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dissertation entitled

"FIFTY-CENT SYBILS": OCCULT WORKERS AND THE SYMBOLIC
MARKETPLACE IN THE URBAN U.S., 1850-1930

presented by

Tammy Stone-Gordon

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in American Studies

 

 

 

 

 

Date August 17, 1998

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TIM-CERT
HARE.

"FIFTY-CENT SYBILS": OCCULT WORKERS AND THE SYMBOLIC
MARKETPLACE IN THE URBAN U.S., 1850-1930

BY

Tammy Stone-Gordon

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Program in American Studies

1998

 

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ABSTRACT

"FIFTY-CENT SYBILS": OCCULT WORKERS AND THE SYMBOLIC
MARKETPLACE IN THE URBAN 0.8., 1850-1930

3}!
Tammy Stone-Gordon

By 1850 the spiritualist movement in the United States
had shown that performing the occult could be profitable
work. By 1870, advertisements for the services of palmists,
conjurors, clairvoyants, fortunetellers, mediums, and card-
readers appeared regularly in the classified columns of urban
daily newspapers.. In the first decade of the twentieth—
century, cities and states began passing laws against telling
fortunes for money. This dissertation explores the meanings
of occult work through newspapers, literature, fibm,
graphics, and 1,430 seer advertisements in papers from San
Francisco, St. Louis, Boston, New York, and Chicago.

Chapter One shows that middle-class perceptions of
”rural innocence” allowed authors to romanticize the occult
worker early in the nineteenth-century. Chapter Two asserts
that mediums used the notion of "innocence" to make money
channeling spirits, to assert that class disenfranchisement
:made mediums especially qualified, and to use prevailing
notions of gender and race to justify their work. Chapter
Three argues that mdddle-class perceptions of the "self-made
:man“ led some writers to dismiss the occult worker as

disrespectful of the market system and advertising's role in

 

it. Chapter Fox

  
  
 
 
 
 

demonstrate tha.
prcfessionaiism
criticized, raci
validate their c
writers viewed 5
professionalism.
purity and nativ;
fortunetelling it
seem responded ‘
power °f the dis
listitutim. and

timelves .

 

it. Chapter Four uses fortuneteller advertising to
demonstrate that occult workers appropriated the language of
professionalism in conjunction with declarations of
ethnicized, racialized, gendered, and class "otherness" to
validate their claims to status. Chapter Five shows how
writers viewed seers though dominant notions of female
professionalism. Chapter Six looks at the role of social
purity and nativist language in the criminalization of
fortunetelling in the early twentieth-century and shows that
sears responded to criminalization by advertising not the
power of the disenfrachised self but the effectiveness of the
institutions and products with which they now aligned

themselves.

Copyright by
TAMMY STONE -GORDON
1998

To My Family

 

My family

 

 

 

this dissertatic
grateful to Chri
ride a aotorcyc
wiry fruits (t
even during pe
unfailing Supper

in this disser

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My family had an important role in the production of
this dissertation, and I cannot thank them enough. I am most
grateful to Chris Gordon. In addition to teaching me how to
ride a motorcycle and make strong wine out of various and
sundry fruits (two activities that tended to make me happy
even during periods of heavy data entry), he gave me
unfailing support and many insights into the issues engaged
in this dissertation. I would not have fulfilled any
requiremnts toward any degree if it were not for his help.
My dad, Bob Stone, found a scrap of a 1903 Detroit Free Press
when he was overhauling the pneumatic system of an old church
building. a This piece of paper containing exclusively
fortuneteller advertisements was the beginning of the
project . My mom, Pat Stone, encouraged me not to give up on
higher education, especially when I most wanted to no longer
pursue a degree. I am grateful for her encouragment. Tawni
and Rob Scott, in addition to being extremely fun to be
around, helped me in many ways, including lending me their
truck so I could teach HST 313 in Farmington Hills. With
Trevor Stone I traded satire and complaints about the crazier
parts of graduate school. That helped me imeasurably.

I also would like to thank my committee. Lisa Fine was a
model mentor and superb teacher. Her intellectual rigor and

honesty and love of history provided me with both challenge

vi

 

and encouragme.’

on this dissert
get through grc‘
good a person v
literary parts

than when initia

 

us and let me

that I appreci
economic histo
Project. Doug .
Pu: which is ac

tim' He also 1

research

and encouragment. Peter Levine gave me insightful cements
on this dissertation and the guidance I very much needed to
get through graduate school. Jenifer Banks showed me how
good a person can be at teaching, and her comments on the
literary parts of this dissertation made them much better
than when initially conceived. She also opened her home to
us and let me spend time with her dogs, both generous acts
that I appreciate a great deal . Victor Jew taught the
economic history seminar in which I began formulating this
project . Doug Noverr encouraged me to participate in the
PCA, which is something I will be grateful for for a long
time. He also found me a laptop to use during the initial
research stages on the advertisements . The following are
folks whose teaching and mentoring have also been an
inspiration: Gary Boppenstand, Wilma King, Harry Reed, Joyce
Ladenson, George Cornell, Steve Rachman, and Dean Rehberger.

Workers at the following places went above and beyond in
helping me with this dissertation: MSU Special Collections,
U of t! Law Library, the St. Louis Police Library, the Chicago
Clerk of the Circuit Court Archives, the University of
Illinois Law Library, and the South Carolina Historical
Society Archives. I am very grateful as well to the American
Studies Program and The Graduate School for fellowships .

I was lucky to have surrounded myself with a conumnity
of good friends and sharp thinkers. My peer-readers would
not have put up with my awful rough drafts had they not been
very, very good friends: Susan Stein-Roggenbuck, Maria

vii

Quinlan-Lamb
Gebhart- I als
Rosemary Posse
Theresa Evans.
Couture, and Je

run here at His.

Quinlan-Leiby, Adrian Gaskins, Tonita Branan, and Mary
Gebhart. I also owe thanks to Jill Anderson, Christy Rishoi,
Rosemary' Possanza, .Allyson. Samuel, Tony Michel, Andy and
Theresa Evans, Jackie Carr, Dagny VanDuine, Hillary Nunn, Amy
Couture, and Jeffrey Miller. Time spent with you all made my

run here at Michigan State worthwhile.

viii

List of Figures
Introduction: E

Chapter One: '1‘?
Symbol of Rural
1822-1852. . . . . . .

|
Chapter Two: W'LI
Mediums: Hediur.
Inequality ......

Chapter Three: i
Aversion to all if
and the Self-Had:

miner Four; '5

Profession ' 3
mo all” a

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List Of FigureBOO‘COOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOx
Introduction: Fifty-Cent Sybils and Symbolic Marketplace...l

Chapter One: The Rural Occult Werker as a Middle-Class
Symbol of Rural Innocence in Irving, Sedgwick, and Hawthorne,
1822-1852000000000.0.0.0...0.0.000...00.0.0000000000000000019

Chapter Two: White Prophetesses and the Brotherhood of
Mediums: Mediumship as a Symbolic Response to Class
InequalitYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOSO

Chapter Three: Humbugs, Fifty-Cent Sybils and "A.Positive
Aversion to all Pretenders to 'Divination'": Occult WOrkers
and the Self-Made Man in Barnum, Thomson, and
Douglass...................................................82

Chapter Four: "Secret Wbrkers” and Self-Made WOmen:
Professionalism and the Occult WOrkers' Werld, 1870-

1910.00.00.00000000000000000000000000000.000.000.000000000117

Chapter Five: A.Spooky Little Girl Like You and ”A.Cunjuh
‘oman Lack Me”: The Occult and Female Professionalism in
Jma' D‘Visp and ChesnuttOOOOOO0......00.00.000.000000000162

Chapter Six: ”Wholesale Raids on Portunetellers": Urban
Myths and the End of Seer-Centered Advertising, 1890-

1930.00.00.00.000000000000000000000000.0.0.000000000000000213

Conclusion: Occult workers and Lower-Class History.......252
mndix00O...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.00.0.0.000000000000000256

BibliograthOOOOOOOOOO0.00.00...O...COO...00.0.00000000000265

Figure 1: page i
of darkness to 4
not the medium 1
root. A. Medan:
i918 [reprint, I

Figure 2, page J
frontispiece, 8.
(Chicago, 1895).
audiences' notic

Figure 3. page :
seer: ham! GCC
ml 'The SUI
21! 1912. “0m:-
5311? household

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1, page 256: A. Medium.reveals how he uses the cover
of darkness to convince seance participants that spirits and
not the medium.play the instruments brought to the seance

room. A. Medium. W. (New York.
1975 (reprint, 1922 edition]).

Figure 2, page 257: Cora L. V. Hatch-Scott-Richmond,
frontispiece. H D- Barrett. W.
(Chicago, 1895). Early elite mediums relied on their
audiences' notions of beauty and innocence to ply the trade.

Figure 3, page 258: Artist's depiction of a visit to the
seer's home, accompanying the article by Olivia Howard
Dunbar, ”The Survival of Sorcery,” Harper's weekly, September
21, 1912. WOmen seers made room for occult work in their
daily household routines.

Figure 4, page 259: Artist's depiction of vera, frontispiece,
Richard Harding Davis, W, (New York, 1908).
Authors from Hawthorne to James and Davis saw the medium.as
an enchanting yet malleable young woman who could easily
become the victim.of evil-minded.manipulators.

Figure 5, page 260: Pandora's ad, sen Francisco Examiner
advertisement, March 11, 1906. One of the few to use a
photograph.

Figure 6, page 261: The Medium Mrs. Dr. Clark's ad, San
.Francisco Ekaminer ad, April 8, 1900. women seers often
combined titles such as ”Mrs. Dr.” or "The Reverend Mrs."

Figure 7, page 262: Graphic accompanying New Ybrk Times
Magazine Section (Part 5) article, December 12, 1909, 7:1.
The anonymous author condemned seers as unscrupulous
immigrants or African-Americans who "prey for the most part
upon a densely ignorant class."

Figure 8, page 263: Professor Akpan Aga's December 20, 1922
advertisement in the Amsterdam News.

 

Fifty-C

CGHUESS 2

50¢. daily

avenue.
-Aknv

. .. he 8
into the an

 

Introduction:
Fifty-Cont Sybils and Symbolic Marketplace

COUNTESS ZINGARA, gypsy palmist, clairvoyant; 25c.,
50c. daily, evenings. 60 west 25th st., near 6th
avenue.

-~New'YOrk world classified ad, March7, 1910
. . . he was ready to proceed with his inquiries
into the mysteries of the cheap and nasty
necromancy of the day, and to encounter the rest of
the fifty-cent Sybils with an unperturbed spirit.

-- the "Cash Customer" persona of Mortimer
Thomson, beginning his visits to New York's

fortunetellers. in NW
1859

In the latter half of the nineteenth—century, thousands
like Countess Zingara advertised occult services in urban
daily newspapers. The spiritualist movement, which began in
1848 and included the production of autobiographies of occult
workers, had shown that occult work could be profitable.
Writers like Mortimer Thomson commented on the phenomenon of
occult work in ways that diverged sharply with the image
occult workers put forward about themselves as those who
could help the helpless and soothe the troubled.

This dissertation examines how two different groups
advocated different ways of knowing in response to their
different social situations. As the twentieth-century
neared, authors (primarily white and middle-class) became
more professionalized and.more respected as arbiters of
culture. Seers, most of whom.were lower-class and in large
part racially or ethnically "other," began to claim that
their talents merited the respect given to professionals who
were formally educated. The fact that lower-class ”others”

claimed professional status in the latter half of the

1

nineteenth-cent
in which profesr
of talent and 1
professional st.
were not drudge:
of industrial or
seer: publicly i
as 'otbers' raci
creative, resour
Others of this c
worker to dEfend
privileged, midd]

 

nineteenth—century is significant in that this was the time
in which professionalism.developed as a middle-class measure
of talent and intelligence. Hence seers' claim to
professional status was an assertion that the lower-classes
were not drudges or morons simply responding to the dictates
of industrial capitalism without exercising voice. Instead,
seers publicly insisted in the seer advertisement that they—-
as ”others" racially, sexually, and economically-aware
creative, resourceful, and intelligent. Thomson, like
others of this class, used the image of the debased occult
worker to defend the rationalized world-view of the
privileged,:middle-class white male and guard empiricism as
the’measure of respectability. Thus the figure of the occult
worker emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth-century
as a site of class struggle.’

The history of occultism.in the United States has
focused primarily on two distinct periods: the witchcraft
panics of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-
centuries and the rise of spiritualism in the 18503. In each
instance historians have focused on the cultural, social and
economic changes that brought about occult movements or the
attempted suppression of occultism, Howard Kerr and Charles
Crow have rightly stated that the history of the occult in
America is characterized by diversity of practictioners,
methods, and beliefs, but that the common thread of American
occult practices in the last few centuries has been that "the

more visible forms of the occult have shared a continuing

relationship Ofll
the cultural me
In the cash
historians' vie"
produced the pr.

tarlsen in Dari;

Puritans draw or
P3111811 mitten whc
“We power a
religious confli
divinfiion: end 1

Pulitan or @r 2

The 3P1! itm
nille
teenth‘Ctentur

 

 

 

relationship of tension with the values and institutions of
the cultural mainstream. "1

In the case of seventeenth-century witchcraft,
historians' views have differed greatly over which "tension"
produced the practice and hysteria of witchcraft. Carol
Xarlsen in W determined that
Puritans drew on the construction of women as witches to
punish women who were overstepping gendered boundaries of
economic power and political voice. Richard Godbeer in The,
.nagil;s_nqninign argues that possessions were the result of
religious conflict between the ancient practices of healing,
divination, and supernatural protection and the dominant
Puritan order.2

The spiritualist movement of the latter half of the
nineteenth-century has provoked similar debates. Ann Braude,
in,33diga1_§pizitg, finds the rise of spiritualism to be a
result of its iconoclaom, which had appeal to reformers
(especially women's rights reformers) who looked for
alternatives to the hierarchy of organized religion. R.
Laurence Moore in In_$ea:gh_gf_flhite_§rgu§ asserts that
nineteenth-century occult practice was informed primarily by
tensions in the authoritative ascendancy of science and
technology over religion. Authors who have studied some of

the other late nineteenth- early twentieth-century occult

 

1Kerr and Crow, "Introduction, " WW, (Urbana,
1983), 4

2carol 1‘- Karl-en. WW
£919nisl.lsu_nnsland. (New York. 1898): Richard Godbeer..zhs_ns¥il_a
WW (Cambridge. 1992)-

3

practices haw
for the cultm
tears examines
experience' by
mysticism, art
offers this gut
educated elite
class position

99136! Washingtc

occult Practice
that allmvecl wt:

fascinatiou w it]

 

 

 

practices have focused on the implications of occult practice
for the cultural elite. In Ng_zlace_gf_fizage, T. J. Jackson
Lears examines the educated elite's search for "intense
experience” by focusing on its use of Eastern and/or peasant
mysticism, artisinal craftsmanship, and martialism. Lears
offers this quest as paradoxical evidence of hegemony; the
educated elite's interest had the effect of stabilizing their
class position by sharing symbols with the lower classes.
Peter washington in Madama_fllaxataky;s_fiahggn asserts that
occult practice was characterized by cults of personality
that allowed white American elites to express their
fascination with eroticism and (inadvertently or not) secure
imperial power.3

Most studies of the occult have focused on these
behaviors as primarily connected to the aspirations and
tensions of the middle and upper classes. This dissertation
builds on these works in order to explore the other half of
the hegemonic relationship identified by Lears: the creation
and function of the occult worker in the lower classes. It
also explores how some characterizations of occult workers
authored by elites attempted to negate the power claimed by

occult workers for the lower classes. This dissertation

 

31am Brande. WW
.ninstasnfh:£snturx_ansrisao (Boston. 1989): R Laurence Moore..In

 

M (New York. 1993).

   
   
    
  
  

term 'occult w
because the ver
the rigid dicho
lover-class wor
their own bodie.
med themselt
work. They set
Ethod 0f divine

chose (and the h

 

 

 

departs from earlier works by looking at the occult worker as
a worker and by examining the meanings occult workers took
in different yet connected fields of discourse. I use the
terms "occult worker” and "professional seer” interchangeably
because the very nature of prophecy-for—profit problematized
the rigid dichotomy between higher-class professional and
lower-class worker. Occult workers relied exclusively on
their own bodies for pay; they had no bosses and rarely
removed themselves_from their own homes for the purpose of
work. They set their own prices, their own hours, their
method of divinaton; they could refuse customers if they
chose (and the high number of ads specifying "ladies only"
indicates they did this quite regularly). They added occult
work to the regular rhythm of their work lives, which most
often meant domestic labor or piece-work sewing. They also
claimed proficiency in fields of knowledge claimed by
educated elites: :medicine, counselling, social work,
ministry and business. Yet very few occult workers made
enough economic capital to consider themselves "comfortable."
They not only had little prestige accorded them, they were
openly villified for being informally educated and hence
"ignorant." NOn-seers consistently wrote about them as
inhabiting the darkest of the dark dirty spaces of the urban
landscape. And unlike middle and upper-class urbanites, they
did not divide their homes into spaces meant for work and
spaces meant for interaction with friends and acquaintances.

Clients saw in the seer's home the evidence of her household

labor ' and hen:
woman. In tern
education, and
terms of the ft
the ability the
labor, they wet
The term '
term to refer t:
advertiSEd in u:
conjuring, cartc
astrology and pa
aG‘V‘EI'tiBEIlants 0
that either Spec'
generic term 'CL
M Other t:
the “”7 of in:
early twentieth.C
capital.-

 

Pierre
c .4
aim-.31. which isI

' or relatic

 

 

 

labor, and hence the evidence of her status as a lower-class
woman. In terms of geography (public and private),
education, and economic capital seers were "workers," but in
terms of the functions they performed in the community and
the ability they had to control the specifics of their own
labor, they were ”professionals."

The term.'occult" itself is a slippery one. I use the
term to refer to the methods of divination occult workers
advertised in urban dailies: clairvoyance, channeling,
conjuring, cartomancy, herbology, teacup-reading, chiromancy,
astrology and palmistry. Newspapers grouped together
advertisements of seers using these methods under headings
that either specified the particular method or under the more
generic team “clairvoyants.”

Two other terms have been of significant use in telling
the story of images of seers in the late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-centuries: "cultural capital,” and "symbolic
capital." Pierre Bourdieu conceives of power in terms of
capital, which is more than simply a reference to money,
goods, or relation to means of production. Capital also
serves to explain symbols and language, with different groups
having access to different kinds of power based on the ways
in which they conceive of language (and, in the case of this
dissertation, the symbol of the occult worker). Bourdieu
defines symbolic capital as prestige and cultural capital as
talents or knowledge. Those outside the dominant modes of
gaining capital will use the concepts they share with

mast groups
will tppropriat
significance to
groups then res
ideology to kee
exchange is the
01‘- GMinant ide
and reworked th
their Status as
CI Ethnicity,

5 * :hc caPita

dominant groups to construct their own capital, i.e. "others"
will appropriate selected dominant ideologies and assign
significance to them to turn them to their benefit. Dominant
groups than respond in turn by altering the symbol or
ideology to keep their social position.‘ This system of
exchange is the ”symbolic marketplace.” Occult workers drew
on dominant ideologies such as professionalism and science
and reworked them according to their own cultural capital,
their status as "outsiders" according to gender, class, race,
or ethnicity. As seers turned this cultural capital to
symbolic capital, many non-seers were forced to renegotiate
what they meant by such things as professionalism.and
scientific positivism (which they did in this case through an
increasing reliance on formal education and professional
societies). Bourdieu's theories of power are particularly
applicable to a study of the meaning of the seer as a symbol
in a time‘when power was intricately linked with gender,
race, ethnicity and work.

For this study I have compiled a database of 1,431
advertisements between 1850 and 1930 (the bulk of which came
from between 1880 and 1910) taken out by occult workers from
five cities (New York, San Francisco, Boston, St. Louis, and
Chicago) and seven newspapers, five of which were produced
primarily by whites (The San Francisco Ekaminer, The Boston
Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and

 

‘800 Pierre Bourdiou. W
W (Cambridge. 1984) and W
(Cambridge, 1991).

 

he New York Horl
for African-Amer;

fender) to exam.
thuselves. I ch
were readily avai
These cities expe
and 1900, and hem
regions. They 99;
writers that had ‘-
seers. In additi:

mum“! in

The New York World ) and two of which were produced by and
for African-Americans (The Amsterdam News and The Chicago
Defender) to examine the ways in which seers presented
themselves. I chose these cities because their newspapers
were readily available and took advertising from seers.
These cities experienced a great deal of growth between 1870
and 1900, and became major business centers for their
regions . They were also cities named by contemporaneaous
writers that had active and highly visible populations of
seers. In addition, I wanted a large sample of
advertisements in order to get an idea of the dominant and
unusual symbols and claims sears used in presenting
themselves and their profession.5

Well-read works of literature also played an important
part in the negotiation of the terms through which seers
worked. If the production of the occult worker in literature
is any indication, the middle-class needed this ”other” to
define itself as rational or sentimental, charitable,

industrious and consuming of respectable goods, mindful of

 

5! entered the ads according to several criteria: name, sex, race,
nation, specializations, class, title, methods of divination, location,
whether they teach the trade or not, age, restrictions, and scientific
claims. From this database I was able to ascertain whether advertising
seers lived and worked near one another, how they may have thought
their audience would read racial, gendered, nationalized, scientific,
and classed signifiers, what types of divination most often accompanied
the assertion of a particular race, ethnicity, class, or sex. While
the sampling is nowhere near an exact total of the complete number of
seers advertising (and it is certainly not the total of numbers of
sears given that a seer would have had to have been literate or have
access to someone who would compose the ad), it does give enough
information to determine some of the most popular themes of the ads and
be able to situate some of the claims and the activities these claims
represented amidst the changes taking place in as urban cultures of the
late nineteenth-century.

 

'proper' sex rol<
but no less power
mostly white, ed‘!
occult worker as

or in need of cor.
characterizations

arhivalences over

 

classness. As Stu
Wt self-referent:
(in Blmn'. case
mining! “Editing:
the 'Other'“in w
as Classed terms-

“If" The occu

”proper" sex roles, and, (most of the time) less explicitly
but no less powerfully, white. Whether authors catering to a
mostly white, educated, Northeastern readership saw the
occult worker as romantic or degraded or in need of charity
or in need of confinement to a jail cell, their
characterizations were inextricably linked to their own
ambivalences over what it was that constituted.mdddle-
classness. As Stuart Blumin has shown, the middle-class was
not self-referential; it depended on myths of the "other"
(in Blumin's case, the “lower classes") to negotiate its own
meaning.6 Mediums, fortunetellers, and conjurers provided
the ”other'--in vocational, racialized, and gendered as well
as classed terms-awho was so inextricably linked to the
"self.” The occult worker was particularly connected to
three areas of thought engaged by the lower-middle, the
middle, and the upper-middle classes: the obligation of the
middle class to be a guide of morality in a world becoming
less rural and more urban, the ideology of 'selfamade' men,
and the roles of women in community prosperity.

Nine works of this period were particularly indicative of
the ways in which the middle-class conceived of seers:
Irving's Wall. Sedgwick's W.
Hawthorne's MW. Thomson's W
.Nen_xsz, Barnum's.flnmbng§_g£_the_flnrld, Frederick Douglass's
autobiographies, Davis ' s W, James ' s m

 

‘800 Stuart 31min. WWW
InInsrisncs_in_ths.ansricsn_£itxl_11§n=lann (Cambridge. 1989).

9

MAXIM

represent a varie

 

travel narrative J

"h

seer (or seers) a

fiction, autobio

or as an example

Literary imag
Preconceptions tol
permulling their J
the needs they Per

|
Hariety of CUltLgl
l

 

Bostonians, and Chesnutt’s The_§gnjnzg_flnman. These works
represent a variety of genres, including "local color" and
travel narratives, historical romance, "high" and ”low"
fiction, autobiography, and expose, and they all feature a
seer (or seers) as a central character, in a pivotal role,
or as an example of a main theme.

Literary images are important in determining the client
preconceptions to which occult workers had to respond. When
performing their work, professional seers responded to meet
the needs they perceived in individual clients, who came from
a variety of cultural and economic groups. The seer's
success depended on a deep familiarity with the values and
beliefs of the clientele and on his or her ability to meet
the demands of those values and beliefs. Middle-class
literature had a great deal of power to inform the
expectations of possible occult worker clients (of any
class), and exploring the ways in which this literature
imagined the occult worker will help illustrate how these
views informed meetings between occult workers and clients.
Richard Brodhead has suggested that the past of American
letters "needs to be understood not only as the history of
literary works but also as the history of literature's
‘working conditions. . . a history not of texts or contexts
but of the multiform.transactions that have taken place

between them. "7 This approach to literature as historical

 

7810M Brodhoad. WW
We. (Chicago. 1993): 8-

10

 

artifact beg8 ”'1
performance of or
in different the:
approaches with r

occult workers ev

roles and functio
Perform social an
exFlared in the cc
professional seer.

All of the on
'Other' through va
differently-(med o

“'“iter-md-re ad

 

artifact begs two questions on the role of literature in the
performance of occult work. First, how did authors, writing
in different rhetorical situations, use similar thematic
approaches with regard to occult workers? Second, why were
occult workers evoked in discussions of middle-class social
roles and functions? Given the power of literature to
performrsocial and cultural work, these questions must be
explored in the context of the meanings and functions of the
professional seer.

.All of the authors I discuss saw the occult worker as an
”other” through various means: more ignorant or dirty, or
differently-hued or nationalized, or less educated than we-
asdwriter-and-readers. Yet this does not mean all authors
villified the occult worker. In fact, some authors-—
particularly those restricted by race or sex in the literary
marketplace--viewed occult workers less fearfully than white
and.male authors. This could be due in part to similarities
between literary work and occult work. Charles Chesnutt
found himself gaining entrance to the literary marketplace
through the "local color“ genre, a genre which allowed
African-American authors a.measure of validity as exotics.
Similarly, Sedgwick entered literary work through domestic
fiction, even though her work drew on supposedly masculine
history and promoted republicanism. Douglass accessed the
market though the slave narrative. These authors sold well
if they stayed.within the confines of "type”: local color,

domestic, slave narrative.

11

  
  
  
  
  
  
 
 
  

Occult work
system in smile
and gendered con
scientist, an E,
to 'reveal all s

would sell. The-

51‘3“.”va 01’ ever.
mended 1:0 occul-
in the Political

Yet. all of t
literature we: e w:
Professiom Beers
Vocational 'Other,

“t - .
«a tie mdlcatiOG

 

Occult workers presented themselves in their market
system.in similar ways by exploiting racialized, national,
and gendered conscriptions. Harketing oneself as a gypsy, a
scientist, an Egyptian, or even young, beautiful, and willing
to "reveal all secrets” was an act of adopting a persona that
would sell. These acts are similar to authors adopting (and
yet profoundly reworking) the genres thought to be more
particularly adapted to a certain race or gender. What
sympathy, or even glory in Chesnutt's case, these authors
extended to occult workers emanated from.a similar position
in the political economy.

Yet, all of the works in the chapters specifically on
literature were written by professional authors and not
professional seers, and are necessarily depictions of the
vocational “other." Even though these works can give us
little indication of how occult workers felt personally about
their work or how they structured their work according to
their own concepts of gender, race, and class, literary texts
nonetheless represent an important aspect of occult work: how
many non-seers viewed seers and worked their visions into
already existing notions of social structure. Literature is
significant evidence of the processes through which myriad
connected self-identities were intricately woven into as many
other-identities. Until the second decade of the twentieth-
century, when film began to play a large part in public
opinion and new printing technologies made original graphics

12

 

easier to produ
media.
Spiritualis
Rev York in 1848
while the topic <
riddle-class Ame:
literature reflec
Specifically as 3'
“man
5 . . . .
literaltune dealin
Mt" in'Mic
spiritlh'llism as p

easier to produce, print culture reigned as the dominant mass
media.

Spiritualism, the movement begun by the Fox sisters in
New York in 1848, was an issues many authors took up. But
while the topic of spiritualism engaged a great number of
middle-class Americans during this period, and indeed their
literature reflected this, I will not deal with the movement
specifically as it affected literary production. Howard Kerr
in W
WW Show that
literature dealing with spiritualism focused on the
:movement's implications for Christianity or science or used
spiritualism.as proof of the ridiculousness of reform
‘movements.° .Much of this huge body of writing focused on the
spiritualist movement itself rather than the profession of
medium, and instead of trying to cover all writings on
spiritualism, I chose several that look more specifically at
the work of the medimm. These I placed in the context of
presentations of other types of occults workers such as the
fortuneteller and the conjurer. The works in the chapters on
literature in particular represent a large body of writings
on the work of the occult, and they are indicative of various
and shifting views the mostly white middle-class created of
itself and its position in American society and culture in

reference to the occult worker.

 

fikmmndlumr.IInimuL_annJnuritdummenhcamljmnrhuLsanuuuai
WW (Urbano. 1972) -

13

I
Similarly I 1

 

artifacts indice
themselves. 0cc
which workers be:
identification
close. Seer ads,
willing to deal 1.
working class' mg!
represented the cl
encouraging belie
lives.

Since Occult .
into m” Chlture '

"a“ the earliest

 

Similarly, the chapters that deal with seer-produced
artifacts indicate the views the lower-classes had of
themselves. Occult work became more visible during a time in
which workers began to see themselves as workers, and class
identification became stronger as the century came to a
close. Seer ads, by declaring sears as those who were
‘willing to deal with ”delicate” issues, represented the
working class' more fluid definitions of morality. They also
represented the carnivalesque by making fun of nobility and
encouraging belief in magic and its powers to transform
lives.

Since occult workers brought age-old methods of magic
into mass culture, their methods need to be defined. Mediums
were the earliest of the popularized occult workers, and they
specialized in "channeling" spirits from the dead. While in
a trance, the medium could write, speak, or create physical
phenomena (such as furniture moving, instruments playing or
knocks sounding) which would then be interpreted as messages
from.the dead. Palmpreaders used the lines of the hand to
tell various personality traits as well as the past, present,
and future of the guerent. A.tea-1eaf reader served the
customer a cup of tea, and while drinking engaged the
customer in conversation. When the tea was finished, the
reader swirled the leaves in the cup and dumped them in the
saucer. She then told the stories evoked by the designs made
by the leaves. Card-readers used playing-cards or specially-
designed cards that could be laid on the table in various

l4

 

combinations de
question. The
kinds of reading
po-ers, and what
ability to see t
in ads by Africa:

and also speciali

 

buy an herbal mi;
speeificany to 1:
Canon the fact t
satisfying. full,
L's-stem“. Like

andience .

O
eir‘ f a “set
ltua 3t
‘ the
e Eff 3 Vs
.i: O
‘Sagr f Q17

combinations designed to give the querent an answer to any
question. The generic "fortuneteller" gave any of these
kinds of readings or used what we would now call "psychic"
powers, and what seers then called ”second sight," the
ability to see things others cannot. Conjurors, particularly
in ads by African-Americans, used a variety of these methods
and also specialized in the uses of herbs. .A customer could
buy an herbal mixture for use in rituals pertaining
specifically to his or her own problems. All methods had in
common the fact that the occult worker had to come up with a
satisfying, full, relevant answer to the problems of
customers. Like their literary counterparts, they needed
audience.

The public discourse through literature and occult work
had three overlapping chronological phases. The first, which
emerged between 1820 and 1860, was a moment in which seers
and authors tenuously agreed that the occult was a valid way
of knowing. Chapter One, which looks at social order and the
fear of urbanization in depictions of seers by Catharine
Sedgwick, washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
Chapter Two, which engages issues of white working-class
identification in seven autobiographies of famous mediums,
cover this period. Authors in this period romanticized seers
as part of a useful social order. Mediums, cashing in on the
spiritualist movement, saw occult work as a way to diminish
the effects of an unequal class system. Despite their

disagreements, to varying degrees authors and occult workers

15

br.‘ u

 

The second

  
 

occult work, fro.
over the idea of
cMiller Three, w;
occult worker in'
Barnm, and Fred
at the “Y Beer
Claim? the vali
this seem“! Phase
These m ch“Pter

“Cult Vol-k ‘8 ma

believed that feeling and emotion were useful ways of
understanding the natural and supernatural worlds.

The second phase in public dialogue on the meaning of
occult work, from 1850 to 1890, was marked by disagreement
over the idea of rationalism.as a marker of respectability.
Chapter Three, which looks at empiricism.and masculinity in
occult worker images authored by Mortimer Thomson, P.T.
Barnum, and Frederick Douglass and Chapter Four, which looks
at the way seer advertisements responded to empiricism by
claiming the validity of alternate ways of knowing, represent
this second phase of public discourse on occult workers.
These two chapters show that both authors and seers viewed
occult work as marking the differences between higher- and
lower-class values. Rationalism.as a way of interpreting the
world stood out as residing within the jurisdiction of white,
middle-class males, while the practice of magic evidenced
lower-class status-~subcategorized as the province of women
and minorities .

Between 1890 and 1930 this taxonomy reached strained
proportions and had devastating consequences for seers in the
third period of public discussion of occult workers. In this
period, seers became more vocal about their "otherness”
qualifying them for professional status while at the same
time authors became more guarded about professionalism as the
mark of the middle-class. They also worried more
specifically about the effects of professionalism on the

bourgeois woman. Chapter Five, which asserts that

16

 

professional aut.
workers as evide
professionalism '
seers in works 13‘
harles Chesnutt,
Chapter Six, whic

work and the marg

 

status, shows the
399“ advertising
cm“ °n Prefess
‘3 9 Whole, :
the OCCUR Yorker
Provides evidence
through “131% to
groups may have b
induced mailings
BaJketph“: the

3‘ c
inherently~c1e f in
different Social

professional authors, to varying degrees, viewed occult
workers as evidence of the negative effects female
professionalism.had on middle-class interests. Images of
seers in works by Richard Harding Davis, Henry James, and
Charles Chesnutt, characterize this period. Likewise,
Chapter Six, which explores the criminalization of occult
work and the marginal assimilation of seers into professional
status, shows these as the results of a long tradition of
seers advertising their "otherness" in conjunction with their
claims on professional status.

As a whole, these three periods of public discussion of
the occult worker, negotiated by sears and non-sears alike
provides evidence of competing groups using a single symbol
through which to define themselves and one another. While
groups may have had differing views and interests, they
produced meanings of the occult worker in the same symbolic
marketplace: the discursive arena of public print. While
differently-defined groups may have used print according to
different social circumstances, their characterizations of
the occult worker tell a great deal about the power relations
surrounding the act of definition itself, with one
characterizaton intricately linked to another produced in
different social circumstances. This work is a story of one
portion in the long history of the difficulty inherent in the
process of self-referentiality, and stands as evidence of

working- and under-class people's abilities to voice

17

 

 

alternative soon
limit working- a

Writer Joan:
'stupidity' of t;
system of capital
Capitalism needs
with lousy jobs t-l
brains fits the t"
in: difference 1'
13 the touting of

uIlia-rd mobility.
class of stupid 9

 

 

 

During the latter
Professionalism b1

43:9le .stupid . I

alternative social theories in a society which attempted to
limdt working- and under-class language.

writer Joanna Kadi asserts that the perception of the
“stupidity“ of the working- and under-classes serves the
system of capitalism which depends on cheap labor:
Capitalism needs simple explanations about why poor people
with lousy jobs take orders from men in suits. Lack of
brains fits the bill. . . Any noticeable class divisions stem
from difference in intellectual capacity. Connected to this
is the touting of ”American ingenuity" as the doorway to
upward mobility. It's as untrue as the existence of a whole
class of stupid people . . .9
During the latter half of the nineteenth-century, when
professionalism became the measure of worth in the dominant
classes, non-formally-educated people were increasingly
labeled “stupid." The story of fortunetellers' uses of the
rhetoric of professionalism shows that, like stories of
organization and labor protest, that many lower-class people
knew full well of the ways in which they were losing in the
capitalist game. And more importantly, this story shows that
the same seers, widely seen as part of the "stupid" lower

class, publicly protested by printing their alternate world—
views in what lines they could afford in the daily newspaper.

 

9.10am: Rodi . WW
(Boston, 1996): 44.

18

 

 

 

the Occult We:
Innocence is It

Early f ictir

 

less critical of
this point in li‘
writing extensive;h
Way of knowing
fiction writers,
albeit in differs:
dealt Primarily L
terrible to Write
they Scemed to la

ammpriate "Etho-

c‘5*3*dit.it)n , 1

Chapter One:

The Occult Worker as a Middle-Class Symbol of Rural
Innocence in Irving, Sadgwick and Hawthorne, 1822-1852
Early fictional presentations of occult workers were
less critical of occult work than those that came later. At

this point in literary history both men and women were
writing extensively on the issue of emotion and "feeling" as
a way of knowing the world. Romance writers, domestic
fiction writers, and transcen-dentalists dealt with feeling,
albeit in different terms. Occult workers, as persons who
dealt primarily in the realm.of emotion, did not seem as
terrible to writers struggling with the issue of emotion as
they seemed to later writers who saw rationality as the
appropriate method with which to understand the human
condition.1 Yet authors, as cultural arbiters to the middle-
class, also approved of seers when sears supported a stable
social heirarchy. They located the model of heirarchy in
what they conceived to be the "pure” and "simple” rural

world.2 The occult worker, presented as either a product of

 

18cc Joanne Dobaon, “Reclaiming Sentimental Literature," American
(Literature,, 69(2), June 1997: 263-288; Jane P. Tompkins, ”Sentimental

Power: W and the Politics of Literary History,“ gm
9(1981)=: Ann Douglass. W (New York.
1977); Mary Rally, I'The Sentimentalists: Promise and Betrayal in the
Home,"£igng, 4(Spring 1979): 434-446, and Cathy Davidson, Bgynlntign

W (New York. 1986)-

2Henry Wash Smith maintained that the myth of America as the
”garden for the world" was the defining principle of American national
consciousness, while Leo Marx has stated that the tensions and
collusions between nature and technology have been more integral to an
American sense of self than simply the pastoral/agrarian ideal alone.
The novels discussed here glorify the pastoral ideal but definitely
grapple with industrialization and urbanization in ways similar to
Marx's thesis. See Henry Wash Smith, Ihg_!i;gin_Lann, (Cambridge, 1970,
c1950) and Leo Marx,

W. (New York. 1964).
19

the arcadian rura
anxieties middle-
agpointed guardian:
saw this 'purity'

of an imagined ru

 

Washington I
nineteenth-«mu:
heme” the young
'Wfil of 30113
Visit to BrfiCEbri

firm "1”“ fan

the arcadian rural past or the city slums, represented the
anxieties middle-class men and women struggled with as self-
appointed guardians of all that was morally pure. Authors
saw this "purity" as emanating from the proper social orders
of an imagined rural world.3

washington Irving wrote about these issues in the early
nineteenth-century as an attempt to provide connections
between the young republic and England. azagghridgg_ng11‘_gr
Tha_flnmoziata‘_a_uadl§y,(1822) by "Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." is
a sequel of sorts to Washington Irving's highly successful
Thg_§kgtgh_nggk, which contained an account of a Christmas
visit to Bracebridge Hall, the seat of a country squire who
draws "almost feudal homage" from the neighboring village.‘
The aristocratic family prides itself on keeping quaint rural
traditions, evidenced by their sponsorship of a May-day
festival, their tolerance for roving Gypsies, and their pride
in such sports as horsemanship and falconry. (Bragghridgg
(Hall,consists of vignettes of every aspect of the household
to the explicit end of capturing "some traces. . . of old
English character" before that rural-identified character

inevitably falls prey to industrialization and urbanization.5

 

3Karen Balttunen has shown that the emerging urban middle class
romanticised rural life as more innocent and sincere than urban life.
As young rural men and women came to cities looking for work, middle
class urbanites became transfixed on the idea of the rural innocent
falling prey to the urban confidence man. See Karen Halttunen,

 

. .
0 9 » v'. -C U

 

Amazigg, (New Haven and London, 1982).
4«warmer: Irving. W (New York.
1865: rev. from 1822 ed.): 17.
5Irving, 458.

20

 

1

1
‘.

 

At first 92
collection by a

which to occupy

 

 

 

households in to

    
 
  
 

context of the a
distinguish itse
mners,

°n the "Y8 of tr
Slightly ridicul
aristocracy that
of 'gentee1 Perfo

nWhere is t

eReunion to Occu

3M1 classes. T

0
superstition8 . a

inte“81:8.

At first glance, the work appears to be an anecdotal
collection by a gentleman-bachelor who has little else with
which to occupy his time other than "sketching" quaint
households in foreign lands. However, when considered in the
context of the anxiousness of the American middle-class to
distinguish itself from social "inferiors" by cultivating
manners, azacebridge_nall becomes a witty instruction manual
on the ways of the benevolent and proper, if not at times
slightly ridiculous, aristoi. Crayon's writings show a rural
aristocracy that practices benevolence and provides a model
of "genteel performance.“5

NOwhere is this benevolence more apparent than in its
extension to occult workers and the superstitions of the
lower classes. The gentry of Bracebridge use the occult as
an entertainment, which has the effect of making lower-class
"superstitions” appear reconcilable with upper-class
interests. The gentry pay for the privilege of a palm or
card reading (supposedly seeing it as an entertainment), and
in turn this payment allows the occult worker to stay near
the gentry, providing them with the colorful pastoral
background that makes those of the upper class feel like
landed gentry.

The people of Bracebridge are isolated from the bustle
of industrialization, and therefore take a great deal of time

for life's "simpler" pleasures, such as romance. Crayon's

 

“aaltunnen uses the phrase “genteel performance“ to represent the
cultivation of fashion and manners that the antebellum middle-class used
to differentiate itself from the lower-class of “social inferiors. "

21

pmpose in visit
'iair Julia Temp
the Squire's sonl
my.” Opening

 

rarely leaves the
Guy and Julia, th
yearns, the Gene:
huntsnen and the

Crayon's 0V1) bach

 

purpose in visiting the Hall is to witness the wedding of the
”fair Julia Templeton," an orphan in the Squire's care, to
the Squire's son Guy, "a fine, spirited young captain in the
army.”7 Opening with a reference to a wedding, the work
rarely leaves the theme of romance, offering commentary on
Guy and Julia, the servant-girl Phoebe and the son of the
yeoman, the General and Lady Lillycraft, "Old Christy" the
huntsman and the Lady's dressing-maid, and of course,
Crayon's own bachelorhood. One fifth of the chapters of
(Bragghzidgg_flall consist of topics on romance and courtship
(or lack thereof). The emphasis on courtship is significant,
for this area of social interaction.between the sexes was
highly governed by rules, regulations, and proper codes of
conduct. Yet despite these rules, or perhaps because of them,
courtship was also a highly unstable social interaction.
Readers interested in aristocratic style and manners needed
to look no further than Bracebridge Hall to find a model of
conduct in which the instability of romance is tempered by
the stability of gentility itself.

Irving's vision of an ideal rural past shows that a true
aristocracy is a system in which symbols link the different

groups in webs of "reciprocal" relationships.8 Crayon's

 

7Irving, 16.

8The world of Bracebridge embodies Antonio Gramsci's concept of
cultural hegemony, in which ruling classes and ruled classes share
symbols. This sharing then has the effect of making lower-class
interests appear to be compatible with higher-class interests. See The
zxiggn_xgtgbggk§, ed. and trans. Quentin Bears and Jeffrey Nowell Smith
(New York, 1971). T.J. Jackson Lears has used this concept in
explaining the educated elite's attraction to mysticism in the Gilded
Age. See

Ansrisen_£ultursl_1£nn=122n (Chicago, 1983)-
:22

 

 

 

 

 

 

accounter with "
three of his mal
occult worker in
performance. Du
Crayon comes upo:

describes the re:

 

Sleeping on the t
next to a 'thievj
he find! the fon
113th £189“:
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I

numerous 3m

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raggg

encounter with "the gipsey girl," on an evening walk with
three of his male acquaintances, reveals the role of the
occult worker in the rules governing courtship in the genteel
performance. During a stroll with his gentlemen friends,
Crayon comes upon an encampment of gypsies. While he
describes the rest of the area with scenes like "children
sleeping on the straw with which the tents were littered”
next to a "thievish-looking dog" and other scraggy oddities,
he finds the fortuneteller, the "gipsey girl," marked by a
"slattern elegance”:

Ber long black silken hair was curiously plaited in

numerous small braids, and negligently put up in a

picturesque style that a painter might have been proud

to have devised. Her dress was of figured chintz,
rather ragged, and not over clean, but of a variety of
most harmonious and agreeable colors; for these beings
have a singularly fine eye for colors.9
Crayon views her much as an actress, as an exotic character
in a play to be gazed upon for enjoyment, a view that
reflects Irving's ambivalence on the roles of women in social
life.

