Reading the American Novel 1780-1865 PDF
Preview Reading the American Novel 1780-1865
Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 READING THE NOVEL General Editor: Daniel R. Schwarz Theaimofthisseriesistoprovidepracticalintroductionstoreading thenovelinboththeBritishandIrish,andtheAmericantraditions. Published Reading the Nineteenth-Century Novel Harry E. Shaw and Alison Case Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890–1930 Daniel R. Schwarz Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Brian W. Shaffer Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 Shirley Samuels Reading the American Novel 1865–1914 G. R. Thompson Forthcoming Reading the Twentieth-Century American Novel James Phelan Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 Shirley Samuels Thiseditionfirstpublished2012 (cid:2)2012ShirleySamuels BlackwellPublishingwasacquiredbyJohnWiley&SonsinFebruary2007. Blackwell’spublishingprogramhasbeenmergedwithWiley’sglobalScientific,Technical,and MedicalbusinesstoformWiley-Blackwell. 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Designationsusedbycompaniestodistinguishtheirproductsareoftenclaimedastrademarks.All brandnamesandproductnamesusedinthisbookaretradenames,servicemarks,trademarksor registeredtrademarksoftheirrespectiveowners.Thepublisherisnotassociatedwithanyproductor vendormentionedinthisbook.Thispublicationisdesignedtoprovideaccurateandauthoritative informationinregardtothesubjectmattercovered.Itissoldontheunderstandingthatthepublisher isnotengagedinrenderingprofessionalservices.Ifprofessionaladviceorotherexpertassistanceis required,theservicesofacompetentprofessionalshouldbesought. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Samuels,Shirley. ReadingtheAmericannovel,1780–1865/ShirleySamuels. p.cm. Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-0-631-23287-2(cloth) 1. UnitedStates–Inliterature.2. Americanfiction–19thcentury–Historyandcriticism. 3. Americanfiction–18thcentury–Historyandcriticism.4. Nationalcharacteristics,American,in literature.5. Socialhistoryinliterature.6. Identity(Psychology)inliterature.7. Socialpsychology inliterature.8. Literatureandsociety–UnitedStates.9. Literatureandhistory–UnitedStates. 10. Booksandreading–UnitedStates–History. I.Title. PS374.U5S262012 813’.209–dc23 2011032108 AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. Thisbookispublishedinthefollowingelectronicformats:WileyOnlineLibrary978-1-4443-5435-5 Setin11/14ptMinonbyThomsonDigital,Noida,India 1 2012 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xv 1 Introduction tothe American Novel: From CharlesBrockden Brown’s Gothic Novels to Caroline Kirkland’s Wilderness 1 2 HistoricalCodes inLiterary Analysis: The Writing Projects of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Hannah Crafts 23 3 Women, Blood, andContract: Land Claims in Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Sedgwick, and James Fenimore Cooper 45 4 Black Rivers, Red Letters, andWhite Whales: Mobility and Desire inCatharine Williams,Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville 67 5 Promotingthe Nation in James Fenimore Cooper and Harriet BeecherStowe 91 6 Women’sWorldsinthe Nineteenth-Century Novel: Susan B. Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,FannyFern, E. D.E. N. Southworth,Harriet Wilson, and LouisaMay Alcott 119 Afterword 151 Further Reading 165 Index 171 v Preface .......................................................................................................... “Did you ever hit anything human or intelligible?” JamesFenimore Cooper,The Deerslayer(1841) “Is this theend?Is life asfragile, as frail?” ......................R..e..b.e..c.c..a...H..a..r.d..in..g...D..a..v.i.s.,..L..i.f.e..i.n..t.h..e..I.r.o.n...M..i.l.l.s..(.1..8..6.1..). Thisbookpaysattentiontohowfictionworksasahistoricalpractice. Inparticular,itintroduceswaystothinkaboutnovelswritteninthe United States during its early development as a national enterprise and before the historical break we know as the Civil War.The early chapters present an overview of such novels as well as introducing fictional genres; they include possible ways for readers to interpret thesegenres.Thelaterchapterscarryoutmorespecificexaminations ofparticularnovels,askinghowtheyestablishanddevelopgroundsof inquiry.Suchinquiriesincludestoriesaboutmurder,seduction,and seavoyages,aswellashousekeeping,lamplighting,anderrandsinto thewilderness.Throughoutthebook,criticalattentionispaidtohow to interpret a relation between the volatile (and sometimes quiet) eventsthattakeplaceindifferentlocationsandatdifferenttimes,and thestoriesthatpeopleintheUnitedStatesmadeuptoexplainthose events and themselves. TotellstoriesabouttheongoingenterprisewenowcalltheUnited Statesengagesreadersinarelationbetweenhistoryandthenarrative