THE AMERICAN COUNTER GOTHIC: EVOLUTION OF MONSTROUS WOMEN AND THEIR MONSTROUS TEXTS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE by BONNIE WHITENER FRED WHITING, COMMITTEE CHAIR PHIL BEIDLER YOLANDA MANORA MAHA MAROUAN CASSANDER SMITH A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2012 Copyright Bonnie Whitener 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Various texts theorize the wanton woman and the conditions that created her but none so much as Leslie Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel. His book speaks to a particularly American wanton, monstrous woman because, as Fiedler states quite accurately, the very roots of America are a result of our relationship with the other and with fear. The puritans feared God, Satan, Indians, and women. Over time, the United States has encountered myriad others to fear as well. As a result of this fear, says Fiedler, American literature is, at its heart, gothic literature. More importantly, this fear is demonstrated through a lack of mature love relations in American plotlines and in authors’ characterizations of women. Fiedler is absolutely correct in his connection of an American gothic sensibility to a problematic relationship with women. However, his discussion of Hannah Webster Foster’s novel, The Coquette, is inadequate. He suggests that Foster adheres to well-worn gothic motifs when, in fact, she does not. Eliza Wharton contains elements of a gothic and sentimental heroine. However, Eliza struggles in a culture of fear and convention and resists these forces as long as she can. This resistance to convention in the first novel written by a woman born in the United States indicates the beginning of a conversation with the American gothic consciousness Fiedler suggests. My claim, therefore, is that there is another set of stories and symbols that runs counter to this gothic sensibility so deeply entrenched in American literature. There are writers who create female characters that resist conventions but are aware of a “gothic “conversation, with Foster and The Coquette as the initiators of this conversation. Novels that also have this conversation include The Scarlet Letter, The Awakening, Lolita, and Sula. These texts were each simultaneously ii bestsellers and were also distasteful to their audience and their critics. They also take place during upheavals in American culture when nation, freedom, identity, and relationship to the other were of particular concern. iii DEDICATION This dissertation, first and foremost, is dedicated to my daughter, Maia. She was my inspiration to begin this project and her presence in my life drove me to continue in this endeavor even when I wanted to stop. Also, this is dedicated to everyone who helped me and guided me through the trials and tribulations of creating this manuscript. In particular, my family and close friends who stood by me throughout the time taken to complete this journey and who, miraculously, are all still speaking to me. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am pleased to have this opportunity to thank the many colleagues, friends, and faculty members who have helped me with this research project. I am most indebted to Frederick Whiting, the chairman of this dissertation, without whom this project would not have been possible. I would also like to thank all of my committee members, Philip Beidler, Yolanda Manora, Maha Marouan, and Cassander Smith for their invaluable input, inspiring questions, and support of both the dissertation and my academic progress. I am indebted to John Schmidt, Beth Yarbrough, and David Francko for granting needed extensions and for their understanding of the circumstances which made them necessary. This research would not have been possible without the support of my family who kept a roof over my head and my friends who never stopped encouraging me to persist. I am immensely grateful to Scott Dorman for, among other acts of kindness, rescuing me from my own proofreading and making the last step of my project so effortless. v CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 1 EMBLEMS OF NATION AND FALLEN WOMEN IN THE COQUETTE ..........................19 2 HESTER PRYNNE AS COUNTER GOTHIC HEROINE IN THE SCARLET LETTER.......37 3 A WICKED SPECIMEN OF THE SEX:” THE AWAKENING’S EDNA PONTELLIER AND THE MONSTROUS NEW WOMAN ..................................................56 4 CREATING SOMETHING ELSE TO BE: GOTHIC INVERSION IN TONI MORRISON’S SULA ....................................................................................................74 5 MCFATE AND THE MAIDEN: AMERICA AND LITTLE GIRLS IN LOLITA .................94 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................112 vi INTRODUCTION My interest in monstrous women began with a common experience for many women. I was told by a revered journalism professor as an undergraduate that, because I had a nice smile, I should become a barmaid. After all, he said, a barmaid was a very respectable occupation where he came from (Ireland). I declined his suggestion and left his office unsure of what just happened, how I felt about it, and what this might mean for any plans I had for a “life of the mind.” I changed my academic career from Journalism to English Literature, graduated successfully with a B.A., and moved on to graduate studies. It was in this venue I found not an answer to the