As Jenifer Banks has shown, Irving's writings and life
reveal ”an unresolved tension between fantasy and reality” in
regards to women, for, even though he enjoyed interacting
with women, he "preferred. . . to remain an uncommitted

observer, maintaining carefully circumscribed relationships

wdth,women--usually considerably younger than he or 'safely'

 

911mm. 140 .

23

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as the young man
distaste for the
imral and the

apparent simplic;
92W girl as an
reflects this am};
'other,‘ the gyps
extertainmnt' wi
'cleustrophobi a .
ckEStic emitting;
WWItishne”

 

 

marriedm”1° 'To further complicate his views of women, he was,
as the young man on whom Crayon was built, torn between
distaste for the European women he saw as extravagant and
immoral and the ”unworldly American ladies who, in their
apparent simplicity, seemed harmless.““- Crayon's view of the
gypsy girl as an exotic ”other"--one of "these beings'--
reflects this ambivalence in ethnicized terms. As an
"other,” the gypsy girl could be caught in Crayon's gaze, as
entertainment, without threatening himnwith the
'claustrophobia" Banks identifies in Irving's fears of
domestic comitment with white women. The gypsy girl's
occultishness further provides Crayon with the distance that
allows him to enjoy her without being trapped by her; her
profession is at odds with Crayon's self-sufficiency as
expressed through his role as romantic observer.

Crayon's romantic observations are tempered by his sense
of business. Be admires the gypsy girl's business acumen, as
he watches her sell not fortunes but wish-fulfillment to the
general and Master Simon. She is rational about the way to
get money and is clear-headed and unemotional in her
perception of other people's needs. Ber unscrupulousness
appeals to Crayon as a man ”masculine" enough to dismiss
fortunetelling as the activity of women. The Oxonian draws

the girl to the side, where he provides her with information

 

1°Jenifer Banks, "Washington Irving, the Nineteenth-Century
American Bachelor.“ W0! ed. Ralph
Aderman, (Boston, 1990): 254, 261-262.

“Banks, 254.

24

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about the general and Master Simon, both of whom have
interests in particular women. He returns to the group
exclaiming the wonders of the art of fortunetelling: "this
girl has told me some things that I thought no one knew but
myself!"12 Crayon relates that the "girl now assailed the
general" with broad hints at his fortune. The general, who
had been cultivating a courtship with Lady Lillycraft (who
was visiting Bracebridge for the wedding) hesitates when the
girl mentions payment, but she reels him in with "Come, sir,
old love burns strong; there's many a one comes to see
weddings that go away brides themselves."13 She delivers all
that he had hoped for: Lady Lillycraft and the monetary
"fortune" she brings with her. The general ”paid her half-a-
crown with the air of a man that has got the worth of his
:money."14 The girl tried the same tactic with Master Simon,
but in referring to his failed romance she touches a nerve,
and Master Simon feels he does not receive the good fortune
the general received. She loses his hire. She makes up for
it with Crayon, though, who admits to having "a weakness of
spirit where there is a pretty face concerned," and he
receives an amusing fortune "which, if prove true, and I am
determined to believe it, will make me one of the luckiest

men in the chronicles of Cupid. "15

 

12Irving, 140.
13Irving, 141.

14Irving, 141.
lsIrving, 140-142.

225

 

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lies in the far
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gentlemen give 1*
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She tells her Cl

Therefore, Wen .

Crayon's approval of the Gypsy woman as a fortune teller
lies in the fact that she makes no challenge to the existing
social order. Her "knowledge” is only that which the
gentlemen give her in order to dupe one another. She is
enough of an exotic "other" to provide the gentlemen with
someone interesting upon whom to gaze. Even as she uses
their own fantasies to procure money from them, her status is
clearly defined geographically and economically. The
gentlemen are walking near a Gypsy camp, which is outside the
grounds of Bracebridge. The fortuneteller loses money when
she tells her client what he does not want to hear.
Therefore, even though she plays with the feelings of the
men, she does not threaten their superior social position.

For women the consultation with the fortuneteller is
much more serious. The ”fair” Julia's marriage is a sure
thing and she has no use for the fortuneteller, but Julia‘s
lower-class counterpart, Pheobe Wilkins, finds herself in
dire need of magic. Crayon often amuses himself with the
troubles of "simple” Pheobe Wilkins, the niece of the head
housekeeper. In love with the son of a yeoman farmer, but
caught in a fight between his mother and her aunt over
status, Phoebe is separated from her lover and despairs of
ever seeing him again. Since her aunt considers Phoebe too
high-quality to marry the son of a yeomen farmer and the
farmer's wife considers her son too proud to marry a servant-
girl, the match does seem impossible. Crayon reports that as
Julia's wedding approaches, members of the household-~mainly

26

mo and serve
'a harvest time
about the groun
getting smuggle
most vulnerable
time in hiring .
young mu whoa;

pretentious , Phc

 

 

female sillines
read to her, an

Social statue I'd

women and servants--become preoccupied with romance, which is
"a harvest time for gipsies.” He finds Gypsies “hovering
about the grounds, telling the servant girls' fortunes, or
getting smuggled in to the young ladies."16 Phoebe is the
most vulnerable, and the Oxonian and Master Simon waste no
time in hiring the Gypsies to manipulate her moods. As a
young woman whose social status is precarious despite her
pretentions, Phoebe (as Crayon sees her) is the ultimate in
female silliness, for she is willing to believe every fortune
read to her, and, significantly, she wants to raise her
social status rather than accept the status into which she
was born. ”Ready-Money Jack"--the sensible yeoman--ends
Phoebe‘s misery at the hands of the gentry-Gypsy collusion by
expressing his desire for her to marry his son. Crayon is
amused by the class feud, presumably because he thinks no one
beyond the "real" aristoi and their guests can claim any
status that matters.

Irving's message about gentility and the occult is
clear: the genteel must only utilize the occult as
recreation. Crayon shows that a real belief in the occult
may be quaint, but it also demonstrates desperation and
excessive emotion, which he equates with women, the white
lower class, and ethnic "others." Used as a sport, however,
as Crayon, the Oxonian, and later Master Simon utilize the
occult, is to extend benevolence to the occult worker--a

person who contributes to the ”old-time" feeling of the Hall-

 

1‘Ztrving, 256 .

27

 

 

 

«mile also dem
situation. Unl
can 'pess" for _
world of Braceb:
mo ('naturall
more credulous)

330' themselves

Indeed: the

 

Crayon, seems to
W50“ practicin.
because She apps.
fiatlemn and See
it“ She is one .
shi?fi'81’..i.tions hm
CreYoo praises s
0518:: follnd Ellis

“9 Poetical and

dwhile also demonstrating one's own control over the
situation. Unlike the world of the city where men and women
can ”pass" for genteel through the confidence game, the rural
world of Bracebridge shows that hierarchies are stable, for
women (”naturally” more emotional) and servants ('naturally"
more credulous) lack rationality and control because they
throw themselves wholeheartedly into superstition.

Indeed, the validity of occult practice, according to
Crayon, seems to depend simply on the social status of the
person practicing it. The "gipsey girl" was tolerated
because she appeared to accept the social status of the
gentlemen and seemed to recognize her role in perpetuating
it. She is one of many persons Crayon describes who practice
superstitions and rituals in and around Bracebridge Hall.
Crayon praises such practices, saying that superstition ”is
often found existing in lofty natures, especially those that
are poetical and inspiring. ”17 But while Crayon considers the
person, a bookish man who is a dependent at the hall but not
a servant, and himself (Crayon spends several pages
contemplating ghosts) to be "poetical and inspiring," he also
says that superstitions in lower-class people are much more
basic, although nonetheless romantic. Crayon regrets that
”the peasantry [in general] have become expensive and
artificial in their pleasures, and too knowing for simple
enjoyment," but at Bracebridge, however, rituals such as May-

day ”infuse poetical feeling into the common people“ which he

 

1"Irving, 126 .

28

 

 

 

without destroy

The same s

 

says will 'swee

lower classes a:

higher classes .

 

especially among
as81mm by all,
hesitation from

are rather shy o

 

 

to The gentry, '

of fortunetellin,

the
*ire 3U rte t
tiMSJ
They fire
fi‘nCtioQB Of 8
“De
18
2 in , 3‘0
in

says will ”sweeten and soften the rudeness of rustic manners,
without destroying their simplicity.“18

The same superstitions that "soften the rudeness" of the
lower classes also temper the inherent rationality of the
higher classes. Indeed, rationality in the higher classes,
especially among men, is, in the world of Bracebridge,
assumed by all, as the parson finds out when he encounters
hesitation from peasants asked about superstitions: "they
are rather shy of avowing them to strangers and particularly
to 'the gentry,‘ who are apt to laugh at themm"19 In his view
of fortunetelling, Crayon shows that while he is the romantic
observer, he also has limits on his emotional investment:
"there is something strangely pleasing in these tamperings
with the future, even where we are convinced of the fallacy
of the prediction.”20

While the gentry use superstiton to temper their
rationality and servants and farmers use it to temper their
rusticity, the "roving gypsies", according to Crayon, occupy
a different relationship to the supernatural and hence to the
world of Bracebridge and its social structure. Bracebridge
residents see the gypsies as "roving” but this particular
band never seems to rave far, and Crayon suspects that the
squire supports them because they signify the feudal "old
times.” They are at once excluded from Crayon's views of the

functions of superstition for Angloewhites, yet they are

 

lsIrving, 265.

191rv1ng, 340.
20Irving, 257 .

ZS)

 

 

crucial to crea
Ethnically and i
the servants: t;
Yet both servanfl
fortunetelling “I
livestock.
Significant
industrialist ne
gypsies accounts
develoments in
considers that I
houstrializatio:
the gentry/serve:
gentry (and the s
993“?) depends

tOCraYOn’ the Sc

BraeBbridge depe
I“.
or he: Place.

 

 

crucial to creating the ideal social system of Bracebridge.
Ethnically and culturally different from both the gentry and
the servants, they are the people lingering on the outskirts.
Yet both servants and gentry value the service of
fortunetelling enough to overlook the regular theft of
livestock.

Significantly, the yeoman farmer and the newly-rich
industrialist neighbor are the only two wanting to hold
gypsies accountable to law. These characters represent newer
developments in the class structure (especially when one
considers that Irving tries to evoke the era of pre-
industrialization) and do not understand the "reciprocity” of
the gentry/servant to gypsy relationship. The status of the
gentry (and the status the servants glean from service to
gentry) depends upon the existence of the "other." According
to Crayon, the social glue of the ideal society of
Bracebridge depends upon everyone knowing and staying in his
or her place. In the world of Bracebridge the gypsies are
content with lower status because the upper class is
appropriately benevolent, especially the women, who plead for
leniency for a gypsy caught theiving.

Catharine M. Sedgwick's 1835 Ihe_Linand§;_Qr‘_:Sixty
xears_§incez_in_5meriga also uses the fortuneteller to
articulate an ideal society and system of conduct, but
evidences a different vision fromnnracehridge_flall. Rather
than focusing on the positive aspects of aristocracy as

Crayon does, Sedgwick targets the negative: fashion and

30

eye

‘I

i “N ”J 9. #

a)

9
M

H“

1“ .‘h 1‘
‘ .nJl'ihl‘él

Hi; t'. .

ao

-.
-
r-

1* x‘lh.‘

.. kl it.“

WM

i'w

 

insincerity. E
undeniably repu
and piety rathe
proper society.
m portions c
'seemed uniquel
social rank--a

energetic, some
barbarous, but

cor“Wing refi
to Perpetuate t
8"41PMClique)!“

the merging mi

insincerity. Her vision of the perfect social structure is
undeniably republican, where virtures of honesty, simplicity
and piety rather than manners and fashion admit one into
proper society. As Gordon WOod has described the views that
some portions of the young republic held of itself, America
”seemed uniquely free of the constraining distinctions of
social rank--a naturally egalitarian society, young, rustic,
energetic, sometimes even frighteningly and fascinatingly
barbarous, but at any rate without the stifling and
corrupting refinement of the Old World."21 tJacksonians sought
to perpetuate the notion that Americans--because of their
simplicity--exuded the virtue Europeans lacked, even while
the emerging middle-class looked to Europe for manners and
fashion. Sedgwick's novel reflects the view that the
developing middle-class needed to focus more on the virtuous
yeoman past and less on the English aristocratic past, such
as that described by Irving.

Rural culture, exemplified by the hardworking,
independent, and virtuous Lee family in the novel, plays an
important role in representing the yeoman past. Sedgwick's
Ihe_Linungd§ demonstrates that while this ideal existed in
the rural past, its values can be transferred to the bustling
and prosperous city.

The occult worker, as depicted by Sedgwick, represents
conflicting views of what the young republic should strive to

 

’NkudonIknd.1unLsamndan4uLrhaJulsimuijummhkuh_lzu&dlnl.
(New York, 1969), 98.

31

 

 

 

he. Effie, the
to aristocratic
of the ideal so
industrial capi
occult worker

standards, her 1'
to the decadencel
racial/ethnic 'c
r0found ambival
the limits of a

f°rtunete11er ha

 

be. Effie, the fortuneteller in novel, represents an appeal
to aristocratic decadence, but she also represents the limits
of the ideal social system based on virtue, democracy, and
industrial capitalism. .Ihe_Linungd§ asserts that while the
occult worker may be virtuous according to some republican
standards, her profession recalls an irrationality best left
to the decadence of aristocracy or the irrationality of
racial/ethnic "others.” The occult worker here represents a
profound ambivalence on the part of the middle-class about
the limits of a republican system. Significantly, Effie the
fortuneteller has real authority. She is not over-emotional,
as are some of the characters, yet she is open to feeling as
a way of knowing. Most importantly, she tells the honest
truth.

Sedgwick's story takes place in New York shortly before
and during the American Revolution. The narrative centers on
the family of Isabella and Herbert Linwood, New York City
”quality” peOple with ample money and respect for the King.
Herbert declares himself a ”rebel" and leaves his father's
home to fight for the American cause. Isabella remains at
her father's home, professes loyalty to the King, but also
doubts that loyalty.

The Linwoods are connected to the Lee family who, as the
fortuneteller Effie says, are ”well to do in the world, but
not such quality as“ the Linwoods. Bessie is a fragile,
pious daughter of a farmer and friend to Isabella, and Eliot

Lee is the noble yeoman son and courageous patriot. Jasper

32

 

‘1

I
l
4

 

 

Meredith is als
fashionable cheI
until he has tcl
narrow misses,
Isabella sees t
marries the her
like not at all'
independence of
madness caused l
falsmoflable Cous
a~'i8tocrati¢ no:
Super, u Effie

losing Isabella.
dependent On his

 

the shameful fate

Meredith is also a friend to these families; he is a
fashionable charmer, who hesitates taking sides in the war
until he has to, and then sides with the British. After many
narrow misses, intrigues, and other adventures of the war,
Isabella sees the error of her loyalty to the crown and
marries the hero Eliot, who values her for ”what most men
like not at all [in a woman]--. . . love of freedom and
independence of control; ”22 Bessie emerges from a fit of
madness caused by Jasper's deceit. Herbert marries Jasper's
fashionable cousin Lady Anne, who is cured of her
aristocratic notions by contact with the young Linwoods.
Jasper, as Effie predicted, marries a deceitful woman after
losing Isabella‘s affection and returns to England to be
dependent on his mother. The "fashionable" characters are
either reformed by simplicity and egalitarianism or suffer
the shameful fate of lifelong dependency. The values of the
rural community of the Lees-—frugality, honesty,
egalitarianismp-are spread to all favorable characters. The
novel ends with a view of the defeated British vacating New
York at the close of the war.

The opening scene reflects the tension of a transition
in ideas about seers: the colonial notion of seers as
witches and the Victorian notion of seers as respectable only
if sincere. At the opening of the narrative, four of the

five principal characters visit a fortuneteller named Effie.

 

”Catherine Bodwick. WW
.awsrisa. (Now York. 1835) vol.2, 223.

33

 

 

 

Isabella, an a:
the King rathe r
'sinple' countr

In the idea
fortuneteller ' 5
good housekeepi

. . . they
not to any
little but
fiI‘Eplace

and Guelde.
that, if n
emiertaini.
1Wious

The “frat-.01- dea
house, saying th
mount, Produci
Science,“ Sed

curious, to r eve

”fining of the te

Isabella, an aristocratic girl who tends to sympathize with
the King rather than rebels, takes her friend Bessie, a
”simple” country girl, to the home of a fortuneteller.

In the ideally-virtuous world of 1ha_Linupgda, even the
fortuneteller's house is evidence of hard work, tidiness, and
good housekeeping:

. . . they reached Effie's door, which admitted them,

not to any dark laboratory of magic, but to a snug

little Dutch parlour, with a nicely-sanded floor--a
fireplace gay with the flowers of the season, pionies
and Guelder-roses, and ornamented with storied tiles,
that, if not as classic, were, as we can vouch, far more
entertaining than the sculptured marble of our own

luxurious days .23
The narrator deals with Effie more harshly than with her
house, saying the "pythoness Effie turned her art to good
account, producing substantial comforts by her mysterious
science.”24 Sedgwick's use of the term ”pythoness" is
curious, for even if she meant simply to evoke the classical
meaning of the term as a Greek prophetess, she must have
known her readers (certainly not many of whom had access to
classical educations) might conjure up images of a gigantic
female snake.

Einting that Effie's profession is indeed a less-than-
proper one, the narrator nevertheless forgives this because
of Effie's honest face, which in sentimental culture
signifies an honest soul:

Even Bessie felt her horror of witchcraft diminished

before this plump personage, with a round, good-humored
face, looking far more like the good vrow of a Dutch

 

23 Sedgwick, vol. 1, 20.
2480(Igwick, vol. 1, 20.

34

 

picture t
personate
of Endor I
nothing 0
Effie doesn't a
fortunes she de
come true. In

her good than e

 

 

through which tl
A3 in 52a;

semen as a ton.

approval 0f the
characters value
order). “an

unlike Bracebric-

picture than like the gaunt skinny hag who has
personated the professors of the bad art from the witch
of Endor downwards. Effie's physiognomy. . . betrayed
nothing of her calling.25
Effie doesn't appear after this opening scene, but the
fortunes she delivers resonate throughout the book, as many
come true. In the culture of sincerity, this speaks more for
her good than even her ”physiognomy" and provides a device
through which to begin the action of the novel.

As in W. the rural past in W
serves as a touchstone of moral example. The narrator's
approval of the occult worker is begrudging. Favorable
characters value family, community, and country (in that
order). Even George Washington is praised more for his
domestic sentiment than his deeds in war , for his
”sympathies were alive to the charities of domestic life."26
Unlike Bracebridge, however, the ideal world of the Linwoods
romanticizes the rural past as a domain of democracy rather
than aristocracy. As a result, Effie, who practices a
profession of which the narrator does not wholly approve, is
treated so ambivalently in the novel. Even though she is
Dutch, and thus nationally different from both the Linwoods
and the Lees (and hence an "other" to them), she is white and
not excluded from full participation in (and the full rewards
of) democratic capitalimm. Her home is tasteful and beautiful

instead of garish or fashionable, illustrating hard work.

Here importantly, Effie has earned the money to buy the home

 

”Sedgwick, vol. 1, 20.
ZGSedgwick, vol. 2, 211.

35

l

5,5...) ‘,

._ “W Wk] 1) Ml)

1
l
L

‘1.

u
‘i

gt
it
“\i ‘J’s't. '1 ‘JIQ.

'5

Q
,.|..
,L.

W ‘1 .

l 6dr

-

III.-
-

u;

4

.9.

' I

 

 

 

by herself and
the yeman far:
independence 0.
world, and make
predictions are

overall her rea

 

are correct. ’I
liEited, since
EliOt never con

Of Effie as a d

by herself and remains independent, just as Bessie's father,
the yeoman farmer, had done before his untimely death. This
independence of spirit is admirable in the ideal democratic
world, and makes Effie's work more acceptable. Although her
predictions are inaccurate in some of the particulars,
overall her readings for Bessie, Isabella, Herbert and Jasper
are correct. The narrator's approval of Effie, however, is
limited, since the confident, virtuous, and strong-minded
Eliot never consults her. Indeed, such varying descriptions
of Effie as a dangerous asp, a classical prohetess, or a
”good vrow of a Dutch picture" reveal both the promise and
the limits of democratic capitalism,

Sedgwick used Effie's Dutch affiliation to evoke the
tradition of colonial tensions that led to the English
gaining control over new'Amsterdam.in 1664, tensions that
emerge from English-Dutch racial sameness and national
otherness. In the New Amsterdam.of the 16503 an 60s, Dutch
and English settlers repeatedly threatened to use the racial
”other'--Native Americans-~against one another, even though
they often recognized their mutual interests in dealing with
Dutch colonial powers in the Old WOrld. Culturally, the
Dutch preferred that no town held power over the outlying
farms, while the English in general saw towns as strong
centers of government and commerce. This difference between
thergroups resulted in the Anglo-Dutch War between 1652 and
165 4 , which increased suspicion between the two groups, as

leach side claimed they would use Native American allies

36

 

T"

 

 

against each 0
hits like the
outsider. Eve:
were long gone
that Effie is 1
urban- and rurall

The occult
walking to Effi
novel, Isabella
to leave her so
She takes him p,
the Place wherel
Concerned in the
Whether and
asks 111‘ if any

uaVels' c He dq

ha
Ve to €1.08: th'

 

 

against each other327iEffie reflects this tension, as she is
white like the English colonists, and yet is nationally an
outsider. Even though the tensions between English and Dutch
were long gone by the time the novel was published, the fact
that Effie is Dutch evokes a tradition of tension between
urban- and rural-based power.

The occult theme also evidences racial relations. In
walking to Effie's house for the card-readings that open the
novel, Isabella wants the "black servant in livery" Jupiter
to leave her so that she may hear her reading in private.
She takes him past Gallows Bill, saying ”Jupe, is not that
the place where they hung the poor creatures who were
concerned in the negro-plot?" Jupe answers that his
grandmother and aunt were executed there, and when Isabella
asks him if any ghosts have been seen there, he replies, ”I
dare say, Miss Belle. Them that's hung onjustly always
travels." He doesn't want to travel farther because he'd
have to cross the ”ghost-track," so Isabella suggests she
feels odd sensations, like hot pockets of air and a slight
rumbling under her feet. When she remarks "I think I see a
faint shadow of a man with a rope around his neck, and his
head on one side--do you see, Jupe?,” Jupe quits the scene
abruptly, "leaving Isabella laughing."28

This exchange represents several of the novel's themes

about social structure and the occult. Isabella, the young

 

”Jo-81cc Krona. WW
Xerkl_lfiiz=111:. (Philadelphia. 1983)-
“Sedgwick, vol. 1, 13-19.

37

 

 

lady just emerg
aristocracy,‘ 5
old schoolmaste
as a joke, whic
one.‘ The exch.
imaturity of t
own rationality
EYE- . . that 1
she has every r
Yet. while
hem“ with ids
m on 'royal f
m a“ this 901

lgeni . s .
us in devl

lady just emerged from a ”residence of unquestioned
aristocracy," sees the affair as "a good lesson, on what our
old schoolmaster would call the potentiality of mankind" and
as a joke, which Herbert and Jasper find to be "a capital
one.” The exchange represents not only the cruelty and
immaturity of the young aristocrats but their sense of their
own rationality and racial superiority. Isabella, with ”an
eye. . . that looked as if she were born to empire," feels
she has every right to taunt the servant.29

Yet.while she may be "born to empire," she is not born a
heroine with ideally-democratic views. The narrator looks
down on "royal favor and European fashions," and Isabella has
both at this point, although the narrator still praises her
”genius" in devising the plan to scare away Jupe. Bessie,
the country girl "who had been bred in the strict school of
newbEngland orthodoxy" and is herself fearful of ghosts, is
the only one who sympathizes with Jupiter: "she did not in
the least wonder that poor Jupe was scared," presumably
because Isabella uses very particular ghosts--those hanged in
a slave rebellion and the very relatives of Jupiter.
Isabella restates the power she has over Jupiter‘s life by
reminding him of the hangings, and thus racial hierarchy.
Bessie's sympathy is significant, for not only is fearful of
superstitions--"the Bible says, that sorcery, and divination,
and everything of that kind, is wicked”--but she is also ”of

the earth's gentlest and finest mode--framed for all tender

 

”Sedgwick, vol. 1, 13-19.

38

 

twities, wit
brow. 'Thou art
Bessie's womanh
the spinster as
a man, Isabella
the fora of one.
insanity later i
not love her. '1
Irving. that onl
s323‘~’r8t.itions .

The C108ing
Cause of democra
in a diffEI‘ent m;
t"0°98 leave New
tells the Limbo,
k. Liam is s}

 

 

 

\
MW
u'lUfiiv

rhmh‘fl
ii”)! NM Jul,
“1“" 1

H
J
“v.1

humanities, with the destiny of woman written on her meek

1

brow. 'Thou art born to love, to suffer, to obey. . .

“M’- v H“

Bessie's womanhood--which ends up being a positive model of

H
{H
i"‘:

71w .;

)0 '1'

the spinster as social worker-—allows her to assert Jupe ”is

inl')‘

1 )H’
In.

a man, Isabella,” while the "girl of empire" responds ”He has

I

the form of one. . . "30 Bessie also deals with a bout of
insanity later in the novel, as she pines for a man who does
not love her. This emphasizes the theme, also developed in
Irving, that only the highly-excitable or nervous fear
superstitions.

The closing scene, after Isabella's conversion to the
cause of democracy, recasts her relationship to the servant
in a different mode of racial superiority. When the British
troops leave New York, and the whole town celebrates, Jupiter
tells the Linwoods he is to dine with General washington.

Mr. Linwood is shocked, for he “was ready to believe almost
any extravagance of the levelling Americans; but the
agrarianism.that made Jupiter a party at the festive board
‘with the commander-in-chief rather astounded him.“31 Isabella
quickly corrects Jupiter, instructing him that he is to serve
Washington at dinner. Jupiter then appeals to Isabella for a
coachman's job with Herbert's new wife, the former Lady Anne.

.33 they discuss the position, both agree that New York will

  

become a place of industry, of "bustle and racket," which

Jupe sees as ungenteel. When he suggests leaving, Isabella

  

1’3 "'3'_b¥*‘*.:!'1" w -

. a I
.. ' ‘ . won .
i .1. e , . .
f L~—""’:Jfifiw'flt Pat-”L .37 P‘ r k .

 

”Sedgwick, vol. 1, 13-13.
3lsoaqw1ck, vol. 2, 279.

39

 

responds 'That
he a place for
'idle' black se
reveals her newl
view, now consil
honest. The bll
freedom, with tzl
decadence of J
both: and leavesl
the Patriot-yewI
Like Jupe,
this new society
Practices indepeh
assimilated into:
I

“Grier, She Sign

 

 

responds "That will be wisest Jupe; New York will no longer
be a place for idlers of any degree.”2 In reckoning the
"idle" black servant with the ousted aristocracy, Isabella
reveals her new republican self. The ideal society, in her
view, now consists of the virtuous, who are industrious and
honest. The black servant represents a plantation-style non-
freedom, with the house slaves trying to imdtate the
decadence of the owners. Her "new” New York expels them
both, and leaves society to Isabella and her future husband,
the patriot-yeoman Eliot Lee.

Like Jupe, the occult worker represents the limits of
this new society. As a white nationalized "other" who
practices independence and good housekeeping, Effie can be
assimilated into the ideal republican city. As an occult
worker, she signifies at best irrationality and at worst sin,
which will in the emerging democratic world of Ihe_Linungds
require constant renegotiation to gain approval in a rational
urban world governed by the "sincerity" of rural virtue.
Effie indicates that approval is possible, for her skill is
real, and from it she gains authority. This renegotiation
allows her the admittance to full participation in a
democracy not granted to Jupiter, who is the racial ”other,"
unless he remains in a marginalized role as a dependent
servant.

By the 1852 publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Blithedalg_3gmangg, the theme of egalitarianism was strained.

 

”Sedgwick, vol. 2, 279-280.

40

 

 

fiith this nove
set limits and .
Irving and Sedg
W critic;

culture While a

 

'chotony three
privilege . If.
survival dependl
(rapresented he

"Wen governed 1

dollESticity , - 33

 

With this novel, Hawthorne asserts that the ideal worlds with
set limits and clear hierarchies, such as those depicted by
Irving and Sedgwick, have broken down. ,1he_fllithedale
Romance criticizes middle-class romanticization of rural
culture while asserting that the breakdown of the rural/urban
dichotomy threatens male and middle-class claims to
privilege. .The_nlithedale_ngmange shows that middle-class
survival depends, in large part, upon turning debased women
(represented here by the occult worker) into proper bourgeois
women governed by ”piety, purity, submissiveness and
domesticity.”3

Of the novels that deal with the notion of rural
innocence in middle-class cultural ideals, none is more
explicit in rendering the central role of the occult worker
than Ihe_fllithedale_3gmangg, Hawthorne places his poet-
narrator Niles Coverdale at Blithedale, a farm evoking Brook
Farm” where middle- and upper-class reformers gather to share
labor and live in a communitarian experiment. Coverdale
reveals the difficulties inherent in constructing an
egalitarian society from.members of a non-egalitarian one.
He represents prevalent anxieties that social forms such as
public spectacle needed to be further controlled by the
genteel, or else these displays would compromise bourgeois
femininity with public consumption. If the bourgeois female

becomes a show for the public instead of a private one for

 

33Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,"
anarisan.9nartsrlr. 18(2). Summer 1966: 152.

41

I
3the
.7»
.F‘
.11
=9:
' 1
9
7 1
.e
,_.
t‘F
=61

 

 

 

the family I b0:
cmpromised.
Priscilla,

tensity of 81.

snow midnight .

imediately my.

Zenobia, the wee

 

 

 

irsists Priscil
Ptrpose than to
a11W8 for the e
Edium even as 8
militically min
P00! thing:

8alaunder.
COffee, “C
such “fish,
She has ha:

think he

the family, both middle-class and male privilege are
compromised.

Priscilla, a "slim and unsubstantial girl," appears one
snowy midnight at the main house of the newly-formed utopian
community of Blithedale. Miles Coverdale, the poet-narrator,
immediately imbues the girl with an other-worldliness, while
Zenobia, the wealthy writer and women's rights reformer,
insists Priscilla "has probably no more transcendental
purpose than to do my miscellaneous sewing."“ Still, Zenobia
allows for the existence of the myth of the working-girl
mediwm even as she derides it as a fantasy of the
romantically minded:

Poor thing! She has been stifled with the heat of a

salamander-stove, in a small, close room, and has drunk

coffee, and fed upon dough-nuts, raisins, candy, and all
such trash, till she is scarcely half-alive; and so, as
she has hardly any physique, a poet. . . may be allowed
to think her spiritual.35
The supernatural romance the Blithedale utopians find in
Priscilla supports their perceived responsibility toward her:
"Let us warm.her poor shivering body with this good fire. . .
Let us feed her and make her one of us. . . And in good time,
whatever is desirable for us to know will be melted out of
her.”36 Priscilla occupies a liminal position; the upper
middle-class utopians of Blithedale admit her partly as an

entertainment (albeit in a more subtle form than her role as

"The Veiled Lady" clairvoyant platform worker) and partly as

 

”Nathaniel Hawthorne , W. ed. Seymour Gross
and Rosalie Murphy (New York, 1978 [rpt. 1852]): 25, 31.
35Hawthorne, 32.

36Hawthorne, 32.

42

 

an object of I

have the gift r

 

unscrupulous m
not truly an oc

podium of s

    
  
   
  

Despite h
trance-speakin‘
the Powers of 1
h the days bei

sPirituul Show

an object of reform.” As the novel turns out, Priscilla did
have the gift of second-sight but had been entrapped by an
unscrupulous mesmerist, letting the reader know that she is
not truly an occult worker, and so she is deserving of a
modicum.of sympathy.

Despite his professed disgust at the public spectacle of
trance-speaking, Coverdale twice attends a demonstration of
the powers of The veiled Lady and mentions her to harken back
to the days before spiritualism, when mediumship was a
spiritual show rather than a scientific one:

. . . the veiled Lady. . . was a phenomenon in the
mesmeric line, one of the earliest that had indicated
the birth of a new science or the revival of an old
humbug. Since those times, her sisterhood have grown
too numerous to attract much individual notice; nor, in
fact, has any one of them ever come before the public
under such skilfully contrived circumstances of stage-
effect, as those which at once mystified and illuminated
the remarkable performances of the lady in question.38

'NOw-a-days," Coverdale continues, ". . . the exhibitor
effects the simplicity and openness of scientific
experiment.” Like the inhabitants of Bracebridge, Coverdale
finds these new theatrical entertainments to be the bane of a
romantic practice of magic; rationality has merged with
romance. The second time Coverdale sees the veiled lady,

late in the novel, he knows she is Priscilla. This time he

 

3”Hawthorne, 28. Several contemporaneous works have dealt with
the connection between spiritualism and reform movements. See

particularly Fred F0110” a Luax_n9st9ni.erl_flsmen_s_nishts_snd

sninuauaianaJuuusnnudnsrunL1blLuuLandJaummicasuLihaJnnenmuuhe
Seam (Auburn. New York. 1855) and Bayard Taylor' a W

W (London, 1863). Howard Kerr provides a useful
discussion of the spiritualism-reform connection as well in W

W. (urbane. 1972)
3“Hawthorne, 5.

43

 

 

 

directs reader
Spectacle of t]
cmbling of e:
Spectator was <

finds, among sc

 

intellectual de
Progressive del
ether: those of
Character! Bc
than may" fc
'the“ days, th
the aetual labc
9930:1339 He 3
rePresent the c
fashionable find

Late
llect. He

he a degraded C
Stem" °f reli

directs readers away from the spectacle proper and toward the
spectacle of the audience, which represents to him the
crumbling of established order, since the role of the
spectator was one he had claimed for the genteel author. He
finds, among some, ”a type of womanhood in which a bold
intellectual development seems to be keeping pace with the
progressive delicacy of the physical constitution" and among
others those of "a generally decent and respectable
character.” However, ”all [were] looking rather suburban
than rural," for which Coverdale finds reason to regret that
”these days, there is absolutely no rusticity, except when
the actual labor of the soil leaves its earth-mold on the
person. ”39 He finds in this audience a group of people who
represent the crumbling of social order: rural people looking
fashionable and artificial and women evidencing bold
intellect. He finds the whole "epoch of rapping spirits" to
be a degraded one after he hears audience members tell
stories of religious and familial orders upset by mediums and
mesmerists.

In Ina_nlithedale_ngmange we see the downfall of the
ideal worlds of B:agehzidga_flall,and.1he_L1nwngda. The ideal
societies of both depend on hierarchies of male and female,
white and black, Amara-English and ethnic "other," and
gentility and lower class. Coverdale finds these to be sadly

breaking down to foam a degraded culture instead of a utopian

 

”Hawthorne, 181-182.

44

 

  

Blithedale, (3'
mile such hie
predictably in
boundaries-qr:
fashion, woolen
the middle-ole
find inspirati
traditional gen

Zenobia's
SPeCtacle of Th
b0“mafia betw

even science an

Blithedale, (which turns out to be disutopian as well).‘°
While such hierarchies do indeed exist and function
predictably in the novel, Coverdale observes that the
boundaries-~rural folk looking as if they want to follow
fashion, women exercising intellect--hinder the "purity" of
the middle-class male experience, especially when trying to
find inspiration in rusticity, which is supposed to clarify
traditional gender roles and class expression.

Zenobia's grotesque suicide from heartbreak and the
spectacle of The veiled Lady reflect the dangers of crossing
boundaries between men and women, genteel and rustic, and
even science and religion. But Hawthorne also has Coverdale
reveal some glimpses into the feelings of the less-privileged
members of these hierarchies, as when the neighboring farmers
laugh at the Blithedale farmers. Coverdale notes that the
neighbors gossip about the Blithedaleans ”that the cows
laughed at our awkwardness at milking time. . . that we had
hoed up whole acres of Indian corn. . . and drew the earth
carefully about the weeds.” Coverdale disagrees, saying that
the farming was successful, but the artistic and humanitarian
impulses suffered under hard labor. He insists that
”Intellectual activity is incompatible with any large amount
of bodily exercise” and therefore the "yeoman and the

scholar. . . are two distinct individuals, and can never be

 

”Roy R. Hale explains the whole utopia-gone-awry theme of The
W well when he says “What the inhabitants hope will be
a May Day--a warm, 'hearty' purification--turns out to be a winter‘s

tale told in retrospect by a frosty bachelor. " W
m (Austin, 1957): 140.

45

 

melted or weld
is me than a
him; it is an
exclusive cate

white, male, in

 

Priscilla
is acceptable 1
PIiVilege, Saw
urban slum to 4
Prisctillzi be“;
“Stemlt, Vht
demonstrations
“Ste-welt. c,

1°39 history 0

melted or welded into one substance.““- Coverdale's diatribe
is more than an insult to the laboring neighbors who mock
him; it is an attempt to re-order the world into the mutually
exclusive categories upon which social order (not to mention
white, male, higher-class privilege) rests.

Priscilla represents a transgression of boundaries that
is acceptable to the maintenance of middle-class and male
privilege. Having been born sensitive and strange in an
urban slum.to a fallen artistocrat and a ghostly seamstress,
Priscilla became the victim of the mesmerist Professor
Westervelt, who veiled her and sold tickets to the
demonstrations of her clairvoyant powers. It seems
westervelt's control over Priscilla was just the latest in a
long history of harassment at the hands of others. As a
child in the urban slums, her delicacy and whiteness were
sources of persecution, as the "big, red, Irish matrons,
whose innumerable progeny swarmed out of the adjacent doors,
used to mock at the pale Western child."2 This story, and
her father's revelation that Priscilla was actually an
aristocrat, makes the girl more attractive to Coverdale:

Poor maiden! How strangely had she been betrayed!

Blazoned abroad as a wonder of the world, and performing

what were adjudged as miracles--in the faith of many, a

seeress and a prophetess--in the harsher judgment of

others, a mountebank-«she had kept, as I religiously

believe, her virgin reserve and sanctity of soul,
throughout it all.‘3

 

“Hawthorne, 60-61
“Hawthorne, 172.
”Hawthorne, 187.

46

 

The story awak
and Hollingswo
redeeming the
newly-found we
fall in love w‘
The fate

marriage signif
rather than con
former blacksmil
erecting 8 Comp
“me My be .
instead the new;
Blithedale fails

“"9! Work tow

 

The story awakens a sense of benevolence in both Coverdale
and Hollingsworth, who realize they can be rescuers by
redeeming the medium.from her trade, but because of her
newly-found wealth and aristocratic genealogy, neither has to
fall in love with a "real" poor girl.

The fate of the medium is significant, for Priscilla's
marriage signifies her containment by a "proper" social form
rather than containment by the occult. Hollingsworth, the
former blacksmith and rich philanthropist intent upon
erecting a compound for criminal reformation, hears Zenobia's
fortune may be in jeepardy and rejects her as a mate, taking
instead the newly-rich and always complacent Priscilla. When
Blithedale fails, Hollingsworth and Priscilla remain but
never work toward Hollingsworth's philanthropic goal.
Instead, Hollingsworth is ruined by the guilty knowledge that
be caused Zenobia's suicide. The man who, finding out
Priscilla could be rich, rescued her from the mesmerist's
entrapment, had become dependent upon her. Coverdale found
Priscilla standing near Hollingsworth ”as if she felt herself
the guardian of her companion, but likewise a deep,
submissive, unquestioning reverence, and also a veiled
happiness in her fair and quiet countenance."“

Reforming the occult worker from a product of the city's
slums into the devoted bourgeois wife is the only real social
change the residents of Blithedale effect. However, the

utopians find themselves, like their city clothes under the

 

“Hawthorne, 223 .

47

stress of l
infusion of
initially r
utopia of 1
wife, the I
private we

The d
Irving, Se
With the i
(in these

tolerated

stress of labor, looking like "gentility in tatters." The
infusion of the occult worker, and the urban decay she
initially represents, aids in the implosion of the rural
utopia of the middle-class, but in her conversion to devoted
wife, the middle-class and its ethos of the sanctity of
private womanhood lives on.

The differences in the portrayals of occult workers by
Irving, Sedgwick and Hawthorne reveal that writers dealing
‘with the identity of the middle-class as guardian of morality
(in these works typified by a perceived rural innocence)
tolerated occult work only if it did not question established
orders of race, gender, and class. Bracebridge_na11 and,Th§
,Linungda,demonstrate a belief in the perceived role of
bourgeois whites as moral guardians, which allowed them.(in
the narratives) to exert control--either by benevolence or
manipulation-~over those characterized by excessive emotion:
African~Americans, ethnic "others," people of lower classes,
and some women. If, according to these narratives, occult
workers do not question established hierarchies, they are
then to be tolerated and even encouraged. The occult worker
as character served to show that seers can serve society as a
contained "other." The Gypsy palmdst and the Dutch seer
provide the genteel with the opportunity to show just how
rational they are by amusing themselves with prophecy and not
falling prey to a confidence game by actually believing the

fortune.

48

As t.
fr. 1: run
mieties
the 'sinp]
place in t
mvenent I
increased
(as Baltun
social que
Ileanil198 o
lurked son
2might be
In the few
We. t‘

C1053 to t:

As the middle-class feared and imagined a transition
from a rural-based to an urban-based culture, writers voiced
anxieties about social distinctions they saw as products of
the "simple” rural world. The occult worker held a central
place in this part of the middle-class imagination. This
movement represented not only the burgeoning of cities and
increased daily contact between the middle— and lower-classes
(as Haltunnen has shown) but also the difficult cultural and
social questions entertained by the.middle-class on the
meanings of "middle-class." Middle—class definitions of self
lurked somewhere among an aristocracy, a democracy of morally
upright hard workers, and a dreaded “gentility in tatters.”
In the few years between Bracebridge_nall and.The_fllithedalg
Romance, the occult worker "other” had become perilously

close to the middle-class "self.”

49

 

mu Proph
hdimhip u

Writers 0!
Sedgwick, Irvir
the lens of the
sediunsuor at
could have drau
innocents. no.
class notions c
”098 to encom;
and industrial
“‘33 experienc
folk, The mos
nineteenthfient
5Pirits f°r an
Platform demons
“9 Wealthy. ti
'Iootg- sud/or
PM ”‘1' been
mm leer: Pla
s'tmctnre.

Chapter Two:
White Prophetesses and the Brotherhood of Mediums:
Hediumship as a Symbolic Response to Class Inequality

Writers of the early nineteenth-century such as
Sedgwick, Irving, and Hawthorne saw occult workers through
the lens of the middle-class idea of rural innocence. Famous
mediums--or at least those who produced autobiographies--
could have drawn heavily on the notion of mediums as rural
innocents. However, they did not rely exclusively on middle-
class notions of occult work. Instead they broadened their
scOpe to encompass the class interests of both farm.workers
and industrial laborers. They did this by drawing on their
class experiences as industrial laborers and ”simple" country
folk. The most visible occult workers of the mid-
nineteenth—century were elite mediums, those who channeled
spirits for an often wealthy clientele and held public
platform demonstrations. Even though elite mediums served
the wealthy, they also spoke forcefully of their class
"roots" and/or their tenuous class status as occult workers.
From.this beginning of the mass popularization of occult
work, seers placed their trade in the context of a class
structure.

