'You done cheat Mose out o' de job, anyways; we all knows dat'

328 Pages·2015·1.54 MB·English

by  Karen Kel Roop

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
5-2011
““''YYoouu ddoonnee cchheeaatt MMoossee oouutt oo'' ddee jjoobb,, aannyywwaayyss;; wwee aallll kknnoowwss ddaatt''””::
FFaaiitthh hheeaalliinngg iinn tthhee fificcttiioonn ooff KKaattee CChhooppiinn
Karen Kel Roop
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
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Roop, Karen Kel, "“'You done cheat Mose out o' de job, anyways; we all knows dat'”: Faith healing in the
fiction of Kate Chopin" (2011). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 971.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/2308513
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―‗YOU DONE CHEAT MOSE OUT O‘ DE JOB, ANYWAYS;

WE ALL KNOWS DAT‘‖: FAITH HEALING

IN THE FICTION OF KATE CHOPIN

by

Karen Kel Roop

Bachelor of Arts
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
1975

Master of Arts
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
1977

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the

Doctor of Philosophy Degree in English
Department of English
College of Liberal Arts

Graduate College
University of Nevada, Las Vega
May 2011
Copyright by Karen Kel Roop 2011
All Rights Reserved
THE GRADUATE COLLEGE

We recommend the dissertation prepared under our supervision by

Karen Kel Roop

entitled

“„You Done Cheat Mose Out O‟ De Job, Anyways; We all Knows Dat‟”:
Faith Healing in the Fiction of Kate Chopin

be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in English
Department of English

Darlene Unrue, Committee Chair

John C. Unrue, Committee Member

Joseph B. McCullough, Committee Member

Joseph A. Fry, Graduate Faculty Representative

Ronald Smith, Ph. D., Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
and Dean of the Graduate College

May 2011

ii
ABSTRACT

“„You Done Cheat Mose Out O‟ De Job, Anyways; We All Knows Dat‟”:
Faith Healing in the Fiction of Kate Chopin

by

Karen Kel Roop

Dr. Darlene Unrue, Examination Committee Chair
Professor of English
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850, the half-way mark of the century in which the
country itself would be broken in two, Kate Chopin was destined to bear witness to the
many divisions that have distinguished the United States. Especially noticeable in the
post-Reconstruction period in which she wrote was the expanding chasm between the
races. This dissertation argues that even Chopin‘s most seemingly orthodox Southern
stories betray a quest for a theology capable of healing the physical, emotional, and
spiritual ills omnipresent in the country and especially apparent in the post-Civil War
South. The alternative to mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism, which Chopin
indicts for furthering racial division, was the Voodoo of Louisiana and Haiti. This study
shows that both her short fiction and two published novels incorporate elements of the
African-based religion as tools for forging and metaphors of the interdependence of soul
and body, individual and community, time and space. For Chopin‘s African American
characters, the belief system serves as a source of power. Most of all, Chopin draws upon
Voodoo values to question the role of art itself and to posit a more expansive notion of
aesthetics than that which dominated Western thought of the late nineteenth century.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The process of writing this dissertation has been much like a Voodoo rite in which a
cool, watery Rada god descends only to be followed by a hot, fiery Petro god. To
maintain order amid such tumult has required the intervention of many wise priestesses
and priests, otherwise known as mambos and houngans.
Indeed, I owe thanks to a mambo I never met, ―Aunt Cynthy‖ who introduced my
Texan mother to some conjure practices later passed on to me. Without my mother‘s
stories about Cynthy, I might never have begun this literary and academic ritual. So I
would like to thank Hilda Roop for giving me a glimpse into a past not that removed
from the world Kate Chopin knew and recreated in her fiction. But I am also indebted to
many women friends and colleagues who have encouraged me more recently as I have
wrestled with the lwa. Special thanks go to the Three Graces in the Writing Center who
helped me face down my own self-doubts and maneuver my way through the dissertation
process: Drs. Natalie Hudson, Jacquie Elkouz, and Patrice Hollrah. Of course, this
dissertation would never have come to fruition without the patient support of Professor
Darlene Unrue, my committee chair.
I must also acknowledge the houngans who made this dissertation possible. Although
my studies ultimately took a different path, I cannot ignore the support I received at the
University of Texas, Austin, where I began my doctoral work with my committee chair
Professor James Duban and committee members Professors William Scheick and Donald
Graham. At UNLV I owe thanks to Professor John Irsfeld, who brought me back into the
fold at the university, and Professor Richard Harp, who has supported me at several
academic junctures. Most of all, I would like to thank my committee members Professors
iv
Joseph A. Fry, John Unrue, and especially Joseph McCullough, who initiated my
entrance into the doctoral program at UNLV and whose class inspired the paper that
became the foundation for my dissertation.
Apart from the lwa, mambos, and houngans are two individuals for whom no
category seems to suffice. So I will simply say thank you to Bill, who in our lives
together gave me the time and space to work, and to Walter Nowak, my Père Antoine
whose spirit continues to sustain me and to whose memory I dedicate this dissertation.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iv

