Narrating Class in American Fiction

273 Pages·2009·1.83 MB·English

by  William Dow (auth.)

American Literature Readings
in the st Century
Series Editor: Linda Wagner-Martin
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by
contemporary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of
the nineteenth and twentieth century in the United States.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Freak Shows in Modern American Imagination: Constructing the
Damaged Body from Willa Cather to Truman Capote
By Thomas Fahy
Arab American Literary Fictions, Cultures, and Politics
By Steven Salaita
Women & Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing: From Faulkner to
Morrison
By Kelly Lynch Reames
American Political Poetry in the 21st Century
By Michael Dowdy
Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and
James: Thinking and Writing Electricity
By Sam Halliday
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Racial Angles and the Business of Literary Greatness
By Michael Nowlin
Sex, Race, and Family in Contemporary American Short Stories
By Melissa Bostrom
Democracy in Contemporary U.S. Women’s Poetry
By Nicky Marsh
James Merrill and W.H. Auden: Homosexuality and Poetic Influence
By Piotr K. Gwiazda
Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Literary Criticism
Edited by Lyn Di Iorio Sandín and Richard Perez
The Hero in Contemporary American Fiction: The Works of Saul Bellow
and Don DeLillo
By Stephanie S. Halldorson
Race and Identity in Hemingway’s Fiction
By Amy L. Strong
Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism
By Jennifer Haytock
The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt
Vonnegut
By David Simmons
Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American
Literature: From Faulkner and Morrison to Walker and Silko
By Lindsey Claire Smith
The American Landscape in the Poetry of Frost, Bishop, and Ashbery:
The House Abandoned
By Marit J. MacArthur
Narrating Class in American Fiction
By William Dow
Narrating Class in
American Fiction
William Dow
NARRATING CLASS IN AMERICAN FICTION
Copyright © William Dow, 2009.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-60982-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-37627-8 ISBN 978-0-230-61796-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230617964
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dow, William.
Narrating class in American fi ction / William Dow.
p. cm.—(American literature readings in the twenty-fi rst century)
1. American fi ction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Social
classes in literature. 3. American fi ction—20th century—History and
criticism. 4. Working class in literature. I. Title.
PS374.S68D69 2009
813(cid:2).309355—dc22 2008017506
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: January 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my father, my mother, and Anne-Marie
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Case of Class 1
1 Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass:
“Hard Work and Blood” 17
2 Class and the Performative in Rebecca
Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills,
and Stephen Crane’s Maggie 45
3 Body Tramping, Class, and Masculine Extremes:
Jack London’s The People of the Abyss 75
4 “Always Your Heart”: Class Designs
in Jean Toomer’s Cane 105
5 Meridel Le Sueur’s Salute to Spring:
“A Movement Up Which All Are Moving” 133
6 Class, Work, and New Races: Zora Neale
Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and
Agnes Smedley’s Daughter of Earth 163
7 Class “Truths” in James Agee’s Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men 187
Conclusion: Going Back to Class 219
Notes 225
Works Cited 247
Index 263
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Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making. Among the many
friends and colleagues who have given extraordinary insight and
encouragement to this project, I would like to offer a special thanks
to Alan Wald, Karin Badt, Robert Shulman, Jon Delogu, Linda
Wagner-Martin, Paula Rabinowitz, David Coad, Jeanne Campbell
Reesman, John Hartsock, and Barbara Foley.
The research for this book was substantially aided by several
American University of Paris librarians. Thanks to Jorge Sosa, Isabelle
Dupuy-Llorente, Anne Guerineau, Michael Stoepel, Sally Murray,
Laurence Amoureux, and Jeff Gima.
Portions of chapter 2 appeared in Twisted from the Ordinary: Essays
on American Literary Naturalism, ed. Mary Papke (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 2003). Sections of chapter 3 were first
published as “Down and Out in London and Orwell,” Symbiosis 6. 1
(April 2002). An early version of chapter 4 was first published as “The
‘Great Design’ of Toomer’s Cane” in MELUS: The Journal of the
Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States,
and is reprinted here with the permission of MELUS. I’m grateful to
the editors and readers of these publications.