Their class experiences—-served up as qualifications for
mediumship_-were gendered and racialized. Mediumship, as told
by the mediums, evidenced the crossing of two prominent
discourses in the mddpnineteenth-century: the notion of
"separate spheres" for men and.women and the white working-

class attempt to distance themselves from African-Americans,

SO

 

no for them
they had in
The mod
into mass me
In my ways
palmists, cl
For the firs
of consumers
of and Wti
immanfly,
to minimize
Spiritualist
“le Whit
discussed th

Of Spiritual

who for them evoked servitude, by asserting the whiteness
they had in common with middle-class Euro-Americans.1

The modern spiritualist movement propelled occult work
into mass media and began a national discourse on the occult.
In many ways the spiritualist movement provided mediums,
palmists, clairvoyants and card-readers with a mass market.
For the first time in the nineteenth-century, a large group
of consumers was versed in the occult arts through coverage
of and participation in this highly-visible movement. More
importantly, early elite and famous occult workers attempted
tolminimize customer control of the meanings of the
spiritualist movement or occult work. While their customers,
usually white and ranging from comfortable to well-to—do,
discussed the religious, scientific, and social implications
of spiritualism as it applied to them, mediums, almost always
emerging from ”country" or “laboring” homes, took the
opportunity of the autobiography or as-told-to biography to
comment on class privilege as it pertained to white people.
In distinctly gendered and racialized modes of telling,
mediums contextualized their work against a backdrop of class
inequality, sometimes perpetuating it and sometimes
criticizing it. Nevertheless, mediums claimed the profession
for those at the bottom of the economic ladder, linking
occult work with lower-class cultural vitality. WOmen

:mediums asserted that their own suffering as laborers made

 

lblvid R- Roodiqcr. Ihs_IIass_nf_flhitsnasni__3ans_and_thainakinn
Wan. (London and New York. 1991)-

51

them more se
while male 111
rental train
theories of
Spiritu
participate
mama.
occult wrke
have survive
me through
and the mean
t° 8“Wort t
901111th nega
sii'll‘itualisIr
Filblished m
Nimhip.

line. Mre f

them more sensitive and susceptible to spirit communication,
while male mediums emphasized physical vitality and the
mental training that allowed them to see beyond the dominant
theories of science espoused by the educated elite.

Spiritualist mediums were the first occult workers to
participate in a broad public debate over the meanings of
their work. They were the most famous (or notorious) of
occult workers and hence more personalized accounts of them
have survived. The autobiography in particular served as the
mode through which mediums spoke intimately about their work
and the meanings of work in their lives. Whether they wrote
to support the movement, criticize religious orthodoxy,
counter negative images of mediums, or to expose the vices of
spiritualism.er tricks of the trade, mediums used the
published word to articulate a common understanding of
mediumehip. They demonstrated that mediumship rendered class
lines more fluid by either showing the absurdity of class
privilege or by demonstrating how labor qualified one for
upward mobility. {As a rhetorical strategy for criticizing
class inequality, elite mediums drew on prevailing notions of
racial and ethnic ”others" as more attuned to the
supernatural and of women as passive. While arguing for
their own cultural capital based on their experiences of the
inequalities of class, they drew on their existing capital:
whiteness and/or maleness.

The humble beginnings of the spiritualist movement--in a

farmhouse where two girls acted as mediums-~served as an

52

 

r

example, and

dynamics of t
Hydesville, N
discovered th
toe joints an
Either.2 The:
frazzled moth
Splitfoot' vh.
Alll’ and Isaac
abolitionists g
rec{nested int:
Phenomenon. 5
$001! over the
ho bElieved 1
highly aware c
rePlaced the I

smiking' “Bug

spkitua]

 

example, and indeed set the model, for the gender and class
dynamics of the work of the medium. The movement was born in
Hydesville, New York in 1848. Young Maggie and Katie Fox
discovered the trick of making raps on the floor with their
toe joints and turned this into a taunt aimed at their
mother.2 They made the noises in the night and told their
frazzled mother the raps were caused by a ghost named ”Mr.
Splitfoot" who could communicate through the two girls. When
Amy and Isaac Post, women's rights reformers and
abolitionists, heard of the nearby Bydesville rappings, they
requested interviews with the girls to investigate the
phenomenon. Soon word had spread and an older Fox sister
took over the management of the mediums. Other mediums--some
who believed they channeled real spirits and some who were
highly aware of their own trickery--came forward, and
replaced the rapping with spirit.writing and later with
speaking, usually in the voices of departed relatives or
spirit guides.

Spiritualism's popularity can be explained in terms of
its versatility. Practitioners looked for "scientific" proof
of an afterlife, messages from departed loved ones, or just
an interesting evening. Some sought a replacement for a

rejected Christian orthodoxy, and spiritualism rested

 

2Reuben Briggs Davenport. WW

Q ‘

         

   
 
 

   
 
 

   
 
 

   

. (new York, 1888). Davenport
reported that the girls were eight and six years old when their
mediumship began, but others reported they were fourteen and twelve.
SueAnnlnamkh nmusaLJmuLuuu_JuurinnumnimdemmmiuLnnnnm.Nn
ninstasnthzcsntnrx_Amsrica. (Bo-ton. 1989): 10-

53

epistwlogic i
aChristian cc
are willing t
reason. The or
opportunities
spirit mnipul
jobs and seen:
Mediums,
cultural clima
encouraged rel
loWet-classes.
eCStatic expre
“its a perfe
Gmldison Finn
hem t0 conce
and Piunwites

epistemologically on the existence of an afterlife, providing
a Christian connection without the burden of clergy. Mediums
were willing to oblige most customers no matter what their
reason. The movement gained wealthy patronage, which provided
opportunities for women (considered naturally more passive to
spirit manipulation) and for some men to leave frustrating
jobs and secure fame and, sometimes, a livable income.3
Mediums, like many spiritualists, were part of a
cultural climate of the early and mid-nineteenth-century that
encouraged religious experimentation among both middle- and
ower-classes. Evangelical religion provided an outlet for
:static expression, while conmunes sprang from the desire to
reate a perfect society. Finneyism (began by Charles
'andison Finney) appealed to middle-class Americans who
'gan to conceive of poverty as the result of loose morality,
d Finneyites set' out to save the poor from destruction by
1ping them pray. Lower-class men emerged as prophets and
1 igious leaders, such as Joseph Smith of the Mormons and
>ert Matthews of the Kingdom of Matthias . Women, both
let and white, such as Rebecca Cox'Jackson and Mother Ann
the Shakers, also became religous leaders and spoke and
”be publicly about their conversions and other religious
>eriences. In such times, mediums from the lower-classes
l3'41 rather easily step into the spiritualist movement to

\

. 3m Braude's We provides a fuller analysis of the
th and perpetuation of the movement. See also R. Laurence Moore, In

0 e Jo - 0"}; ~20
Q3313, (New York, 1977).

in . .0; o_e ee‘ -0! ;u- .s

54

 

pursue a livin
the variety of
religous leads
The nine

highlighted in
1850 and 1880

Romeo 1853 a
Semantha Hettl
overcoming pm,
PSYChOmetrist.
W“ the 'sore
encountered as
Bettie COIbum
in Lincoln's p;
h 98309 and 1
1888 '43 teld ‘
””mmgm
mm M. Nil

\

”mum‘ins it!
You

0113\on
:EL:::re11 39d:

- ligious I
W

Y.
1mg mfg
. Ch Polity,

{“m&;?ln a‘rdil

pursue a living, for Americans by 1850 were well-versed in

the variety of religious expression and the diversity of

religous leaders before the public eye.

The nine mediums (depicted in seven autobiographies)
highlighted in this chapter did most of their work between

1850 and 1880 and recalled that work in texts published

between 1853 and 1900. The texts range in theme and scope.

Semantha Mettler' s 1853 autobiography tells story of

overcoming poverty to become a great mesmerist healer and

psychometrist. Erma Hardinge Britten recounts her triumph

over the "sore temptations of a vicious aristocracy"5 she

encountered as an entertainer to find fame as a medium.

Nettie Colburn wanted to explain the role spiritualism played

in Lincoln ' s presidency. Cora Richmond sought to demonstrate

the peace and beauty of spiritualism. Margaret Fox in her

1 8 8 8 ”as told to" biography intended to debunk spiritualism

as a humbug of the powerful. Ira Davenport told his story to

writer T.L. Nichols to recount the number of times he and his

  
   

‘ror the diversity of religious experiment, see Alice Felt Tyler,
and

    

, (New York, 1944). Paul Johnson
39b Sean Wilentz in Whigs, (New York, 1994) do a good
tn 1‘ discussing the class differences in religious experimentation in
had-:3, work on Robert Matthews .

_ "tintilue.

On women and religious leadership, see
l'arrell Bednarowski, "Outside the Mainstream:

Women's Religion and
11 Religious Leaders in Nineteenth-Century America" in m
‘(=!:. t“=€ianvMart. H
illaglr“ Y.

     

    
 

ed. (New York, 1993) and Jualynne Dodson, "Nineteenth-
Iii-y A. M. E. Preaching Women: The Cutting Edge of Women's Inclusion
church Polity,“ in Thomas and Kellerm, eds. W

, (Abingdon, 1981).
( 1‘ 5mm sardines Britten. W.
neon, 1900), 6.

SS

 

brother dumfou
wrote to both
with the

all of the med

 

thirteen. Alli
people or from
Who came from .
social mhilitj
is unclear. T1
m the? explir
51'3” PM on i
“in“ became
elite of Spiri‘

The narra-

me Mimi RC!

brother dumfounded the learned, and the anonymous A. Medium
wrote to both expose fraudulence and still defend the trade.
With the exception of Semantha Mettler and A. Medium,
all of the mediums began work between the ages of six and
fourteen. All insisted they came from simple "country"
people or from laborers, with the exception of Cora Richmond,
who came from a lower-middle class family with an eye toward
social nobility, and A. Medium, whose life before mediumship
is unclear. They were like other mediums in that, whether or
not they explicitly stated they channeled real spirits, they
always put on a dramatic show. They were unlike other
mediums because they attained such fame; they became the
elite of spiritualist mediums. '
The narratives began by focusing on early adversity.
The medium, according to the tales of the most famous spirit-
worikers,‘ went through an apprenticeship called "development. "
Development included work with a more experienced medium and
a s‘l.‘.:1.nt as a ”test medium." Test mediums usually worked in
Public lecture halls in which a panel of the community' s
distinguished thinkers chose a topic for the spirits. Cora
Ric hlnond took pride in the fact that her spirit guides
o‘:""=""":l.tted the committees, which ”were composed of the most
8e hclarly men of the literary clubs" and "the best writers
aha thinkers of the time. '5 When the comittee of learned men

\

h‘ 3 53-D- Barrett. W- (Chicago, 1895):

§ 3 e I am treating this work as an "as told to" biography because
‘b {Qtt lists himself as compiler and editor and because Cora Richmond

ied for the copyright in her name.

56

 

delivered the
theme), the m
spirit-direct
of testing a
least, other
editor were
any sleight 0
As mediu
“P platform w
bones of the i
valuable to h,
'59“ her Chan
Lincoln serva
M Of her p1.
Giving s
advantages, 8‘:
“Mic Work.
maiden“ at
t° School to 1
Elisha Kent 1;
a“which fmm

affectioh "Er:

’delivered the topic (often of a theological or scientific
theme), the medium entered a trance state and then gave a

spirit-directed address on the topic chosen. While this form

 

 

of testing a medium' s development was challenging to say the
least, other tests could be downright degrading. Test
mediums were regularly tied with ropes or gagged to prevent
any sleight of hand or ventriloquism.

As mediums became more highly developed, they often gave
up platform work for more congenial private sittings at the
homes of their clients. Nettie Colburn realized she was
valuable to her client--none other than Mary Todd Lincoln--
when her channeling partner (another medium) gave orders to a
Lincoln servant and "No one seemed to think she was stepping

out of her place.“

Giving seances for a wealthy clientele had its

advantages, such as access to the services of tailors and
damastic workers, rides in beautiful carriages, and
attendence at elegant balls. Margaret Fox said she was sent
to school to be groomed for marriage by the famous explorer
Elisha Rent Kane, and Nettie Colburn received an offer of
aui<>zation from a wealthy man but refused it, for ”the ties of
as 15 action were not easily broken" despite the fact that "his
wga a home of affluence and my own that of a laboring man.“

0
t tfirs of adoption notwithstanding, pay was undependable at
\

Q‘ 78n- Nettie Colburn Maynard. WW

(I.
hiladelphia, 1391): 102
311314., 19.

57

 

best, and, d
to self-res;
. since bury
opinion some
expenses."9
Despite
presented ti
was stated
the wolf frc
earliest of
by a close 1
relieved by
insolvent af
Church ”for
Mtitute on
“month; vs:
”other took
Smith's h

best, and, depending on the medium, could come at some cost
to self-respect, for as A. Medium noted of payment that " . .
. since burying his conscience, [the medium] was of the
opinion someone, other than himself, should pay the funeral
expenses. "9
Despite the irregularity of income, these nediums
presented the work as highly preferable to other jobs. They
even stated that sometimes only the spirit guides could keep
the wolf from the door. Semantha Mettler's story, one of the
earliest of the nedium genre, an as-told-to biography written
by a close friend, was a tale of extreme economic hardship
relieved by mediumship. Semantha' s father, having died
insolvent after alienating the family from the Presbyterian
Church "for playing the violin at balls, "10 left the family
destitute and with little access to conmunity support .
Semantha worked long hours trying to serve the boarders her
another took in, and marriage provided no relief, for
Semantha' s husband was consistently in and out of debtor' s
Prison. As the biographer notes, "Mrs. Mettler ' s situation
“7‘18 trying in the extreme, not only for the severe labor, but
for the anxiety, and sense of dependence, which it
:i‘I“-"<>lved.”11 When Semantha saw a mesnerist about a medical
pbghlem, she found herself, at the dawn of the spiritualist

\
a ’A- Radium, WW {reprint}. New York:

‘ b - button and Co., 1922: as.

Q 3 “Frances 8- Green. WW
Wm- (New York.

1353).
11Green, 30.

 

58

1

mvervent, an
she could dis'
quined a repu
her in her tr
newly-famous i
had bought he
no bounds to ‘
nothing which

Later fa
Poverty. Net‘
the key induce

medim-ship. ii

 

her “hot and

movement, an easy subject for the mesmeric trance, in which
she could diagnose disease and effect miraculous cures. She
gained a reputation for miracles, found homes willing to host

her in her travels and garnered recommendations from the

 

newly-famous Fox sisters. At the end of her narrative, she
had bought her own house where she received clients who "know
no bounds to their affections to [Semantha]. . . and there is

nothing which they would leave undone to gratify her. "12

 

Later famous mediums found equal success in staving off
poverty. Nettie Colburn cites labor exploitation as one of
the key inducements out of industrial work and into
mediumship, in which the medium could have more control over
her labor and her life. Colburn's early years were divided
between daytime industrial work and night-time occult work.

She much preferred mediumship, for it “came to me in a sense
unsought, and took me, an untaught child, from my humble home
in the ranks of laboring people, and led me forth, a teacher
Of the sublime truth of immortality. . . until everywhere. .
- I found only words of welcome and kindly care. ”13 Margaret
Fox reveals that mediumship "was the only refuge left her
from the cruel pursuit of poverty and want."14 The father of
the famous Davenport Brothers refused to take payment for the
Behaices of the boys (who before entering mediumship worked
‘3 hewsboys) until he found "his business deranged." The

1)
iQQrapher stressed that "Every labourer-every one who
\

“Green, 105.
“Colburn, 23.
1‘Davenport, 165.

59

renders a se.
paymnt, uni.

The mos
told-to biog
economically
moal labor
often enjoya
gendered for
have been at
Performed ph
“dime EXpl
active and H
mm Met
co“ Richtnon
than exPloi
Weapon. d!
mm? to x
cultivated .
of an after

1550mm, t

renders a service-—every one whose time we occupy, deserves
payment, unless he obtains money under false pretenses. ”15
The most prevalent theme in the autobiographies and as—
told-to biographies is that mediumship provided the
economically disenfranchised with an opportunity to escape
manual labor and poverty and replace it with challenging and
often enjoyable work. This theme existed in distinctly
gendered forms, however, and even though mediumship may not
have been stylistically segregated (since women often
performed physical manifestations and men trance spoke),
mediums explained their work according to notions of men as
active and women as passive. Yet while Nettie Colburn,
Semantha Mettler, Margaret Fox, Emma Hardinge Britten and
Cora Richmond presented themselves as nervous and passive,
their exploits tell the reader otherwise. And while Ira
Davenport and A. Medium presented true mediumship as the
ability to manipulate physical surroundings, they still
on 1tivated their customers ' emotional investment in the idea
Of an afterlife. While criticizing the lowly status of
1- a~1><>rers , they held to many gender prescriptions that did not
a""*:'--"-~?ays describe mediumship accurately. What is important
here, however, is that they chose certain gendered beliefs
thfiy perceived in their potential audience (and perhaps
b‘ liefs they held themselves) as entrance to a "respectable"
public discourse on spiritualism and mediumship. It was

\

 

15121.- Nichols. Wuhan. [reprint].

“‘5' York: Arno Press, 1976: 32.

60

within this
critique of

Similar

 

great deal 0
ren relied 0:
who vere "re:
homes. The"
in contrast
dangerous.“
shared by th
spirits of t
thically.
sPiritunl me:
the? Conside
Dhlsical pm
My discim
putting him
'hitenesg ,
t° critic-1.
Place. “i
10”melon
to 3.90de
criticl-Sm <

Identified i

 

within this discursive space that they delivered their
critique of class inequality.

Similarly, these famous and successful mediums relied a
great deal on racial privilege in its gendered forms. The
men relied on customers seeing them as trustworthy gentlemen
who were "respectable" enough to be admitted into private
homes. Their whiteness helped them to cultivate this image
in contrast to the percpetion of African-American men as
dangerous.“ White women mediums stressed the whiteness
shared by the medium and her affluent customers by channeling
spirits of the racial/ethnic "other. " This more
romantically-racialized method allowed the “other" to bring
spiritual messages to the homes of wealthy whites from those
they considered prone to the supernatural without the actual

physical presence of the "other. " The passive white female
body discursively negated the danger of the "other” by
putting him or her into the service of whites . Stressing the
whiteness shared by mediums and their clients allowed mediums
to criticize class inequality by leaving racial inequality in
Place. With their positions in higher-class society as
lower-class workers already precarious, they were not going
to jeopardize their newly-found freedom in work by delivering
czl“"JL‘Ichism of racial beliefs, especially since they so easily
ithtified with romantic racialism.

\

1‘8» George Frederick-on. WM
Q‘h I I I CHRIS“: and maxim: 1311-12“ (New York,
13 7 1 ) .

61

 

Hale me
extent than
in the super
nest reveali
very differs
recounts the
nineteenth-c
Davenport, t
homer, sin
EXplains in
effect Spirit
definitively
Pilblication 1
W.
with“ (197!
that 'mdimm
Could find' 1
"dead men t1

while tj
PEISpectivES

influenCe Vh“

Male mediumship eschewed romantic racialism to a greater
:ent than female mediumship, but replaced it with a belief
the superiority of masculine physical agility. The two
rt revealing accounts of male mediumship are notable for
'y different reasons. raiggzaphy_Qf_;he_nzgtheza_nayenpgzt
:ounts the work of the two most famous male mediums of the
reteenth-century: Ira Davenport, born in 1839, and William
'enport. born in 1841- W
.z1tnalistig_fly§:gz1ea_zxpg§gd is more controversial,

ever, since it is the only book written by a medium that
»lains in detail the variety of methods used by mediums to
Sect spiritualistic phenomena. no one has ever
rinitively named the author of the book, but soon after its
plication scholars and occultists alike agreed that
elation: was a rare book. Editors of the most recent
.tion (1975) state that it "was such a crushing expose”
.t "mediums themselves bought every copy of the work they
1d find” to keep it from.other readers, believing that
sad men tell no tales'."17
While the works may have been written from.two different

spectives (Biography neither claims nor refutes spiritual
luence while Revelations outwardly denies it), both assert
t physical manifestations are superior to trance speaking
that men are better at creating physical manifestations.
e importantly, these works assert that masculine-style

iumship is more effective at ridiculing, tricking, ripping

5

17Price and Dingwall, xiv.

62

 

off or dumb:
social, and
society. 5.
always the r
subverting 1
formal educz
The Dar
similarly.
the homes of
shoeings. A
friend condu
gentlemen fry
(usually econ
““9 fOnward
take Place as
or Other ldb<
Was a Practic
ensure that 1
mitestatior
”dim, then

or dumbfounding those who claim.to be the intellectual,
ial, and cultural superiors of the medium and the rest of
iety. Since the men chosen to ”test" the mediums were
ays the community's educated elite, tricking them meant
verting the privilege inherent in the status gleaned from
nal education.

The Davenports and A, Medium.conducted their seances
ilarly. Early in their careers they hosted small shows in
homes of their friends. Later they held large public
wings. A typical seance began with the manager or a
and conducting attendees to their seats. Several
tlemen from the audience or from a panel of skeptics
nally economic or religious leaders or men of learning)

a forward to inspect the area in which the seance was to

3 place and to tie the mediums to their chairs (a sailor
other laborer was often enlisted to do the tying). .Tying
a practice used with both male and female mediums to

are that they could not move around enough to cause the
lfestations, such as guitars playing or hands waving. The
iums then entered a "spirit cabinet," a device invented by
Davenports in which thezmediuma sat during the seance.
spirit cabinet was a large wooden box with two doors and
iewing hole placed high on one of them. A. Medium.used a
ole curtain hung in a corner or the cover of darkness (see
andix, Figure 1). The inspection committee then placed
aral musical instruments in the cabinet and closed it up.

manager dimmed the lights and the manifestations began.

63

Ihe inst
than others
voices spoke
sometimes 3;
When a2
cabinet to 1
within. The
cabinet with
usually dish
bruised tron
imminent.
the mdiums
phenomena or
“9 accordir

M398! Bed ' y

The instruments played music (some tunes easier on the ears
than others); ghostly hands appeared at the window; spirit
voices spoke from within, and audience members could
sometimes speak to the voices of their deceased relatives.

When all commotion ceased, the manager opened the
cabinet to show the mediums fully tied to their chairs
within. The Davenports loved to take a gentleman into the
cabinet with them to see how he might emerge, which was
usually dishevelled, frightened, annoyed, or once in awhile
bruised from being smacked in the head with a musical
instrument . The committee again inspected the cabinet and
the mediums and either admitted they could.not explain the
phenomena or offered an explanation for it, usually a weak
one according to the mediums' accounts. When the seance
dispersed, the spin began. Those present offered their
analyses in private conversations and public forums.

Both the Davenports and A. Medium relished hearing or
reading about participants' explanations for what they saw in
the seance, for they related with glee that they had stumped
each community's educated elite: doctors, clergy, and the
professoriate. While the author of(The_argthe;a_nagenpgzt
ended his name with "M.D.," the mediums themselves had
"received the common school education free to every boy in
America” and came from parents "in moderate circumstances"
who had recently fallen on hard times.“ A. Medium made no

explicit reference to his class background but related on the

 

1°Nichols , 9 .

64

very first p

  
  
   
 
   
 

reading publ
'great pleas'
reverend wou‘
infinitely
an explanati
continued say
and their fol
milY be. or an
exFunction e1
follow main
dish Vere his
Chaim?) on
and the Billir
°“‘ the trick
5' Hediu
Educated Elity
issued it Olll
ocold only wo
interests in
ms hints t
Van ofeen dit
with chemical

sen delivered

( first page that his project aimed not only to show the
ling public how mediums work but also to give himself

sat pleasure in demonstrating to the scientific and
arend*would-be exposers of spiritual phenomena how
Lnitely wrong have been the theories advanced by them as
explanation of the wonderful manifestations." He

:inued saying he "will exult in proving to such persons
their followers and admirers, that however learned they
be, or are supposed to be, they have never yet offered an
Lanation that would hold water. . . "19 The work that
towed maintained this spirit of exposing a trick (some of
:h were highly clever in the uses of physics and

nistry) only to emphasize the intelligence of the medium
the silliness of the learned elite in trying to figure
the trick.

A. Medium.hid his disdain for the pretentiousness of the
:ated elite until the publication of the book (and then,
red it only anonymously), for he had not yet retired and
id only work if his customers believed he had their best
arests in.mdnd when he worked for them. Yet sometimes he
as hints that his glee at tricking his social "batters"
often difficult to contain. After one seance, produced
1 chemical reactions and sleight of hand, several learned
delivered an explanation so outlandish it would “cause
'mediumf to smile right out loud, every time he thinks of

' He continued, asserting the work of the medium.is

19a. Medium, 111.

65

characterized is
yet inwardly la

Political
phenomenon the
behaviors lower
dminant social
rebellion to tr.
could be dauger
transcript' the

those with higy

characterized by showing outward respect to class hierarchy
yet inwardly laughing at the absurdity of privilege.
Political scientist James Scott has called this
phenomenon the ”hidden transcript,” meaning the aggregate of
behaviors lower-class people use to rebel against the
dominant social order without explicitly showing that
rebellion to their "superiors," whose anger or displeasure
could be dangerous.20 A. Medium made public the "hidden
transcript" mediums found in debunking the privilege accorded
those with higher formal education:
Think of the aggregate of intellect there on that
evening, using their every faculty to discover the true
source of the ”manifestations," bringing in such a
verdict. It is the opinion of the 'medium' of the
occasion, that, in reality, they were convinced it was
the work of the disembodied spirits, but it would never
do to admit it; hence the ridiculous explanation was
the only respectable way out of it. It is only the
'mediumfl who can enjoy these displays of brilliant ideas
and profundity of the supposed profound men and women
who undertake to unearth the true inwardness of our
puzzling ism, for only the 'mediumf is absolutely
certain they are wrong, and he, alone, could tell just

how simple were the operations that befuddled the brainy
man of science. 21

Over and over again A. Medimm criticized the elitiwm of his
customers and his would-be exposers. After describing the
construction of a slate used to effect spiritawriting, A.
Medium asked ”In what way is the chemist better fitted to
discover the defect in the slate just described than the
ordinary clerk or day laborer?” since the Chemist's training

"in certain lines of scientific subjects” led him to overlook

 

”Jam- C- Scott. W
W, (New Haven and London, 1990).

21A. Medium, 28-29.

66

other pos
noted the
managing
business
once hav
swindlim
has the
0f perso
been swi
associat
Uni
they Chi
certain
force d
llhich n
eonSci:
trial I
at 183‘
were an
all-Owe
his Ca
(short

\

other possible ways of effecting the trick. A. Medium also
noted that the more "highly educated" or sufficient in the
managing of "great mercantile and other institutions of
business" a customer was, the easier he was to swindle, for
once having been duped he would not expose the medium.for
swindling him out of even large amounts of money because "He
has the reputation of being a brainy individual by hundreds
of persons, and would rather give up twice the amount he has
been swindled out of than have his friends and business
associates know what an ass he has made of himself."22

Unlike A. Medium, the Davenport Brothers never claimed
they channeled spirits. Instead, they merely stated "that
certain manifestations of physical and intellectual power--
force directed by intelligence--take place in their presence,
which neither they nor any other living person actively or
consciously produce,” and they saw "every séance [as] a
trial more or less perfectly conducted of this first question
at issue.”23 This did not mean, however, that the nediums
were never "tested” in the manner described by A. Medium, who
allowed prominent members of the community to inspect him and
his cabinet. As the most popular mediums of mid-century
(short of the Fox sisters), they received very publicized
tests conducted by the most prominent professors.

At Harvard (which Nichols calls "the Oxford of the New

World") in Cambridge, "a suburb of Boston...the most

 

321;. Median, 131, 257.
23Nichols, 82.

67

int lli«
demonst:
profess!
or adva:
but the
they be
IBSponda
with th
occurre
rattled
tied, to
with a

sCitanti
Prejudi

about t

intelligent and scientific city in America," the Davenports
demonstrated the manifestations in front of a panel of
professors intent not upon ”finding and accepting the truth,
or advancing the cause or increasing the domain of science,
but that they might expose and authoritatively denounce what
they believed to be a great imposture. "24 The mediums
responded by bringing one of the professors into the cabinet
with them, and after all of the usual manifestations
occurred--"the phantom hand was shown; the instruments
rattled..."-—the doors opened to find the medimms securely
tied, but now the professor had been tied around the neck
with a rope as well. Nichols goes on to denounce the type of
scientific investigation that approaches a topic with
prejudice, but it seemed the Davenports showed their feelings
about their would-be exposer during the actual seance by
placing a rope around the gentleman's neck. The Harvard
professor was not the first or last "social better" to enter
the spirit cabinet and emerge with some evidence that someone
had tampered with him.

That the Davenport Brothers highlighted the fact that
they took men inside their cabinet to rough them up speaks to
a specifically masculine style of telling about the ways
mediums debunked class hierarchies. According to both Ira
Davenport and A. Medium, they were masters of physical
manifestations, and A. Medium stresses over and over that men

were superior to women in this type of mediumship, despite

 

“Nichols, 83-85 .

68

the better 01
trade beneatl
made a name
piled themse
and even ton
and when mus
Nichols repo
the eQually
Wefltions pu
DavenPorts w
slliritual ex
bIOthers for
5- Hedi
duillicity ar
1"“le gas
“We "Edit
l'fialousl am
inluryuzs
female “Edit

mifQStat 1‘

the better opportunities women had to hide the tools of the
trade beneath their copious skirts. The Davenport Brothers
made a name for themselves by "being present" when plates
piled themselves on the table, when glowing hands appeared
and even touseled customers, when furniture moved on its own,
and when musical instruments played with no apparant player.
Nichols reported no animosity between the famous brothers and
the equally famous Fox sisters who specialized in answering
questions put to them by customers, but he did imply that the
Davenports were superior mediums since at the above-mentioned
spiritual extravaganza at Harvard the professors saved the
brothers for last, presumably as their greatest challenge.

A. Medium, however, makes repeated references to the
duplicity and even stupidity of female mediums, making his
jealousy quite obvious. He warns male mediums not to trust
female mediums, saying they ”are universally selfish and
jealous, and will leave no stone unturned to do you an
injury.“25 These sentiments emerged presumably because the
female medium.was "jealous of your powers to obtain 'physical
manifestations,‘ and although she may not say anything
against you in public, be sure that every individual she
meets will have a 'bug in his or her ear' concerning the
geniuneness of your 'manifestations. ' ”25 Even though A.
Medium.described.many successful female mediums performing

physical manifestations, he reserves his highest praise for

 

Zhu.wm¢umn 95.
26A. “in, 95-96.

69

male met
cores t!
satisfa
'mediurn
does no
itgzs

finishe
They a:
many ex

'materi

male mediums, asserting they make the bests "artists" when it
comes to enacting a seance, for such shows are "always
satisfactory for the reason that if a man feels sure that the
'mediumfl is a fraud, he has been so well entertained that he
does not regret the money paid for the opportunity to witness
it.”27 By contrast, "there are no really smooth, expert and
finished female 'mediums' for 'physical manifestations. . .
They are universally hunglers (sic), which accounts for so
many exposes. It is not the male 'mediumfl who had his
'materialization' exposed, one time in a hundred. ”23

A. Medimm also noted that women mediums were kept from
the organization he considered the life-blood of the trade,
the Brotherhood of Mediums, a secret national network which
allowed a:medium.to have information on seance attendees even
if he was new to the community. A. Medium.described several
ways in which his Brotherhood allowed its members to prosper.
The "notebooks" were the most important tool of the trade,
consisting of detailed notes on individuals across the
country. During a seance, mediums remembered any information
attendees revealed about themselves and their families
(including the prices they were willing to pay for a seance)
and recorded this information under their names, which were
then grouped by city. Any medium in the Brotherhood then had
access to this information. Members of the Brotherhood

supplemented this infommation with copious research into

 

27a. Medium, 286.
23a. Medium, 106-107.

70

graveyarl
shared k
substano
construe
the media
moors an

N
name. 01
widesprea
that the
“posed :
alltobiogg
that n, y
term. I
idea Of a
Wilma 1
accurding
VOndErinS
and “Mar
Places, 1

SMIS. I

graveyards, newspapers, and local libraries. Members also
shared knowledge of chemistry, such as which combinations of
substances could make a hand glow, or knowledge in the
construction of spirit cabinets or "magic" slates or even, if
the medium was not a traveller and owned his own home, trap
doors and hidden storage units.

No other:medium.mentioned this organization by this
name. One reason could be that the network was not as
widespread as A. Medium.claimed it to be. Another reason is
that the network would only function properly if no member
exposed it, as A. Medium.did with the publication of his
autobiography. What is more important, however, is the fact
that A. Medium tells the Brotherhood's story in such gendered
terms. Exageration or not, he used the Brotherhood (or the
idea of a Brotherhood) to prove that men made more clever
mediums than women. Exclusion from the Brotherhood,
according to A. Medium, left female mediums ”continually
wondering how.Mr. so-and-so, manages to give so many positive
and undeniable 'tests'--full names, dates, incidents and
places, instead of doves, 'conditions of prosperity' and
symbols."29

A. Mediumfs claim that women were alienated from the
Brotherhood is misleading, however, as one of the most famous
women clairvoyants of the nineteenth-century--women's rights
reformer Victoria.WoOdhull--used the notebooks in her early

career as a travelling clairvoyant, although through a male

 

29a. Medium, 100.

71

 

envoy
and h
itfor
fathe
neces
his d
train
wealt
infor
elite
that s
Broth!
their

2"and:

fact 1

envoy. rAs her biographer Barbara Goldsmith notes, Victoria
and her sister Tenie practiced their clairvoyancy with
information from the notebooks gathered by their scheming
father Buck Claflin. Claflin performed the research
necessary to gain information on prospective clients, while
his daughters conducted consultations. The sisters used this
training well, and gained their first big largess from the
wealthy Commodore Vanderbilt in New York by gathering
information on the stock market from their contacts with
elite prostitutes.30 Goldsmith' s findings on Woodhull reveal
that while women may have been somewhat marginalized in the
Brotherhood, they still accessed the service and created
their own networks of information from women-Oriented
services like prostitution.

Marginalization in the Brotherhood (coupled with the
fact that male medimms travelled more than all but the most
famous female mediums) explains somewhat the perceived
difference in male and female styles of mediumship. If
women‘s messages tended to be more symbolic than those of
men, it was because they may not have had full access to such
detailed information in cities in which they did not live.
Education could also have been a factor in effecting some of
the illusions borne of the more exotic chemicals (ones that

women would not have readily used in household tasks). The

 

”Burma Goldsmith. W

W. (New York. 1998)-
This work is particularly useful in its insight into the role of the

occult in woodhull's life and how the training Wbodhull received as a
clairvoyant served her in her activism.

72

 

physi
specj
These
racia
consi
Print
The 5
White
Which

sPiri

‘most compelling reason A. Medium.justified female exclusion
from the Brotherhood, however, was that women in the trade
had the advantage of femininity.

While white male mediums saw themselves excelling at
physical manifestiations, famous white female mediums
specialized in channeling characters, or spirit guides.
These guides were usually a stereotyped version of a
racial/ethnic ”other," especially stock characters whites
considered.mere attuned to the supernatural such as Indian
princesses or medicine men or healers of African descent.
The seance then, in the hands of some of the most famous
white women medimms, became a feminized form.of:minstrelsy in
which white privilege could be enacted in praising female
spirituality over male rationality.

Even though they spent more time speaking of degrading
work conditions before entering mediumship, women mediums
were less confrontational in overtly criticizing class
hierarchy, probably because they were invested in maintaining
the appearance of femininity in order to keep working. The
explicit narrative of works by famous white women mediums
supported existing class hierachy by asserting that through
talent and hard work anyone could rise to the top. The main
storyline showed a medium who climbs out of poverty and
frustration into the delightful and fulfilling social world
of the upperamiddle class and sometimes the upper class.
Given that the figure of the European "peasant mystic" was a

romantic one for some of the educated elite, as explained by

73

T. J. 5
first t
having
relied
uhitene
the '01
their a
Spirit:
'other'

T]
in the
develol
Native

rforn

T. J. Jackson Lears in W,” it is curious at
first that the mediums did not explain their successes as
having grown from their “country" roots. Instead, mediums
relied on that which they had in common with clients: a
whiteness that seance participants emphasized by constructing
the ”other" in their own terms. Elite mediums attributed
their success to their spirit guides, who were most often
spirits resembling romantic racial/ethnic stereotypes of the
”other" as highly attuned to the supernatural.

The most extensive uses of racial/ethnic characters came
in the 18603, 70s, and 808, when mediums repeatedly used and
developed the characters of the same spirit guides, usually
Native American women and African-American men. These repeat
performances attempted to maintain white privilege during a
time when whites perceived existing racial caste as
threatened: after the demise of slavery, during periods of
heavy immigration on both coasts, and during the campaign to
exterminate Native Americans, who were "impeding" westward
expansion.32 It was also an attempt to critique the hegemony
of the scientific empiricism associated with men by focusing

on the romance of the spirit.

 

311‘. J. Jackson Lears. MW
.Tranaf2rnatian_af_Anerinan_9ultursi_innnziizn. (Chicag0. 1981)
32809 George Prederickson. Wadi—m

.nshats_nn.afr9=Amariaan_Qharaatar_and_nsstinxi_lfillzlili (New York.
1971), John Bigham,

atnumaraeuLiheJumdi_JuuaarmLJuaumunsan
.Natixiam._la£n=1225. (New York. 1963) and Robert Berkhofer..1he_flhits.

W, (New York, 1979).

74

This
guide. On
spirit gui
seeress am
those numb
regretting
advice, tr
'always b;-
from her in
deePGSt ant
“MEG ceI
Chicago, w!
“Huntic f;

Whose
senti.
{meow

app)“
Child.
drollc
”€qu

This was especially true with the "Indian maiden" spirit
guide. One of Core Richmond's favorite and most popular
spirit guides was Ouina, the Indian maiden, who "was a
seeress among her people, and. . . was almost worshipped by
those humble children of the forest."33 Ouina dictated poems
regretting the "vanishing” of her race, gave spiritual
advice, travelled through the higher spheres in a canoe, and
”always brings strength and takes away all sense of weariness
from her medium, by coming in for a few’moments after her
deepest and most exhaustive lectures had been given. "34 Ouina
reached celebrity proportions with a spiritualist society in
Chicago, whose leader, in introducing Richmond, described the
romantic figure of the "Pocahontas":35

Whose canoe comes to us laden with beautiful flowers of

sentiment and poesy? Who with her magic wand, banishes

'cobwebs' from 'think-boxes' and makes 'ezzery-body'

happy? Who is this strange compound of maturity and

childishness, of dignity and simplicity, of gravity and
drollery, of wisdom and nonsense?. . . Ouina! Thrice
welcome Ouina! Tell us not that this name, so dear to
our hearts stands for a myth! If Ouina is not, then are
we not, and chaos is come again.36
Ouina's appeal emanated from “simplicity" and “childishness,"
which made her less an impediment to westward expansion and
more a curiosity to be treasured and consulted when

necessary. Richmond and her friend Sarah Brooks even dressed

 

33Barrett, 93.

“Barrett, 97.

35Rayna Green asserts that white America has constructed Native
American women in one of two ways: the Pocahontas, who is beautiful and
admits to the superiority of whites, and the Squaw, who is an ugly
licentious drudge. "The Pocahontas Perplex: the Image of Indian Woman
in American Culture,” W. 16 (Autumn 1975): 698-
714.

“Barrett, «5.

7S

99111

in "Indian costumes made by the directions of the spirits"
and gave "Indian seances" which, according to the biographer,
"were always held at private residences" as specialties for
special clients.” Nettie Colburn also repeatedly channeled
an Indian maiden named “Pinkie," (a curious blend of red and
white), WhO‘WBS one of Mary Todd Lincoln's favorite spirit
companions.

While the Indian maiden spirit guide was most popular,
the black male healer came in second. The use of the healer
was complicated, for the respect clients had for magical
healing powers was often mitigated by stereotypical comic
relief. While the medium.and clients appreciated the
spirit's powers, they also assumed he would be a jolly
prankster, barely capable of understanding the seriousness of
the seance. Emma Hardinge's "darkie Spirit" once put an
attending skeptic through what he called his "gyganks."
Gyganks consisted of possessing the skeptic's body, shaking
him, and making him.leap back and forth across the seance
table with the purpose of successfully restoring the
gentleman's sight..38

Mediums also used spirit guides as a way of validating
their own powers, such as when Nettie Colburn's friend Parnie
channeled the spirit of one of the Attorney General's former
servants, ”an old colored man. . . who identified himself

with his old master by expressing his thanks that his request

 

37Barrett, 135.

”Elm flamingo Britten. W.
(London, 1900): 120-121.

76

‘to be bu
sit. . .
her by va
asserting
class med
Char
the clier.
also used
clients,
'Great P:
do honor
that She
Spirit [15

[Mickie

'to be buried under the tree where in his old age he used to
sit. . . ”'39 was granted. Parnie's use of the servant served
her by validating her customer's sense of benevolence and by
asserting the white privilege held in common by the lower-
class medium.and her higher-class client.

Channeling the spirits of those more easily forgotten by
the client lent validity to the mediumfs power, but mediums
also used spirit guides to pay them compliments in front of
clients, such as the ”darkie spirit" calling Britten the
”Great Preacher” or ”Spirits of great chiefs" returning "to
do honor to the white prophetess . " 4° Cora Richmond stated
that she warranted special protection from a Native American
spirit named "Omwah. . . who in earth life was a Cheyenne
'medicine man} [and who] always accompanied the medium.when
she was travelling; when she was going by train, he was
always astride the 'fire-buffalo'.“1

The drama of the spirit "other" became popular during a
moment of transformation in white middle-class culture.
Karen Halttunen in W
identifies this shift as one from sentimental to theatrical
culture. During the Jacksonian period, white muddle-class
Americans distinguished themselves from the masses by a
belief that outward appearance reflected inward morality,
making the "sincerity" of manners and fashion important to

upward:mobility. Balttunen notes that around the 1850s, the

 

39llaynard, 116.
“Britten, 121, 140.
“Barrett, 404.

77

 

thee
'ger
suck

brid

”.0
ND -
(D
N
v 4‘
a

American middle-class became increasingly aware of the
theatrical elements of their culture. This awareness of the
”genteel performance" spurred interest in home recreation
such as parlour plays and masquerades.‘2 The medium deftly
bridged both these cultures. By insisting she channeled real
spirits the medium appealed to the "sincerity" of sentimental
culture, but by channeling the ”exotic" she appealed to
theatrical culture.

In its dramaturgy, the parlour seance functioned for the
middle-class in some of the same ways minstrelsy functioned
in white working-class culture by expressing an attraction to
the cultural forms of the "others" while still maintaining
symbolic control over them.‘3 The seance differs from
minstrelsy in two ways. First, the parlour seance was
organized and performed primarily by women and held in the
private space of the home, whereas minstrelsy was a realm of
masculinity enacted by males in public spaces. The
medimmistic trance itself supported notions of white
femininity as passive but powerful nonetheless. Mediums
insisted that the channeling was genuine (except when writing
to debunk spiritualism) because they did not have the
knowledge base--due to lack of education-~the spirits had.
Explicitly, they channeled real voices; they did not
interpret them. This worked to their advantage when bringing

 

“Karen nalttunen. W
W- (New Haven and London.
1982).

“Brie Lott. W
W. (New York. 1993)

78

the racial/ethnic "other" to white clients. The white female
body, symbolized as "pure“ and non-threatening in its passive
form, supposedly mitigated the danger of the racial/ethnic
"other." The combination of the ”naturally" more spiritual
"other" and the ”pure" white female body became a
condescendingly romantic performance which used white notions
of the ”other" to question rational, male, bourgeois
whiteness. Britten's "darkie spirit" is a good example of
this dynamic. The medium amends the white configuration of
black.masculinity as dangerous by channeling a jolly
trickster who ultimately works for the good of the client.
The perceived danger of the ”other" is placed under control
through romanticization. Similarly, Cora Richmond's
”medicine man," instead of impeding westward expansion,
travels with the "fire-buffalo” (the train being a popular
symbol of westward expansion) as a talisman of luck for the
white woman.

Second, while minstrelsy, as Eric Lott states, had an
"oft-remarked capacity to ridicule upward in class as well as
downward in racial direction, "“ mediumistic performances of
the ”other" rarely questioned class structure explicitly.

In this way, the performance was one of collective and
classed whiteness; the mediums from the working classes
performed an idea of the racial/ethnic "other" to become
(in their narratives) an upper class self; the "others" they

produced were always in service to both the medium.and her

 

“Lott, 111-112 .

79

raci
clas
upoe

tone

that
on n
cert
help
Part
look
cond
ern
Prep
neti

diSc

clients. Spirits may have materialized early on to debunk
slavery, but they never showed up to debunk the romantic
racism of the white bourgeosie. While mediums presented
class as somewhat permeable (since they found entrance to the
upper classes) and whiteness as somewhat negotiable (between
romance and rationality), they saw racial/ethnic "otherness"
as so stable that it reproduced itself beyond the grave.