INTRODUCTION TWO EIGHTS, CHANGE OF STATES ....................................... 1

CHAPTER 1 CHRISTIANITY AND THE ‗NEGRO PROBLEM‘ ................... 14
At Fault: The Unhallowed Ground of Reunion and Redemption ............................... 15
The Savior‘s Sin: The Crack in ―A Dresden Lady in Dixie‖ ...................................... 73

CHAPTER 2 VOODOO LWA VS. JIM CROW LAW ..................................... 80
The Haitian Roots of Kate Chopin‘s Religious Revolution........................................ 94
The Voodoo Quest: ―And What about Explorers, Theosophists, Hoodoos?‖ .......... 120
Calling Down the Lwa .............................................................................................. 162

CHAPTER 3 AT THE CROSSROADS IN THE AWAKENING...................... 194
The Solitary Soul on the Celestial Railroad .............................................................. 198
Catholicism: The Pont to Voodoo ............................................................................ 225
The Lwa‘s Ride ......................................................................................................... 234

CONCLUSION MOSE‘S JOB .............................................................................. 277

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 285

VITA ............................................................................................................................... 320
vi
INTRODUCTION

TWO EIGHTS, CHANGE OF STATES

In early American history, one of the most infamous theological developments
originated with a bit of divination practiced by a group of teenage girls eager to know
whom they would marry. The harmless event soon turned ugly as the Salem witchcraft
trials unfolded in 1692, with the Barbados slave Tituba in the eye of the storm. Accused
of initiating the girls‘ fits, Tituba turned state‘s evidence as a means of self-preservation
and implicated other women as worshipers of Satan. While her slave and ethnic status
undoubtedly contributed to her precarious position in the Salem proceedings, popular and
academic assessments have often misrepresented Tituba as both an African and a Voodoo
priestess. According to Elizabeth Reis, historians have finally recognized that Tituba was
an indigenous woman of Barbados, but the myth that the slave practiced the African-
based faith and regaled the Salem girls with stories of Voodoo has long endured.1
That Tituba was a scapegoat of Puritanism gone horribly awry is undeniable. That she
has little to do with a study of the fin de siècle writer Kate Chopin might seem equally
certain. Yet the seventeenth-century slave‘s experience exposed a tension between race
and religion in the United States that did not relax with the hanging of the last Salem
―witch.‖ In the late nineteenth century, the relationship between people of color and
mainstream religion became especially strained as Jim Crow legislation and attitudes
increasingly infiltrated God‘s houses, be they Protestant churches or Catholic cathedrals.
Nonetheless, the scholarship addressing the topics of race and religion in Chopin‘s fiction
has adhered to parallel rather than intersecting lines and confined itself to separate if

1 Elizabeth Reis, ―Gender and the Meaning of Confession in Early New England,‖ in Spellbound:
Women and Witchcraft in America, ed. Elizabeth Reis (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998),
53-74.
1
equal cars in the train of critical analysis. In the meantime, the lesson of Tituba has been
ignored.
Kate Chopin‘s position on race has inevitably been a controversial subject resulting in
conflicting assessments by biographers and critics alike. In 1989, Helen Taylor headed up
the faction that would find Kate Chopin guilty of subscribing to conservative, Southern
notions of white supremacy. Disregarding the more nuanced perspective promulgated in
Per Seyersted‘s biography, Taylor proclaims, ―Chopin‘s racism is a central element in her
writing.‖ The critic inverts Seyersted‘s argument that ―Kate Chopin‘s [racial] range . . . is
quite wide compared to these authors [e.g., Ruth McEnery]‖ to fashion a Southern
Erinyes consisting of Chopin, McEnery, and Grace King. With the publication of Emily
Toth‘s seminal biography in 1990, scholars garnered more evidence with which to indict
the adult Chopin for honoring the Confederate flag just as she had as a youth when she
tore the Union standard down from her house. Raised by Confederate slaveholders,
Katherine O‘Flaherty married Oscar Chopin, who gained notoriety by participating in the
White League‘s failed attempt to take control of New Orleans in 1874. While
acknowledging that ―whether Kate Chopin shared Oscar‘s prejudices—whether she
cheered on the White League—cannot be known,‖ Toth also claims that ―in her fiction,
[Kate Chopin] never depicts social equality between blacks and whites.‖ Most damning is
Chopin‘s continued friendship with her brother-in-law Phanor Breazeale, who, during
Reconstruction, participated in collective efforts to intimidate blacks. Against such a
backdrop, Sandra Gunning concludes in her 1996 examination of race and lynching in
American literature that ―Chopin does not . . . advocate the abolition of Jim Crow.‖ Thus,
in evaluating Chopin‘s portrayal of Grégoire Santien, whose murder of the biracial Joçint
2