questions I had left my professor’s office with, but an alternative to the possibilities with which he had presented me. I encountered Mikhail Bakhtin’s description of a set of Kerch terracotta figurines (a description which has inspired other female scholars). These figures were of pregnant, senile old women. He called them grotesque, referred to them as hags, and added them to his theory of transgression through carnival (a theory which, in spite of Bakhtin’s anxiety about the hags, I find very useful). These hag figures resisted all the definitions of life and showed the possibility of a pregnant death: “There is nothing completed, nothing calm and stable in these old hags. . . . They combine a senile, decaying, and deformed flesh with the flesh of new life (Bakhtin 25). There was no part of a woman’s life that these figures did not call into question--sexuality, pregnancy, intellect, life, and death were all under scrutiny. Kate Chedgzoy called the hags “impudent women.” They represent a thumbing of the nose at patriarchal definitions of the female body and behavior. They were wanton, monstrous women. And, Bakhtin added, “moreover, the hags were laughing” (25). 1 My interest in the expectations for women, with the help of Bakhtin’s discomfort with the Kerch figures, evolved from the personal, curious, and slightly stunned to an intellectual pursuit. The idea of these monstrous hags laughing in the face of an academic of Bakhtin’s stature warranted further study. I needed to know what they were laughing at and what other women might be laughing at in the face of authority. As I moved further into my studies, I found more wanton women. I found them specifically addressed by Toni Morrison who had made the exploration of the wanton woman her life’s work. The wanton woman, according to Morrison, was an outlaw, a pariah. She would always cause trouble in her community and culture because she destabilized the definitions of selfhood, particularly feminine selfhood, and made people very uncomfortable. Various texts theorized the wanton woman and the conditions that created her in the American context but none so much as Leslie Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel. His book speaks to a particularly American wanton, monstrous woman because, as Fiedler states quite accurately, the very roots of America are a result of our relationship with the other and with fear. The puritans feared God, Satan, Indians, and women. Over time, the United States has encountered myriad others to fear as well. As a result of this fear, says Fiedler, American literature is, at its heart, gothic literature. More importantly, this fear was demonstrated through a lack of mature love relations in American plotlines and in authors’ characterizations of women. Fiedler is absolutely correct in his connection of an American gothic sensibility to a problematic relationship with women. However, his discussion of Hannah Webster Foster’s book, The Coquette, leaves me uneasy. Eliza Wharton does not fit his definition of a heroine of an inherently gothic American literature. He dismisses Eliza Wharton’s character as a sentimental heroine and the book as a sentimental knock-off; he also dismisses Hannah Webster Foster by referring to her as “Mrs. Foster,” rather than using her last name as he 2 does with male authors. According to Fiedler’s assessment, both women behaved themselves in keeping with the expectations of the day. However, neither of these women behaved themselves. Foster creates in Eliza an unapologetic (though often trapped and confused) heroine who contains elements of a gothic and sentimental heroine. Eliza struggles in a culture of fear and convention and resists these forces as long as she can. This resistance to convention in the first novel written by a woman born in the United States indicates the beginning of a conversation with the American gothic consciousness Fiedler suggests. My claim therefore is that there is another set of stories and symbols that runs counter to this gothic sensibility so deeply entrenched in American literature. There are writers who create female characters that resist conventions but are aware of a “gothic” conversation, with Foster and The Coquette as the initiators of this conversation. Books that also have this conversation include The Scarlet Letter, The Awakening, Lolita, and Sula. There are certainly many other books that use and disrupt our gothic baggage but I chose these texts because they were each simultaneously bestsellers and were also distasteful to their audience and their critics. They also take place during upheavals in American culture when nation, freedom, identity, and relationship to the other were of particular concern. The Coquette is pivotal in this selection of texts not only because it was written by a U.S. born woman, but also because it mimics but does not repeat the British sentimental novel. At its heart, it is very different. The Coquette examines the constraints on American middle class women. It illustrates what would have happened if Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice had gone terribly wrong. If Elizabeth Bennet had not the good fortune of meeting the handsome, liberally minded Mr. D’arcy, what would have been her fate? Surely she would not have settled for the life her best friend, Charlotte, did and marry a dull, but financially and socially stable minister. 3