The autobiographies and as-told-to biographies did claim
that economically-disenfranchised people had a special hold
on mediumship by asserting that poverty and hardship created
certain sensibilities that can be uniquely artful and
helpful. However, the fierce competition-~due undeniably in
part to the stress of the work-- that led elite mediums to
look "downward" in gender or create romanticized and
condescending stereotypes of racial/ethnic "others"
eventually undid the profession, for those seeking to outlaw
prophecy-for-profit eventually used racial role-playing or
notions of ”deceitful" women to their own ends (this will be
discussed at length in Chapter Six).

The fact that male mediums used primarily male privilege
and female mediums used mainly white privilege speaks to a
historical moment when intersections of gender and race
discourses allowed mediums to work. Elite mediums found
entrance into the higher classes when ideologies that valued
white feminine youth and beauty or white male cleverness and
"respectability" merged with notions of a lower class

penchant for the supernatural. This was also a moment,

80

eluci
white
vorke
Amerj
freec
elite
succe
mista

disri

i/

elucidated by David Roediger in flage§_g£_flhitengaa, when the
white working classes came to define themselves as white
workers in order to distinguish themselves from.African-
Americans, who for them evoked slavery, dependence, and non—
freedom.‘5 While stressing white working-class capability,
elite women mediums looked "downward" in race while the
successful male mediums looked ”downward" in gender, a
mistake that eventually proved to be an almost fatal

disruption of the cohesiveness of the profession.

 

”David R- Roediger. W
W. (New York. 1991)-

81

Eur

intc
rhet
pass
dead
whic

pr 6C

mid:
disc

fine

a pa
[are
'Sil
0f t
"Edi:

Clan

Chapter Three:

Eunbugs, Fifty-Cent Sybils, and ”A Positive Aversion
to all Pretenders to 'Divination'”: Occult Workers
and the "Self-Neda Nan" in Barnum, Thomson, and
Douglass

The differences in male and female mediumship brought
into focus by the writings of elite mediums were not simply
rhetorical strategies limited to occult workers. Female
passivity and emotion and male agility and rationalism were
dominant public discourses of the nineteenth-century, on
which the detractors of the occult drew as much as the
practitioners. Non-fiction writers played an important role
in negotiating the meanings of the occult worker in the late-
middle nineteenth-century, espcially works written within the
discourse of manhood characterized by rationality, proper
financial practice and professionalism. Non—fiction texts
tended to see the occult worker, like Goeffrey Crayon had in
Irving's Bracebridge_fiall and Coverdale did in Bawthorne's
Blithedale_3onance, as affronts to rationality and hence:male
power. Yet while these characters struggled with emotion as
a way of knowing the world, male non-fiction writers seemed
more certain in dismissing much of ”feeling" as female
”silliness." They often directly contradicted the validity
of the emotion that was the most crucial concept in female
mediums' autobiographies and the way in which many seers
claimed power.

The figure for which the occult worker served as a foil

was the "self-made man,” a symbol John Cawelti has said

served powerfully as an American icon. He writes that

82

 

 

'Amer.
propor
self-a
becau:
the ca
carni‘
chapta
0f thl
magic.
suppo
their

Profi

90Ver

Profe

"Americans have always been the world's most enthusiastic
proponents of the self-made man. "1 Writings promoting the
self-made man ideology are important in the history of occult
because the self-made man stood in philosopical opposition to
the carnivalesque type of shows seers enacted. Additionally,
carnivalesque advertising, such as that used by seers (see
chapter four) , was the single naost important cultural product
of the late-nineteenth—century that kept the promise of
magical transformation alive.2 Self-made men, however, were
supposed to prosper through hard work and dedication, not
their own magic and fantasy, even if some, like P.T. Barnum
profited from others' beliefs in magic and the fantasic.

When writers viewed white bourgeois culture as one
governed by rationality, proper financial transaction, and
professionalism, they imagined occult workers in harsher
terms than writers who weren't willing to fully dismiss
emotion as a way of knowing. "Rational” writers saw occult
workers as comical at best and at worst criminal, indecent,
and most offensively to them, disdainful of middle-class
rationality.3 P.T. Barnum's W, Mortimer
Thomson's WW, and Frederick Douglass's
autobiographies, all written in the second half of the

nineteenth-century, use occult workers as foils to show what

 

130m: Cawelti. W. (Chicago, 1965). 1-

2806 Jackson learn. Winona:
W11. (New York. 1994).
3Nark Twain also made comical use of spiritualism in W

W of 1883 and W of 1885- See
Howard Kerr's "Sperits Couln't a Done Better' in W

W-
83

 

the

spur

Sin:

0ft!

pro
how
and
jou
hei
org
in
let.
eacj
the]

30m

Chm
"in!

achi
thei

VOrk

the rational "self-made man" is not: superstitious and
spurious of respectable capitalism.

That these writers chose non-fiction is significant
since such writing stood in contrast to novels, which were
often dismissed as romantic, sentimental, or frivilous. Also
significant was the fact that these writers were not
professional literary authors. Mortimer Thomson was,
however, a journalist who made a living writing for dailies
and publishing books based on his experiences as a
journalist. P.T. Barnum wrote W at the
height of his fame as a promoter, showman, and museum
organizer. Frederick Douglass was a successful speaker,
travelling in the 0.8. and abroad as an abolitionist and
later as an anti-racism.and woman suffrage activist. While
each author faced different rhetorical situations, each of
them was invested in the ideology of the self-made man and in
some version of social change. Barnum sought to educate the
public on how to be entertained and not deceived by
imposters. Thomson sought to rid cities of "questionable”
characters and make them.places "respectable" people would
want to live. Douglass initially set out to show the
atrocities of slavery and racial caste and later to
demonstrate the African-American potential for learning and
achievement. The notion of the rational self-made man tied
their works together, as well as the roles that occult
workers played in their books as those standing in opposition

to the rational man.

84

 

ra
ni

SO

in
sc.

I61

PIE
hp;

81,};

38!]

mg

”an

is;

Science, although not an explicit theme in any of the
works discussed here, looms in the background as evidence of
rationality of the self-made man. While evangelism in the
nineteenth-century continued to be a major force in enacting
social change, science-~as practiced primarily by white,
formally-educated males--took an increasingly important role
in social authority and work toward “public good."4 .As
science gained more social authority through public health
reform especially, science came increasingly to be seen as a
masculine pursuit, as educators warned against the
debilitating effects of intellectual activity for women.5
Americans in the latter half of the nineteenth-century looked
more and more to science as a way to solve prOblems, and
hence tended to even further glorify male rationality.
Barnum. Thomson, and to a lesser extent Douglass, used the
prevailing belief in scientific method as a way to truth and
applied it to occult workers to show them as credulous,
superstitious and therefore unfit for a modern world.

The "self-made" P. T. Barnum.could hardly be considered
sentimentally genteel, scientifically rational, or even
respectable in the eyes of much of the middle-class. In
fact, Barnum.was proud of his ability to trick people. Yet

no one in print seemed to hate fortunetellers and mediums

 

‘Charles Rosenberg chronicles the ways in which science and
evangelism.worked together in public health movements in the nineteenth-

century in.Nn_Qthsr_Gadsi__Qn_asianss_and_Amarisan.§asia1_1hnunht.
(Baltimore, 1961).

53¢. wear» W- Roseiter. W
W (Baltimore. 1982)-

853

1.12.1
base]
which
all C
'An a
requi
offer
him t

He He

SEVQI
great

games

more than the King of Humbug himself. In his 1866 flnmhngs_gf
the_flnrld, Barnum calls fortunetelling ”one of the most
baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs”
which is ”busily practiced by knaves and believed by fools
all over the world."5 He concludes of mediums' skills that
”An aptitude for deception is all the capital that a person
requires in order to become a 'spirit medium' , "7 and he
offered five hundred dollars to the person who could prove to
him that any medium could actually communicate with the dead.
He was positive he would forever keep his money.

Barnum wrote W to fulfill a promise
he made in his 1855 Autgbiparaphy_gf_2._2._narnnm.to "expose
several of the chief humbugs of the world." He also spends a
great deal of time clarifying his position on confidence
games and uses numbngs_g£_the_nnrld to delineate between the
"honest" humbug and the charlatan. Be identifies humbugs
across time and space, such as scientific advancements in
food preparation, withcraft trials, overzealous reformers,
and “the greatest humbug of all. . . the man who believes-~or
pretends to believe--that everything and everybody are
humbugs." Be reserves special discussions for occult
workers, who practice "whole sciences (falsely so called)
which are unmingled humbugs from beginning to end. Such was
Alchemy, such was Magic, such was and still is Astrology,
and above all Fortune-telling." Barnum's particular

 

‘P-T- Barnum W. (London. 1866): 230-
7Barnum, 61.

86

corn

pair
was
the

our

End
the
for
Wit.
Viti
use.
Prir
inc.
adv:
99:11
the
the
app!

complaint with occult workers is that they advertise and
"create" a product that is--in his view-—false. One of his
purposes in exposing the fraud of mediums and fortunetellers
was to protect the less astute from losing their money to
these frauds: "It is high time that the credulous portion of
our community should be saved from the deceptions, delusions,
and swindles of these blasphemous mountebanks and imposters."3
While the occult workers may be "blasphemous," their real
crime is taking the money of the innocents who are unwise in
the use of the occult.

P.T. Barnumfs philosophy of advertising is important in
understanding his disgust with occult workers. First, he was
the most famous practitioner of the type of advertising
fortunetellers practiced: the carnivalesque, which promised,
with all kinds of far-out claims, some kind of interaction
‘with magic or fantasy. Second. while Barnum and seers both
used the carnivalesque, Barnum.did not approve of seers
primarily because he thought women and people of color
incapable of truly appreciating the market forces at work in
advertising. Barnum.be1ieved that "advertising is to the
genuine article what manure is to 1and-—it largely increases
the product."9 The important thing regarding this "manure" is
that it adds to the quality of the product. When practiced
appropriately, advertising was a positive "humbug," which to

Barnumrmeant ”putting on glittering appearances-~outside

 

aBarnum, 1, 5, 71

9Barnum, M .

87

9.

cl

Th.
de:
Shc

CIE

showb-novel expedients, by which to suddenly arrest public
attention, and attract the public eye and ear,” and "a man
may, by common usage, be deemed a 'humbug' without by any
means impeaching his integrity." The honorable humbug is the
entrepeneur who creates "outside show" to add to the value of
a quality product.

Barnum further explains his view of the honorable humbug
by refering to Monsieur Mangin, the pencil-peddler. To sell
his lead pencils, Monsieur Mangin parks his outlandish coach
and dons a "costly velvet tunic with gold fringes" and "a
magnificent burnished helmet, mounted with rich plumes of
various brilliant colors.”1° Mangin's address to the
gathering crowd reveals two things: producers respond to
consumer needs, and good advertisers are conscious of their
charlatanry:

Yes, gentlemen, I am.a charlatan--a:mountebank; it is

my profession, not from choice, but from necessity.

You, gentlemen, created that necessity! You would not

patronize true, unpretending, honest merit, but you are

attracted by my glittering casque, my sweeping crest, my
waving plumes. You are captivated by din and glitter,

and therein lies my strength. Years ago I hired a

modest shop in the Rue Rivoli, but I could not sell

pencils enough to pay my rent, whereas, by assuming this
disguise--it is nothing else--I have succeeded in
attracting general attention, and in selling literally
millions of my pencils.11
This honest humbug delivers several things. First, he
delivers a show, and the cost of the pencil includes the
show. Second, he delivers moral comment that mountebanks are

created by consumers and should not be judged harshly for

 

103mm, 8-11, 16.
“Barnum 18.

88

 

 

simp

the
he i
'dis
the

tang

begi
econ
betw
mult
abso

adVe

POte
0rde

simply satisfying consumer needs. Third, and perhaps least
important in this exchange, he delivers the product itself,
the lead pencil. Mangin, as the humbug of integrity, admits
he is a show and makes the potential customer aware of his
”disguise." Barnum.a1so notes that Mangin's pencils were of
the highest quality, asserting that his show was backed by a
tangible, usable product.

Barnum.delivered his theory of advertising at the
beginning of some important changes in cultural views of
economic transaction. Alan Trachtenberg contends that
between 1870 and 1900 the volume of advertising in America
multiplied by over ten times. This "indicated not only an
absolute expansion but a decisive change in the function of
advertising" from the "older function to inform. . . to a
mode in which information as such new fused with a message
about the product, together with the message about the
potential consumer, that he or she required the product in
order to satisfy a need incited and articulated by the
advertisement itself."12 'Trachtenberg sees this function as
disassociating the production of goods from their consumption
because advertising emphasized the abstract values (morality,
beauty, goodness) products would supposedly give the
potential consumers.

While Trachtenberg locates this shift beginning after
1870, bourgeois culture had begun to find the evidence of
production distasteful as early as 1830 by separating the

 

“Trachtenberg, 136-137 .
89

hon
prc

res

la}

do:

bu1

ac<
881
wh.‘
an:
a I
Co:

The

Cr:
the

cm

home into spaces of labor and spaces of leisure (the latter
providing space for "genteel performance," the show of
respectability and distance from labor) .13 Barnum' s "manure"
philosphy of advertising reflects the tendency to obscure the
labor of a product by almost allowing the advertising to
eclipse the product. Barnum.be1ieved that the ”outside show"
doesn't just inform the potential customer of the product
but batters the product by providing positive associations.

Barnum's mermaid.spectac1e typifies this. He had
acquired a "Feegee Mermaid" consisting of a monkey's torso
sewn to the body of a fish, but orchestrated a media campaign
which presented the mermaid as a beautiful underwater
enchantress. As his biographer notes, Barnum.had New York in
a mermaid ”fever" by the time he exhibited the piece at
Concert Hall for one week and then at his American Museum.
The exhibit was further publicized by Barnumfis public
“debate” with naturalists over the authenticity of the
creature. The difference between Barnumfs advertising and
the actual object did not enrage the public, however, who
could not get enough of the creature, a fact Barnum's
biographer attributes to ”the time-honored tradition of
sublimating one's own sense of outrage into the innocent
delight that comes from seeing one's own friends and

neighbors humbugged as well. "14 Barnum saw his ”genuine

 

13Balltunen, 102-114.

“Saxon. W. (New York. 1989):
119-123. For more on Barnum' s autobiographies (which are deemphasised
here to examine the neglected W more fully) and life

historY. «0 Neil Harris, W. (Boston.
90

pt
q;
ha

no
ht
blr

18c
Cri
Cla:
the:

the

article" not only as the shriveled piece of taxidermy but as
the attendant show of the advertising itself and the jokes
the spectacle allowed repeat visitors to play on their
friends. He had put on a show with a media blitz and a
public debate with naturalists, and felt he had delivered a
quality product, despite the fact that the advertising itself
had overtaken the product in importance.

In Barnumfs view of social hierarchies, occult workers
as gendered, classed, and racial/ethnic "others” simply could
not present themselves as ”honest" humbugs, as he presented
himself and Monsieur Mangin. While Barnumuwas willing to
blur the lines between advertising and product for the Eeegee
Mermaid, he was not willing to admit that occult workers
might be orchestrating their work similarly. His attacks on
occult workers fall into two categories: those on mediums who
make a show of femininity and nervousness and those on urban
"witches" who, he finds, do not attempt to hide the evidence
of their domestic labors when they told fortunes, therefore
lacking a "genteel performance" of any kind. Barnum
criticizes mediums for overacting prescriptions for.middle-
class white women and fortunetellers for not subscribing to
these same prescriptions. The fommer advertised too much and
the latter advertised too little.

How did Barnum.know that there was no ”geniune article”

in the seance or consultation? Why couldn't the seance be

 

1973) and Eric rrets, “Performing Selves and the Theatrical Imagination
in Antebellum America: The Examples of Anna Cora Mowatt, P.T. Barnum,
and Nathaniel Hawthorne, " Michigan State University Ph.D Dissertation,
(East Lansing, MI, 1995).

91

vi
is
en

de

sh
hi

Cor

Ger

explained as he had explained the mermaid showing? Barnumfs
one key distinction between occult workers and his own work
is that he admits to being a showman. When the customer
views Barnumfls splendorous mermaid advertisements, he knows
(according to Barnum) that the ad is part of the show, and
when he comes to the American Museum to see the mermaid, he
is not only treated to the joke but to all the other
exhibits. The occult worker, on the other hand, insists she
delivers real spirits or real prophecy, and stands by her
ability to deliver these rather than admitting she puts on a
show. Barnumfs sense of his own rationality will not allow
hum to believe in prophecy, and therefore, he sees the occult
worker's product as false.

Barnum blasts female mediums in particular for feigning
femininity in the form.of passivity and illness in order to
bolster their validity as mediums. ‘Victorian belief in the
frailty of the white bourgeois female nervous system allowed
mediums to portray themselves as more susceptible to spirit
contact.15 Barnum' s sixty-page section on spiritualists
centers on the credulousness of spiritualists and the
trickery of mediums. He takes special interest in detailing
the ways in which mediums produce various "spirit phenomena,”

such as making spiritual "letters on the amm" by flexing an

 

J-3'1'or a discussion of victorian female "nervousness,“ see Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg and Charles Rosenberg “The Female Animal: Medical and
Biological Views of Woman and Her Role in the Nineteenth-Century“ in

Nhman.and.flsa1th.in.hmarisa. ed. Judith Whlzer Leavitt. (Madison.
Wisconsin, 1984). See also R. Laurence Moore, “The Medium and Her

Message: A Case of Female Professionalism” in W
W. (New York. 1977).

92

pla

par

“in
hOw
Hor
tha-

he:

if n

Prac

mEdi

and

Clai

Vie:

arm muscle and scratching the surface of the skin with a
blunt point or answering unopened letters by folding them in
such ways that enable them to be seen through the paper. He
also uncovers the mystery of spirit photography by explaining
the use of old negatives on new prints, and spends time
debunking various "physical manifestations": instuments
played by spirits, tables rising, hands grabbing seance
participants, etc. Be dedicates one chapter to three female
mediums who use the trappings of femininity--"delicate"
health and full skirts--to convince seance participants they
produce physical manifestations. One is "rather tall and
muscular” while ”her general manner and expression“ evoke
"innocence and simplicity.” Under cover of her skirts,
however, she--using only her feet and legs-~displays feats
worthy of the Samson she channels. Barnum.charges another
that ”her health is not so delicate, however, as to prevent
her from labouring hard to humbug people with 'physical
demonstrations ' . "15 To Barnum, true femininity is
irreconcilable with mediumship.

The parlour seances described above were a cultural form
practiced mainly by the middle-class. A hostess hired the
medium who visited in the evening with other guests , to whom
the medium channeled messages from the dead. The working-
and under-class occultists practiced a different style: the
clairvoyant consultation in which individual customers

visited the homes of the clairvoyants where they could, for a

 

“Barnum, 72-76.
93

 

11'

as

price between ten cents and a dollar, receive a private card-
or palmpreading, an astrological prediction, or other form.of
divination. While Barnum' a complaint of the medium was that
she played the middle-class lady too well, his poor
estimation of the lower-class fortuneteller rested on her not
playing the lady at all.

Barnum.at first seems ambivalent as to the racial/ethnic
identification of fortunetellers, but in the end concludes
that they are either white and poor or racially/ethnically
”other," regardless of class. He begins his discussion of
fortunetelling in racial/ethnic terms, offering divination as
evidence of established social hierarchies:

Witches and wizards operate and prosper among the

Hottentots and negroes and barbarous Indians, among the

Siberians and Kirgishes and Lapps of course. Everybody

knows that --but are the French, and Germans, and

English, and Americans poor ignorant creatures too?

They are, if the belief and practice of witchcraft among

them is any test: for in all those countries there are

witches . 1"

Barnum.goes on to remark on the high number of fortunetellers
advertising in the morning's newspaper, where he finds
”sixteen witches and two wizards” and further comments that
"one of these wizards was a black man; a very proper style of
person to deal with the black art."18

Barnum.introduces readers to the profession of prophecy
by reminding them that white seers make whites seem too much
like racial and ethnic "others.” Despite this opening

association with "others," he proceeds to trace prophecy

 

”Barnum, 230.
“harmmm,231.

94

through Judeo-Christian history, relating that "the Jewish
witch was a mere diviner, or at the most a raiser of the
dead, and the Gentile witch was a poisoner, a maker of
philtres, and a vulgar sort of magician. The devil part of
the business did not begin until a good while after Christ."
The present incarnation of this history is the fortuneteller,
who according to Barnum, "has degenerated into a very vulgar
and poverty-stricken sort of conjuring woman. "19 Barnum's
presentation of the present witch embodies the classed
”other," who, despite being white, refuses the aesthetic
standards of the white middle-class:
[Fortunetellers] live in cheap and dirty houses that
smell bad; their houses are in the same style, infected
with a strong odor of cabbage, onions, washing-day, old
dinners, and other:merely sublunary smells. Their rooms
are ill-furnished, and often beset with wash-tubs,
swill—pails, mops, and soiled clothes, their personal
appearance is commonly unclean, homely, vulgar, coarse
and ignorant, and often rummyuZO
Here Barnum.asserts that the fortuneteller, as one of the
"unworthy” poor, represents a blending of public and private
which was offensive to middle-class sensibilities. While the
bourgeois held to "polite social geography" in which the
victorian home was divided into regions of the ”genteel
performance" like the parlour, and regions of preparation for
the performance, like the kitchen,21 the fortuneteller allowed

the evidence of her labor, such as wash-tubs and:mops, to be

seen. With this, Barnum.completes his invocation of the

 

19Barnum, 231.
”Barnum, 231.
21Balttunen, 102-114.

95

 

is

T1
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cc
5C.
pr
re

re

fortuneteller as "other” by asserting the lack of gentility
reflected in her home. Here he equates the white lower-class
"other” with the racial/ethnic "other.“

As seen by Barnum, the product sold by the fortuneteller
is not a good one. The ”advertising" she effects is nothing
.more than "sublunary": the evidence of domestic labor. .As
Trachtenberg asserts, Victorian Americans came to use
advertising as a way of validating the respectability of
consumer choices, and, given Barnumfls description of dirt and
squalor, the fortuneteller's services are not respectable
products. In other words, fortunetelling is not a
respectable service because it does not come with a
respectable "outside show." Barnumfis view of the
fortuneteller's lack of advertisement predicts later views of
advertising which, according to Trachtenberg, blurred the
product's connection to labor by focusing on its consumption.
While Barnum criticized mediums serving the middle-class for
disingenuous advertising, he faults the fortuneteller,
whether lower-class "other" or belonging to ”negroes and
barbarous Indians,” for not advertising to suit the tastes of
the middle-class. This, he shows, is disrespectful to the
market culture that produces "self-made" men such as himself.

Barnum's double standard can be partially explained in
his attitude toward women and the occult. Throughout his
discussions of superstitions, spiritualism, and urban
fortunetelling, Barnum.associates the supernatural with

female incredulity and irrationality. From the white ladies

96

 

He
to

de

Vh

wh.
as:
Dr:
C0:

lea

of the South who used to consult enslaved root-workers to the
“femification” of men in spiritualism to the nervous mediums
and prophecying washerwomen, he thoroughly mingles
superstition with femininity. Even though he admits
everyone has ”an inherent love of the marvelous” and remarks
that the "most learned and the greatest men have been the
deepest believers in ingeniously-contrived machines for
running human reason off the track," he provides examples
that more harshly judge women for superstitious silliness.22
He supports his view with a belief in the inability of women
to be fully educated in rationality, best indicated by his
denomination of the ancient Sybils as humbug. He says the
”Sybils were women, supposed to be inspired by some divinity,
who prophesied the future. . . These ladies lived in caves,
and among them are said to have composed the Sibylline books,
which contained the mysteries of religion,” but Barnum
asserts, in a confused temporal moment, that the books were
probably plagiarized from the "Old and New Testaments." Be
completes his diatribe against female learning and religious
leadership by doubting the existence of the Sybils, saying
"if there were any, they were probably ill-natured and
desperate old maids, who turned so sour-tempered that their
friends had to drive them.off to live by themselves, and who,

under these circumstances, went to work and wrote books."23

 

”Barnum, 304-307, 37, 220.
”Barnum, 303.

97

Ce

tr

 

In this flourish on women, learning, and prophecy,
Barnum adds learned (presumably middle-class) women to his
characterization of the occult worker as the racial, classed,
ethnic, gendered ”other, " compiling a group of people who,
unlike Mangin and himself, are alienated from the
professionalism of the independent entrepeneur. They create
no "genuine" product and reflect poorly on their customers.
This makes them deviants to the rules of proper market
culture and hence outcasts from middle-class status.

Barnum's description of ”New York City witches” owes
much to Mortimer Thomson's 1858 WW3,
WWW- Thomson' 8 work
is more focused on a specific ”humbug" than Barnum's,
describing nineteen visits with fortunetellers whose
advertisements he found in New York dailies . W
W portrays professional prophecy as an urban problem,
and asserts that over a thousand customers a week from all
social classes lose their money to the Charlatans, many of
whom use fortunetelling as a “screen” for such activities as
abortion, prostitution, and counterfeiting . The tome
demonstrates the full extent to which views of morality
mingled with views of money, for while the narrator expresses
outrage that fortunetellers lure young women into
prostitution and practice abortion (which may have been the
case in rare occasions), their primary crime is selling a
worthless product. While prostitution is "the most terrible

truth connected with this whole subject, " the swindle takes

98

CE¢JQE£

 

 

 

the main focus of the book. The narrator finds the number of
swindles alarming enough to look forward to the time when
fortuntellers "will be no longer classed with harmless
mountebanks but with dangerous criminals. "24

Thomson wrote under the pseudonym of 0.3. Philander
Doesticks, P.B., a character of almost limitless naiveté in
regards to urban life. While Thomson' s literary reputation
has been eclipsed by later humor writers using a similar
personae, such as Twain in W. Thomson did
achieve popularity in the 18508 with sketches of New York at
its least glamorous, like W and The
WWW. He also Published
W. on extended
parody of Longfellow's “Biawatha.”25 W,
his last work, focused on the fortunetellers initially

identified in W-
In W, Doesticks visits nineteen fortunetellers,

claiming he hopes to find a wife from that profession whose
witchcraft might relieve him from the burdens of debt. This
motif follows him through each visit, even one in which he
disguised himself as a woman to "catch a glimpse of his
future husband." The structure in which Doesticks ponders on

 

“Mortimer Thomson. W. (New York. 1859.
reproduced 1969): 18-20.

25Thomson's work has received little attention from literary
critics. Two notable exceptions are Edward J. Piacentino's "Seeing the
Elephant': Doesticks' Satires of Nineteenth-Century Gotham.“ studies
in_angziggn_flnmg;. 5 (2 and 3): 134-144 and David E. E. Sloane's “The
Bumor of the Old Northeast: Barnum, Burnham, and the Ben Fever.“
atndiss.in.hnsrissn.fluner.6: 154-162-

99

his hopes for a “witch-wife" only to be disillusioned by his
visit to each fortuneteller is significant not only in
developing the humor of Doesticks' gullibility but also
because it is charged with the language of commerce:

The ”Individual," modestly speaking of himself in the

third person, admits that, being then a single man of

some respectability, he was at that very period looking
out for a profitable partner of his bosom, sorrows,
joys, and expenses. Be naturally preferred one who
could do something towards making a share of the
expensive responsibility of a family off his hands, and
was not disposed to object to one who was even afflicted
with money; --next to that woman, who he had not yet
discovered, a lady with a "natural gift" for money-
making was evidently the most eligible of matrimonial
speculations.26

While Doesticks says he has "respectability" or the gentility

to give him middle-class status, he still searches for the

money to ensure that status.

Doesticks recognizes that status does not come from
:manners alone, and sets out to "speculate" on marriage:
”What a treasure. . . would such an accomplished wife be in
republican America,--how exceedingly useful in the case of
her husband's rivals for Customphouse honors, and how
invaluable when creditors become clamorous. ”27 While Thomson
pokes fun here at the monetary fixation of the middle-class,
he also strongly validates it by having Doesticks describe
the fortunetellers as those who do not respect the rules of
propriety governing the use of ready-money.

Doesticks recounts his visits in the third person,

sometimes as ”the Individual” but mostly as ”Cash Customer,"

 

26Thomson, 58 .
2"Thomson, 61 .

100

emphasizing the importance of his consumer status in the
exchanges. Doesticks describes a world--always
geographically set apart from his own community-~in which
those around him can only see him.in terms of the money in
this pocket. He describes one neighborhood with the warning
that ”Sunshine is the only protection for a well-dressed man
against the population of this part of town,” and insists the
neighborhood is a place that raises thieves, and is home to
the ”boldest and.most desperate burglars," "fathers who teach
their children the thief's profession, and mothers who carry
pickpockets at the breast.” He sees the fortuneteller as a
prominent feature of this "nest of crime," where she "has her
home, and here she thrives."28 Doesticks describes himself as
the respectable outsider in the communities of
fortunetellers, where he is subjected to suspicious glances
and rude behavior. In turn, he allies himself with the
respectable reader by describing not only the crime
associated with fortunetellers--presumed only on the basis of
his assessment of their neighborhoods-~but the illogic of
their readings and the squalor in which they live.

The aesthetic sensibilities of the respectable "Cash
Customer" are offended by what he perceives to be squalor,
and the monetary sensibilities are offended by his belief
that in certain neighborhoods people raise their children
with the sole purpose of teaching them how to take the money
of the ”well-dressed" man. Each visit in which Doesticks

 

”Thomson, 137
101

undergoes these assaults on his respectability is
characterized by an encounter with a disagreeable person who
is racially or ethnically distinct from the Cash Customer.

In twelve of his nineteen visits, he encounters people--
the fortuneteller's neighbors, customers, boarders, or the
fortunetellers themselves--he describes as racially or
ethnically different from himself. He is let into the houses
by ”a grizzly Gaul" speaking bad English, a husband speaking
cockneyed English, Irish girls, and a ”quiet colored girl."
He describes neighbors and customers like "sharp-featured
restless Jews" and "delegates from Africa, and from.the Green
Isle of the Sea" and encounters seers like the "Spanish
Lady,” the ”Brazilian Astrologist,“ an "ancient" Frenchwoman,
the drunken "Gipsey Girl," Madame de Bellini the Dutchwoman,
an overburdened mother ”of the Irish breed. . . red-haired,
'freckled, and dirty to a degree, " and Mr. Gromner, who
Doesticks calls ”the Cullud Seer," and Mrs. Grommer, "the
sable sorceress.” While four of these seers advertise
themselves as ethnically distinct-~"The Spanish Lady,” "The
Gipsey Girl,” the ”Brazilian Astrologist” and the
Frenchwoman “from Paris"--Doesticks clearly points out the
racial/ethnic orientation of the rest of the seers and their
neighbors and customers.

One implicit message of the book is that an overwhelming
number of the people who don't respect middle-class aesthetic
sensibilities or the proper uses of cash are ethnically or

racially "other." And since all but two of the seers

102

 

 

cl

He

f0:

Thc
ind
“on
rag

the.

Doesticks encounters are female, he demonstrates that lower-
class women of all races and ethnicities are ill-instructed
in proper housekeeping, manners, and the honest uses of cash.
For his forays into "dangerous" neighborhoods and for
his money (usually twenty-five cents to a dollar), Doesticks
receives what he considers to be ridiculous nonsense:
warnings about enemies, advice about love, the doings of
relatives far away (relatives the Cash Customer made up). and
lucky numbers and days. Doesticks, introduced immediately as
a man making his own luck by seeking a rich wife, finds no
use for the fortunes. In conclusion, he recounts the sum of
what he received:
A.recapitulation of the various prophecies made to the
Cash Customer would show that he has been promised
thirty-three wives, and something over ninety children--
that he was brought into the world between 1820 and
1833--. . . under nearly all the planets known to
astronomers--that he has more birth-places than he has
fingers and toes. . . he has so many future fortunes
.marked out for him that at three hundred and fifty years
old his work will not be half done.29
He hopes that after readers discover the vulgarity of
fortunetellers, they will not "be willing to pay money for
any personal experience with" the seers. According to
Thomson, seers, who in many ways practice much like other
independent entrepeneurs, are not worth the good consumers'
money because they are dirty, silly, and ethnically or
racially "other." In a class system in which the genteel use

their purchases to reflect their respectability, Thomson has

 

”Thomson, 405.
103

exposed the fortuneteller industry as peddling a product that
reflects poorly on the consumer.

Barnum and Thomson reflected a changing sense of what it
'was that constitued middle-classness. While Irving,
Sedgwick, and even Hawthorne saw the ideal middle-class in
terms of virtue first and economic progress second, Barnum
and Thomson reversed the order of importance, with economic
progress first with virtue and morality naturally following.
While concerned about gentility in manners and aesthetic
concerns like housekeeping and grooming, they were more
concerned that those who didn't express gentility were after
the money (and hence the status) of the middle-class man. At
the end of Barnumfls and Thomson's logic was a fear that the
”unworthy” poor, who were ethnically and racially "other,”
were much like the middle-class in their quest for status
through cash. By advertising “falsely“ and delivering a
nonsensical product, fortunetellers mocked the system through
which entrepeneurial white men ”made” themselves. This is
what made occult workers threatening to the men.benefitting
from this system.

Unlike images in Barnum and Thomson, the occult worker
in Frederick Douglass's autobiographies is not the real
deceiver in market culture. Instead, the slaveowner and the
northern racist are the absurd and disgusting mountebanks.
Looking at the autobiographies as evidence of middle-class
views on economy is much more complicated than in the cases

of Barnum and Thomson, even though Douglass evokes many

104

middle-class signifiers. The class status of Douglass
himself can be debated. First, he was born a slave, but then
he learned manual trades that he embraced as honorable work
after his escape from enslavement. He went on to become a
writer, orator, foreign consul and.man of comfortable means.
Yet even at his peak of fame, he received second-class
treatment as an African-American. Douglass's own class
status can be argued to lie anywhere from underclass to black
elite, but his writings were addressed to a largely white and
middle—class readership. The first autobiography sold thirty
thousand copies, and catapulted Douglass from a position as a
protege of famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to a
powerful figure in his own right. To reformwminded white
readers trying to fend off fears that the polished Douglass
had never really been enslaved, the narratiye set at ease
fears that the eloquent, cultivated speaker had not been
enslaved.3o

The themes of the autobiographies appealed to readers
for different reasons. In,Middle=Qlaas_zzgyidence‘_lfizn=
12.10.. John Gilkeson locates reform movements as a staple of
nineteenth-century middle-class identity. He notes that
"antebellum moral reform societies. . . propagated a new
social order resting on self-discipline rather than deference

to external authority," and the catchwords describing this

 

3°8ee Peter Ripley, "The Autobiographical writings of Frederick
Douglass.".fionthsrn_fitudiaa. 24(1): 5-29.

105

new

Doc

CC

he

 

new'middle-class became "stable, industrious, sober."31
Douglass's life story was a pristine model of self-
discipline.32 Against almost overwhelming odds, Douglass
taught himself to read and write. He wrote movingly and
passionately of the hypocrisy of southern religious
institutions that perpetuated slavery and of northern
churches that barred African-Americans from full
participation. As a free man he put himself to any trade he
could find, whether he saw it beneath his skills or not. And
he constantly sought new knowledge through prolific reading.
Douglass realized that his readership was intent on seeing
African-Americans as unlearned and lazy, and he cast part of
his story in terms of hard work, honesty and discipline,
which spoke directly to his readers' prejudices.

Some readers specifically named the occult worker as the
opposite of Douglass's self-made man. Douglass's
accomplishments inspired George Ruffin, African-American
lawyer and Harvard graduate who penned the introduction to
the 1893 Life_and_Timaa, to call Douglass ”in every sense of
the word. . . a self-made man." To Ruffin this meant
Douglass "was poor [and] has by honest toil and industry
become rich and independent." From his inauspicious

beginnings, he has become noted as a "writer of power" and ”a

 

31John 8. Gilkeson. Jr. W.
(Princeton, New Jersey, 1986): 12-13.

32Rafia Safar provides a useful discussion of Douglass' s use of
self-made man ideology in 'Franklinian Douglass: The Afro-American as

Representative Man” in W
Essays,, ed. Eric J. Sundquist (Cambridge, 1990).

106

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vi
hc

sl

thinker whose views are potent in controlling and shaping
public opinion” and finally ”a cultivated gentleman whose
virtues as a husband, father, and citizen are the highest
honor a man can have."33 Ruffin contrasts these with the
slave south he envisions in Douglass's narrative:
Here was the great house and the cabins, the old Aunties
and patriarchal Uncles, little picanninies and
picanninies not so little. . . ; mules, overseers, and
broken down fences. Here was the negro Doctor learned
in the science of roots and herbs; also the black
conjurer with his divination. Here was slave—breeding
and slave-selling, whipping, torturing and beating to
death.3‘
Ruffin continues, stating "Little did the overseer on this
plantation think that he had in his gang a man of superior
order" in Douglass, who had "undaunted spirit? and "whose
mind, far above the minds of the grovelling creatures about
him, was at that time plotting schemes for his liberty.”35
His commendation of Douglass as a self-made man lies in
making distinctions between Douglass, a rational, intelligent
man, and his fellow slaves, who consisted of "grovelling
creatures,” "picanninies not so little," and of course ”the
black conjurer with his divination.” A.black professional
himself who was highly aware of white views of blacks as
irrational and irresponsible, Ruffin emphasizes Douglass's
difference from the "brutes" made by enslavement. In order

to see Douglass as a self-made man (and much like the

strategies of self-presentation by Barnum), Ruffin needed to

 

33George Ruffin in Douglass, 467.
3‘George Ruffin in Douglass, 467-470.

35George Ruffin in Douglass, 467.
107

di

ct

distinguish him.from underachievment and irrationality,
characteristics he attributes to African-Americans—-other
than himself--who were "broken" by slavery. To Ruffin, the
occult worker is Douglass's irrational and unintellectual
opposite.

While Ruffin's introduction provides one way Douglass's
story was read, the narrative itself does not fully follow
through Ruffin's system of logic. Douglass is much more
ambivalent about Sandy, the conjure man, because his sense of
himself as a rational and self-determined.man is much more
complicated than Ruffin's reading of him. One central
concern of the autobiographies that informs Douglass's view
of the conjure man is that of deception. On the surface this
theme coud be interpreted by nineteenth-century readers as
evidence of ”right feeling" and hence middle-class
respectability. It can even be related to the market-focused
distaste for deception of Barnum.and Thomson. Yet Douglass's
focus is not the excluding of the "unrespectable' through
manners or the placing of limits on market culture but
instead the dismantling of racial caste. With the

autobiographies, especially the 1855 W
Freedom, Douglass asked the white middle-class to fully

extend its aversion to deception to its own racism.

In this schema, the conjurer who helped Douglass to
defeat Covey and his own fears seemed honest and truthful
compared to whites who practiced everything from terrorism to
condescension in their attempts to control black labor and

108

privilege their own whiteness. Yet Douglass, in presenting
himself as a sober, rational, industrious man, could not
fully embrace the practice of divination, and in the years
between the first and second editions of his life-story,
Douglass became compelled to further explain his relationship
to conjure as a connection to the support network of African-
American communities.

In the 1845 Narratiye_gf_the_Life, Douglass recounts his
first meeting with Sandy Jenkins and the ensuing fight with
Covey with less comment than he provided later. His only
comment on conjure was a rare footnote (perhaps added through
editorial suggestion) that while conjure was cannon among
slaves, he himself did not believe in it. Despite the
footnote, conjure plays an important role in symbolizing the
community support Douglass used to escape from slavery. He
begins the story by saying "You have seen how a man was made
a slave: you shall see how a slave was made a man."

Douglass relates the story of how he runs from.Covey after he
had beaten him.savagely for falling down to illness. .After
enduring a heating by the overseer Covey, Douglass seeks
shelter in the woods. It is here that Douglass meets Sandy
Jenkins, an enslaved man on his way to his free wife's house.
Jenkins took him.home, fed him. and shared with him.the
secret of not getting beaten by white men: "a certain root,
which, if I would take some of it with me, carrying it always
as.my right side, would render it impossible for Mr. Covey,
or any other white man, to whip" him. Douglass says he

109

doubts the efficacy of the root, but to appease Sandy, he
wears the root in his right pocket. He returns to Covey's on
a Sunday, and Covey does not beat him, which Douglass
attributes not to the root but to his own timely return on a
Sunday. On Monday morning, Douglass narrates, "the virtue of
the root was fully tested" and Douglass fights Covey and is
never successfully whipped again by anyone. He says the
”battle with Covey was the turning-point in my career as a
slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and
revived within me a sense of my own manhood.” Douglass does
not mention the root again except in reference to Sandy, who
appears later relating a foreboding dream (accurate as it
turned out) about Douglass's escape attempt. Douglass also
speaks of Sandy in a rare footnote:
This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my
being whipped by Mr. Covey. He was "a clever soul." we
used frequently to talk about the fight with Covey, and
as often as we did so, he would claim my success as the
result of the roots he gave me. This superstition is
very common among the more ignorant slavesfi"6
Other than at first doubting the efficacy of the roots, this
footnote is the only comment Douglass provides on conjuring
in the 1845 version. As an afterthought (or an editorial
suggestion) he clarified his relationship to conjure,
restating that it was an act of superstition in which he did

not believe. Nevertheless, conjure serves as a bond between

the two men who share the horror of slavery, and symbolizes

 

3‘Douglass, 60-70.
11()

We

community cohesion even though Douglass feels compelled to
distance himself from it in a footnote.

In the 1855 telling of the fight with Covey, Douglass
provides much more conunent on Sandy Jenkins as well as the
roots, revealing the struggle Douglass had over narrating the
incident as one of community effort (symbolized by conjure)
and the efforts of the self-made man. This time, after
stating he ”found Sandy an old adviser," Douglass explains
that Sandy "professed to believe in a system for which I have
no name. He was a geniuine.African, and had inherited some
of the so called.magical powers, said to be possessed by
African and eastern nations.“ Douglass also locates his
feelings toward conjure in the realms of rationality as well
as Christianity, saying "all this talk about the root, was,
to me, very absurd and ridiculous, if not positively sinful.
. . and I was, therefore, not disposed to cumber my pocket
with it. I had a positive aversion to all pretenders to
'divination.'. . . It was beneath one of my intelligence to
countenance such dealings with the devil, as this power
implied." When he returns to Covey's and Monday morning
comes around, Douglass says he "forgot my roots and
remembered my pledge to stand up for my own defense. "37 In
this second version, Douglass draws a further contrast
between superstition and self-determination, saying he is

wary of "pretenders" and finds use of the root to be sinful.

 

”Douglass, 280-283 .
1 1 1

Yet while he explains that the fight with Covey is an
act of independence, rationality, and manhood rather than a
result of magic, Douglass refuses to see Sandy as a fraud or
a fool. John Sekora asserts that the 1855 uy_ngndage_and4u1
zragdgm is a more accurate rendering of the Covey incident
than the 1845‘Neratigg, since Douglass had by 1855 shed the
editorial constraints of the Garrisonians. He further
interprets the fuller re—telling of the Covey scene as
Douglass's assertion that he, instead of being the self-made
man of white myth, was a man whose turning points came as a
result of the support of other workers and.African—
Americans.38 As Sekora also demonstrates, Douglass's 1855
telling fills in the scene more fully with more emphasis on
the fight with Covey as a collective effort of Sandy the
"adviser," Sandy's wife, who provided him with shelter and
"the meal, of all my life, most sweet to my taste and vivid
to my memory," and Bill and Caroline, who both refuse Covey's
order to help him.whip Douglass: "In the space of a few
hundred words, Douglass has transformed what had been a
solitary victory in the.flazra;ige, impossible to share‘with
anyone, to conmunal triumph ten years later"39 Yet Sekora
asserts that “the root is diminished to a piece of

precipitating stage property" in this new emphasis on

 

38John Sekora, " 'ur. Editor, If You Please' : Frederick Douglass,
W and the End of the Abolitionist Imprint."
W 17 (2): 608-626. Sekora provides a useful history of
Douglass's relations to white abiltionists and the production of the
autobiographies.

398ekora, 625.

112

pa;

e):

m

en

de

39

ye

Uh

 

 

community. I would assert that Douglass's important
revisions in the 1855 version make the root all the more
important in revealing Douglass's view that "self-made” men
are produced through commmnity support.

While Douglass saw Sandy and the incident with Covey as
part of a collective resistance, he also valued individual
expression through labor. He was attracted to the notion of
the self-made man, for immediately after his escape from
enslavement he praised free enterprise for allowing men self-
determination through labor. In the north, "Every man
appeared to understand his work, and went at it with a sober,
yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep interest
which he felt in what he was doing, as well as‘a sense of his
own dignity as a man." He notes that "the people looked more
able, stronger, healthier, and happier. . . I was for once
made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being saddened
by seeing extreme poverty. "0 While he later finds northern
free enterprise to be more complicated than his first
impression when he is denied work because of race, he
nevertheless continues a belief that the best labor is done
pridefully, freely, and soberly.

