my various moods and activities and
I would like to pay tribute here to their resilience, their good-nature
and to tell them how much I love them.
1
Kate Chopin, Edith
Wharton and Charlotte
Perkins Gilman: Studies in
Short Fiction - An
Introd uction
The three authOI'S who are the subjects of this book, Kate Chopin
(1850-1904), Edith Wharton (1862-1937) and Charlotte Perkins
Gilman (1860-1935), were prolific and innovative short-story
writers. All three wrote short stories throughout their professional
lives and were also practitioners in other genres; all wrote poetry,
for private and public consumption, both Gilman and Wharton
wrote novels, criticism, autobiography, essays and cultural cri
tiques, Wharton wrote travel books and Gilman had a long and
distinguished career as a sociologist, lecturing and writing outside
the academic establishment to a wide range of different audiences.
Chopin, the most dedicated short story writer of the three, wrote a
few minor articles and was the author of three nove1s: one, Young
Dr Gosse, was destroyed after she failed to find a publisher for it,
another, At Fault, was published at her own expense in 18901 and
her third and best known, The Awakening, was published in 1899,
toward the end of her life.
In this book I will be looking at the work of these writers only in
their short fiction but as this short fiction comes in a variety of
shapes and guises I will be ranging between discussions of Kate
Chopin's micro-narratives, stories of less than a thousand words,
and Edith Wharton's novellas, Sanctuary, The Touchstone and
Madame de Treymes. The chapters are all discrete, all explore
separate aspects of the writers and, although there are many
grounds for comparison between them, my central concem here
is not to sustain the analogous qualities of their work. In each
chapter I take an aspect of the short fiction of the individual writer
1