eventsthatthisbookwillsometimestakeforgranted,yettheposition ofnarrativewill,ofnecessityinabookaboutmakingfiction,always vii Preface take priority. A literary history of the United States assumes both historyandliterariness,howeverinterconnectedandinterpenetrating theseterms.Theutilityofsuchapositionwillemergeinthepagesthat follow. The major authors who appear in these pages – Louisa May Alcott,CharlesBrockdenBrown,JamesFenimoreCooper,Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe – keep com- panywithauthorswhomightnotbeasfamiliarastheyoncewereto readers–FannyFern,CarolineKirkland,GeorgeLippard,Catharine Sedgwick,andE.D.E.N.Southworth.Theycertainlyreadeachother andthisbookreadstheminconversationaswellasexploringwriters whoseworksarestillbeingdiscovered,writerssuchasHannahCrafts and Julia Ward Howe. Inthemeantime,theepigraphswithwhichIopenmyinvestigation aremeanttorefertotheimportantrelationbetweenhumanlifeand intelligibilityinthenovelsthatappearhere.Forthehistoricalnovelist JamesFenimoreCooper,thequestionofhowamanonthefrontier decides his manhood in the early American republic often revolves aroundkilling.TheenigmaticinquiryposedinTheDeerslayerdefines theboundarybetweenhumanandanimalspeciesastheplacewherea hunter decides if he kills for food or for some more difficult cause, suchasrevengeorthebountyofscalps.ForRebeccaHardingDavis, writing of the coal mines of West Virginia not long after Cooper’s frontierhaspushedfurtherwest,thefragilityoflifeunderindustrial capitalism makes an emphatic argument about immigrants and the laboringclassesintermsoftheiraccesstoanothercategoryofhuman life, the ability to understand art. Formulatingtheconnectionsamongreading,affectivebeliefs,and familial ideology in the context of the rise of democratic political identifications has been the project of critical works since F. O. Mathiessen’s American Renaissance appeared to produce a field of study aligned with his title.1 In many ways a study of how national identifications with democracy are enacted in the literature of the 1850s, Mathiessen’s influential treatise has been followed by several excellent studies on the rise of the novel as an explanatory force for social order. These works include Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel (1960),CathyDavidson’sRevolutionandtheWord(1986),andNancy Armstrong’sDesireandDomesticFiction(1990).2Morerecentwork bycriticssuchasElizabethBarnesandLaurenBerlanthasencouraged viii Preface inquiry into the relations of democratic traditions and the work of fiction.3 Critics like Karen Sanchez Eppler and Caroline Levander have engaged in new attention to childhood as a literal nursery for education and belief.4 What happens to childhood, they ask, in the context of democracy and the novel? Fiction that repeats a narrative progression toward familial for- mation, often expressed through a culminating marriage, provides reassurance. That reassurance might emerge through a narrative progression that enables and endorses family formation as well as endorsingafamilyformationthatproducessatisfactoryanticipations and resolutions in the narrative form of the novel. Not simply chiasmatic,sucharelationdeclaresmutuallydependentandmutually constitutivethearrangementsofnovelsandfamiliesthatproduceand endorse an especially satisfying relation to a social order that can maintain both marriage and the novel. Questionsremainaboutqueeridentificationsthatcouldcrossand perhaps, by their very tensions, reinforce the dominance of hetero- sexual marriage plots.5 So, for instance, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s TheBlithedaleRomance,theuncertainty ofthenarrator,evocatively named Miles Coverdale, and his several attachments might seem betrayedratherthanelucidatedbyhisfinalconfession.Aftertortuous scenes in which the seemingly reluctant narrator spies on lovers throughbackparlorwindowsorfromtangledvine-producedbowers in trees, Coverdale asks the reader to guess his amative longing. Or ratherheannouncesthatthesecretmusthavebeenvisiblelongbefore. Thenondescriptdeclarationatthenovel’sclose–“I–I,myself–was inlovewithPriscilla!”