Significantly, Douglass does not take his praise of free'
enterprise to the same place Barnum.and Thomson do. While
Douglass sees Sandy as perhaps "ignorant,” he does not see
him as deceitful. First, Sandy took no money for the advice.
Even though he was known as "the rootaman," Sandy probably

 

“Douglass, 94 .
1 1 3

received no payment other than respect for his advice
(Douglass does not delve into the particulars of conjure
work). Second, Sandy's beliefs have "no name;" they are
removed from white forms of market, society and culture, and
Sandy uses them in opposition to the slave system. Third,
Douglass saw Sandy's forays into the occult as much less of a
sin than the religious hypocrisy of whites, who professed to
be upstanding Christians yet practiced slavery, brutality,
and prejudice. Douglass added an appendix to the first
edition of the autobiography to explain that his diatribes
against religion were aimed at ”the slaveholding religion of
this land, and with no reference to Christianity proper. . .
Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for
calling the religion of this land Christianity.““~ Douglass
is unwilling to see the adviser Sandy as a mountebank, when
slaveholding ”Christians” practice deceptions through
supposedly more valid religious forms.

Douglass's theme of white deceit is rendered in his
discussion of Covey, the embodiment of all that was
disgusting, cruel and absurd about the instution of slavery;
unlike Sandy, "Mr. Covey's ferte consisted in his power to
deceive. His life was devoted to planning and perpetrating
the grossest deceptions. Every thing he possessed in the
shape of learning or religion, he made to conform to his

disposition to deceive. "‘2 Covey was so sneaky that Douglass

 

“Douglass , 97 .
“Douglass , 57 .

114

and his fellow slaves called him "the snake." Using his
deceptions, Covey "broke“ Douglass, for at a point he was
”broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was
crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read
departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died"
for "the dark night of slavery closed in upon me." The
deceitful nature of white society had, previous to meeting
Sandy Jenkins, ”transformed [Douglass] into a brute! "‘3 Next
to the deceptions enacted by white society to secure power
over blacks, Sandy's occult work seemed benign, and even
honorable, for in the third edition, Douglass remembers him
as ”Sandy a conjurer as well as a Christian."“

Like Thomson and Barnum, Douglass rejected the occult as
irrational. But unlike Barnum.and Thomson, who found middle-
class manhood in a market culture through.which men "made"
themselves, Douglass found masculinity to reside in the self-
determdnation borne of community support. Formerly enslaved,
Douglass could not fully buy into a system that increasingly
sought to blur the distinction between consumable goods from
the labor that produced them. His attraction to free
enterprise was that men could own their own labor. This is
why he is unwilling to dismiss Sandy the man even though he
is skeptical of the efficacy of the occult work Sandy

performs. To Barnum.and Thomson, occult workers are low-

 

‘3Douglass , 58 .
“Douglass, 459 .

115

quality products; to Douglass, occult workers are men first,
and men who conjure second.

These versions of self-made man ideology reveal changes
in both black and white middle-class identification. In the
corporate culture that developed in the second half of the
nineteenth-century, black and white middle-class Americans
claimed.white-collar work as a feature of respectability, but
in each community that claim resonated differently. For much
of the white middle-class, the successful man of enterprise
stood as evidence of the American Dream as a justification
for beliefs in white privilege and the power of (male)
invidualimm. If the "sincere" man stood out as the
embodiment of ideal middle-class masculinity in the first
half of the nineteenth-century, the entrepeneurial man
usurped him in the latter half. The African-American middle-
class was equally proud of black professionals, but their
existence proved "uplift of the race" more than individual
glory (although the latter certainly existed) .‘5 The occult
worker in each case, however, reflected the ways each group
conceived of itself as middle-class. The occult worker to
the white professional ethos symoblized what lurked outside
appropriate economic practice, while to African-American
professional ideologies this figure floated liminally between
the ignorance born of oppression and the support networks

developed in creative response to that oppression.

 

‘58” Darlene Clark Him, Wk
WWW. (Brooklyn. 1996)-

116

Chapter Four:
“Secret Workers“ and Self-made Women: Professionalism
and the Occult Workers' World, 1870—1910

While some writers saw occult work as an affront to
male-identified rationality, seers forwarded their own views
on rationality in the form.of the advertisement. Like books
for writers, advertisements presented occult workers with a
useful forum through with they articulated their views of
themselves and the world in which they did their work.
Palmists, astrologers, clairvoyants, card-readers and.mediums
used their access to print culture—-the classified ads--to
advertise their services, and in turn these advertisements
reflected a distinct view of society, culture and econonomy.

Advertisements made several important assertions. By
declaring identities and using symbols in combinations that
seemed incongruent to the dominant culture, they asserted
that identity was infinitely negotiable. By claiming
professional functions for non-educated people, they declared
their disagreement with the notion that formal education was
the most reliable evidence of talents and skills._ They also
provided competition for the formally-educated professionals
in matters of finance, health, and domestic counselling.
Their willingness to deal with “delicate" matters Openly
spoke to a sense that working-class morality was more
realistic to the human condition than the more stringent set
of beliefs prevalent in the middle-class. Finally, their
very presence spoke to a critique of American culture's

increasing reliance on science as the privileged way of

117

knowing. These assertions showed that even though they were
alienated from dominant methods of social distinction, seers
had created their own meaningful system through which they
highlighted and validated their talents and skills.

Like the elite mediums who discussed their craft with a
careful sense of their audience and possible customers,
lesser-known occult workers, those who advertised in the
classified sections of urban dailies, demonstrated an acute
sensitivity to the demands of the marketplace economy as well
as to dominant late nineteenth-century identity codes. But
because the lesser-known seers sought a more diverse
clientele than the elite seers did, they appeared not to be
invested in perpetuating the racial, classed, and gendered
heirarchies elite workers often felt compelled to uphold.

Occult workers were truly on the margins of social
respectability, and from that vantage point, they utilized
the classified advertisement to play freely with and often
invert dominant notions of gender, race, class, age,
ableness, and nation. Even though most of the ads had four
lines or fewer, together they presented a world in which
dominant hierarchies were backward or negated. Lower-class
women began their names with "Queen" or "Lady'; being
”colored" meant being especially qualified. Immigrant status
meant exotic knowlege rather than foreign threat. People with
little or no formal education claimed fields of knowledge
also seen as propety of the new class of educated

professionals such as business, counselling, and health

118

services. Fortunetellers exercised their creativity by
utilizing fantasy in ads at the same time professional admen,
as Jackson Lears writes, tried to distance ad-making from its
roots in the carnivalesque.1 In these ways, the fortuneteller
ad represents working- and under-class appropriation of the
symbols usually used to perpetuate their own inequality.
Pierre Bourdieu provides a useful way to look at this
phenomenon of lower-class people appropriating the symbols of
the dominant class and redefining them, Bourdieu looks at
power in terms of three kinds of capital: economic
(relationship to production), symbolic (prestige), and, most
importantly to this study, cultural capital, meaning
knowledge and talents. While occult workers held very little
economic and symbolic capital, their capacity to use
language, in the "utterances" of their ads, allowed their
very existence as workers. Bourdieu writes:
Utterances receive their value (and their sense) only in
their relation to a market, characterized by a
particular law of price formation. The value of the
utterance depends on the relation of power that is
concretely established between the speakers' linguistic
competences, understood both as their capacity for
appropriation and appreciation; it depends, in other
words, on the capacity of the various agents involved in
the exchange to impose the criteria of appreciation most
favourable to their own products.2
Prophecy could be turned into economic capital only through
the occult workers' ability to convince potential customers

of the value of their service. They did this with an acute

 

lJacklon Laura. Wanna—Wu
m. (New York, 1994).

2Pierre: Boardieu. W. (Cambridge. 1991) .
67

119

sensitivity to what their customers valued--money, love,
family, health--but they also went further by claiming that
social disenfranchisement by gender, race or nation made them
particularly good at seeing into these areas of life. The
seer ad worked only because it turned the knowledge of
customers' values into (ideally) economic capital in the form
of payment and symbolic capital in the form of turning
disenfranchisement into its own prestige.

Portunetellers advertised throughout the nineteenth-
century, but the ads did not appear in abundance and with
consistency until around 1870 when dailies had become more
cannon and accessible. At their most minimal they included a
name and a location, but more often they also included
special qualifications of parentage or culture, lists of
problems they were willing to cure, the method they used,
prices, offers to teach others the craft, and sometimes
restrictions such as "ladies only." They also listed their
hours of Operation and sometimes provided testimonials from
satisfied customers. Even more rarely, they provided digs
against their competitors. (As competition grew more fierce
in the first decade of the twentieth-century, the ads began
to take up more and more space in the classified ads. From
about 1880 to about 1910 the many ads promised seekers
anything from advice on ”female complaints" to magical self-
transformation .

This study relies on 1,430 advertisements from seven

newspapers (The Boston Globe, The Chicago Defender, The St.

120

Louis Post-Dispatch, The Chicago Tribune, The new Yerk
world, The New Yerk Amsterdam News, and The San Francisco
Ekaminer) from five cities (Chicago, New York, St. Louis, San
Francisco, and Boston) to examine the ways in which seers
presented themselves and their work. The sample includes 303
advertisements from the New Yerk world, 22 from the Chicago
Defender, 329 from The Chicago Tribune, 86 from the.Amsterdam
News, 267 from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 264 from the San
Francisco BXaminer, and 159 from the Boston Globe.

Each of these cities experienced intense growth between
1870 and 1900. They also were ethnically diverse because of
immigration and became, if they were not already, major
centers of business in their regions. Au Medium.noted that
it was Boston, New York and San Francisco where mediumship
was "worked the finest."3 Chicago and St. Louis, however,
outdid others in the sheer volume of ads and the large spaces
allotted the promotion of seers in their newspapers.

There were other regional differences as well. Ads in
the Boston Globe were much shorter than others, seemed to
hint more than the others at prostitution, and failed to
appear in large numbers after the 1890s. The San Fransisco
Ekaminer and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch advertised
fortunetellers in their classified sections up until the
19103, while the Chicago Tribune and the new York world‘quit

offering ads when police began cracking down on seers around

 

311. Medium, W. eds. Bury Price and
Eric. J. Dingwali, (New York, 1975), 246.

121

1910. The Amsterdam news and The Chicago Defender, both
African-American produced papers, are not available until the
teens and twenties after prophecy laws were passed in their
respective cities. However, they still carried ads for
spiritual healers, mediums and fortunetellers in the
religious announcements column and as regular advertising,
such as the full ads for things like hairdressing or
undertaking.

Even though occult practice differed somewhat
regionally, seers across the nation had more similarities
than differences. Most urban fortunetellers advertising were
women, and all but a select few (and these were most often
men) worked out of their homes. Later graphics placed them
there often (see Appendix, Figure 3). Their stated hours
were hardly ever less than twelve hours. This fact shows
that fortunetelling fit into the work lives of married lower-
class women quite easily. A woman with children could work
as a clairvoyant in the course of her day while preparing
food, washing, sewing, cleaning, gardening, and caring for
her children.

The trade was also taken up by those engaged in outwork
sewing. {Mortimer Thomson called on one fortuneteller who
lived in the Bowery district with her teenage sister, and the
"two occupy themselves with plain sewing, except when the
madame is overhauling the future and taking a look at the
hereafter of some anxious inquirer, who pays her as much for

the reliable information she imparts in three minutes, as she

122

would charge him.for making three shirts."‘ ‘Used to a variety
of tasks and many interruptions, the outworker or housewife
may have welcomed a person calling for a fortune as a
pleasant breakn5 The fifty or twenty-five cents gleaned from
the exchange may well have been an added bonus for taking ten
or fifteen minutes to chat with a caller who was often
‘willing to divulge more than a bit of personal or secret
information.

Mortimer Thomson and A. Medium.both comment that urban
seers saw a diverse set of customers. While many customers
in new York were to Thomson "ignorant servants," ”unfortunate
girls of the town,” or "uneducated overgrown boys," he also
noticed that "carriages, attended by liveried servants, not
unfrequently stop at the nearest respectable corner adjoining
the abode of the notorious Fortune-Teller, while some richly-
dressed but closely-veiled woman stealthily glides into the
habitation of the Witch." And upper-class women were not the
only "social batters" who visited the sears, for "not a few
men engaged in respectable and influential professions, and
many merchants of good credit and repute. . . are actually
governed by [a seer‘s] advice in business affairs of great

:moment."5 Thompson also noted that occult workers serviced a

 

Mortimer N. Thomson. W. (Upper saddle
River, N.J., 1969 [rpt., 1859]), 227.

58» Glenna Matthew. W
W- New York, 1987 and Christine Stansell, W
W. Urban. 1987.

6Mortimer Thomson, 19. See also A. Medium, 213.

123

dozen seekers a day on average (although he does not say how
he arrived at this number).
The seers were just as diverse except in terms of class.
With the exception of elite mediums and possibly some highly
successful fortunetellers, most urban seers were poor or
working class. Thomson, in his visits to New York
fortunetellers, noted that "It is probably a thorough
conviction of the necessity of eating and drinking. . . that
induces our modern witches to charge a specific sum for the
exercise of their art."7 He went further to say that
fortunetellers, with a few exceptions, inevitably live in the
poorest sections of town, areas which offended his sense of
cleanliness and made him look over his shoulder more than
once:
Sunshine is the only protection for a well-dressed man
against the population of this part of town. In the
twilight or darkness he would be robbed, if not garroted
and murdered. The boldest and most desperate burglars,
and others of that stamp, have their homes about here--
fathers who teach their children the thief's profession,
and.mothers who carry pickpockets at the breast. In the
midst of this nest of crime the fortune-teller has her
home, and here she thrives.a
Of course fortunetellers in their ads did not mention the
reputation their neighborhoods had with the "well—dressed,"
although Madame Barrett in New York in 1903 knew the bad
reputation fortunetellers had with this set and was willing
to calm their fears. She advertised herself as a "scientific

palmist and astrologer" who lived in a "good neighorhood."9

 

7Thomson, 24.
8Thomson, 137.
92:» York World classified ad, March 7, 1903.

124’

Seer ads reflected that, to some extent, certain areas
of the city boasted higher numbers of fortunetellers than
others, and these areas tended to be older sections
characterized by diverse activity: residences, entertainment
areas, and businesses. The popular addresses were much more
likely to be near theaters and taverns than churches. They
were also characterized by their proximity to the principal
arteries of public transportation later in the century. Of
all the ads sampled in the New Ybrk world, 22% mentioned an
address on Sixth street, which was used by both rich and poor
since it was considered to be part of the ”lower depths" yet
intersected the pride of nineteenth-century New York, Fifth
Avenue. The Amsterdam News (available after 1920) advertised
streets in the West 130s, with 10% of ads coming from 131st
street in the center of African-American-dominated Harlem.10
Twenty-two percent of ads in the Chicago Tribune asked
customers to come to an address on Madison, with another 15%
requesting visits on Clark Street which bordered the
financial district and was also known as an area for
entertainment (theaters, bars, and houses of assignation) and
working-class lodging.11 In San Fransisco, the popular
addresses were on Market Street (16%), which was the site of
conmerical and entertainment activity.12 Seers in Boston ads

.mentioned Tremont street in 15% of their ads, an area which

 

“Eric Bombers”. W
W. (New Haven. 1994)-

“stephen Lonoatmt. W. (New York. 1973) .

”Doria Muscatine. WW
.zran_Earlx.ns¥s_:e_rha_zsrrhsuaka. (New York. 1975)-

125

was once the site of wealthy single-family homes but
transformed into a street of lodging houses for new
immigrants and other working-class people starting in the
187Os~13 In St. Louis, clients were likely to go to Olive
Street (18% of ads sampled) or Franklin (14%), busy parts of
the city characterized by entertainment and business.L‘
Writers like Mortimer Thomson, who were trying to equate
prophecy-for-profit with urban decay, over-stressed seer
‘concentration, however, and the advertisements demonstrate
that while there were areas which housed a number of seers,
most were dispersed across the city.

Mediums' autobiographies, as well as newspapers accounts
and exposes such as Thomson's Kitchen and Barnumfls‘flnmhnga‘
describe the process of seer consultations in similar ways.
Typcially a customer would read a fortuneteller's
advertisement and call at the address. Sometimes a seer
would require a seeker to make an appointment for a later
date (possibly allowing the seer to research particulars in
the life of the seeker). Usually, the seeker entered the
living area of the seer where a section of the room had been
curtained off especially for prophecy. Sometimes this area
would be a small room and sometimes not more than a small
space in a bedroom with a table and two chairs. The seer

sometimes asked for payment in advance, although many occult

 

”Walter Muir Whitehill. WW.
(Cambridge, Mass., 1968).

“James Neal Prim. W.
(Boulder, Colo., 1981).

126

workers offered a "satisfaction or no pay” guarantee. A.
Medium noted that sometimes "charges for these things are on
the sliding plan. If the person wear diamonds and rich
apparel, he is liable to name one hundred dollars. . . The
man looking for work is 'touched' for from two to ten
dollars, according to appearances of propsperity. "15 Most
seers charged much less according to their ads, and some
offered free services to those who could not afford to pay,
such as Mrs. Johnson's Chicago Tribune ad (published two
years after the devastation of the city's fire) which said
"those unable to pay treated free."16

A.seer could use any number of divination methods such
as cartomancy, channeling, crystal-gazing, palmistry,
chiromancy, or the standard clairvoyancy. Even though
newspapers placed seer ads under a heading such as
"Clairvoyants" that let readers know what seers did, 78% of
the ads further specified the method the sear used. The most
popular was channeling, with 32% of the ads declaring
mediumship, which meant that the seer could talk with the
dead and obtain information known only to spirits. The
second most popular method in the ads was palmistry (22%) ,
which meant the seer could read the lines of the querent's
hand to tell him or her of the future in love, luck, money,
and other areas of life, (depending on the creativity of the

palmist). Cartomancy (reading the past, present, and future

 

15;. Medium, 213.
16Chicago Tribune ad January 19, 1873.

127

with a pack of tarot or playing cards), astrology (seeing the
past, present and future according to the placement of stars
and planets on the client's birth date and in times to come),
and the generic clairvoyancy (which meant something similar
to what we would now call a psychic) were equally as popular
yet less often evoked that channeling or paimistry.

The seeker would ask a specific question or simply ask
for a personality analysis or a general hint of what the
future had to bring. A. Medium noticed a distinct gender
difference (as he was wont to do) between what women asked
seers and what men did. Man, he said, were ”after buried
treasures, mining claims, luck at the gaming table, or to
beat some man in a business transaction, or to obtain lottery
numbers." WOmen, however, "usually want conditions that will
straighten out their love affairs." Wamen could also be more
aggressive by asking for "a 'condition' brought about that
will cause the death of their husband or lover, or an
'influence' set to work that will result in certain ones
giving to them money or jewels or remembering them in their
*wills.”17 Seekers, then, asked about the areas of their lives
'that were least stable, a phenomenon consistent with

divination in many cultures.18

 

17A. Medium, 212-213.

“Lawrence Levine ' 8 W

W. (Oxford. 1977) is an
especially useful source on this point. See particularly 55-80. See
also Alan Taylor, “The Early Republic's Supernatural Economy: Treasure-
Seeking in the American Northeast, 1780-1830,” Angriggn_nng;:g;11,
38(Spring 1986): 6-34.

128

It is unclear from the evidence exactly what these
fortunes meant to the people who paid for them, but some of
their actions indicate that there could have been a range of
responses. Some used fortunes as justification for behavior
that would not be wholly acceptable, such as the young girl
who "ran away with a good-for-nothing character of the
Tenderloin" at the advice of a fortuneteller, much to her
mother's chagrin.“ Commodore Vanderbilt used Tennesse
Claflin and Victoria Woodhull to obtain financial insider
information . 2°

People also tended to go the fortunetellers because they
felt they had no other option. One police matron told how
she had visited a fortuneteller as a young working-girl.
When one night she ”came in tired and blue; something had
gone wrong in my work," her best friend retorted, "'Let's go
and have Madame Herman read our palms. It is only fifty
cents. She will tell you how to get out of your trouble.'"
Madame Herman ended up upsetting both the girls' lives
because they both believed her.21 Miss Morris, a
clairvoyant's assistant, was sure that most clients believed
the information she put to them, and she had no qualms about
tricking people because she truly believed that she and the

clairvoyant were doing good. One day an obviously destitute

 

19'Mother Reveals New Graft Trail-Ber Stoy of Daughter's Ruin by a
Clairvoyant Shows Another Angle of Police Crookedness,“ New York Times,
May 18, 1913, II, 10:5.

”Barbara Goldsmith. W

W. (New York. 1998):
156-171.

21'Eow I Had 54 Persons Arrested And What I Found Out About Palmp
Reading,‘ Ladies Home Journal 28(7), August, 1911: 7.

129

woman entered the office, and the clairvoyant was so moved by
her story that he pulled a con-game--making sure she went
away with more money than she came in with. Miss Morris
reported that repeat customers claimed they did not really
believe, but she was "convinced that a majority of our
educated peple, while openly laughing at palmistry, fortune-
telling, clairvoyanace, and love-charms as relics of the
Middle Ages, secretly believe in them. "22 Lawrence Levine has
shown the preponderance of ancient beliefs in charme, ghosts,
and divination in nineteenth-century culture--beliefs that
cametfrom both African and European cultures, and people held
to them.even when it became unfashionable to do soft"3

The ad specialties are another clue as to the use of
fortunes by customers. Seers' ads looked as if seers acted
as information clearing-houses in all that was considered
”trouble” by both "respectable" and lower-class urbanites.
Ninety-three of the total ads used the very word "trouble" as
a speciality, while others specified further such as
”losses,” "domestic strife,” and other delicate issues such
as in Madame Countess de London's 1888 ad which
euphemistically offered "advice to young men on marriage."2‘
This propensity to advertise their willingness to deal with
delicate problems and matters not readily discussed with

strangers (or even with family members) often drew scorn from

 

22"Confessions of an Assistant Clairvoyant, ' The Outlook 105
(September 6, 1913): 39.

”Levine, ss-ao.

2‘Chicago Tribune classified ad, September 16, 1888

130

non-sears. Mortimer Thomson insisted that the fortuneteller
”front" masked suspect businesses such as abortion services
and prostitution.” Boston sears especially advertised more
than prophecy, offering baths, magnetic treatments, or
massage (services that sometimes required the medium to touch
the client's body), and ads often contained the names of two
women--perhaps as a measure of safety--such as that of "Miss
Ida Phillips and Felicia—-C1airvoyants, 408 Tremont St., up 2
flights; hot baths. "25 Such services could easily have been
mistaken by Thomson as a front for prostitution (or perhaps
were fronts for prostitution). Many specialized in "female
complaints" such as ”Mrs. Dupont, Clairvoyant and Ladies'
confidential physician; diseases of a delicate nature
successfully treated," which could have meant any problem
from unwanted pregnancy to sexually-transmitted disease}7
St. Louie's Madame La veta was even more explicit in her 1888
ad: "Mme. Le vote, the greatest fortune teller, is having
good success; ladies in trouble call her at once; she can
tell you more and in a plainer manner than any medium.you
ever met. "23 Seer ads promoted the notion that occult workers
served as people with whom to discuss all sorts of problems
(many less pressing than unwanted pregnancy) that the seeker

may have been embarrassed to talk about with friends and

 

”Thomson, 19-20.

26Boston Globe classified ad, September 3, 1884.
2"Chicago Tribune classified ad, February 25, 1873.

28St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, August 12, 1888.

131

family members. Madame Irene, "woman of mystery" and St.
Louis seer, even advertised herself as a "secret worker."29
It is difficult to tell what the seeker actually got for
his or her money. Many accounts come from persons seeking to
discredit the profession, and so such reports are not
necessarily indicative of a typical meeting between client
and seer. Thomson reported that seers gave vague
information, such as the fortune he received (and recorded
without punctuation to stress the speed with which she read
his fortune) from.Madame Widger:
I see by looking in this stone that you was born under
two planets one is the planet Mars you will die under
the planet Jupiter but it won't be this year or next you
have seen a great deal of trouble and misfortune in your
past life but better days are surely in store for you
you have passed through many things Which if written in
a book would make a most interesting volume I see by
looking more closely in the stone that you are about to
receive two letters. . . 3°
As a first-time customer, Thomson rarely received information
more specific than that of Madame‘Widger's fortune, but as
the seeker repeatedly went to the same teller, he or she
found better counsel. Since visits were conducted orally,
few records of private consultations are available excepting
those in mediums' autobiographies, which were tailored for
public consumption.
Yet limited archival evidence from a later period

suggests the customer received more personal and specific

information than that given to Thomson. Ellen Pinckney

 

29St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, February 5, 1911.
30Thomson, 93.

132

Brown, a wealthy South Carolina woman in her thirties,
received a five-dollar astrological reading twice in the
19303 from.Ceorge W. Smallwood, M.D who resided in Pepperell,
Massachusetts. Their correspondence suggested other contacts
as well. Dr. Smallwood delivered a wealth of personal advice
(based on the intimate information given him.presumably by
Brown) and some sorry news; in one instance the astrologer
told her ”the one whom you say you love" is not the right
mate, for the stars have it that a union with this man ”could
only end in misery, divorce ac.“”- Elite seers who focused
closely on a select clientele had the advantage over seers
who advertised in urban dailies because elite seers often
found themselves immersed in the private lives of their
clients and sometimes became extended house guests}:2

Occult workers held a unique place in the history of
work at the turn of the century. While they controlled the
means of production (their own bodies), may have had a
professional association (however limited; see chapter two),
and they advertised for themselves and controlled their own
hours, they were maligned as associated with the underclass
like no other type of business owner excepting sex workers.
As Burton Bledstein has shown, middle-class Americans in the
last quarter of the nineteenth-century increasingly looked to
formal education as the qualifier for professionalism,

creating a system of validation that developed into the most

 

31Ellen Pinckney Brown collection, letter from George Smallwood,
Box 28-617, South Carolina Historical Society.
32See Chapter Two.

133

unified feature in defining that which constituted middle-
classness.33 Professional societies with stringent membership
qualifications that depended on formal education effectively
excluded the lower classes from gaining symbolic capital, the
power gleaned from meritocratic systems. Yet seers created
their own symbolic capital by highlighting special
qualifications of gender, ethnicity, race or nationality, and
even class that were the basis for their claim on
professional functions. The very experiences of their own
disenfranchisement served as the qualifications for
professionalism. They knew what Hawthorne knew'when he
showed the Blithedale reformers imbuing Priscilla with
supernatural powers based on her perceived status as a
gendered, aged, and above all, economic outcast: that the
culture was wont to believe (in a hegemonically Christian
way) that sufferers were more likely to have vaguely-
conceived mystical insight.3‘

In their ads, seers were not shy about claiming
proficiency in the services in which the new professionals
thought they only could perform: counselling in health, the
family, law, and addiction, speculation and economics, and
medical practice. Fifty-six percent of the total ads
declared a specialization, and most of these ads claimed a

number of them. The most popular specialization involved

 

33Burton Bledatein. WW1:

.. 9- 1 u o

 

     

3‘See Chapters One and Two.
134

money issues. Seers, mainly women, claimed this
specialization, traditionally governed by males, without
mentioning the source of their knowledge. They could have
chosen to say they had experience holding, selling, or buying
stocks, or they could have mentioned work in banking.
Instead, they let their magic validate their claims. Of the
802 ads which declared specialties, 329 offered help in
financial matters such as banking, speculation, business,
stocks. Mediums most often evoked business as a specialty,
and the ”business mediumP was a stock figure in the
classified columns. Mediums were also more likely to eschew
the title ”Madame" in favor of the more "respectable“ and
less exotic 'Mrs.," signfying the mediums, and the business
medium.in particular, catered more to the no-nonsense
business crowd. Mrs. Foster of New York was typical. She
advertised herelf as a "most celebrated ad reliable business
medium! who had ”no equal in professional skill and cannot be
surpassed. "35

While finance was mainly a man's business,
fortunetellers also provided competition for some of the new
professional women who came to dominate counselling in
marriage and family relations.36 Many a “madame” said she
could see any seeker's "future husband or wife” or tell if

"the one you love if false or true." Another popular claim

 

35New York World classified ad, Feburary 8, 1891.

36See Robyn Haney. W
1129:1235. (New York. 1991) and Regina 6. Knnzel. W

   

In 8. o ; o

1222.12.12, NewHaven,199).
135

was to be able to cause "speedy marriage," indicating seers
may have dealt with women pregnant out of wedlock. Seers
also promised to smooth over quarrels between husbands and
wives, making "domestic troubles" disappear. Professor S.
Indoo started his Amsterdam News ad by asking "Why do
husbands and wives not agree?," implying a visit to the
professor would reveal the answer.37 Professor W. J. Martin's
1911 ad almost drowned other problems in domestic or romantic
ones; he would tell a seeker "whether your husband, wife or
sweetheart is true or false, how to win the love of the one
you desire, marry the one of your choice, family troubles,
business, journeys, speculation, social or domestic
conditions, failures, successes, love,:marriage."38
Seers-~both male and female-~also claimed services that
had been recently taken over by professional males. Such is
the case of medicine. Healing or medical advice appeared in
22% of the ads declaring specialties, an area in which social
reformers were taking a special interest in regulating. By
the 1890s, the medical field in the United States had
transformed itself into a professional body embracing what
Robert Weibe has called ”a scientific gospel." The American
Medical Association modernized and local and state governing
bodies were willing to help the AMA rid the field of (mainly

non-formally educated) "quacks. "39 To fortunetellers, who

 

3"Amsterdam News advertisement, January 14, 1925.

38St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, February 5, 1911

”Robert Weibe. W. (New York. 1967).
114-115. See also John a. Heller, Jr. W
1349:1211: (Urbana, 1981)-

136

often served populations either unable to afford “scientific"
medicine, unwilling to trust the medical field, or requiring
great secrecy, the professionalization of medicine meant
little until it became an issue in their own regulation after
the turn of the century (see Chapter Six).

Legal advice, which appeared significantly less often as
a specialty than business or domestic advice (around 10% of
ads declaring specialties), was another service claimed by
both seers and the educated elite. The only specialty not
claimed by the educated elite was advice on gambling, and
this specialty occurred only in 3% of the ads declaring
specialties.

Seers were very much a part of the newly emerging
economic system that used advertising to create need, and
showed themselves to be competent admakers (another field
claimed.more and more by those with formal education)
according to some of the practices of the advertising
profession. In fact, seers utilized both of the main methods
of pitching a sale at the turn of the century. The most
papular with seers was what Jackson Lears calls "vernacular"-
-advertising which offers magical transformation. Seers also
used newer methods emerging from the admakers' desire to shed
their carnivalesque image: realistic appeals to provable
scientific facts and appeals to satisfied customer
testimonials.

Jackson Lears calls the period from 1880 to 1906 a

”golden age of commercial rhetoric, iconography, and

137

performance." He uses the example of the patent medicine ad
to show that "health-related advertising" provided "a
fantasic counterpoint to the official idioms of repression in
late Victorian culture,” and "promoted the persistent dream
of bodily revitalization, and preserved the popular notion
that life could be lived on multiple planes of meaningx"‘°
Seer ads, in addition to health-related ads, also took part
in what Lears calls "vernacular advertising,” for they
promised magic itself, and gave seekers the sense that they
were part of a multi-layered system beyond the mundane.

Seers claimed fantastic powers. Madame Fink of St.
Louis, like 19% of sampled seer ads which declared
specializations, promised she "unites lovers, brings
separated together" through occult means. Mrs. Richardson,
who advertised herself as a ”colored medium" promised a clear
view of the future, for ”It was a colored medium who told
Josephine she would be Empress of France, which was true.“1
Like another 19% of sampled ads promising medical
rejuvenation of some sort, Madame 2. Mozart of Chicago said
she could help "ladies in trouble" as well as "cure corns and
bunions. "‘2 Even though many ads did not specifically declare
specializations that promised magic results, their very
presence spoke to the notion that ”life could be lived on
multiple planes of meaning," for the occult itself signifies

secret forces that can be tapped for human use.

 

‘°Lears, 141-142.
“St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ads, April 4, 1907.
“Chicago Tribune classified ad, August 6, 1893.

138

Less widely used (but used more by men than women) were
the methods admakers usually employed to prove they indeed
belonged among the new professionals: appeals to scientific
logic and testimonials from."worthies.” Despite being less
popular with seers than ads that simply appealed to exoticism
and magic, these ads were much more verbose and often took up
more space than the others. Seers typicaly used these
methods more after 1890 and often paired these methods with
some declaration of distance between their "respectable” work
and that practiced by other seers. St. Louis, where seers
engaged in fierce competition between 1885 and 1911, saw much
of this type of advertising. Professor W.J. Martin claimed
he was "recognized by the press, medical fraternity and
scientists generally as the foremost medium in the country,
and should not be classed with card readers, fortune tellers,
astrologers and similar humbugs." He further noted "he does
not cater to the superstition of the ignorant, credulous
people. ”‘3 Professor D. Litten of Chicago offered ”personal
indorsements from.prominent people not only as to his
ability and superior power as a medium.but also as to his
honesty and reliability. "‘4 Rose Sabine not only offered
newspaper testimonials but also claimed "some of the leading
man on 'Change and members of the leading clubs are her
regular patrons, and some of them.have paid her enormous

amounts for information. . . Her large and elegantly

 

“St. Louis Post-Dispatch ad, February 5, 1911.
“Chicago Tribune classified ad, March 19, 1999.

139

furnished parlors are always crowded with the leading ladies
and gentlemen.”5

Seers' proficiency in writing the successful ad showed
what was at this time a radical notion: that working-class
and poor people could be artistically creative. Seers also
extended this proficiency as well to performance.
Fortunetellers used the body as a site of performance by
dressing eccentrically, exaggerating motion, and using a
variety of voices and props to effect the aura of mystery.
Ann Brande notes that one of medium.Ascha Sprague's customers
took issue with the immodesty of her appearance saying her
"outlandishness in hat, frock, wristbands and country girl
flamishness" attracted the wrong kind of attention.“ Other
mediums banked on other eccentric images, such as Cora
Richmond, who wore her hair loose in long wringlets, bared
her neck and shoulders and hung a necklace with an oversize
cross around her neck (see Appendix, Figure 2).‘7 Seers also
tried to evoke the exotic by advertising themselves as "born
with a veil" or having a ”second sight" or being the "seventh
daughter." Between 1898 and 1916 Madame Porter changed her
address four times and varied her specialties slightly but
was always (in five ads anyway) ”born with a double veil,

second sight.“8

 

”St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, August 12, 1888

‘5J.H. Crawford quoted by Ann Brande, 108.

"Barrett frontispiece.

“San Fransisco Examiner classified ads, January 12, 1898,
September 7, 1908, April 9, 1912, October 4, 1914 and March 5, 1916.

140

The most extensive use of performance (and the various
art-forms inherent in performance) was of course the
ethnic/racial exotic. Twenty percent of the total sample of
seer ads declared the seer was of a particular national or
racial origin, such as "Edith, celebrated colored
clairvoyant,” "The Noted Daughter of Rhineland, Mrs.
Catherine, the German giantess and clairvoyant,” or ”Countess
Zingara, wonderful famous Gypsy Palmist.“9 Other ads used
ethnicity, race or nation by noting the seer used occult
methods from faraway places, such as Professor Akpan Aga, who
declared, next to a picture of him wearing a suit jacket and
bow tie with his turban, that he practiced the "Magic and
Occultism of Africa” (See Appendix, Figure 8).” The uses of
racial, national, ethnic, or even religious signifiers was
diverse. Seers evoked Gypsy, France, Egypt, Germany,
England, the "East," ”Oriental,", Hindu, India, Indian,
Europe, Africa, South America, Spain, West Africa, Congo,
Eboe, Aden, Nigeria, England, the American west, "colored”
(mainly in white papers), "white“ (mainly in black papers),
Persia, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Greece, China, Turkey, and
Japan. Some seers evoked the romance of cities such as New
Orleans or Paris, while some evoked regional pride by saying
they were from the South, Boston, Arkansas, Tennessee,
Missouri, or New York. The most popular

ethnic/national/racial signifier was "gypsy" or ”gipsey;”

 

”New York World classified ads, December 9, 1888 and April 22,
1909. Chicago Tribune classified ad, September 18, 1881.
50Amsterdam News ad, November 29,1922.

141

Nineteen percent of all seers who used a national or racial
signifier used this term, and in several ads the very term
was synonymous with fortunetelling, making ”gypsy” a
professional designation: "Mrs. Keever, well-known gypsy"
and ”WANTED--Everybody to know that the celebrated Gypsy
Woman has returned to this city. "51 The second most popular
ethnic/racial designation was French or Parisian, which
sought to play on customers' notions of the French as
fashionable and romantic. German and Egyptian each took up
7% of those that declared a ethnic/racial affiliation. In
.African-American produced newspapers African was the most
popular designation, and most often seers broke down Africa
into regions or countries such as Congo, Eboe, Aden, or
Nigeria. When African-Americans advertised in predominantly
white-produced papers, they chose to use ”colored” or
Egyptian.

Gypsies, as David Mayall points out in his study of
Gypsies in Great Britian, used fortune-telling primarily as a
service to sell to gadjo or non-gypsies. They did, however,
spend time perpetuating the image of gypsies as persons
having particular talents in prophecy and.when alone, made
fun of the propensity of non—gypsies to believe the fortunes
told them. Gypsies began to enter the United States in large
numbers beginning in the 18803 primarily from Eastern Europe

and Russia. Anthropologist Rena Gropper calls the years

 

51New York World classified ad, May 18, 1901 and Chicago Tribune
classified ad, September 16, 1868.

1!42

between 1880 and 1925 the Camp Period of Gypsy history in the
United States, during which they camped in the winter in
rural areas but headed into more populated areas in the
summer looking for work.52 Of the fifty-three ads that used
"gypsy“ or ”Romany," twelve indicated the seer or seers were
either coming from or leaving soon for a ”tour" or trip.

Given the medium of the classified ad, which was
supposed to be a temporary venue anyway, the mention of
movement bolstered the image of Gypsy authenticity, since
many Gypsy tribes were migrating in the U.S. at this period.
One ad cleverly advertised the location of the I'camp" in
conjunction with a generic name, "Gypsy Fortune Teller" to
allow any of the women present at any moment a customer
arrived to sell the fortune. Same appeared to be settled,
though, which also reflects the historical picture of Gypsies
in the U.S. since "sedentary” tribes did settle in urban
areas. Mademe Zingara of New York took out at least seven
ads in the New'York world between 1886 and 1893 in both the
summer and winter months, five of which mentioned the same
address. In 1903 either she announced her "return” or
someone took over her name at a different address.53

Seers using French, France or Paris in their ads relied

on their customers conjuring up an image with all the romance

 

52David Mayan. WW
(Cambridge. 1988) and Rena D- Gropper. W
£at:srna.ans_aurxixa1. (Princeton. 1975)-

53St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, June 6, 1909; New Yerk
world classified ads, July 4, 1886, September 13, 1886, November 4,
1888, January 9, 1891, February 8, 1891, March 5, 1893, April 9, 1893
and March 7, 1903.

143

of the exotic Gypsy but none of the associations with
poverty. Recognized as an ethnicity with a long and romantic
history in the United States steaming from association with
the exoticiem of New Orleans, the French in America did not
evoke the poor or itinerant but the fashionable and the well-
established. Carl Wittke notes in his discussion of the
"Older Immigrants” that nineteenth-century (middle-class
white) society looked to France for lessons in mainly
”manners, fashions, and cooking" and late in the century "the
quest of American houswives" was to find ”French cooks and
butlers, gardeners, waiters, and dressmakers" and looked for
Parisian ladies to teach their daughters French, the
proficiency in which would demonstrate a refined femininity.
Namely, the middle-class sought "cultured” servants. Even
the Eastern disdain for the Quebecois immigrant worker in the
late nineteenth-century could not dispel the connotation of
French with high culture and manners .5‘ Therefore,
declarations such as that of Madame Le Nermand (her name
having been taken from.a famous and fashionable eighteenth-
century seer) that she "has the celebrated Parisian charms"
took on double meaning.55 Boston sears, perhaps working on
their city's reputation as America's most "cultured," took
out a disproportionate number of ads evoking France (43% of
ads using France came out of the Boston Globe, while ads from

this paper accounted for only 11% of the total sample).

 

“Carl Wittke. WWW-
(Western Reserve University, 1939). 313-324

55Chicago Tribune classified ad, September 13, 1331.
144

Seers such as ”Nellie Evans, Best French clairvoyant in
Boston" and ”Mme. Willett, the only French clairvoyant from
Paris in Boston," vied.with one another to be not only the
best seer in Boston but the best French seer .55

The ads that evoked Germany seemed to do so because they
had German communities as customers rather than to conjure up
an image. Of the twenty-two ads that used German, only five
said the seers were German. The rest indicated they spoke
German. Only one, "Doctor Utz, the Great German Magnetic
Doctor" tried to evoke the reputation Germany had as a leader
in science. The seventeen that noted the seer could conduct
a consultation in.German did so to attract immigrant
populations, and St. Louis, which had a large German
immigrant population (although not as large as Chicago and
New York by 1900), made up almost half of the ads evoking
Germany. Seers seemed to want to keep Germany at a distance
in their ads, since few of their customers would have found
anything exotic in it with the exception of some hint of
labor radicalism (which would have been more threatening and
less romantic), for the native-born saw Germans as either
sober, hard workers or fun-loving beer drinkers (whatever the

rhetorical situation called for) .57 The propensity to avoid

 

56Boston Globe classified ads, January 7, 1882 and April 13, 1880.

578ee James M. Bergquist, “German-America in the 18903: Illusions
and Realities" in Mcormiek. ed-. WW
Amar1can_Bs1ar19na_in_rhs_N1nsrssnth:nentu22. New York. 1983 for some

of the particulars of German-American culture and economic status and

John 813mm. WW
1225, New York, 1971 for placement of Germans in the context of

xenophobia directed at other immigrant groups.

145

being seen as a German was evidenced best by a Post-Dispatch
ad which announced the services of "Mme. Zelmar, little
French palmist” who spoke ”German and English" but apparently
no French.58

.Africa and African countries were also popular in both
white- and black—produced newspapers, but the advertisements
were different. In white-produced papers, Egyptian was the
only African nationality used, while it was called upon
little in black—produced newspapers. One seer in the
Amsterdam News said he was a "native of Africa,“ but made a
distinction between Egypt and.Africa by saying "Egyptian and
African formulae used.”59 West African countries like
Nigeria, Congo, or simply ”West African" were used only by
seers in the.Amsterdam News and the Chicago Defender. The
difference was one of time and audience. The black-produced
papers, available in the late teens and twenties, were
targeted at an African-American audience who, at this time,
had been.familiar with the movement of paneAfricanism.for at
least twenty years. Seers exploited this interest in Africa
by stressing their country or area of origin. Professor
Thomas Ogunshola's 1925 ad was typical, and presented him as
a "NATIVE OF WEST AFRICA, MASTER OF SCIENCE" who ”guarantees
to bring peace and happiness to your home. Advice and luck

given on business."° Significantly, all of the seers

 

58Chicago Tribune classified ad, June 1, 1862 and St. Louis Post-
Dispatch classifeid ad, June 6, 1909.

”Amsterdam News ad, 391-11 19, 1923.

60Amsterdam News ad, April 1, 1925.

146

advertising themselves as.Africans were men, and they claimed
to be herbalists or scientists. Women in the black-produced
newspapers used a different style by eschewing the use of
ethnicity and aligning themselves (like many seers did after
the passage of prophecy laws) with institutions or evoking
beauty, such the Amsterdam News ad which read "Madame
Hamilton will open 2nd Universal Spiritual church at 116 west
118th street. . . Floral Readings."61 (WFlower seances" had
been popular with mediums from the beginning, and consisted
of seances in which the only payment was flowers--a good
visual effect behind a female mediums-and from which the seer
received publicity).

The ads in the primarily white-produced papers catered
to a white readership, whose interest in Africa would not
have extended much past the usual stereotypes given new life
by social Darwinism, with the exception of Egypt, which would
have evoked images of an advanced yet romantic society . 52 The
San Fransisco Examiner and the Chicago Tribune ran the most
ads evoking Egypt, yet they appeared in all white-produced
newspapers with the exception of the Boston Globe, in which
seers rarely evoked race or nation other than French. The ads
evoking Egypt were usually more highly stylized than all but
those evoking gypsies, and often coupled the evocation with

exotic names or high titles such as "Princess Zoraida,

 

61Amsterdam News ad February 6, 1929.
62For a discussion of the uses of social Darwinism by whites
against black and a discussion of African-American interest in Africa

from 1900 to 1919, see Hilfred C. Fierce, W
.Enitfld_fitltlli_12fln:1212v (New York, 1993)-

147

Egyptian clairvoyant," "Ismar, the Egyptian gypsy,” or "Prof.
H. Cairo (known as Ragah), Egyptian palmist and

astrologist. "53 Seers evoking Egypt rarely claimed to channel
spirits, a method usually marketed to more wealthy and white
clients, and instead preferred palmistry or astrology.

Seers not only asserted that maligned immigrant or
native-born minorities held special powers, they tested the
very notion of ”authentic" identity. When Mortimer Thomson
visited "Madame Carzo, the Brazilian Astrologist” he
encountered a woman he thought was not Brazilian at all, but
instead looked like “a transplanted Yankee school ma' am” who
had taken up astrology because the wages for school teaching
were so meager. According to Thomson's conjeCture, she could
not "depend exclusively on civilization and enlightenment for
a living" and so turned to "superstition and ignorance" and
the higher pay of the fortuneteller. Thomson felt her
"Yankeeismf'was further proven when he paid her and she
”instantly produced a 'Thompson's Bank-note Detector' from
under a pillow, and a one dollar note, issued by the
President and Directors of the 'Quinnipiack Bank' of
Connectictut” and carefully scrutinized the bill.“‘

In Thomson's world, ethnic categories were so stable
that anyone who was not dark-skinned but who did show a
suspicion against being conned must inevitably be a Yankee.
He passed snidely by the symbols that would "authenticate"

 

”San Fransisco Examiner classified ads, October 4, 1914, May 4,
1902, and March 5, 1916
6‘Thomson, 232-233.

148

Madame Carzo as a Catholic Brazilian, such as pictures of
Saints like "St. Somebody taking his ease on an x-shaped
cross, St. Somebody Else comfortably cooking on a gridiron,
and St. Somebody, different from either of these, impaled on
a spear like a bug in an Entomological Museum"55 Madame
Carzo's ”lady-like" appearance seemed at odds with his vision
of her Brazilianness such as it was of ”boa-constrictors,
half-naked savages, dye-woods, Jesuit's bark, cockatoos,
scorpions and ring-tailed monkeys. "‘5 We have no evidence of
Madame Carzo's personal vision of what constituted meaningful
identity for her, but we do know that Madame Carzo did not
see incongruency between a "lady-like” appearance and
Brazilianness.

Of course not all seers were likely to identify honestly
‘with the ethnic labels they chose to use in their
advertising. This leads to questions of the definition of
identity itself. What would have made Madame Carzo
"authentic" Brazilian? The usual signifiers would have been
place of birth, place of parents' or grandparents' birth, a
set of cultural practices, citizenship, or language. In the
ads, in which play with symbols was not just tolerated but
expected (how many ”queens“ spend time seeking to ward off
"evil influences” for day-laborers or socialites?), identity

as a definable term was even more problematic.

 

6”Thomson, 229 .
“Thomson, 222 .

149

Such play with identity is apparent in the use of the
term."Gypsy" and Gypsy signifiers. One scholar has noted that
Gypsies, a tight-knit group whose world-view depended on
strict separation between Gypsy insider and gadjo outsider,
"dressed for the part” of Gypsy fortuneteller "by wearing
colourful headscarves and droopy earrings. '57 They became
more ”Gypsy" specifically for fortunetelling. Given the
close-knit grouping of Gypsies, few outsiders knew them.we11
and so seers could take on this identity and fool many
customers. Since ads that claim the seer to be "genuine"
were fairly common, it was not impossible that some persons
claiming to be ”Gypsy" learned from.books or other means how
to dress and act accordingly. Likewise, in the late
nineteenth-century, persons with any skin tone between light
brown to very dark could have passed as Egyptian without
causing suspicion. Any light-skinned African-American or
white person could pass as French by simply knowing a bit of
the language. Seers could have been engaged in a sort of
minstrelsy, or they could have fully identified through
birth, culture, or language, but given the ads were composed
to sell a fortune and were based on what seers thought would
validate them to their customers, the degree to which seers
identified with their own personae is virtually impossible to
substantiate.

Some seers chose to use differences in physical ability

to market themselves as exotics in similar ways to the ads

 

”Mayan, 49.
150

that used ethnicity. The numbers were much, much smaller.
However, they were significant in that all of them chose to
highlight blindness. The "blind seer" had been an archetype
of western culture for centuries. Oedipus had said of
Teiresias:

Teiresias: seer: student of mysteries,

Of all th'as taught and all that no man tells,

Secrets of Heaven and secrets of the earth:

Blind though you are, you know the city lies

Sick with plague; and from this plague, my lord

we find that you alone can guard or save us.‘°
All nine of the seers who used differences in physical
ability evoked blindness, and all of them remained nameless,
using blindness as a name in itself, such as the four ads
taken out in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the "American
Blind Lady” clairvoyant.69 Another typical ad read "BLIND
Fortune Teller, 1519 Morgan St.; ladies, 25c; massage and
magnetic treatment for nervous diseases.”0 In addition to
the using the Teiresias symbol of the magical "blind seer,§
occult workers evoking blindness relied on the long-held
stereotype identfied by disability activists as the
”supercrip," a person having a disability, tremendous
talents, and courage that allowed them to achieve greatness.

With their ads they also provided a public declaration that

blind people could be self-sufficient, not a small assertion

 

68Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, translators, "The Oedipus
Rex of Sophocles," W (Orlando, Fla., 1960): 88

69St. Louis Post Dispatch classified ads, March 6, 1904, May 7,
1905, April 21, 1907, and June 6, 1909.

"St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, October 14, 1888.

151

in a society intent on institutionalizing those with
disabilities."1

Seers also evoked other identity signifiers that were
considered less exotic in dominant culture; the most
significant set of symbols had to do with gender. women
seers usually chose one of two manners of self-presentation:
the "respectable” (and presumably white) lady or the lower-
class (and assumedly racial/ethnic/national 'other') exotic.
Of the total ads, 73% made obvious, through titles or
pronouns, that they were female. Some tried to play up their
”respectable" femininity by using the title "Mrs." (29% of
women used this title) over the more exotic and more
preferred (44%) ”madame." Women using the title Mrs. were
much more likely to declare channeling as a method, the more
popular and accepted method among the higher classes.
Palmdstry was more popular with women calling themselves
Madame.72 Forty-two women enacted a ”ladies only" or "no
gents" restriction for either the sake of safety, of
distancing themselves from.even the hint of a prostitution
charge, or the preference for female company. To a lesser
extent, women further distinguished themselves from one
another based on the extremes of age (obviously since very

young and very old women were in the minority against a

 

”Joseph P. Shapiro, WW
nax_:ixil_nishts_nnxsmant. (New York. 1993). 16-18. 63.

”Seers often declared proficiency in more than one method. The
correspondences between method are title are as follows: Channeling,
113 using Mrs. and 92 using Madame; Palmistry, 24 Mrs. and 120 Madame;
Cartomancy, 26 Mrs. and 89 Madame; Astrology, 19 Mrs. and 30 Madame.

152

majority of mrs.'s and madames); forty-two of them declared
that they were either old and experienced or young and
gifted. One San Fransisco seer simply called herself the
"Oldest lady palmist and card reader in the city"73 and so
joined thirty-two of her female colleagues who used advanced
age or many years' of experience as a selling point. Ten ads
used youth, with seers choosing one of two options: the
attractive young woman or the child-savant. One Chicago ad
relied on subtle hints of attractiveness, reading ”Miss
Norwood, wonderful young clairvoyant. Satisfaction to all
callers." Girls took another approach, such as that of
'Zelma, little French wonder palmist, card reader,” who
presented themselves as gifted innocents.7‘

The most popular image men chose was the scientific
professor, whether white and "hailed by the press" or
racial/ethnic "other” practicing "scientific herbalism."
While men claimed the same professional functions as women
did (family counselling, business, and health) and in the
same proportions, men packaged themselves differently in
terms of method. More men proportionately chose to use
science than women (25% of men used science as a selling
point compared to a 17% rate of use for the total sample),
indicating male seers recognized the cultural capital males
had in cleaving themselves to the supposed rationality of
science. They also showed a slightly lower propensity to be

 

73San Fransisco Examiner classified ad, March 12, 1904.
"Chicago Tribune classified ad, July 5, 1885 and St. Louis Post-
Dispatch ad, April 21, 1907.

153

a medium.(27% of men compared to 32% of the total), higher
numbers in terms of astrology and clairvoyancy and lower
rates of palmistry and cartomancy, the two methods considered
least "scientific." (Clairvoyancy and channeling could be and
were expressed in terms of electricity, while astrology could
be likened to astronomy). The scientific professorial image
was not exclusively white, however, as men who claimed a
nationality or ethnicity claimed science in ways similar to
native-born white men.

Science was an important selling point in the ads, with
17% of ads evoking a particular science or simply calling a
seer, for example, a "scientific palmdstfi or a "scientific
astrologer." By 1900, science had taken a hold on the public
imagination as a privileged way of knowing, a hold which had
been building throughout the nineteenth-century.
Professional societies had formed and regrouped under newer
more stringent membership policies based on formal education,
professorship, and publication, deeply limiting official
participation by those educationally and economically
disenfranchised such as men of color, all women and working-
class and poor people. At the same time government and big
business took an interest in science that made it an even
more prestigious field in which to worki75

In such a cultural climate, one would expect that seers

trying to appeal to the public would have made more far-

 

75Har9aret Rouiter. WW- (Baltimore.
1982.) See especially Chapters Three and Four.

154

ranging use of science (science was mentioned in only 17% of
the total sample) since spiritualists had since 1848 made the
connection between channeling, clairvoyance and electricity.
That some seers chose to use science is less important than
the fact that most did not. .As a matter of fact, the lack of
appeals to science paired with the presence of so much
magical transformation speaks to the ways in which seers
represented opposition to the strengthening of science as a
way of knowing, and by extension objected to the privileging
of it practitioners. While they did emphasize the ability of
the (primarily lower-class female) body to know things which
are not readily knowable, they did not wish to, in any
scientific methodical way, explain how they could know the
things they purported to know; It was enough to have been
born a Gypsy or the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter.

The ads that do evoke science, however, are not
insignificant. The most popular declaration of science was
that of medicine, with 64% of the ads using science claiming
healing powers or proficiency in matters of health. The
percentage of those claiming science and a
ethnic/national/racial signifier almost matched the total
percentage of those using ethnic/national/racial symbols or
identities (19% to 20%). There was, however, a
disproportionate number of men using science. While men
appeared in only 17% of the total ads, they were visible in
38% of the total of those claiming science as a selling

point, which was congruent to the cultural perception at the

155

turn of the century that “'Prestige' and 'professionalismP
were. . . concepts that . . . reshape[d] 'science' to make it
seem.even more masculine than it was."75

Class stratification allowed seers another means of
distinguishing themselves from their colleagues, and appeals
to social distinction and respectability became more numerous
as seers became more numerous (and more competitive with one
another) in the last decade of the nineteenth-century. Only
seven percent of the total sample (103 ads) evoked class
explicitly, but the ones that did are telling. The majority
(78) of those explicitly evoking class chose to appeal to
some symbol of higher classness such as royalty or
refinement. The seers who chose to evoke royalty did so in a
playful way, discursively undermining the power inherent in
the system of titled nobility, such as "Queen Stella, palmist
and life reader, tells everything,” "Countess Zingara (the
only original gypsy Zingara) palmist, clairvoyant" or ”Lady
Frances Compton" who "never fails to reunite the separated;
removes evil influences. "77 Such play with the meanings of
nobility became more popular at the turn of the century when
discussions of class polarized in the capitalist paradigm of
capital and labor and freed the discourse of nobility from

any seriousness.

 

75Rossiter, 73.

77St. Louis Post-Dispatch ad, April 21, 1907; new Ybrk world ads,
April 7, 1903 and April 22, 1909. Bakhtin suggests the use of royal
symbols by the lower classes was an important aspect of the
carnivalesque. See Mikhail Bakhtin,(Banglai§_and_nis_nn;1d,
(Indianapolis, 1984)196-277.

156

Some seers who evoked upper-classness did so in a less
playful way than those evoking royalty by specifying that
they wished "not to be classed" with the social position of
fortuneteller. Professor W. J. Martin was one such seer, and
asked not to be mistaken for the average seer "either in a
business, financial or social role."73 Madame Althone of
Chicago declared herself "a lady of unexcelled social
standing and.merits the consideration of the most intelligent
and refined," while Professor Gladstone announced only "high-
class patronage” was solicited by him.79 Samri Ellis declared
he*was "ever ready to help those with capital.”°°

At the other end of the spectrum, and especially in
African-American produced newspapers, seers courted the
masses or specifically the poor. While this is not the same
as declaring oneself poor or lower-class, it does indicate
interests. Additionally, seers would not have had to declare
themselves lower-class because they were assumed by the
dominant culture to belong to the lower-classes. What is
significant here is that they played with class signifiers
and therefore declared their interests as aligned with the
”downtrodden." In opposition to "high-class patronage,” Mrs.
E. A. McAllister announced in the Amsterdam News that "all
are welcome.“ Other seers bragged they had helped

"thousands" without regard to social position, and some

 

7°St. Louis Post-Dispatch ad, September 8, 1901.

79Chicago Tribune ad, June 28, 1896 and St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ad, February 5, 1911.

a°.N'ew Fork World classified ad, April 2, 1910.

1157

.mJ——__4

 

specialized in helping the poor by limiting price, such as
Miss J. H. Dwyer who had a ”reduced fee to the poor” and Mrs.

Johnson who said ”those unable to pay treated free. "31
By 1890, seer self-presentation had begun to show some

changes that would alter the course of occult work in the
By 1900, the new professionalism became

twentieth-century .
so firmly entrenched as a symbol of the middle-class that

educated men and women began to defend it vigorously with a

plethora of reforms from child welfare systems to the
At this same time,

regulation of the medical profession.
more and more seers began to advertise in the newspapers.

Seers began to attack each other with less-than-polite

remarks about their colleagues' lack of education, silliness,
They increased

and in one case, even their poor gramar.
their advertisement of national/ethnic/racial exoticism and

still claimed those professional functions the new middle-

class now so vigorously guarded as a symbol of their own

Seers who declared sexual, racial/ national,

class status.
and classed disenfranchisement in conjunction with claims on

professional functions could no longer be contained within

the romantic visions of the “other" put forth earlier in the
The "other, " in the view of the new middle-class,

century.
had by 1900 played too fast and loose with the symbols of

social order, and a few activists set about passing laws

against prophecy-for-profit while some customers took steps

8laminates!!! News classified ad, April 1, 1925; San Fransisco
Examiner ad, April 8, 1900 and Chicago Tribune ad, January 19, 1873.

158

 

 

toward keeping prophecy under their own control by turning it

into a parlor game.
These changes in seer advertising should be seen in the

context of the general tendency among professionals in this
era to redefine their work and the qualifications it took to

A comparison with two other professions is

do that work.
As Charlotte G.

useful here: midwifery and psychiatry.
Horst has shown, midwivesuboth rural and urban and of a

variety of ethnicities--at the mid-nineteenth-century
practiced childbirth attendance as a comunity service.

They had little desire to mobilize and control the

profession. As the usually white, male, and middle-class
specialists began to make inroads into the profession,

childbirth came more and more to be located in hospitals and

away from the community, especially for the births of urban,

middle-class white women. Alienated by systems of formal

higher education, women midwives did not create networks of
academic association but instead worked within community

systems.” Elizabeth Lunbeck describes a similar process in
her work on the professionalization of psychiatry, showing

that in the early twentieth-century the practice moved its

emphasis from the insane to everyday life, in which

psychiatrists created ideologies of "normalcy” through which
Again, this tendency

to solidify and expand the profession.

”Charlotte 6. Horst. W
W. (Cambridge. Hanan 1995).

159

 

alienated women by focusing on the pathology of femaleness,

making the profession difficult to access for women.83
Both of these examples show educated white males

claiming a particular professional field, and in this way
fortunetellers were similar. In print, they claimed the
field for women and ethnic/racial "others, " stating their

"natural" affinities for the supernatural qualified them for
r“

 

fortunetelling the way the "natural" rationality of white,
educated men qualified them in the sciences. Seers '

increased advertising and increased emphasis on I'otherness"
in the 1910s represents a more forceful claim on the
profession by those alienated from other professions.
difference, however, was that in the fields of obstetrics and

The

psychiatry white educated men actually wanted the jobs .

There were no major courses of study at major colleges in
By 1910, educated professionals, especially

fortunetelling.
doctors , sought to eliminate the competition fortunetellers

provided and some began to appeal to medical boards to
penalize those who practiced medicine without licenses . This

was to have a devastating effect on seer advertising that

loudly declared the talents and skills of the non-formally-

educated .
Despite the demise of seer-centered advertising after

1910 (which is examined in the Chapter Six), the voices of
occult workers boomed from the classifieds between 1870 and

”Blizmth Lunbeck. W
W. (Princeton. 1994).
160

 

 

1910. Groups of people considered inarticulate--poor people,

imigrants, minorities, women, the non-formally educated--

spoke loud and clear about the world around them. The boom

in seer ads in this period demonstrated that seers--

configured as lower class--asserted possession of as many

talents as the more privileged classes . Barred from the

venues of social distinction, they used their cultural

capital to create their own system of prestige .

161

 

 

Chapter Five:

A Spooky Little Girl Like !ou and ”A Cunjuh 'omau Lack
Me”: The Occult and Female Professionalism in James,
Davis, and Chesnutt

‘As occult workers in the newspapers began to appropriate
symbols of professionalism and claim professional status for
themselves, the middle-class became embroiled in a dialogue
over the meanings of female professionalismm The victorian
”angel in the house" who protected the home from
contamination from the public sphere was being slowly
transformed into the twentieth-century "New woman" who
embraced higher education and even flirted with
professionalism, But this transformation of the ideal white
woman was never complete, and the meanings of each were
contested through the figure of the Gibson Girl, the white
college girl whose manners were socially proper and whose
goals were modestly professional. Not surprisingly, this
popular figure excluded a discussion of changing roles for
black women, who were beginning to make inroads into
professional careers but for the most part held low-paying
service jobs.

The occult worker as a figure of literary imagination
absorbed much of the Gibson Girl ideology except in the case
of African-American women occult workers, who recalled both
the worlds of slavery and the post-reconstruction South. In
both cases, the occult worker represented a central figure in
the discourse on women's work at the turn of the century.

From the pens of some male authors, seers stood in for either

the beauty or tragedy of the transition of women's roles from

162

 

 

 

antebellum to modern forms. The portrayal of the occult
worker depended on whether the author saw female
professionalism as a positive good or a negative influence on
community stability. Henry James' s W, Richard
Harding Davis's Winn and Charles Chesnutt' s The
W reveal that middle-class attitudes toward
occult work were conceived of in terms of womanhood and its
different classed and racialized forms.

Women ' s historians have demonstrated that the figure of
the Gibson Girl reflected great uncertainties about new roles
for women. Purveyors of popular literature between 1890 and
1910 portrayed the "new" young woman as beautiful, feminine,
socially fashionable and interested in higher education only
insofar as it equipped her to become the loyal and
sacrificing mother and wife. The literature stressed the
function of the Gibson Girl as a consumer and not a producer.
Popular magazines depicted professional women as selfish,
bitter and unhappy. Lynn Gordon asserts that the Gibson Girl
"represented, not so nmch acceptance of women ' s higher
education, as a fear of its results and an attempt to deflect
social change by warning educated women about their future. "1

Such anxieties about female higher education and
professionalism were not the sole province of women's
magazines , however . And educated professionals were not the

only victims of these limitations; female occult workers also

 

1Lynn Gordon, “The Gibson Girl Goes to College: Popular Culture

and Women's Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920' W
W 39 (2): 211-230.

163

saw their profession being attacked as a misuse of

femininity, albeit in different terms. Authors like the

psychological realist Henry James as well as the ”Gibson Boy”
journalist-novelist Richard Harding Davis used the
spiritualist medium to explore the hotly-contested issue of
bourgeois womanhood.2

Both ”high" literary authors and ”popular" novelists
engaged the issue of changes in women's roles between the

victorian and modern periods, evidenced by James and Davis.
Henry James took up the subject in his 1886 W

after several literary successes. W is rare for

James in that it is set in the United States, for he usually

set his stories and novels abroad. Richard Harding Davis was

a popular author in a different set.
noted, Davis has been unfairly dismissed as "that most

As one critic has

despicable of American writers--the superficial purveyor of

journalized fiction" who wrote nothing more than ”servant

girl romanticism."3 Just as much of a traveller and every bit
the society man as James (Solensten notes that Davis was the

prototype for Charles Dana Gibson' 3 ”Gibson Boy“) , his

fiction was not received as well as James' , and he never

 

2Both these works owe much to Hawthorne's portrayal of Priscilla
as a medium whose femininity is assaulted by the public gaze in The,

W. William Dean Howells presents a similar rendering
of a medium's rescue from spiritualism in W. See

William Dean Howells and The

Howard Kerr' e “No Traveller Returns:
Wu“ in W

mu. (Urban. 1972)-
3John Solensten, "The Gibson Boy: A Reassessment," W

W. 4(4-ra11 1971): 304. 303.

‘solensten, 312 .
1 64

 

became a darling of "high" literary society. Nevertheless,
by the time he published W in 1908, Davis had
worked as the editor of Harper '9 Weekly and had published
numerous short stories and war accounts. While not his most
popular work, W did have its following, enough
so that clairvoyant Eva Fay brought a lawsuit against Davis,
charging she and her deceased husband "have been defamed by
characerizations contained in Mr. Davis's recent novel 'Vera,
the Medium' , " portrayals that will "destroy the means of
gaining her livelihood. "5 While Davis sent a lawyer to Fay,
who was in Columbus, Ohio at the time she declared her intent
to sue, it is unclear whether the suit ever reached the New
York courts . Despite the differences in their participation
in the literary world, both James and Davis explored quite
explicitly the occult worker as a symbol of the changing
views of white, middle-class womanhood.

Spiritualist mediums, portrayed by Hawthorne, Barnum,
and others as lower-class people (usually women) who cater to
middle-class parlour seances, provided the focus for James
and Davis to discuss the changes in middle-class womanhood.
They were particularly interested in changes which did not
disrupt white middle-class male access to social, economic,
and political privilege. Cast as a lower-class aspirant to
middle-upper-class society, the spiritualist medium served to
instruct readers in the difficult process of upward mobility

 

5"Mrs. Fay to Sue Author. Declares She Will Ask $20,000 Damages
from Richard Harding Davis,“ New York Times, October 16, 1909, 1:4.

165

through femininity. Henry James's 1886 The_flgatgniana
features the young, beautiful, and lower-class medium.verena
Tarrant, who finds herself caught between Olive, the wealthy
women's rights reformer, and Basil Ransom, the young lawyer
and conservative Southerner. Twenty-two years later Richard
Harding Davis published W, another story of an
striking young working-class medium (see Appendix, Figure 4).
Both works feature a working-class girl who makes her living
channeling spirits and who is caught between her lower-class
parents or associates and her upper-class clients. Both
works feature a young man who ”rescues" the medium from her
conundrum.by marrying her. More importantly, both works
assert that occult work allowed the white female body to
become a product to be consumed either by the vulgar masses

or the decedent or too-powerful upper class.

The deliverance from this difficulty, according to these
authors, resides in marriage to the white-collar man
(although in Ths_ngstgniana the marriage is not necessarily
the happy ending as it is in W) . As a
representative of passive Victorian womanhood, the medium in
these novels represents the fate of respectable women in
market culture when married to a professional. Marriage, for
the upwardly mobile girl as well as for the educated
professional woman, means a conversion from a producer to a
consumer. Each work validates the notion that in order to
obtain respectabilty through marriage to the white-collar

man, occult workers must give up their profession, because it

166

is associated with the lower classes as a producer/servant
role and also because female professionals could not (in this
view) simultaneously be workers and wives. The white middle-
class woman in bourgeois culture, according to James and
Davis, could not be a producer (worker) and a consumer
(wife) at the same time.

The topic of women's rights provided James the
opportunity to look at women's status. In The_flgstgniana, he
sought to take up a serious question, what he described as
"the situation of women, the decline of the sentiment of sex,
the agitation on their behalf."5 He introduces Olive
Chancellor as the eccentric upper-class woman fixated upon
the idea of women's rights. verena Tarrant, whose skills and
companionship are sought by Olive, is the mediumistic
daughter of Selah Tarrant, a mesmerist and fraud who lives
for the possibility of public attention. verena never makes
the grand public debut as a women's rights speaker planned by
Olive. Instead, the conservative Southerner and lawyer,
Olive's cousin Basil Ransom, convinces verena to escape from
Olive and her parents by marrying him,

Davis's story is obviously based on Ihe_flgatgnians, for
like verena, vera is raised among spirit-rappers and
represents their best. vera also is sought after by the
upper-class to satisfy their own needs. In W

this class is represented by Mr. Hallowell, the dying old man

 

6F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds. W
W, (New York, 1961): 47.

167

who made his fortune by scamming a patent from.his brother-
in-law. Hallowell wants vera to prove to him that spirits
can communicate with the living so that he may decide upon
his will. Two of Hallowell's associates hire vera to channel
a message from the spirit of Hallowell's sister that will
allow them.to control the fortune after the old man's death.
vera, wishing to escape her profession but harboring deep
loyalties to her associates, struggles to overcome the stigma
of an earlier arrest for the theft she committed out of
abject poverty. Like verena, Vera never fulfills the
desires of the upper-class and instead decides to marry the
white-collar man. Davis presents vera's marriage differently
from James's ominous view of verena's, however, for vera is
whisked away by Winthrop, the virile, caring, district
attorney who is professionally successful yet despises the
pretensions of "high" society. The closing scene shows vera
being taken from a scene of exploitation by the upper-class
and degradation by the lower-class by a respectable citizen,
who will marry her and defend her honor at the cost of his
own professional reputation.

Each work reflects a fear that white middle-class
womanhood has become a product to be consumed by the masses
in the cultural changes from a producer to a consumer
society. The medium, emerging from a working-class
background and entering into the world of the bourgeoisie,
possesses a "natural" passivity that typifies her as a

possible candidate for genteel womanhood. But many middle

168

and upper-middle-class women, who found the "angel in the
house" archetype constraining, found expression in a variety
of reform activities.7 James acknowleges reform culture as an
expression of middle- and upper-class womanhood, but negates
its validity by demonstrating its attraction to spiritualism,
which likens reform culture to the showiness of market
culture. James portrays the struggle over verena, from which
Basil eventually "rescues" her, as a struggle between the
decadence and silliness of middle- and upper-class reform
culture and the vulgarity of mass culture.

James begins by doubting the efficacy of the ”progress"
proposed by reformers as it is expressed through occult
practices. Basil Ransom's conversation with Olive's sister
Mrs. Luna about Boston reform culture establishes not only
the "oddness" of Olive Chancellor but also of reform.culture:

Olive, too, was going somewhere after dinner, but he

musn't.mdnd that; perhaps he would like to go with her.

It wasn't a party--Olive didn't like to go to parties;

it was one of those weird meetings she was so fond of.

'What kind of meetings do you refer to? You speak
as if it were a rendezvous of witches on the Brocken.’
'Well, so it is; they are all witches and wizards,
mediums, and spirit-rappers and roaring radicals.'°
This oft-quoted passage reveals the historical connection

between reform and spiritualiam, and sets up James's critique

of the elite women's movement as willing to stoop to any

 

780: Ellen Carol Dubois. Mai-WM
.9 o-\— .— o. o {mm--c'- v-O'Lm—o ;H' . - 5‘: 3-', (Ithaca, 1978)
and Robyn Hurley . W
1235,, (New York, 1991).

8Henry James, W, ed. Charles Anderson (New York, 1986
[rpt.1886)): 37

     

169

level to win adherents.9 James also evoked what was later to
be called lesbianism.in his portrayal of the relationship
between Olive and Verena, saying that the "mesmerizing" of
Verena by Olive had a sexual element. The connection between
women's rights, spiritualism, and lesbianism had already been
made in reference to Victoria WOodhull, the character on whom
some surmised the character of Verena.was partially based.
When Woodhull had criticized the famous preacher Henry ward
Beecher for hypocrisy by making public a sexual affair
Beecher had with a collegue's wife, Beecher's supporters
attacked WOodhull's sexual practices. One testified before
the church committee investigating the affair that Isabella
Beecher Hooker had developed ”an unnatural affection for Mrs.
Woodhull"1° and this explained Hooker's support of Woodhull.
Another of James's critiques of the use of mediumship by
reformers and.mass culture alike is that mediumship degrades
white femininity by allowing the medium, as a public speaker,
to become a product to be consumed. The consumable good, in
this case, is verena. The reader is first introduced to
verena Tarrant at a women's rights meeting where the seasoned
suffragist and reformer Mrs. Farrinder is scheduled to speak
but is replaced by Verena, whose mesmeric father entrances

her into a speech on the oppression of women. The narrator

 

9Ann Braude establishes the historical connection between reform
and the occult in BMW

WW (Boston. 1989).
10'1'onlny Shearman quoted in Barbara Goldsmith, W

I
. .
so a; .oe. e e - ,e‘e‘e: '

(New York, 1998): 402.

170

states that verena is "naturally theatrical," while Basil
Ransom notes that "if she had only had a goat she would have
resembled Esmerelda."u- While the elderly suffragist
considers the possibility of verena as a "mountebank," Ransom
is attracted to the exoticism of this particular performer:
He had never seen such an odd.mdxture of elements; she
had the sweetest, most unworldly face, and yet, with it,
an air of being on exhibition, of belonging to a troupe,
of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even the
details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt
at the histrionic. If she had produced a pair of
castanets or a tambourine, he felt that such accessories
would have been quite in keeping.12
Olive Chancellor's attraction to her is much the same;
verena was "so strange. . . [she] seemed to belong to some
queer gipsy-land or transcendental Bohemia. With her bright,
vulgar clothes, her salient appearance, she might have been a
rope-dancer or a fortune-teller.” Verena represents to Olive
a window into the lower classes; her histrionic appearance,
”appeared to make her belong to the 'people,’ " which gave
Olive entrance "into the social dusk of that mysterious
democracy, " a realm from which her wealth precluded her.13
James introduces verena as a product for market by
demonstrating the various ways the audience members consume
the mediumistic show and hence the medium herself: as an
impostor to be exposed, as a person with whom to "slam,” and

as an actress to be gazed upon for pleasure. Each of the

audience members may do with her what they will.

 

“James, 77, 82.
12.IIaIIIss, 82.
13James, 101.

171

That Verena's father is a mesmerist is significant. The
character of Selah Tarrant seems to have been lifted out of
Barnumfls,Hnmhngs_gf_the_flgr1d_and also reflects an extension
of the theatrical aspects of middle-class culture (see
chapter one). The narrator presents Selah as a thoroughly
public figure whose goal in life is to attract attention; the
"vision of. . . publicity haunted his dreams, and he would
gladly have sacrificed to it the innermost sanctities of the
home. Human existence to him, indeed, was a huge publicity,
in which the only fault was that it was sometimes not
sufficiently effective." Selah thought that "if a diviner
day was to come upon earth, it would be brought about by
copious advertisement in the daily prints." Social activism
is in fact secondary to him, for "receipts were what Selah
Tarrant was, in his own parlance, after.”“ This is what the
elderly suffragist eyes critically in the Tarrants, whom she
regards at first as a “company of mountebanks;" she warns
"I'll speak after you, and if you're a humbug, I'll expose
you!"15 Even Selah's wife recognizes her husband is a fraud,
but he refuses to admit as much. Selah even continues the
show in their private lives, for ”he had phrases, excuses,
explanations, ways of putting things, which, as she felt,
were too sublime for just herself; they were pitched, as
Selah's nature was pitched, altogether in the key of public

life." It is this context that produces "the young

 

“James, 120-121.
15James, 81 .

172

prophetess" verena, who had been "nursed in darkened rooms,
and suckled in the midst of manifestations. . . and had been
passed from hand to hand by trance speakers.”15 ‘Verena is
born into a culture of the masses, to be consumed as a
product, as a show, whether she speaks in a magical trance or
uses her charm to win adherents to the women's rights
movement .

vera's work is much less complicated than verena's, for
vera needs only to satisfy the needs of market culture--in
its upper- and lower-class forms-~instead of both market and
reform.eulture. She, nevertheless, is still in danger of
being consumed by market forces. vera the medium.knows she
is a cheat. When her guardian Mabel Vance asks her to wear
an outfit which "suited. . . the priestess of the occult and
mysterious,” Vera replies that the outfit makes her ”feel
as mean as though I were picking pennies out of a blind man's
hat,"17 She has seen so much spiritual manifestation as a
third-generation.mediump-her mother “worked with the Fox
sisters before they were exposed"--that she cannot bring
herself to believe in it. She jokingly tells Winthrop--the
present D. A. and hometown hero who helped Vera out of the
theft conviction--she was raised with spirits: "I used to
play around the kitchen stove with Pocahontas and Alexander
the Great, and Martin Luther lived in our china closet. You

see, the neighbors wouldn't let their children come into our

 

“James, 95-96, 105.
17Richard Harding Davis, W, (New York, 1908): 86-
89.

173

house. . ..'”3 Orphaned by both her parents and later her
aunt, and too ill to work long in the mills, vera had written
to Paul Vance, a famous mesmerist, to see if she could work
for him as a medium, and he accepted.

Despite vera's consciousness of the trickery of her
profession, she still holds on to an innocent belief in
spirits. When she shares her belief in spirits with
Winthrop, he brings up her earlier confession of knowing her
profession's frauds inside and out, but she replies that ”in
spite of all the tricks, sometimes I believe there's
something in it":

She looked at Winthrop, her eyes open with inquiry.

He shook his head.

”Yes," insisted the girl. “When these women come
to me for advice, I don't invent what I say to them.

It's as though something told me what to say. I have

never met them before, but as soon as I pass into the

trance state I seem.to know all their troubles. And I

seem to be half in this world and half in another world-

-carrying messages between them. Maybe,” her voice had

sunk to almost a whisper;. . . ”I only think that. I

don't know. I wonder."19
Winthrop is less charmed by vera's open-mindedness than with
her admission that as a girl she used to worship him.for his
baseball talents, and he talks "like a father" to her,
instructing her to leave mediumship. She replies that the
stigma of thievery keeps her from honest work. She sees her
one-time infringement on the laws of the respectable economic
system.as a sentence to a lifetime of market frauds, which

degrade her "natural” talents and abilities.

 

"Davis, 130.
19Davis, 131-132 .

174

 

vera's commendable qualities go beyond her persistent
innocence. She is loyal enough to keep working for her
friends and to keep one from giving in to his cocaine
addiction. She is passive enough to channel spirits, and
caring enough to help her clients with their troubles. Also
important is her submission, for she sees herself as one who
cannot "rise” above her situation, and so she embraces her
profession with all its stigmata. When Hallowell's acerbic
career-girl niece Helen threatens vera with prosecution and
public exposure as a thief and a fraud, vera masters her
defenses:

"Do you know who I am?” she asked. She spoke like
one in a trance. "Do you know who you are threatening
with your police and your laws? I am a priestess! I am
a medium between the souls of this world and the next.

I am.Vera--the Truth! And, I mean--” the girl cried
suddenly, harshly, flinging out her arm, ”that you shall
hear the truth! Tonight I will bring your mother from
the grave to speak it to you!“

With a swift, sweeping gesture, she pointed to the
door. "Take those people away!” she cried.20

When all are out of sight, vera bursts into tears. Paired
with loyalty and innocence, this public self-composure makes
vera the perfect candidate for admission into the ranks of
bourgeois womanhood, but her profession makes her part of the
public domain, living a "life as open to the public as the
life of an actress, as easy of access as that of the
stenographer in the hotel lobby. "21 In the world of M

Medium, being as accessible as a hotel lobby was definitely

 

“Davis, 151.
21Davis, 51.

175

an unattractive alternative to the private confinement of
domesticity.

In each novel, the professional man performs a "rescue"
of the noble lower-class woman from her difficult position as
product for the decadent upper-class and the degraded lower
class. The professional white man is the knight errant of
bourgeois femininity. James conducts Basil Ransom's
introduction in republican and capitalist terminology, both
of which make him a little suspicious; his clerk-like
clothing leads Mrs. Luna to conclude he looked "poor--as poor
as a young man could look who had such a fine head and such
magnificent eyes" yet he also resembled a “column of
figures." The narrator continues, noting that Basil's "head
had a character of elevation which fairly added to his
stature; it was a head to be seen above the level of a
crowd, on some judicial bench or political platform, or even
on a bronze medal," while his eyes, "with their smoldering
fire, might have indicated that he was to be a great American
statesman. "22 Basil's young magnificence is matched by
Winthrop, the hero of W. While Basil is a
young man with potential to rise, Winthrop, in his later
thirties, has already demonstrated his professional
abilities. Like Basil, his statesman-like manner wins
converts to his cause, for after a stint as a small-town
prosecuting attorney and a legislator, he came to New York to

practice law, “and in the cause of reform had fought so many

 

22James, 35-36 .

176

good fights that on an independent ticket, much to his
surprise, he had been lifted to the high position he now
held.” But unlike Basil, Winthrop possesses modesty: "No
more in his manner than in his appearance did Winthrop
suggest the popular conception of his role. He was not
professional, not mysterious” but was "sane, cheerful,
tolerant. It was his philosophy to believe that the world
was innocent, until it was proved guilty. "23 Winthrop is not
the slick corporate confidence-man; he is the true
statesman, serving the country when it calls upon his high
ideals. While Basil's ideals are not as "pure" as
Winthrop's, he does send checks home to his mother, who was
living with the effects of the loss of the family's wealth in
the Civil War. Instead of the northern statesman, he is the
southern gentleman-democrat. These two characters, who
eschew the work of the medium, represent the rationalism.of
the ideal middle-clas82male.

In The_ngstgniana, Basil saves Verena from two types of
mesmerists: Olive, whose wealth and convictions entrance
verena, and Selah, who is the father figure, mesmerist proper
and representive of mass culture. The public exposure called
for by both Olive as a reformer and Selah as a showman of
mass culture, while portrayed at opposite ends of the classed
spectrum, both serve up verena for public consumption. Like

a magician, Olive puts verena "completely under the charm! of

 

23Davis , 33

177

women's rights. The narrator makes sure to explain this
charm as magical:
The idea of Olive's charm‘will perhaps make the reader
smile; but I use the word not in its derived, but in
its literal sense. The fine web of authority, of
dependence, that her strenuous companion had woven about
her, was now as dense as a suit of golden mail; and
verena was thoroughly interested in their great
undertaking; she saw it in the light of an active,
enthusiastic faith.1‘
Indeed, verena "left to herself. . . was not always thinking
of the unhappiness of women; but the touch of Olive's tone
worked a spell, and she found something to which at least a
portion of her nature turned with eagerness in her
companion's wider knowledge, her elevation of view. "25 This
"spell" is similar to the mesmeric trance into which Selah
puts Verena. James further equates reform culture with mass
culture when verena explains to her mother her relationship
'with Olive and expresses herself in terms similar to those
she uses in describing the mesmeric trance, that Olive ". . .
doesn't want to speak herself; she only wants to call me
out. Mother, if she doesn't attract attention to me there
isn't any attention to be attracted. "25 Mrs. Farrinder' s
reaction to verena is singularly cool; she "viewed with
suspicion certain romantic, aesthetic elements which Olive
and verena seemed to be trying to introduce into" the women's

rights movement, leaving Olive to wonder "what vulgar

aspirants to notoriety" she confused with verena.?7

 

2‘James, 173.
25James, 153.
“James, 199
”James, 174.

178

Olive competes with mass culture for Verena, evidenced
by her dislike of Matthias Pardon, the obnoxious newspaperman
who wants to offer verena to crowds. Olive has ideas for
showing verena's talents, but she views them in opposition to
Pardon's vulgar aspirations:

Olive had a standing quarrel with the levity, the good-

nature, of the judgements of the day; many of them

seemed to her weak to imbecility, losing sight of all
measures and standards, lavishing superlatives,
delighted to be fooled. The age seemed to her relaxed
and demoralized, and I believe she looked to the influx
of the great feminine element to make it feel and speak
more sharply.28
If women's rights speakers become sideshows, it would be the
fault of the debased public, not the speaker. Her classist
notions, however, are not strong enough to make her want to
‘withdraw women from public view. Rather, according to Olive,
women's rights speakers should be consumed for the political-
-not entertainment--benefit of society.

James makes the readers see the blurring between the
type of public exposure suggested by Matthias Pardon and that
suggested by Olive Chancellor. He also points out the
similiarities, in the character of verena, between public and
private exposure. verena, like Selah Tarrant and Barnumfis
Monsieur Mangin, has been created by a consumer culture to
satisfy the cravings of others. Indeed, this is as close as
James ever gets to creating a psychological portrait of

verena Tarrant, and it is a portrait so incredible that the

narrator notes "that I despair of presenting it to the reader

 

28James, 141 .

179

with the air of reality." As Verena feels herself drawn
toward Basil Ransom, she discusses the subject with Olive,
who is notably upset that her "spell" is being broken. It is
in this context that the narrator reminds the reader that
Verena is the trance maiden, that the wills of others are
worked through her passive body. This passivity, developed
by "her familiarity with the vocabulary of emotion, the
mysteries of 'the spiritual life,'" was "an expression of her
innermost preferences;" she yearned to “expose herself, give
herself away, turn herself inside out, for the satisfaction
of a person who made demands of her." Verena's "artlessly
artful faculties," which when confined to the domestic sphere
would have made her "ideal," make her a freak in the public
arena.29 Indeed, when Olive agrees Verena should be
introduced to the public she hires Mr. Filer to orchestrate
the debut. This gentleman, who is ”in the lecture business,"
has "handled prime donnas. . . and natural curiosities"
before promoting the pair of suffragists, a duo that leads
him to declare "I've never seen anything up to this. "30 Even
though Olive disapproves of mass culture, she ends up
promoting women's rights the same as one would a ”natural
curiosity."

In the end Verena does not make her grand appearance
before the public, but as Lynn Wardley points out, James
hardly sees Basil Ransom's taking verena from the spotlight

 

”James, 370.
30James, 423.

180

as an escape: "Far from.rescuing Verena from a life spent as
'food' for women and men, the ending surprises us with a more
graphic presentiment of just such a life.““- When verena
wondered aloud what would happen to her speaking career if
she ever married Basil, he responds that “the dining-table
itself shall be our platform, and you shall:mount on top of
that."32 Verena's public voice will be silenced; she becomes
dinner to the individual man rather than food for the public.
verena Tarrant, as she is whisked away at the end, "was in
tears." The narrator concludes that it ”is to be feared that
with the union. . . into which she was about to enter, these
were not the last she was destined to shed,"33

vera the mediumnis compelled to serve deluded upper-
class clients as well as the gambling, drug-addicted,
mountebank troup of lower-class associates who depend on
their star for a living. The character of Hallowell in Vera
the_uedium.is the representative of the "old” nouveau-riche.
Unlike Olive, whose "oldemoney” social status is secure,
Hallowell's status is based only on his fortune, which was
gained by a "patent coupling—pin, the invention of his
brother-in-law," a stroke of luck and scheming that gave him
the capital for other investments. The narrator points out
that Hallowell learned how to be a business man from his

dealings with railroad companies, the popular symbols of

 

31Lynn Wardley, ”Woman's Voice, Democracy's Body and The
Bostonians,‘ m, 56 (3): 660.

32James , 379.
33James , 433 .