–leavesreadersinaplaceofregretandlonging. One reason for such regret is that the purported object of his affectionhaslongbeenmarriedtoarivalandafellowinhabitantof their utopian alternative to familial order, Hollingsworth. Yet the reader’s longing might more plausibly be situated in relation to the desirability of Hollingsworth, the brawny blacksmith about whom Coverdalehasalreadyexpressedhisstronglove.Thebrawnandheft of Hollingsworth operate in odd relation to the perpetually evanes- cent Priscilla, whose early life as a seamstress has operated in close proximitytothesuggestionthatherbodyaswellasherlittlewoven pursesmightbeavailableforpurchasefromherpanderingfather.The secondaryeffectofsuchchoices,aneffectusuallyinvisibleorrelegated ix Preface to the afterlife of an epilogue, might also be understood to be a primary desire. Once a romantic choice has been consummated, at leastinthepredominantlyheterosexualworldofsuchfiction,theplot might close down possibilities and the novel can end. SinceTheBlithedaleRomanceissetinHawthorne’simmediatepast ratherthanintheearliercenturiesofanovellikeTheScarletLetter,it mightseempeculiartotreatthisnovelinthecontextofnationalism andhistoricalfiction.Bypresentingthenovelinsuchacontext,Iwant tocalltomindHawthorne’sfameasahistoricalromancer,and,via The Scarlet Letter, as author of the founding text of American identification based on extramarital desire and illegitimate birth. Theveryuneaseofthenarrativevoiceinbothnovels–aswellasthe hesitations and concealments carried out by the narrators of The House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun – suggests that the productionofasteadyrelationtothenationmadeavailablethrough fiction has deteriorated by the 1850s. Such attention to the difference in novels and other forms of writing produced in the United States during the 1850s has a long criticalhistory.EversinceTheAmericanRenaissance,thequestionof howAmericandemocracywasatoncereformulatedandre-described has challenged prior norms of narrative production. The potential distortionsthatthepresenceofnon-normativedesiremightencour- ageintheplottingoffictionappearnotonlyinHawthorne’shistorical fictionbutalsointheovertlynationalplottingsofnovelssuchasthe redemptive Civil War narratives by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (in The Gates Ajar [1868]), Augusta Evans (Macaria [1863]), and John William De Forest (Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty [1867]). All three show the at once riveting and rivening effects of war on national identifications and all refuse to find satisfactorymaritalresolutions,arefusalthatoperatesasacommen- taryonwhatpossibleidentificationsmightremaintocharacterswho have suffered from death and disintegration during wartime. Thesemodificationsofhowtoreadfictionsometimesflyintheface ofthechallengethathistoricalmoments–notablythelonghistorical momentof theAmerican Civil War– provideinfiction. Modifying theideaofthenationtoconformatoncetothepracticesofthestate, the place where the apparatus of government resides, and to draw ontheplaceofbelonging,novelspresenttheappealofagrouplarger x Preface thanthefamilythatyetinvokestheemotionalresonanceofthefamily. Toyokethispracticalaspectofstategovernancetothesymbolicorder ofnationidentificationhasbeentheworkofapositedfamilyorder. Whatmostpowerfullyconveysthesymbolicorderoffamilystructure especiallyinthestagesofformationmightbethefictionproducedat once to be consumed in the private space of the family and to be (evocativelyinrelationtoitself)partofaserialtellingoftherelationof such order to the state.6 What makes it possible to articulate a new understanding of the productionandconsumptionofliteratureinthenineteenth-century United States? Further, what has happened to the relation between suchnewliteraturesandwhatwasformuchofthetwentiethcentury identifiedasclassicAmericanliterature?Therecentincreaseincritical andtheoreticalenergybeingbroughttobearonbothcanonicaland non-canonicalwritershasrevitalizedboththetextureanddetailofthe literatureweread.Readingsuchliteraturehasbecomeanewactivity throughexploringitsconnectiontothepopularculturethatappears, for instance, in the proliferating propaganda of the American Tract Society, the snippets of poetry in newspaper columns bordered by lithographed announcements of new patent medicines, the stories bound so beautifully into gift books next to engravings of sleeping children, and the fashion plates of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Critics can nowaskwhatconversationsmighttakeplaceamongthesedisparate formsofwriting.Theycanexaminethecorrelationsbetweenvarying scenesofproduction,fromcrowdedparlorswithcryingbabiestoattic rooms.Criticscanquestionwhoreadtheseworks,andhowtheyread, includingpresidentsoftheUnitedStateswhonotonlywrotepoetry butsubmittedpubliclytosuchextraordinaryactsasproducingtheir heads for phrenological examinations. Evenastheyengagethesenewunderstandingsofhistoricalcontext, criticsstillwanttoknowwhatmakesthefictionalworkcompelling. Eachnewgenerationasksabouttherelationbetweentheoriginalityof their claims and the careful attention to prior modes of critical comprehension.Thecategoriesproposedinthefirstchapterascrucial for readings of the nineteenth-century novel in the United States – categoriessuchasviolence,nationalism,andwater–willbeexplicated andfleshedoutinthechaptersthatfollow.Thefirstchapterprovides an overview of authors and genres in American fiction, noting xi
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