181

corporate greed in the last decades of the nineteenth-
century. The narrator also points out that by comparison,
Hallowell's fortune, while substantial, does not give him the
power it did back in the 1880s when Hallowell "was a national
figure in the manoeuvres of the Eastern stock market.” But
”since then giants had arisen in the land; men whose wealth
made the fortune of Stephen Hallowell appear a comfortable
competence, his schemes and stratagems, which, in their day,
had bewildered Wall Street, as simple as the trading across
the coutner of a cross-roads store.'34
Like Olive's social privilege, which James sees as
rendering her a relic and odd to say the least, Hallowell's
status is questioned as well in the more sophisticated market
culture of the decade of the 1900s. His house , built in
1876 "in a burst of vanity," stands as a testament to the
inroads mass culture has made into the world of the wealthy.
In the 18703 ”the house was a 'mansion,‘ and its front of
brown sandstone the outward sign of wealth and fashion," but
in recent years it became part of the mundane cityscape:
Now, on one side, it rubbed shoulders with the shop of a
man milliner, and across the street the houses had been
torn down, and replaced by a department store. Now,
instead of a sombre jail-like fagade, his outlook was a
row of waxen ladies, who, before each change of season,
appeared in new and gorgeous raiment, and across the
Avenue, for his approval, smiled continuallyu35

Like the inability of his house to convey status, Hallowell's
mind has been made ”feeble" due to ”disuse and ill-health,"

 

3‘Davis , 4 .
35Davis , 5 .

182

which leaves him ”suspicious, [and] at times childishly
credulous." Hallowell's credulity makes him.aasy prey for
mountebanks and confidence men. The sharpness that helped
him to scheme in business is ruined by wealth and privilege,
to the point at which he begins to ”admit . . . mediums,
palmpreaders, or people of that sort” into his decaying
mansion to help him decide that fate of his millions.36
While Hallowell's wealth renders him ineffective, vera's
associates are willing--by swindling--to degrade themselves
and vera in the pursuit of Hallowell's wealth. vera's
guardian Paul vance is all of Selah Tarrant and then some.
The narrator describes him in singularly animalistic (and
spiritualistic, give the origins of the movement) terms, a
"fox" who "had red eyes, alert and cunning, a long, sharp-
pointed nose, a pointed red beard, and red eyebrows that
slanted upward.” And like the trickiest of foxes, ”no one
had ever driven him.into a corner from which, either
pleasantly, or with raging indignation, he was not able to
free himself."37 Unlike Selah Tarrant, however, Vance is
fully willing to admit that the occult amounts to a
collection of properly staged tricks. Vance confronts the
crooked doctor and judge who attempt to control Hallowell's
fortune and are fearful that Hallowell may put vera to a
difficult test, with the assurance that ”every test that ever

was put to a medium-«was invented by a medium. " 3° Vance took

 

36Davis, 5, 19.
”own, 47-48.
”Davis, 104.

183

Vera as a ward because "the girl brought in the money" and
together they became "the aristocrats of their calling":
In their profession, in all of its branches, the man and
the girl were past masters. They knew it from the A, B,
C of the dream book to the post—graduate work of
projecting from a cabinet the spirits of the dead. As
the occasion offered and paid best, they were mind-
readers, clairvoyants, materializing mediums, test
mediums. . . to them that calling was as legitimate a
business as is, to the roadside gypsy, the swapping of
horses . 39 -
Mabel vance completes the family. Mabel, whom Paul secretly
calls "a dope" for believing in spiritualism, provides Vera
with companionship and helps her cultivate her priestess
image, gambles on horses, and above all, believes firmly in
the occult: ”Not even the intimate knowledge she had gained
behind the scenes could persuade her that Paul. . . was not
in constant communication with the spirit world” or that "he
could not read the thoughts that moved slowly through her
pretty head,"‘° ‘Vera's other associate, Mannie, has a
gambling problem as well as a cocaine addiction. ‘Winthrop is
impressed with vera's goodness when Mannie tells him that he
quit the cocaine habit because vera told him she would start
if he did not stop. The thought of the beautiful vera
wasting away to the ravages of drug was too much for Mannie,
and he overcame his vice.
Despite the undesirability of this cast of characters,
vera decides to align herself with them. She insists that

she has tried to find different work five separate times, and

 

39Davis, 46-47.
”Davis, 43-49.

184

each time she is fired because someone said to her boss
"'That girl in your front office is a thief'." When Winthrop
tries to get Vera to leave the vances and live with his
sisters ”uptown," he insists she will be able to find
respectable work: "'. . . we fellow townsmen,’ he smiled at
her appealingly, 'will talk this over, and we'll make you
come back to your own people'." But vera, after swearing she
hates "this business,” defends the practitioners of it,
saying "These are my people. . . And they are good people!
They've tried to be good friends to me; and they've been true
to me.*“- But vera tentatively agrees to live with his
sisters until she recants when Hallowell's niece attacks
vera's virtue.

The closing scene of W mirrors somewhat
that of The_ng§tgniana; it is the1mediumfls big moment to gain
a great deal of attention, but instead she disappoints her
audience and turns to the lawyer who eschews the absurdity
and/or immorality of the mediumfis profession. vera has been
hired by twozmen who pose as upright professionals to
impersonate the spirit of Hallowell's dead sister and
instruct him to give the money to The Hallowell Institute--
run by the con-men doctor and judge--instead of the niece
Helen, the daughter of the inventor of the coupling-pin.

This is no private seance, for, given the size of Hallowell's
estate, all interested parties plus members of the press and

spiritualist society worthies attend to see the spirit of

 

“Davis, 134-137 .

185

Hallowell's sister. Vera, after patiently enduring the
inspections of the audience and the tying of her arms, slips
from the ropes inside the spirit cabinet and appears before
the group as an old woman, but decides she cannot go through
with the scheme, and ends up sobbing, begging Hallowell for
forgiveness. Winthrop lifts vera to her feet and helps her
from the room as Hallowell screeches "You've tried to rob
me!" All present think that Winthrop has taken the girl to
prosecute her, but he actually finds himself desiring her for
a bride:
The sobs that shook her tore at his heart; the touch of
the sinking, trembling body in his arms filled himnwith
fierce, jubilant thoughts of keeping the girl there
always, of giving battle for her, of sheltering her
against the world. In what she had done he only saw
sacrifice. In her he beheld a penitent; who was self-
accused and self--convicted.‘2
When Hallowell screams "She plotted to get my money,"
Winthrop retorts "How did you plot to get it?. . . You know
and I know," aligning the scheming of the mountebanks to the
scheming of business. He then turns to everyone present to
accuse them.af falsity: "'You all plotted, and you all
schemed--and to what end--what was the result'--he held
before them the fainting figure of the girl--'that one poor
child could prove she was honestl'." This ”child" (of
twenty-one) leaves with Winthrop, presumably headed uptown.

When he proposes marriage, vera's face becomes a picture of

"dawning happiness.“3

 

“Davis, 21:.
‘3Davis, 214-216.

186

While Verena's career after marriage will be converted
into a series of lectures delivered to a husband from the
dining-room table, vera's career will transform.into the
private performance of white bourgeois femininity. Happily,
according to Davis, vera has escaped her fate as a
producer/product. Basil and Winthrop have rescued the
embodiment of white womanhood--the passive, compliant and
loyal mediump-from.degradation by both the decadent,
ineffectual upper-class and the deceitful, money-grubbing
lower-class, which in the case of Davis includes the con-men
”passing” as a doctor and a judge. While Hallowell uses the
medium.to make up for the ineffectuality born of privilege,
Olive uses the:medium.to access that "mysteriOus democracy”--
made inaccessible by her wealth--to enlighten it of women's
rights. At the other end of the social scale, Selah Tarrant
and Paul Vance use the medium.to swindle the exciteable
public out of its money. The problem.for the medium, then,
is that all of this "use" allows her femininity to be
marketed. According to Davis and James, the only option left
for the white ideal woman is to avoid being consumed by
becoming a middle-class consumer. Marrying the steady,
rational professional breadwinner is the only retreat--
happily or tragically--for the ideal woman from the degrading
forces of the class system.borne of market culture.

For Davis, the retreat of women to the private sphere is
a happy journey, and he does not question the value of the

role vera will play after marriage, as the "uptown” sisters

187

groom her for the role for which she has already shown
promise. Winthrop and vera's first lengthy meeting
foreshadows the roles each will play after marriage:

"I don't believe," she said doubtfully, ”that I
know much about afternoon calls. What would I do, if we
were on Fifth Avenue? WOuld I give you tea?" she asked,
"because,” she added hastily, ”there isn't any tea."

"In that case, it is not etiquette to offer any,”
said Winthrop gravely.

"Then,” said vera, "I'm.doing it right, so far?"

They both laughed; vera because she was in awe of
him, and Winthrop because he was so happy.“

She will maintain a charming innocence and an appreciation of
him in exchange for knowlege of middle-class culture, a
culture that would appreciate vera's passivity and
malleability. Like Verena, her role as a servant to the
public pleasure has been privately contained for the pleasure
of the husband. The professional medium, in these works,
serves to represent the dangers for femininity in public
life. Containment of femininity in marriage to the
professional male preserves class status while allowing white
middle-class male access to social and economic privilege.
Davis further presented the marriage as a happy ending since
vera was excused from occult work but also from the drudgery
of manual or clerical labor.

Whether the author sees marriage as a happy ending or
not, the significance of the ”rescue” through marriage is
that it represents a singular act of self-definition for the
middle-class. The middle-class professional is distinguished

from both the upper- and lower-classes by his honesty,

 

“Davis, 122 .

188

adherence to republican principles of gentlemanly competition
and rationalism, and his "protection" of white femininity.
The upper-class, in these works, is downright freakish:
obsessed with its own interests, disdainful of traditional
family life, and rendered ineffectual or antiquated by the
very wealth that gives them social privilege. The lower-
class fares no better, for it appears willing to do anything-
-including allowing its most beautiful and sensitive women to
be gawked at and tied up in ropes-~to trick people out of
their money. Both authors admit that the culture of market
that creates the class system.identifies the middle-class as
hardworking enough to avoid being ineffectual and wealthy
enough to not have to cheat or swindle. Regrettably or not,
it is in the middle-class mileau, where occult workers--like
Gibson Girls--give up professionalism and retreat to
domesticity, that keeps white femininity safe from
corruption.

While white writers like Davis and James focused on an
increasingly complicated market culture and its implications
for white female professionalism, African-American authors
argued for economic and sometimes cultural access to the
world of market in capacities other than low-paying service
and factory jobs and barely subsistence-level farming. The
occult worker as conjuror did not function for black authors

the same way the spiritualist medium.functioned for white

189

authors like Davis and James."5 Charles Chesnutt's m
£9njnrg_flgnan uses the character of the conjure woman to
explore the meanings of work for black femininity by evoking
a slave past in the turn-of-the-century present. In so
doing, Chesnutt at once celebrates the work of women in the
process oanfrican-American community cohesion and at the
same time regrets that their small victories in market
culture are not extended to black male workers without
compromising their masculinity.

Uhlike James' and Davis' presentations of the white
medium, Chesnutt imaged the black conjure-woman as a capable
producer. Her wares--charms, advice, magic--rather than
debasing her femininity instead glorified it and centralized
women's work as a series of profound acts of beauty and
survival. Set against a backdrop of problematic white
womanhood, Chesnutt's conjure woman represents not the
confinement of the home but its extension to community
service, especially the service of women, making her
Chesnutt's articulation of African-American feminisms of the
late nineteenth-century. Even though Chesnutt was writing
for much the same readership as James, Chesnutt's focus on
African-American culture meant he was working with a
different set of socio-economic realities, and hence produced

a different view of womanhood.

 

‘58” also William Wells Brawn. W
W, (New Jersey, 1968 [rpt.1880]).

190

One of Charles Chesnutt's motivations for writing The
ganjn;:_floman, which appeared in 1899 as a collection of
connected short stories dealing with slavery and antebellum
society, was to respond to the condescending "plantation
tales" written by white writers like Thomas Nelson Page and
Joel Chandler Harris. Particularly, Chesnutt objected to the
romanticization of slavery that allowed the Uncle Remus type
character--the ”sentimental and devoted negro who prefers
kicks to half-pence"‘5--to speak for all former slaves. Some
scholars have examined the ways in which Chesnutt's Uncle
Julius, the narrator of the stories, and John, the
transplanted northerner who provides the frame tales,
represent racialized interpretations of market culture, with
the former depicting the marginalization of black men in that
system and the latter embodying white Yankee capitalist
enterprise. Annie, John's wife, stands as the fate of white
women in market culture: privileged, bored, and “nervous.”‘7
Aunt Peggy, for whom The_§gninre_floman is named, has received
little critical attention in reference to her character's
place in post-reconstruction market culture.‘8 Yet Aunt

Peggy, as a respected, professional, self-employed, free

 

“Chesnutt in Valerie Babb, “Subversion and Repatriation in The

W.“ W 35(2): 69- Babb provides a good
discussion of the different ways Joel Chandler Harris and Chesnutt
utilized the genre of the plantation tale.

"Soc especially Robert Schulmon. BMW
santurx_amsrican_zistiena, (Columbia. MO. 1987) and Richard Brodhead's

introduction to Charles Chesnutt..Tns_cnniura_unnan_and_nthsr_neniurs.
n1“, (Durham, so, 1993).

“Eric Selinger' s “Aunts, Uncles, Audience: Gender and Genre in

Charles Chesnutt's W” in W
25 (4): 665-688 is one notable exception, and will be discussed later.

191

black woman in the plantation South, has important
implications for a discussion of Ihg_ggnjnrg_nnman as a text
employing race as an immediate issue in the post-
reconstruction economy. While Uncle Julius may be the
character 'prefering" half-pence to kicks, Aunt Peggy is the
only.African-American character shown realizing any profit.
Yet Peggy's financial success and power have limits, and
Chesnutt is careful to assert that black power must be
exercised carefully in a system that privileges white
cultural and economic endeavors.

In this way Aunt Peggy, an occult worker who demands
respect and remuneration for her work, represents Chesnutt's
celebration of black women's work in post-reconstruction
marketplace culture: integral to community cohesion despite
being circumscribed by white employers. Blacks and whites
alike utilize Peggy's services, but Peggy knows her customers
come to her with different sources of power and hence command
different treatment. She tries to undermine the effects of
slavery the best she can, but she also realizes her power is
limited, and she is careful to subvert the system when she
can without incurring the wrath of whites. Peggy undermines
white power in highly politic ways, which helps empower
blacks while leaving them.least vulnerable to white violence.
But the ways in which she exercises power--through a special
relationship to nature and careful observation of human

behavior--speak to a worldview that, while being antithetical

192

to the economic system controlled by whites, must still exert
power within it.

(The_cgn1nrs_floman and the related tales are structured
alike. John and Annie request a story of Uncle Julius, their
African-American coachman, usually out of boredom or to pass
the time while they are detained for some reason. Julius
delivers the tale of the "old plantation days" in which he
relates the brutality of slavery and the ways in which slaves
survived it. Annie, as.implied by John's narration, is drawn
to the supernatural elements of the tale which are enacted by
a conjure man or woman, usually Aunt Peggy. Julius relates
fourteen tales (half of which appeared in the original
publication of‘The_cgn1nre_noman), and a professional conjure
man or woman appears in nine (including all seven of the
original publication). Aunt Peggy is the most fully
developed as-a conjurer, with Tenie appearing once in "Po'
Sandy” as a former conjure woman, and Uncle Jobe, an
unforgiving conjure man who finds religion at a camp meeting,
appearing in "The Conjurer's Revenge" and as Peggy's rival in
”The Gray Welf's Ha'nt.”

John as narrator returns at the end of each story,
convinced that Julius told his tale out of self-interest,
such as telling "The Goophered Grapevine” to keep John from
buying the plantation or "Po' Sandy" to keep John and Annie
from tearing down a building he wishes to use for a church.
Each time, John sees Annie as having been duped by Julius's

stories, stories he relates to as pure fantasy and as fraught

193

with Julius's self-interest. John's arrogance blinds him to
the elements of the story bespeaking a vital culture and
philosophic world view--represented by the conjurer--that
respects nature and the human role in it and seeks to balance
unnatural power relations. While John's philosophy emanates
from a belief in "progress" through mastery of nature
(including humans), Julius describes a belief system in which
humans are integral to and respectful of the natural world.
The conjure woman is a person so attuned to natural laws that
she can manipulate them to balance power and punish those who
refuse to respect natural law.

Chesnutt's depiction of the conjure woman has some
important differences from.white-authored depictions of
occult workers. While authors like James and Davis explored
the gendered meanings of the white middle-class transition
from a producer- to a consumer-oriented culture, Chesnutt
used the occult worker to examine the implications of the
changing market system for African-Americans and their roles
in effecting that change. Unlike the white spiritualist
mediums whose skills are honed by passivity, Aunt Peggy,
Chesnutt's central conjure woman, is an active and
independent woman, whose skills represent a lifetime of
careful observation and interpretation of the natural world,
including especially human behavior. While vera and verena
represent the passive feminine counterpart to active male
positivism, Aunt Peggy the conjure woman and Uncle Julius,

the man who “conjures” through storytelling, indicate a

194

worldview deeply at odds with the “progressive” market worlds
that produced the passive woman and rational man in yera_the
Medium and W. Black men and black women are
active, but in a different sense than the male actors
Winthrop and Basil Ransom. While Ransom and Winthrop seek to
uphold traditional marriage, professional privilege, and by
extension white privilege, Peggy and Julius act subversively
to question both capitalism and white privilege. Chesnutt
sets these two worlds at odds in The_cgn1ure_flnnan by
creating a frame tale, narrated by John, a capitalist white
Yankee, which demonstrates that whites invested in capitalist
rationalism.are incapable of relating to and understanding
the world of the conjure tale, and indeed the roots of black
culture. The interaction between the two tales represents a
constant negotiation of racialized and gendered power
relations as enacted in a post-reconstruction market culture.
The tales and their frames also represent the
constraints placed upon African-American authors at the turn
of the century. As Richard Brodhead and others have shown,
Chesnutt developed this collection in response to a difficult
situation. At an editor's request, Chesnutt sent a number of
works to Houghton-Mifflin. The publisher liked several of
the "conjure tales” and requested more like them to publish
as a single volume about conjure. Chesnutt.wrote more, and

the publishers chose which they wanted to include.‘9 Even

 

”For a full history of publication, see Brodhead, I'Introcluction,“
WW. (Durham. 1993): 1-21.

195

though the publisher was the one who explicitly focused the
collection around the issue of conjure, Chesnutt's goals in
the creation of Aunt Peggy cannot be overshadowed by the
publisher's meddling.

As noted above, Chesnutt wanted to respond to plantation
tales written by whites, but he also wanted to break into the
elite literary circles that from.New York created a dynasty
of genteel publishing!50 and circulated works geared primarily
toward educated white Northeasterners. Chesnutt also
believed in the power of literature to convince whites of the
wrongness of their predjudices. He wanted to "accustom the
public mind to the idea" of ”recognition and equality" for
blacks.51 These variables led him to the "local color" genre
so popular at the time.‘52 This allowed him to publish in a
form.recognizable to northern white readers, to recreate a
plantation South distinct from the racist depictions of
white writers, and also allowed him.to instruct his white
readers against the sentimentalization of slavery and for a
critical interrogation of racism.in post-reconstruction
America.

Yet the marketability of Aunt Peggy to white audiences
as a "colorful" character of by-gone days should not diminish
the power of the character actually put forth by Chesnutt.
Peggy is a talented professional who demands respect and

 

5°Schulman, 50-57

51Chesnutt in Babb, 70.

52Brodhead notes that ”local color" narratives gained popularity
because they “performed a larger social work, the work of mourning the
ways of life being eradicated at this time“ by 'a nationally organinzed
cultural economy" (3) .

196

compensation for her labor. In a culture that begrudgingly
allowed white women a marginal respect for professionalism,
Chesnutt created Aunt Peggy as a free black woman in the
plantation South who owns her own labor. She is an
entrepeneur, but willing only to profit if natural laws can
be respected. Peggy provides hope and help in the community
and her work recalls an African past distinct from an
enslaved and capitalist present. Yet Peggy's power in the
system of slavery is limited and she must reconcile survival
in an enterprise system in which whites view black bodies as
capital with the survival of a worldview that decentralizes
human enterprise and constantly seeks a balance of power
between all things, humans or not. Peggy works at several
borders: enslaved and free, black and.white, natural and
supernatural, and economic survival and exploitation.
.Both‘Williwm‘wells Brown and Frederick Douglass had
invoked the conjurer as an integral part of antebellum
culture as a person, in the words of Brown, "who was regarded
‘with more than common respect by his fellow-slaves."53
Lawrence Levine contends that enslaved.Africans, even after
several generations in America and conversion to
Christianity, sought conjurers to help them.eurvive the
brutalities of enslavement and maintain a culture apart from
their enslavers. Levine notes that.African religions saw

humans as part of a system of nature rather than its masters.

 

53Brown, 70.

197

He notes that enslaved Africans saw that "life was not random
or accidental or haphazard" but "meaningful”:
Human.beings could ”read" the phenomena surrounding and
affecting them because Man was part of, not alien to,
the Natural Order of things, attached to the Oneness
that bound together all matter, animate and inanimate,
all spirits, visible or not. It was crucially necessary
to understand the world because one was part of it,
inexorably linked to ite5‘
It is this philosophy of linkage between humans and nature
that made the conjurer so central, "for if the spirits that
affected mankind had to be implored and propitiated
constantly, they also allowed human beings to comprehend and
exercise some control over forces which otherwise would have
overwhelmed them. "55 The belief in human agency in the
Natural Order also survived in European culture, especially
among the lower classes. And, as Levine notes, slaves drew
on these traditions, similar to African ones, and blended
them with African retentions. This syncretism allowed them
to sometimes draw whites into the world of conjure and,
sometimes marginally and sometimes hugely, rework imbalances
of power. It is at these crossroads that Aunt Peggy worked.
The power and limits of Aunt Peggy's work are espcially
poignant in ”Sis' Becky's Pickaninny,” published in the
original Conjure_flnman collection in 1899. Uncle Julius
relates this story when Annie finds herself ”the victim of a
settled melancholy, attended with vague forebodings of

impending fortune." As Annie and John are seated on the

 

sfiwnummcelundma»JEuuaLsukmuaLamiJuasszuasumnmaaai_Jukn=
WWW. (Oxford. 1977): 58-
55Levine, 59.

198

piazza, staring at the "somewhat monotonous scenery," Uncle
Julius walks up carrying a rabbit's foot. John delivers a
lecture aimed at both Julius and his nervous wife on the
absurdity of superstition, admonishing that ”your people will
never rise in the world until they throw off these childish
superstitions and learn to live by the light of reason and
conlnon sense.” Julius proceeds to tell the story of Sis'
Becky, a story that attests to the power of belief in forces
outside oneself. Becky was enslaved by a Colonel Pendleton,
a man who "didn' nebber hab no luck wid his bosses, ef he did
keep hisse'f po' projeckin' wid em.” When Pendleton found
out about a particularly good race horse, his desire to win
overcame his distaste for separating mothers from children,
and he decided to trade Becky away from her baby Nose for a
horse named Lightning Bug. The horse' s owner insisted "I ' ll
keep dat 'oman so busy she'll fergit de babya'55

Both Becky and Hose did not forget, however, and both
became ill and weak. Aunt Nancy, now caregiver to Mose,
decided to consult Aunt Peggy, ”de cunjuh 'oman down by de
Wimfl'ton Road.” Peggy, after haggling for more peas as
payment--'fer you can't 'spec' me ter was'e my time diggin'
roots en wukkin' cunj 'ation fer nuffin. ”Wu-turns Mose into a
hummingbird so he could fly to the next plantation to visit
Becky. The effect on both is temporary, however, and Peggy

must transform him again--this time to a mawking bird--to

 

“Chesnutt, 82-86.
5"Chesnutt , 87 .

199

make a second trip. When the effect of this visit wears off,
Nancy brings Peggy her 'bes' Sunday head-hankercher" and asks
her to enact something more permanent. Peggy asks a hornet
to repeatedly sting Lightning Bug's knees, making them appear
swollen, while she sends a sparrow to Pendleton's to bring
back reports. In the mean time, she stops making visits
possible between Becky and Mose, which makes Becky ill. At
almost the same time, Pendleton and the horse-raiser, each
feeling he'd been cheated by the deal, decided to undo to
trade, and Becky and Mose are reunited.

Peggy does not have the power to abolish slavery, but
she does (for a fee) make it more bearable for Becky and
Mose. While she enlists the help of some roots (to effect
Moss's transformation), a hornet, and a sparrow, most of the
success of Becky and Mose's reunion depends on Peggy's
ability to predict the actions of those around her. She knew
that each man valued his property for what it could do for
him, either work or win, and when each of those values was
threatened, Peggy knew that, instead of putting the effort
into saving the horse or the woman, each man would try to
dupe the other into taking back his "damaged” merchandise.
Peggy also knew how long Becky and Mose could last without
one another, and offered Nancy a potion for Mose to forget
Becky temporarily and timed the knee-stinging with Becky's
worsening sickness (from which she recovered after reuniting
with Mose). Peggy, though, does not work for free. Ber

influence is such that she can command her own price, which

200

in this case is a handkerchief and a little more than a
”mess er peas." While she is outside the confines of the
plantation system.in some ways, such as her constantly-evoked
geographic affiliation with "Wim'l'ton Road” rather than a
plantation, racially she is very much confined to that system
even though she herself is not enslaved. She must know, and
know intimately, the values, cultures, and structures of her
clients. Peggy's position is similar to Julius's after the
war, for while he is a ”free" person, he lives in a system
that seeks to validate whiteness over blackness.

Peggy's liminal position is evoked as well in ”Mars
Jeems's Nightmare." In this story, an enslaved man named
Solomon asked Aunt Peggy--this time introduced as "de free-
nigger cunjuh 'oman down do Wimfll'ton Road”--to recover his
sweetheart, who had been sold to another plantation, and "tar
make Mars Jeems treat de darkies bettah." Peggy devises a
mixture to effect both Solomon's wishes, but gives him
careful instructions and a warning: ”Fer I ain' done much er
dis kin' er cunj'un er late yeahs, en I has ter kinder keep
track un it ter see dat it doan 'complish no mo'd'n I 'lows
fer it ter do.” And as well she "has ter be kinder keerful
'bout cunj'un w'ite folks." As usualPeggy has the
cooperation of others, and the cook administers the goopher
to Mars Jeems . Jeems leaves the next day to attend to some
business and leaves the plantation under the care of Mars
Johnson, a man who carries the repuation of being especially

cruel to slaves and is characterized by “one er dem grins

201

w'at show' all his snaggle teef, en make de niggers 'low he
look lack de ole debbil."58 Almost as soon as Jeems has left,
a new slave arrives who refuses to submit to Johnson's i11-
treatment. Of course Johnson whips and starves him, little
knowing that he was actually Jeems under the influence of
Peggy's goopher. Solomon forgets he is supposed to report to
Peggy, and the new slave is sold to a speculator. When Peggy
finds out, she works quickly and recovers Jeems, who returns
to the plantation a reformed slave-owner, but a slave-owner
nonetheless. Peggy recovers Jeems because she knows the
limits imposed on her work: she can make the system more
bearable but as an individual she cannot completely change
the system.

Yet while the racial caste system.favored whites and
limited Peggy's work, the beneficiaries of that system also
respected Peggy's abilities. In ”Bot-Foot Hannibal," Mars
McAdoo (Julius's former owner), finds out one of his house
slaves had been goophered, and says "he would 'a' had ole
Aun' Peggy whip' long ago, on'y Aun' Peggy wuz a free 'oman."
But while McAdoo complains 'Sump'n got ter be done ter l'arn
dat old witch ter keep her hands off'n my niggers," he ends
up trying to rectify the goopher himself because "he wuz
'feared she'd cunjuh himfl even though he said "he didn'
b'liebe in cunj'in' en sich, he 'peared ter 'low it wuz bes'

ter be on de safe side, en let Aun' Peggy alone."59 :Likewise,

 

58Chesnutt, 59-61.
”Chesnutt, 116.

202

in 'Tobe's Tribulations," when a mob of whites come to
Peggy's cabin in search of a thieving fox (a slave she
transformed to a fox to help him escape to the North),
evidence of her profession makes their search of her cabin
seem less pressing:

. . . en de dawgs run 'roun', en de w'ite folks come en

inqui'ed, and w“en dey seed Aun' Peggy's roots en go'ds

en snake-skins en yuther cunjuh-fixin's, en a big black

cat wid yaller eyes, settin' on de h'a'th, dey 'lowed

dey wuz wastin' dey time, so dey des cusst a little en

run 'long back home‘widout de fox dey had come atteru5°
Their presence, however, is not taken lightly by Peggy, who
is adept at predicting the violence of whites. The goopher
meant to temporarily make Tobe a frog had been unknowingly
mixed wrong by Peggy, who was nervous that a mob of whites
were coming to her door. Tobe spends the rest of his life as
a frog. Peggy rarely makes such mistakes, and only does so
when characters, such as Tobe, have a flaw such as greed or
laziness.

Peggy seems to have a specialty in punishing greed,
whether she explicitly means to or not. When Mars McAdoo in
"The Goophered Grapevine" hires her for ten dollars to devise
a mixture to keep the slaves from stealing his grapes, he
ends up being punished for his own greed. When Henry, a
fairly elderly slave new to the plantation, eats the grapes
'without knowing they are cursed, the overseer sends Henry to

Peggy to see if his property can be saved. Peggy, in
addition to the chicken, pound cake, wine, and ten dollars

 

“Chesnutt, 191

203

she received for the initial goopher, gained a ham.from Henry
to take off the goopher. She instructed him to anoint
himself with the sap of the vines in the spring, which made
him.young and spry in the spring but old and withered in the
fall and winter. McAdoo, WhO‘WBB so greedy it ”ha' ter be a
monst'us cloudy night when a dollar git by him in de
dahkness, "1 decided to sell Henry in the spring for an
exhorbitant amount and buy him back in the fall for a
pittance. After a couple of summers of this, McAdoo hires a
man to extract a better yield from his vines, but the
scheming Yankee ended up killing the vines and,
inadvertantly, Henry too.

In the related tale "A.Victim.of Heredity; Or, Why the
Darky Loves Chicken,” a story Julius tells to convince Annie
to release a man caught stealing John's chickens, Peggy had
given a slaveowner a goopher that would allow him to
underfeed his slaves without making them ill. When he got
greedy and overused it, Peggy instructed him to feed his
slaves with all of his pigs, then all of his cows, and then
finally with all the chickens in the area. He lost his
plantation because Peggy had instructed a young man who had
been wronged by the slaveowner to corner the chicken market.
Despite Julius's (and Chesnutt's) willingness to exploit the
stereotypes held by his listeners (readers), the lesson is as

clear as it is in the other stories: "W'en you is foolin'

 

61Chesnutt, 40 .

204

wid a cunjuh 'oman lack" Peggy, "you got ter min' yo' P's en
Q's er dey'll be trouble sho' 'nuff'."52

Chesnutt's vision of Aunt Peggy has significant meaning
in the historical context of the production of The_£gnjnre
,flnnan. Black women at the turn of the century faced the same
obstacles as white women in trying to earn fair wages and
respect for their labor. But while white women could capture
a marginal respect, such as in the teaching, health care, and
social work professions, very few black women found the
professions hospitable to their presence and found wage labor
hardly sufficient for support. White men and.women were not
willing to allow black.women the same respectability accorded
to white women for homeemaking, and low wages for black men
made this white middle-class ideal virtually impossible when
desired at all. Host rural black women in the South engaged
in share-cropping and.most urban black women labored as
servants or washerawomen, while both rural and urban black
‘women took full responsibility for the domestic care of their
families.“ Despite the seemingly endless work day, black
women found ways to create community cohesion, such as
through charity clubs and church participation, and express
themselves politically through suffrage and anti-lynching

movements, and creatively, through art, music, and written

 

“Chesnutt, 64.
“3800 Jacqueline Jones. Wang]:
; u ' ;; ;. , (New York, 1985)
and Darlene Clark film W

W. (Brooklyn. 1996). especially "Booker '1'
Washington and Nadame C. J. Walker," 95-104.

 

205

and oral literature.“ Even though Peggy's talents may be
unique, such as the ability to converse with sparrows and
hornets, she is still, as a worker, in a position similar to
that of most black women of Chesnutt's time: caught between
the needs of family/community and the necessity of making a
living in a market society in which whites held a great deal
of economic power. While Peggy has no family, she is still a
vital part of the community, and she must constantly make
choices that keep her community safe from white violence and
still make enough money to survive in a system in which
whites hold most goods and capital. Significantly, Peggy is
not concerned with getting rich--like Selah Tarrant and Paul
Vance--but is instead concerned with receiving respect and
fair compensation for her work.

Peggy rises to the challenge of economic survival and
community support by working to effect balance where she can.
When people grasp for too much, such as HoAdoo with his vines
and Jeems with his slaves, or too little, such as Tobe's
laziness in seeking freedom, Aunt Peggy's work restores a
kind of balance (in which the greedy and those who don't seek
freedom hard enough both suffer) to the system of slavery she
is powerless individually to abolish altogether. Unlike
James's Verena and Harding's Vera, Chesnutt's Peggy performs

valuable and honest work. In the view of her author, she is

 

“Evelyn Higginbotham provides a useful analysis of the ways in
which African-American women were active in politics and theology in

es :s . I as ° . ‘om;s'- ,_s Llnxf..| o o- - u .

.1882:12ZQJ (Cambridge,HA, 1993).

206

not a mountebank but a person who (like Douglass's Sandy
Jenkins) counters the effects of shim, thievery, and untruth.
Julius is sure Peggy has "gone ter de good Marster" at the
time of his telling of her. John sees her in different terms
altogether, for he is unable to fully credit ”the negro
intellect" with a complicated worldview and instead sees the
conjure stories as entertainment, "a never-failing source of
novelty and interest,"55 .Aunt Peggy, in John's view, belongs
to a stage set for his benefit, much as other:middle class
whites viewed the labor and culture of blacks in post-
reconstruction society and beyond.“5 By burlesquing John's
inability to truly see Aunt Peggy's skills and labor--and
indeed his inability to see her as existing at all, Chesnutt
worked toward his purpose of publishing a work to educate
whites into respecting black labor and culture.

This purpose, however, is double-edged in reference to
Aunt Peggy and her role in the community. Eric Selinger
asserts that, given the deeply-imbedded fears of black
masculinity in his audience, Chesnutt could not extend the
life-affirming portrayal of the conjure woman to the conjure
man or Uncle Julius, a man who ”conjures" through
storytelling. Selinger rightly points out that Chesnutt's

Jobs, the conjure man, is a destroyer, and represents

 

“Chesnutt, 185.

6“Lower-class whites viewed black labor and culture in more
aggressively competitive terms yet still remade African-American
cultural forms into performances that asserted white superiority. See
Eric Lott. WW
HDrkins.Clasa. (Oxford. 1995) and David Roedisqer'zhs_flasss_sf
Hhimunuai_JmumLaudruuLIakimLsi_flmLJuuuisanku$imanaas. uumflbn

and New York, 1991).

207

Chesnutt's dismissal of self—interested conjure work as
"male, malicious, and destructive.” Julius, the conjurer-
storyteller "has refused the competitive, self-interested
role of the conjure-man" but, unlike Aunt Peggy, he ”comes
too close to the role John hired him.to play right from the
start-~helpful, amusing, a driver of sorts, but an invisible
man" placing himself “on the altar of national
reconciliation. ”‘7 Certainly Julius's submission at the end
of,1he_cgnjnre_flgman, which he put on as a show to reunite
the northern woman (a relative of John's) with her southern
lover, comes close to the sentimentalized portrayal Chesnutt
sought to counteract, and Selinger asserts that "in this
collection, Chesnutt allows white definitions of black
sexuality to triumph.”53

Chesnutt's Julius, who conjures with his storytelling to
restructure power at the beginning but who plays a submissive
role in the sentimental ending, evidences a theme similar to
the "rescued" female medium of James and Davis. Like Vera
and Verena, who choose domesticity over independent careers,
Julius retreats into a stock type while Aunt Peggy remains
strong throughout. Femininity, even though it doesn't always
overpower masculinity, definitely overshadows it in terms of
social value. But, while Chesnutt (in Selinger's terms)

”allows white definitions of black sexuality to triumph” in

 

6"Eric Selinger, "Aunts, Uncles, Audience: Gender and Genre in

Charles Chesnutt's Wm.“ Wm
25(4): 635.

68Selinger, 686 .

208

reference to masculinity, his rendering of black femininity
is more complicated. Deborah Gray White has shown that out
of the slave system, whites developed two distinct views of
black womanhood: the maternal mammy who sacrifices her own
selfhood for the good of whites, and the Jezebel, a
licentious and animalistic woman controlled by her own lust.69
Peggy resembles neither of these. Peggy has neither husband
nor lover. She aids members of the community, but she is not
particularly maternal or self-sacrificing in the sentimental
sense. Even when she reunites Becky and Hose she asks for a
fee, and displays little sentimentality in favor of shrewd
analysis of the situation at hand.

At times Chesnutt comes close to predicting a later
stereotype of black womanhood, but he does not fully develop
it. White identifies the Sapphire in a much later period.
The emasculating Sapphire was articulated most explicitly in
the 1965 Hoynihan-Frazier theory of black matriarchy which
"found the black woman's role debilitating for black.men, so
much so that [Hoynihan] advised black men to seek refuge in
the armed forces. "70 Dialogue from Aunt Peggy such as "Aun'
Peggy neber lack ter wuk fer nobody fer nuffin' and 'W'en you
is foolin"wid a cunjuh 'oman lack.me, you got ter minld yo'
P's en Q's er dey'll be trouble sho' 'nuff” certainly

wouldn't be heard coming from Annie, the genteel "lady.”1

 

‘Wrah Gray White. W
W (New York and London, 1985

”White, 166.

”Chesnutt, 112, 64.

209

Rather than attributing Peggy's shrewdness to a personal
desire to dominate men, however, Chesnutt shows that Peggy
functions, as Houston Baker notes of conjure, "to ensure
survival, to operate changes, to acquire necessary resources
for continuance, and to cure a sick world. '72 If Chesnutt
appealed to an audience slowly developing the black
matriarchy thesis with a female character unmoved by
masculine power, he constructed her in a way that undercut
the stock type. Peggy tries to preserve a natural order-~one
in which workers get paid fairly, the greedy become consumed
‘with their own wants, and loved ones remain together. She is
less a desexualized spinster angry with men than a priestess
administering to spiritual ills.

Henry James, Richard Harding Davis, and Charles Chesnutt
could not use the occult worker to discuss femininity without
investing themselves in the meanings of work. Significantly,
the worlds of James and Davis required occult workers to give
up their professions for the survival of the white bourgeois
communal sense of self that depended on the consumption of
goods and male professionalism. Chesnutt, dealing with a
very different set of social circumstances that all but
eliminated the ideal of domesticity for black.women, located
community survival in female professionalism, ‘All three
forwarded the occult worker to a receptive reading public as

a figure highly charged with meanings of male and female,

 

"Houston Mr. W. (Chicago,
1987): 47.

210

black and white, higher class and lower class, and self and
other.

In the 1860s, P.T. Barnum.had criticized.mediums for
using femininity to cover up the trickery of occult work. In
debunking mediumship he identified the performative nature of
white femininity. This is consistent with Barnumfls heralding
of a new era of economic practice governed by advertising and
a new commercial culture. It is also consistent with the
breakdown of middle-class identification of itself as a
”sincere" society. By the turn-of-the-century, the middle-
class used the occult worker to basically assert that any
buyer had better well beware because anyone could ”play" at
being sincere or honest. The sacred angel in the house had
been co-opted by commercialism, and appearance could no
longer be taken for reality. By 1910, middle-class Americans
had settled for appearance AS reality and further embraced
the consumerism being made possible by the bourgeoning
practice of mass production. As a worker whose products
consisted only of appearance, the professional seer embodied
for the white middle-class the tensions inherent in
conspicuous consumption. This is one of the impetuses behind
the move to outlaw occult work in the decade of the 19003.

The African-American middle-class continued to identify
more along lines of race than class and embraced mass
consumption as a class signifier to a lesser extent than
whites. This distinction played out in the image of the

occult worker, for even after prophecy-for-profit was

211

outlawed, African-American newspapers such as the Chicago
Defender and the New York Amsterdam News ran (sometimes bold)
advertisements for African-American seers and occult healers.
Even though seers may have been on the margins of
respectability, representations of occult workers, such as
Chesnutt's Aunt Peggy, showed that the African-American

middle-class continued to resist fully marginalizing them.

212

Chapter Six:
“Wholesale Raids on Fortunetellers”: Urban Myths and
the End of Seer-Centered Advertising, 1890-1930

The discourse on working women in which occult workers
and writers participated, came to be more heated in the two
decades surrounding the turn of the century. Fortunetelling
took on new meanings in a more heavily-charged urban
atmosphere, an atmosphere the middle-class often saw as
immoral. Like prostitution, fortunetelling could no longer
be tolerated or safely contained in the urban landscape when
so many young working people were entering the city without a
stable system.of direct parental control. The terms of the
discourse on fortunetelling that had been present throughout
the nineteenth-century took on new meanings, and the public
dialogue on occult work changed forever in response. Most
significantly, this period marked the end of occult worker
advertising that emphasized the power of the marginalized
self. Occult work continued, but it no longer had such
powerful presence in mass media.

The period between 1890 and 1920 saw radical changes in
the ways fortunetellers presented themselves and enacted
their businesses. Seers were both outlawed and assimilated.
Detractors of occult work used the languages of two social
movements--social purity and nativismp-to ask urbanites to
re-think the roles of seers in urban life. Organized
opposition, however, was fragmented. While journalists,
public officials, and a few fiimakers--the newest, most novel

of cultural producers--depicted occult workers as a threat to

213

the purity of young girls or part of the "foreign threat,"
other reformers and:many more filmakers failed to fully
promote the criminalization of fortunetelling. Some states
passed laws against prophecy, but these were not widely
enforced. Additionally, the so—called ”prophecy laws“ often
held such minimal penalties that they were ineffective. Even
so, seer ads had changed drastically, no longer emphasizing
the power of the self but instead concentrating on
affiliations with institutions or the powers of the products
they now increasingly sold. These changes were of course due
partly to criminalization, but seers themselves were simply
responding to different market demands. These were demands
that, as Alan Trachtenberg has shown, emerged from a changed
philosOphy of consumption which held that products and not
the people who make them were the most important elements of
the American economy.1

The period between 1890 and 1910 is crucial to
understanding the ways in which prophets-for—profit
participated in the passage of the more carnivalesque types
(and more radical types) of advertising. Competition became
fiercer, and so seers further emphasized their gendered and
(especially) nationalized qualifications. With nativist
sentiment gearing up toward its peak in the nineteen-teens,
this was not a time that was particularly safe for testing
the boundaries of identity (accounts of fortuneteller arrests

 

151“ Trachtenberg. W
W. (New York. 1982). 73-75.

214.

repeatedly stress the ethnic affiliations of the
'offenders"). The competition also made some seers attack
their peers in their ads and distance themselves from the
profession itself. Seers also used more visual imagery,
which made prophecy loom large in the pages of the newspaper
(with the exception of some elite mediums, occult workers had
never been known for their discretion in self-presentation).
Seers continued to advertise in the classifieds, despite the
fact that their numbers and their new institutional
affiliations made them look much more permanent than the
other ads (implying they were not just Gypsies "passing
through"). .All of these changes taking place in the twenty
years between 1890 and 1910 further enforced the fact to the
reading public that these "fifty-cent sybils" were a powerful
presence.

Seer ads around 1910 reflected the tensions surrounding
the profession, and some seers agreed with seer detractors
that the trade was hindered by the unscrupulous. White male
seers, who could most convincingly align themselves with the
new profesionalism, could be particularly harsh toward their
peers. In 1911, Professor W.L. Gladstone entreated possible
customers with this plea: "If you have already made a
mistake, thrown away your money and lost confidence through
dealing with much-advertised and self-styled palmists and
clairvoyants and their cheap, claptrap methods, start from

the beginning and consult Gladstone."2 Professor Garland,

 

2St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ad, February 5, 1911.

215

whose motto "WORK AND WIN" made him look like the Carnegie of
the underworld, went even further in dimmissing other seers:

BEWARE of cheap and incompetent PRETENDERS. There are

in this city at the present time a class of SO-CALLED

clairvoyants who through incompetancy and.misleading
advice are naturally compelled to resort to almost any
means to earn a living. They are driven around from
pillar to post and in their efforts to keep their heads
above water and to avoid justice and will not stop at
any means to earn a dollar.3
One insider in the field working in New York said that such
fierce competition was unique, and that seers as a group were
especially congenial toward one another: ”generous, jolly,
warmphearted, and very considerate" was how she summed them
up in her "Confessions of an Assistant Clairvoyant" in 1913.‘
Nevertheless, in public advertising some sought to capitalize
on the current negative stereotypes of fortunetellers as
seedy or fraudulent, and this, while it may have gained them
some upscale customers, fed into anti-seer sentiment and
eventually helped fuel prophecy's criminalization.

While white male seers strove toward ”respectable"
professionalism, male seers claiming national or ethnic
affiliations--especially affiliations with India-aworked on
the images perpetuated by some of the occult movements
currently in vogue with middle- and upper-class practioners,
especially Theosophy. Peter Washington has chronicled the
occult activities of middle- and upper-class westerners

mainly in Theosophy, the movement began by Madame Blavatsky

 

3San Fransisco Examiner classified ads, October 4, 1914 and April
9. 1912.

‘Anonymous, “Confessions of an Assistant Clairvoyant," m
M, 105 (809W! 6, 1913): 43.

216

at the turn of the century. Theosophy took a large interest
in India, and westerners looked to that nation for
personalities embodying the "pure" insight of the colonial
"other.” They found such in the young boy Krishnamurti, whom
they brought to the U.S. as the New Werld Teacher.5 The
movement was highly visible in the U.S. and Great Britian,
mainly due to the popularity of Krishnamurti. Some urban
seers had used the image of the Indian mystic to advertise
their services even before his arrival, and some blended the
image with western professional validation, such as in the ad
of "O.N. ORLOW, PH.D. 0., OF BOMBAY, INDIA. Psycho diagnoser
of life and diseases. Pr. B. of the Brotherhood of Divine
Humanity. Suite 702, 226-228 Lasalle st. Not a clairvoyant or
a charlatan, but ONE who can READ your life from.the cradle
to the grave. . . ”5 Other ads used references to
professionalism that were more subtle than the declaration of
a Ph.D., such as Khiron's ad of 1904, which declared.him.'The
Distinguished and Eminent Adept in Occultismp-Clairvoyance--
Hypnotism. Khiron the Great. The only Adept of Hindu Occult
Mysteries Practicing in America at the Present Time.”7

The cultural capital of professionalism.and of the
current vogue of the male mystic were largely out of the

reach of women, who despite having made gains into the

 

5Poter Washington. WW

 

York, 1993. See especially the chapter entitled ”Boys and Gods," 126-
144.

6Chicago Tribune classified ad, March 19, 1899.

7St. Louis Post-Diopatch classified ad, March 6, 1904.

217

professions, were still configured as consumers and not
producers. Female seers continued to advertise much as they
had done in 1880 except that with the more extravagant ads
they, like the men, used visual images. Some banked on their
readers' presumed love of youth and beauty. A beautiful face
and bare shoulders were popular images used by women to gain
patronage. One San Fransisco seer, Pandora (a name
interesting in itself), who “Stands Alone in Her Magnificent
Power of Reading the Future of Humankind' and came "from a
race of people who have been clairvoyants for thousands of
years," included her picture in her ad, a photograph of a
lovely woman with full hair drawn up in a headband, having
bare shoulders, and wearing a beaded choker (see Appendix,
Figure 5). Her colleague, mediumLMrs. Dr. Clark, included a
drawing of herself looking straight at the viewer with large
soulful eyes with her bare shoulders turned to one side (see
Appendix, Figure 6).8 Other women chose graphics meant to
evoke exoticism, such as Martha Leon's St. Louis Post
Dispatch ad, which pictured a woman's profile (the woman
.wearing a stylized scarf and headgear) within a thin crescent
moon while a small star shone in the background, or Madam.M.
Martell's graphic of a hand with distinguishable lines and
her picture posted on the palm, Men often used a

distinguished head-and-shoulders pose or a graphic of a

 

8.San Fransisco Examiner classified ads, March 11, 1906 and April
8, 1900.

218

turbaned mystic. Stars, moons, and even angels abounded in
the visual images used both by men and women.9

In the 18903 and 1900s, newspapers did not respond much
to the changes in seer advertising except by granting them
more space. For all their visual sophistication and new long
lengths, seer ads remained in the classified ads with ads for
temporary wants such as women seeking work, horses for sale,
and even the occasional adoption. Many of the newer
advertisements, however, resembled the fuller ads for such
things as department stores and baking supplies. There is
some indication that newspapers courted seer advertisements,
which in 1905 cost the seer in St. Louis thirty cents for
every fourteen words. One New'YOrk Times editorial
criticized Connecticut newspaperswho opposed the proposed
prophecy laws in their state because "it would also shut off
a considerable source of revenue now flowing into the
business offices of papers willing to advertise the large
promises of" seers.1° Yet even though some papers were
willing to support the right of seers to advertise, only the
San Francisco Examiner' (produced in a city most congenial to
sears) and later the.Amsterdam News (which put seers all
over the paper) allowed sears out from the back of the
newspapers where they shared space with used wagons and lost
jewelry. San Francisco had never outlawed prophecy (perhaps

because urban reform never reached the pitch it had on the

 

9St. Louis Post-Dispatch classified ads, rebruary 5, 1911.
1°"Necromancy Warmly Defended,“ New York Times, April 2, 1915,
103‘.

219

East Coast), and the News catered to an African-American
community that integrated seers into the community much more
readily than did white native-born communities (which will be
discussed later in the chapter). This points to the love-
hate relationship many people had with sears, which was
fairly common across the nation. This relationship can best
be summed up by writer Olivia Howard Dunbar in Harper's
weekly, who said in 1912 that "There is always a beguiling
friend who, while expressing the utmost horror for modern
sorcerers as a class, can point the way to one stainless

exception."11

No one group--except perhaps the police and public
officials, and they could easily switch sides (as the papers
told it) with the right bribe--mobilized against
fortunetellers in the 1910s. Journalists and some filmmakers
depicted fortunetellers as a threat to the virtue of young
girls or as a "foreign element,” but no organized reform
group took up the cause of ridding the city of seers with
much enthusiasm, The fragmentation seems to have come from
indecision about the occult worker, for as some reformers
and/or nativists saw seers as a threat to social or ethnic
purity, other reformers recognized the important roles seers
played in their communities, and publicly stated that sears
should be supported and not harassed. The fragmentation also

came from the realization that seers could be contained in

 

11Olivia Howard Dunbar, 'The Survival of Sorcery, " Harper's
Wkly, 56: 12 (September 21, 1912): 12.

220

ways other than criminalization, as professional academics
turned the anthropological gaze on the occult worker as
subject and census takers counted seers as ”semi-
professionals.” These venues assimilated the seer (albeit
marginally) and provided a way for ”respectable” people to
monitor occult worker activities.

Folklore professionalized as an academic field shortly
before the period in which state legislatures discussed seer
criminalization.12 Like the phenomenon of white
dehistoricization and and fetishization of Native Americans
at the turn of the century, folkloric attention to
fortunetellers indicated that some academics saw them as
living relics of the past.13 While expressing their disdain
for seers and their poverty, slovenliness and fraudulence,
academics openly accepted them as subjects (and living
relics) for publications and paper deliveries. This
attention was also motivated by migration and immigration, as
the nation looked to science and academia to support both
racist and anti-racist, both nativist and non-nativist

ideologies.14

 

1-"’Marshall Hyatt credits Franz Boas as the person who, more than
any other, made the field academically rigorous in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth-centuries. He states Boas heightened ”the standards
of professional anthropological research and thus. . . eliminatled]
untrained amateurs - ' W
(Ethnicity, (New York, 1990): 44

13See Curtis M. Hinsley, “Zunis and Brahmins: Cultural
Ambivalence in the Gilded Age," in George Stocking, jr., ed.‘ngnantig

.Herirsai__Iaaaxa_en_Anthreselssisal_fisnaihilitr. (Madison. 1989) (Also

useful in Curtia' a aaxassa_and_aciantiatai__Ihs.8uithsenian_1natitutien
. . ..- ' , (Washington,

 

D. C., 1981).
1‘Hyatt provides a useful discussion of the uses of science in
theories of race and ethnicity. See pages 83-122.

221

In 1895 Henry Carrington Bolton published in the Journal
of American Folk-Lore a paper he had delivered to the
Baltimore Branch of the American Polk-Lore Society called
”Fortune-Telling in America To-Day: A Study of
Advertisements." Bolton began his analysis by saying that
fortune-tellers were simply a degraded version of more
learned people who desire to study the supernatural "in these
enlightened days" and "in this eminently practical country”:
"The intelligent and cultivated become students of
psychology, hypnotiem, and psychical phenomena,‘while the
unlettered and credulous dabble in cheiromancy, clairvoyance,
and astrology . " 15 He went on to some accurate observations
about the gender, class, racial and ethnic.make-up of the
trade, and placed professional seers in the context of
American superstition:

. . . the aristocratic merchant who carries in his

pocket a horse-chesnut as a safeguard against

rheumatism, and the fond mother who hangs on her
infant's neck an amber necklace to ward off the croup,
are giving coutnenance in a genteel way to superstitions
which in a grosser form they condemn, when practiced by
those of a lower social position.16
Bolton commits the same act at the end of his study by saying
the lower-class counterparts to higher-class "students of
psychology, hypnotiem, and psychical phenomena" are burdens
on society, for "financially and socially, these people who

live by preying on credulity born of ignorance have no

standing in this world, and in the next they are consigned by

 

1~"Henry Carrington Bolton, “Fortune-Telling in America To-Day: A
Study of Advertisements,“ Journal of American Folklore, 8(1895): 299.

16Bolton, 307.

222

Dante to one of the lowest divisions of the Inferno,
'Malebolge'.”17

Not all folklorists told seers they were going to hell,
however, and one at least delivered a study of seers without
passing judgement. Stewart Culin in 1895 in Overland.Mbnthly
wrote a detailed and much less condesending study of
"Divination and Fortune-Telling Among the Chinese in America"
that explored the mechanics of fortunetelling in a group he
obviously considered ”other,” but still allowed prophecy as
an activity that is not necessarily indicative of ignorance
or malice.18 These academic products demonstrate the
fascination non-seers.had with seers when they could be
contained either as observable exotic subjects or degraded
'others.9

Census counting also signalled the assimilation of
occult workers under the gaze of authority. Seers were
counted in the census for the first time since 1860, when all
of eight astrologists appeared in the tables under "Authors
and Literary and Scientific Persons." In 1910 the census
listed seers under "Semi-Professional Pursuits“ where they
appeared as ”Fortunetellers, hypnotists, spiritualists, etc"
a full 1,600 (1,220 women and 380 men), an Obvious undercount
given that by this time police had started to arrest seers as
"disorderly persons" and declaring oneself a professional

seer meant legal jeopardy. Nevertheless, the fact that seers

 

17Bolton, 307.

18Stephen Culin. ”Divination and fortune-Telling Among the
Chinese in America.“ W. 25 (February 1895): 165-172.

223

appeared in the census and appeared as "Semi-Professionals”
meant the trade had received some recognition (however
begrudgingly) in a culture in which the language of
validation was caught up in professionalismm

While the federal government was content to count occult
workers and academic professionals were content to study
them, police, cheered on by journalists and local officials,
attempted to contain seers physically. Given that seers
dealt with ”delicate" subjects and were often immigrants or
African-Americans, local officials could create a public
image of themselves as crusaders against both "dens of vice"
and immigration/migration without much effort put forth in
arresting occult workers. Seers were easy to catch: pay the
fee, ask for a fortune, get one, make an arrest. In Boston,
where seers advertised a great deal of magnetic healing and
bathing services, police made fortunetelling a risky
profession using either laws dealing with fraud, practicing
medicine, prostitution, fortunetelling, or the catch-all
"disorderly persons" category. The ads disappeared by 1890
and seers practiced without mass media exposure under their
control. Chicago followed suit by 1917 and St. Louis and New
York by 1911. While the ads reappeared in different forms
(which will be treated later) after criminalization, their
numbers were significantly reduced for a time.

Laws passed against prophecy show an acute awareness of
fortuneteller self-presentation in advertisements and

emphasized that seer advertising was objectionable. Detroit

224

 

seers presented themselves similarly to seers in New York,
Chicago, St. Louis, and California. The Michigan Legislature
approved a prophecy law in April of 1913. Public Act 38
provided that ”any person who shall pretend for money or
gain, to predict future events by cards, tokens, trances, the
inspection of the hands of a person, mind-reading so-called,
or by consulting the movements of the heavenly bodies" will
be charged with a misdemeanor and subject to "a fine of not
less than ten dollars nor more than one hundred dollars, or
by imprisonment for not less than five days nor more than
sixty days." Significantly, the text of the law reflected
the most popular seer specialties, with the exception of
practicing medicine (Michigan seers could be prosecuted with
practicing medicine without a license beginning in 1897).

The legislature specifically mentioned seers could not
"enable any one to get or recover lost of stolen propety, or
to give success in business, enterprise, speculation or games
of chance, or to make one person dispose of propety, business
or valuable thing in favor of another." Finally, Section 4
spoke directly to advertising: "If any person or persons
shall publish by card, circular, sign, newspaper or any other
means whatsoever, that he or she shall or will predict future
events, the said publication may be given in evidence to

sustain an indictment under this act."19

 

uTmhLuLJaas4uLihaJuuuslanumLnfAnutfitamLsiJaumisaiJuasen
.at_fhe_£xtra_§sasions_sf_lalz. (Lansing. 1912). Public Act number 38.
57-58 e

225

Illinois's House Bill Number 477, which became law in
1917, provided a similar restriction on advertising, except
that it provided a fine for advertising alone (capped at
$200). It also differed from.Michigan in that it allowed for
"the practice of the belief known as Spiritualism or . . .
attempted communication with the spirit world, by or through
so-called.mediums" as long as the practitioner asked no money
for the services. Getting paid for "card-reading, palmistry,
clairvoyancy, astrology, seership, spirit mediumship, or any
crafty science,” however, could result in a fine up to $500.20

Regional differences in prophecy-law enaction reveal the
extent to which public officials and journalists (motivating
forces behind the laws) associated the fortuneteller with
urban decay, since less industrialized and.more sparsely
populated areas saw prophecy-for-profit as less threatening.
As Rena Gropper reports, Southern states and California
allowed seers to purchase fortunetelling licenses, and their
freedom to conduct business was rarely interrupted. Seers
were allowed to travel to private homes to tell fortunes or
set up storefronts in business areasun- Significantly fewer
seers in the Southern states declared their main profession
as fortunetelling, and this made them less offensive. In the
1910 census, eight seers were reported doing business in

North Carolina, nine in Louisiana, twelve in West Virginia

 

ahasa4uLihaJuata4uLILLumiaJuuatailuiflmiiiftuumusamumi.
W, (Springfield, 1917): 352.

“Rena Gropper. W
W, (Princeton, 1975): 41.

1226

and twenty-two in Virginia. This is significantly less than
the numbers reporting from Illinois (204), Massachusetts
(134), and New York (200). Of course this does not mean that
prophectic activity was less popular in Southern states;
these numbers represent the fact that the midwest and
northeast had stronger fixations on professional identity,
and prophecy in the rural South was practiced by persons not
necessarily taking the title of fortuneteller.22 Westerners
also looked more tolerably on seers. San Francisco did not
criminalize prophecy-for-profit, perhaps because the reform
movement was not as strong as it was in the more heavily-
industrialized East and Midwest. In other words, Westerners
and Southerners could still romanticize seers as part of the
rural, less-industrialized picturesque the way Easterners had
done in the 1830s and 1840s.23

The explicit motives behind the drive to criminalize
prophecy-~the fear of prostitution and the fear of immigrants
and African-American:migrants-awere (quite ironically) not
publicly expressed by organizations who were active in the
social purity movement and the new round of nativism. Some

reformers even saw occult workers as a positive good in urban

 

2ZAlthough Bolton notes that he found advertisements in New
Orleans papers, I found the phenomenon of seer advertising to be more
practiced by seers in larger urban areas. In looking through papers
available for Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina, I was unable to
locate more thana few'advertisements. See Bolton, 302- 303. :For the
roles of magic and divination in rural life, see Carolyn Merchant,

s so ‘ e s:.' \ ;se: 0' . :3 ’ o (z, 0' .30

(Chapel 8111,1989) and Lawrence W. Levine,.n;agk_gnltu;§_and_nlagk,

 

(Oxford, 1977), especially 55-80 on the syncretism.of European and
.African magical practices.
23See Chapter One, especially the sections on Sedgwick and Irving.

227

communities. The WOmen's Christian Temperance Union, which
extended its activism from alcohol prohibition to domestic
and sexual abuse was silent on the issue of fortunetelling.
The YMCA and YWCAp-formed during this time to provide a
Christian and safe environment for newcomers to the city—~did
not publicly state that fortunetelling was a menace. The
Immigration Restriction League ignored sears." Some
settlement house workers even supported seers, telling
reporters that occult workers "are not always a menace, and
that in many cases they are actually a power for good in
their particular communities,” and their support could have
been partly responsible for other social workers' tolerance
of seers since settlement houses worked most closely with
poor and immigrant populations and would know best»25

Social purity activists were also explicitly silent
about seers, but implicitly they warned against the exoticism
of immigrants the the pleasures of the leisure world, a world
that included fortunetellers. One of the most popular tomes
meant to bring the problem of forced prostitution to the

public eye warned parents and young girls away from

 

2‘Iam 'l'yrrell WW

, ; .0-.. 0: 0 o O- 9 (
(Chapel Hill, 1991); Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, eds. ,nen_and

WV (New York and London.
1997); John HighamfitranmuuWriw
W (New York. 1971).

25"One Thousand Fortune Tellers Flying Their Trade in New Yor
City.” Winn part 5. 7: l- Settlement
workers may have been most instrumental in setting an early example 0.
tolerance for fortune tellers. Robyn Muncy states that settlement wor.
was the first wave of the progressive-type reform that swept the midwe
and northeast at the turn of the century. W
“W (New York. 1991): 3-37-

228

strangers, ice cream parlors, theaters, dance halls and any
Jewish person, but missed naming occult workers explicitly.26
Local public officials seem to have been the only group to
organize specifically against fortunetellers, and this group
tried hard to link their campaign with those of social purity
activists and immigration restriction supporters by using
some of the symbols prevalent in each campaign. Rounding up
seers was one way in which local officials could look as if
they were working in the interest of 'progress"without
really doing much of anything.

New York presents a well-documented example of the
social processes at work in cracking down on prophecy-for-
profit and the ways in which officials, cheered on by
journalists, used seers to create their own public image as
crusaders for a moral and "pure" city. A.new round of
annoyance with the city's sears was apparent in New York City
by the 1890s, and the newspapers and magazines expressed
some of the same reasons for disallowing it that Mortimer
Thomson had declared in 1858. Occult workers were frauds:
they compromised the silly young women naive enough to take
their advice: they lived in ”bad" neighborhoods; they were a
less-than-positive ”foreign element.” One highly publicized

event in late July of 1899 was a demonstration of the Boston

 

2“Agood history of the social purity movement is Mary E. Odom,
WW
asxualitr_in_tha_nnitsd.§tatssi_1nfl§:lizn. (Chapel Hill. 1995)- For an
example of the concerns about prostitution, see Ernest A. Bell, ed.,

00 o- o o o u- - 0 .- 00 0‘ .‘lo : ~ -'4-' 9»

WW. (Place of Publication
Unknown, 1910), which was introduced byEdwin W. Sims, the US District
Attorney of Chicago.

22!)

medium.William.Frank's failure at Lyric Hall to channel the
spirit promised; he was "exposed as a fraud.” Another event
that brought seership to the forefront of public discourse in
New York was the appearance of European medium Madame
Palladino, who submitted to tests and public scrutiny (most
of the coverage doubted her ability to see the future) in
1910.27

In 1909 an article appeared in the Times magazine
section entitled "One Thousand Fortune Tellers Plying Their
Trade in New York City," which accompanied pictures of a
young woman on her knees reading the palm of a seated man,
one of an obviously ”foreign”-looking woman smoking a pipe
and one of a circus-like tent outside of which a sign read
"Gypsy Camp-Have Your Hand Read— 10¢." The article lists the
dangers of visiting a seer, among them.interaction with
.African-Americans, Italians, the "Hebrews from Germany and
Russia," Slavs, Bohemians, Dalmatians and Austrians. The
author also listed the danger of receiving bad medical
advice, although the "County Medical Society is constantly
alert to this danger and is quick to prosecute offenders,“
and the possibility of blackmail. He emphasized that the
seers "prey for the most part upon a densely ignorant class'

who could not appropriately choose how to spend their money . 2‘

 

27"Medium Calls Ingersoll,” New York Times, July 31, 1899, 2:6.
On the Palladino affair, see New York Times September 26, 1909, pt. 6:
9; May 12,1910 187; May 12, 1910, 3:2; letters May 23, 1910, 18:13 May
27, 1910, 1:1.

28"One Thousand Fortune Tellers Plying Their Trade in New York
City," New York Times, December 12, 1909, part 5, 7:1

230

The set of photographs accompanying the article is
significant in rendering the author's theme visually. The
collage consists of three photos. In the center is a photo of
a young girl on her knees at the feet of a young man, who is
seated in a rocker. She looks bored, and he looks as if he
is thinking of the girl rather than the fortune she is
telling him. The left lower photo is of a gypsy woman
smoking a pipe, dressed exotically and sitting on the ground
with her knees spread. On the right is a photo of a
fortuneteller's tent with a large sign and a multi-colored
awning (see Appendix, Figure 7). The full effect, even if
the reader skipped the article, was that seers inhabited a
world of sexual license, immigrants, and carnival display.

The events that most revealed the tensions surrounding
the trade, however, were the arrests of seers themselves. In
1910 police began to round up fortunetellers under Section
899 of the Code of Criminal Conduct (a "disorderly” section),
part of which forbade anyone but a priest or minister to
foretell the future. By 1911 a state law forbid the
advertising of fortunetellers, signifying that the symbol of
the fortuneteller as presented widely by those in the
profession were objectionable (as the text of Michigan's
Public Act number 38 reflected one year later).29

Public officials and journalists increasingly portrayed
prOphecy as a crime against morality, evidenced by the fact

 

29'Latest Legislative Bills. Fortune-Telling Prohibited and
Advance 'Phone Payments Barred, " New York Times, February 17, 1911, 3:1.

231

that women were the primary law-enforcers that rounded up
sears. Gathering the evidence against seers became the
specialites of four women working for the police in New York
City, Maude Leslie, Isabella Morrison, Isabella Goodwin and
Adele Preiss, and headlines consistently stated that "Nemen
Got the Evidence." That women were charged with gathering
the evidence against seers indicates that police (and women's
reform.groups) saw prophecy as a moral crime, one that
endangered the moral chracter of young people, and in the
case of fortunetelling, young women. Mary Odem has shown in
her study of female sexuality in this period that women
played important roles in the legal battles over morality,
with women detectives, police matrons, and soCial workers
exercising what she calls ”maternal justice" in using their
roles as the guardians of moral health. .Central to morality
concerns was the white, working-class girl, whom reformers
saw as particularly susceptible to temptations offered by the
new freedoms of living and.working away from their parents.30
Seen as an innocent who was incapable of recognizing the
dangers of urban life, the figure of the working-girl became
important to the impetus to drive seers from the city.

A 1911 article in the Ladies Name Journal underscores
the role women played as actors and as ideas in the drama of

"cleaning up" the cities of fortunetellers. The editor notes

 

”see Mary 06mm W
W. (Chapel
Hill. 1995) and Joanne Meyerowitz. W
Barnars_in_£hisasnl_lfinn=123n. (Chicago, 1988).

232

 

 

in the preface to the anonymously written “How I Bed 54
Persons Arrested And What I Found Out About PalmpReading"
that the names have been changed but that the story is true.
The speaker began her narrative by answering the call from
the Deputy Commissioner of Police who wanted her to gather
evidence on palmpreaders in order to make a broad.sweep of
arrests. Before she told about her visits, though, she told
readers that one of the palmists, Madame Herman, was
particularly odious to her, a woman she had met ten years ago
when she was a ”cashier in a hotel, living in a boarding
house with a lot of girls--nice girls--young, jolly,
sympathetic and harksworking." She related that her young
female friends did not know"much about life, most of us were
ignorant; but we were all decent girls, and honest.“”- One
night after work the speaker's best friend suggested they
have their palms read, and the speaker obliged. While the
speaker received a foreboding of illness and subsequently
went to the doctor to confirm nothing was wrong, Madame
Herman told the best friend that a ”dark woman" would steal
her boyfriend. The best friend suspected the brunette
narrator and broke up their friendship. The fortuneteller
had spoiled the innocent, youthful friendship between the two
girls. .As a police matron, the speaker had the pleasure of
testifying against Madame Herman at the trial.

 

31"Bow I Bed 54 Persons Arrested And What I Found Out About Palm-
Reading,“ Ladies Home Journal, 28:7 (August, 1911): 7

233

While breaking up a friendship seemed a minor offense,
the narrator declared that many more dangers faced the young
women who consulted seers, dangers that not even a more
mature police matron was immune to. During her time of
gathering evidence, the speaker received all kinds of
fortunes, but some had more effect on her than others. One
seer predicted she would be held at gunpoint by a burglar and
the speaker could not shake the prediction, for she, "like
other women,. . . will listen to the foolish 'predictions' of
palmists even when convinced by visible proof that the
'predictions' are absurd":

As a matter of fact, all through my investigations I

found myself subject to the weak terrors of the foolish

femininity on which these palmist fiends were preying.

I can't explain it, for my reason told me I was silly,

but that there is some superstition in the corner of

every woman's heart there is no doubt, and it was that

which was hauling me awry despite my sober senses.312
The author, a mature, sensible police matron, feared for
herself because it was inherently female to believe what
people said, even the sayings of seers: ”But so susceptible
to all this rubbish is the feminine nature!”33

It turns out in the narrative, however, that breaking up
friendships and frightening innocent girls and mature women
alike were only the smallest of dastardly deeds
fortunetellers commited against womankind. The narrator has

"reason to believe, . . . although of course it was not

within my commission to prove this, that some of these old

 

321bid, 3a, 37.
33Ibid, 37.

234

women also had arrangements with the dens in the underworld,
and that girls who went to them, if they looked like likely
victims, were recommended to places of ill fame." But the
narrator relayed that those seers who held the most danger to
young women were of course men, and she declared "With regard
to the personal safety of young girls going to palmists I
cannot cry out too loud the word of warning." The narrator
relayed the insults of one particularly lascivious male seer,
whom she left in fear: ". . . a fear was coming over me. He
was so large, so powerful; I began to long desperately for
the fresh air of the street." Then she told of yet another
who seduced women and then blackmailed them. The narrator
saw her revenge on all the insults she had suffered to her
femininity when on one night fifty-four seers were arrested
based on evidence she had procured, and ”before mddnight
every one of them was under lock and key at headquarters."34
Much of the Ladies' Hume Journal story seemed to have
been taken right from the headlines, including some of the
fortunes seers gave to New York police matrons. The
possibility of the ruin of young girls by seers also appeared
in the New York papers. In 1913 a mother told the police the
story of losing her "daughter's affections” due to the malice
of fortunetellers and the corrupt police who protected them.
As the report goes, five west Forty-Third street seers, all
of whom were paying off police, would read the palms of young
working girls, telling them of "brilliant prospects" and

 

341nm, 41 .

235

 

stringing them along until they found the ”ideal man" to whom
they would prescribe marriage. .As it turned out the men were
not "ideal” at all but instead.were men "in the disorderly
house business." The paper reported that it was ”just such a
trap that the young daughter. . . was led." The mother
reported broken-heartedly that, following her daughter's
visits to one of the fortunetellers on Forty-Third that ”the
girl ran away with a good-for-nothing character of the
Tenderloin. Her life since then, it was said, had been one
of degradation.”35

The classic story, told over and again by those in the
social purity movement, explained the sexual behavior of
working-class young women in terms of victimization.
According to the ideology of social purists, the girl was too
ignorant to take part in her own degradation, a complete dupe
of those around her who were more "knowing” in the ways of
the world. The story also fits with what Mary Odem.had found
in her study of working-class sexual mores in that the mother
attempted to use the police to control her daughter's sexual
behavior, an act which was motivated as much by economic
circumstance (such as the burden of treating sexually-
transmitted disease or supporting children out of wedlock the

fathers refuse to support) as by prudery.“

 

35'Mbther Reveals New Graft Trail-Ber Story of Daughter's Ruin by
a Clairvoyant Shows Another Angle of Police Crokedness,‘ New York Times,
Sunday, May 18, 1913, II, 10:5.

35899 Odem and Regina maul. W

_ \ l.
.5”. 4 ,e g _ o g- o- . so 0 -‘e‘ . .e . . .-

(New Haven and London, 1993).

236

 

In addition to highlighting female degradation and the
work police women were doing to end it, headlines also
emphasized the ethnicity of the "offender,” renewing the
connotation Thomson raised in 1858 of seers as poor
immigrants. The 1909 Times magazine article emphasized
prophecy-for-profit as a feature of the highly racialized and
ethnicized underworld. While the author stated that a
majority of seer clients came from a ”densely ignorant class'
who most likely ”speak a foreign language and only one," he
found that ”some of the most picturesque of these occult
practitioners are to be found among the negroes.” He went on
to note that ”the negroes are strong believers in mysterious
hoodoos, which they find can be controlled by their
soothsayers on the payment of a reasonable fee," one of whom
had been recently arrested and sent ”to Blackwells Island on
default of baile'37 ‘The author also listed Italians and
Eastern Europeans as those both selling and buying fortunes.
Reports of raids on seers also emphasized the racial and
ethnic dynamics of seeing and its new illegality. References
include quotes from the seers as to their affiliations such
as Barrell Cannon's plea that "he was unable to help himself,
as he was astrological only at Mohammed's bidding” and Mrs.
Minnie Miller's defense that she was a reader for the First
German Spiritualistic Church. Headlines also appeared that

emphazied ethnic otherness such as ”Arrests Hindu Seer,”

 

37"One Thousand Fortune Tellers Plying Their Trade in New York
City," December 12, 1909, V, 7:1.

237

“Arrest a Gypsy Princess,” and "Japanese Seer in Court."38
One telling story of arrests in Paterson, New Jersey revealed
that some African-American seers were fairly successful in
selling fortunes to wealthy whites. "Mediumfis Patrons Fined.
Choir-Singer Among Prisoners of Raid on Paterson Negro Woman"
tells the story of Mrs. Lida Conover, an African-American
medium whose home was raided during a seance . The story
focuses almost exclsively on the white women who were there
and their social standing, such as the ”singer in the choir
of the First Presbyterian Church" who had ”gone to the seance
out of curiosity," ”the wife of.a,well-to-do asbestos roofing
contractor,” and a former schoolteacher who was "now a law
student."39

These stories reflect some of the changes in the ethnic
and racial make-up of cities in the early twentieth-century
and the attendant renewed racism and xenophobia. .African-
Americans had been streaming into urban areas in the
Northeast since emancipation, until Werld.War I when labor
shortages turned the stream into a river.‘0 Nativism had been

violent during the depression of 1893-97, but it was not

 

38"Astrologer Loses $1,000,“ New Yerk Times, January 11, 1914, IV,
4:5; "Spiritualist in Court,” New Yerk Times, July 24, 1914, 9:6;
"Arrests Hindu Seer,” New York Times January 19, 1914, 7:1; "Arrest a
Gypsy Princess," New York Times February 12, 1914, 18:2 and "Japanese
Seer in Court,” New Ybrk Times, March 20, 1915, 5:8.

39'Mediumfs Patrons Fined. Choir Singer Among Prisoners of Raid on
Paterson Negro woman," New Yerk Times, January 23, 1914, 2:7.

“William Cohen in W
Sanfhsrn_Hhits_Qnsst_fnr_Basial.£9n:rnll_18§1:1215 . (Baton Rouge. 1991)
shows that although African-American migration was restricted by the
demand for African-American labor in the South before the Great
Migration, African-American pepulations in cities between 1861 and 1915
rose steadily.

238

until the early twenieth-century that European immigrants
joined.African—Americans as victims of a clearly-defined
philosophy of the role of race in nationalism. As John
Higham.notes, "Several generations of intellectuals took part
in transforming the vague and somewhat benign racial concepts
of romantic nationalism into doctrines that were precise,
malicious, and plausibly applicable to European

immigration. "‘1 As the article "One Thousand Fortune Tellers
Plying Their Trade in New York City" demonstrates, African-
Americans and European immigrants could be ideologically
configured as the same threat to social order, even more so
when their religious practices differed from the white,
native-born mainstream” Hans A. Beer demonstrates that the
Black Spiritual Church developed in urban areas as a
syncretic practice of spiritualism.end slave religions (with
strong African retentions) and integrated.mediums into a
course of religious practice acceptable to many lower-class
and some middle-class African-Americans.‘2 Gypsy, Jewish, and
Catholic immigrants were also targeted as threatening in
terms of religious practice, and therefore the author of "One
Thousand Fortune Tellers" could easily lump together European
immigrants and African-Americans coming from.the South as
elements threatening to a sense of nationalism built on white

protestantism, Fortune-telling, as reported by its

 

“John 8191mm. W
W, (New York, 1971): 131-132.

“Hans A. Beer. W
W, (Knoxville, 1984).

239

detractors, was just more evidence of the degradation
immigrants and African-Americans brought to the modern city.

Police and local officials used the connections between
nativism and racism, along with notions that seers posed a
danger to young white women, to justify raids against seers.
Such action must also be seen in the context of changing
views of urban space. Upper and middle-class urban dwellers
embarked on city beautification movements that not only
created parks and recreation programs (the latter aimed
primarily at the working-class and immigrants) but also
pushed to remove vice districts. These districts of
prostitution, gambling, and bawdy theater had been part of
large city landscapes since the late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-centuries. Beginning in the 1870s, upper and
middle-class urbanites could no longer reconcile their ideal
of what came to be known as the "white city" (after the
constructed city of the 1893 Chicago world's Fair) with the
activities actually taking place in the city.‘3 Police,
judges, and lawmakers responded by cracking down on the sex
trade, and (as we will see) the fortunetelling trade.

Even though relatively few seers were arrested, the
arrests were significant enough to discourses on vice to

attract the attention of reporters. Arrests were common from

 

”For a useful discussion of the legal issues surrounding vice
districts and prostitution, see Thomas Mackey, W

. - 0‘ s e- e; I -e e; .e -;- .oe - I _ : 10-
1211... (New York, 1987). Alan Trachtenberg provides a good analysis of
the white city movement in W
W. (New York. 1982)-

240

1910 through 1914, and were still made until they tapered off
in 1917. Between the first reported arrest in 1909 and the
last in the decade of the teens in 1917, the New York Times
reported sixty-nine different arrests, with thirty-eight of
those coming in 1910 and 1911. Of the sixty-nine arrests,
eighteen were men (26%) and twenty-six were women (37%), with
twenty-five unknowns. The disproportionate number of men
(they made up only seventeen percent of advertisements)
reveals that the notion of male seers compromising young
women seekers was at work (or perhaps the men were just more
visible because they were more financially successful).
Eight reports mentioned the seer's ethnic or religious
affiliation: African-American (2), Muslim, Japanese, German
Spiritualist, Hindu, Gypsy and Syrian. This also reflects a
lower number than those claiming
ethnic/national/racialIreligious identities in their
advertisements, which could have been due more to reporting
than the actual number of arrests. The low number could also
have reflected fewer arrests, since there was some
implication (especially in the Times magazine section
article) that ethnically or racially ”other" seers were less
hanmful if they served only the communities with which they
affiliated.

The city found it difficult to make a lasting impact
with the arrests, however, as judges imposed fines and
accepted promises of "non-prophetic behavior" for period of

time (usually a mere year), and then the seers would simply

241

go back to work. The first thing most seers did when
arrested would be to make some show of indignation. During
the first large "Wholesale Raids on Fortune Tellers" in 1910,
in which sixteen ”Countesses, Professors, and Doctors" came
under arrest, one upscale seer responded by saying ”You might
have called later for that . . . It is an outrage to disturb
me at this ungodly hour. I have an engagement at a Broadway
restaurant for dinner, and I simply won't let you interfere
with it. "‘4 Others claimed they were simply paid advisers and
some evoked their affiliations with wealthy clientele or
churches.

Another striking aspect of the reports was the seeming
hilarity with which law'workers, mainly the matrons, judges
and magistrates, conducted the proceedings or related the
events, as if the seers were more an opportunity with which
to amuse themselves than a serious threat to social order.
Detective Hickson related on one occasion that he went into a
parlor to arrest a seer and the seer prophesied he would be
successful in his "present undertaking” (which turned out to
be the arrest of the seer). Maud Leslie, a police matron,
told a judge of her visit to Josephine Seliasco that ”I could
not help laughing, your Honor,. . . when she told me about my

husband's coming death, because I never had one.”‘5

 

“"Wholesale Raids on Fortune Tellers, " New York Times, November
26, 1910, 1:3.

‘5'Arrests Hindu Seer,“ New York Times, January 19, 1914, 7:1;
“Fortune Teller Wrong," New York Times, December 6, 1914, Iv, 4:2.

242

The efforts of police did not stop seers from performing
their work. When eight women were arrested and sent to Far
Rockaway Police Court (indicating they were working near
amusement facilities and were probably Gypsies), "All of them
were bailed out and then returned to their respective tents
on the boardwalk." Edward Clark was arrested twice in 1913
and had to forfeit a $500 bond he put up in a promise to not
tell fortunes. The second time the magistrate told him "that
if he became professionally prophetic again before the year
was up he would have to put up a $2,000 bond. "45 Usually the
seers had to promise not to practice their trade for six or
twelve months or forfeit money or months in a workhouse.
Sometimes conviction was more tricky, for seers claimed to be
entertainers or religious leaders, which sometimes allowed
them to carry on business after paying a smaller fine or
agreeing to a smaller bond than usual. Natall Elisa, a
Syrian seer, was allowed to go free simply on his promise
that he would ”forsake the business.”47 Of the arrested seers
identified as ethnic, Elisa was the exception, and
magistrates and judges rarely allowed them to claim they were
entertainers or ministers. Yet while white seers did tend to
make this claim more often, sometimes it helped them and
sometime it did not. The largest bond ($2,000) was set for

an elite white male medium, whose wealthy client bailed him

 

45"Fortune Tellers Arrested," New York Times, July 17, 1911, 2:2;
"Cost Him $500 to Make $1," New York Times, August 17, 1913, II, 7:3.

"See “Mrs. Platt Told Fortunes,” New York Times, april 22, 1911,
7:1; "Spiritualist in Court," New York Times, July 24, 1914, 9:6; “For
Removing Cloud, $152,” New York Times, February 27, 1915 and “Dealt in
Magnetic Control,“ New York Times, February 12, 1911, 16:7.

243

out and put up bond for his "good behavior for one year.”8
African-American seers were not extended this option, for
Mrs. Lida Conover paid her own fine, while the seer mentioned
only as ”Solomon," an African-American, could not come up
with the bail he defaulted on and was sent to Blackwells
Island,‘9

Some simply figured they were going to have to forfeit
bonds and so they bribed the police. In 1913 one graft
investigation revealed that some police not only allowed
seers to continue, they also brought them.husiness. The
Times reported in May that "one well-known detective in the
Tenderloin. . . got at least $25,000 in graft. . . in eight
months" by protecting fortunetellers. Five seers fled New
York shortly before the story brokeJ50 By November of 1913 a
seer arrested on the charge of swindling brought down the
whole system.of collaboration between seers and police by
confessing and naming names, one of which was an ex-captain,
who would be indicted for ”receiving protection money.”1

New Yorkers' attitudes toward fortunetellers and the law
came into relief in 1914 with the failure of a bill in the
state legislature that mandated fining or imprisoning

fortunetellers (the current disorderly law allowed them to

 

‘3”Seize Spiritualist As Fortune Teller," New Yerk Times, February
1, 1911, 1:1.

‘9'Mediums Patrons Fined,“ New Yerk Times, January 23, 1914, 2:7
and 'one Thousand Fortune Tellers Plying Their Trade in New York City,“
New York Times magazine section, v, 7:1.

5O'Mother Reveals New Graft Trail,” New York Times, May 18, 1913,
II, 10:5.

51'Police Took Graft of Fortune Tellers," New York Times, November
29, 1913, 24:5; "To Inict Ex-Captain,‘ November 30, 1913, II, 10:2.

24P4

 

 

imprison seers only if they forfeited bonds). Chief
.Magistrate William.McAdoo was frustrated with the failure of
the bill, and stated that “Some people think fortune telling
is a joke, but really it is a very serious evil."52 2Public
sympathy was simply not behind the bill.

Perhaps one reason MCAdoo could not drum up support was
that film, emerging as a powerful force in shaping public
opinion, presented an image of sears that was more fair than
the images previously created by journalists and public
officials. Between 1911 and 1930, forty-six films appeared
that featured seers. Although many of these films no longer
exist, the reviews.can tell us how seers appeared in plots.
Only two of the forty-six depicted seers as accomplices in
sentencing young girls to a life of forced prostitution.53
Twelve depicted occult workers as inhabiting the underworld,
which did not necessarily mean a damning portrayal. Six
featured sears with explicit ethnic identification, and these
were usually sympathetic portrayals but required that the
seer stay within his/her affiliated group unless they
provided help to whites. One good example of this is Wang, a
fortuneteller and lead character in ”The Swamp” of 1921.
Wang comes to the defense of an impoverished abandoned wife

and her son, sees that the heroine is safely married to a

 

52"Failure of Effort to Stop Fortune-Telling," The Survey, HEY 23:
1914: 213.

53-; Phantom Husband“ of 1917 and ”The Knife“ of 1913 portrayed
seers as part of the traffic in girls. Their summaries are in m

Sfataal_zaatnrs_zilna._1211=1229, (Berknly. 1988): 714 and 493-
245

 

provider type of man, and then the writers ship him happily
back to ChinaJS‘

Films in this period showed seers involved in frauds,
trying to escape poverty, initiating the action of the movie,
helping to solve crime or find missing persons, as comic
characters, and caught up in crime, but the overall picture
showed well on occult workers. Sixteen can be positively
identified as sympathetic characters, and one, "The Dream
Lady" of 1918, even featured a seer who "sets up a fortune—
telling establishment intended to make dreams come true."55
Fortunetellers often appeared as a helper or guide to a
sympathetic character. Such is the case in "What Happened to
Rose" in which a fortuneteller gives a working-class girl the
confidence to pursue a rich doctor by telling her she was
Spanish nobility in a former life. Madame Leclaire in
"Double Trouble" adjusts the personality of a young banker so
that he may pursue the girl he wishes to marry. Being a
fortuneteller also appeared in fiLm as evidence of bad luck
and poverty, such the fortuneteller Renee in ”The Fortune
Teller," who takes a job with a circus after a string of bad
luck. She also uses her position as seer, however, to regain
her former husband and win back her child. While some seers

in fiLm were unsympathetic, such as the easily bribable

 

flHmaJmIIhmuLIihLJmuItnuaLQNHflnHJfiLflQflhflLfiifiNfl:fl4flflflhflfl1
inths_nnifsd_Statssl_zsatura_zilmsl_1221=liin. (New York and London.
1971): 780.

55W. 228.
24H5

 

Madame Kautsky in ”The House of Mystery," the good
outnumbered the bad . 55

These depictions must be seen in the context of film
consumption in the first three decades of the twentieth-
century. Film was a cultural product that had to respond to
the tastes of a mass audience. In the late nineteenth-
century, film emerged as a working-class form of leisure, and
by 1920, the middle-class picked up the novelty. From its
roots as a working-class entertainment, film tended to hold
on to ideas of morality that were much more fluid than
middle—class mores. As historians have shown, traditions of
morality in working-class life allowed for contigencies of
poverty. Women could fall back on prostitution when they
needed to extra money, and yet could still marry without
their reputations being tainted with an inherent sense of
"ruin.” Likewise, the lines were sometimes blurred between
"prostitution" and ”treating” like they were between
"stealing" and "scavenging. "57 The variety in f ilmic
depictions of fortunetellers was a result of the working

class tendency to see moral issues in economic context. In

 

56m mum. 12214239, 830; n:.catalm._1211_1220.- . 226.
301,428.
s"’On traditions of working-class morality, see Christine Stansell,

W (Chicago, 1987) .

Kathy Peiss, -. .. , . ... . . -
sha=£§ntnry_NQu_xQ;k, (Philadelphia, 1986) and Joanne Meyerowitz,‘flnn3n
W. (Chicago,

1988). On film and the working-class, see Peiss; Roy Rosenzweig, nigh;

 

- " e h .' ‘ ' ° . ' ' o . u o e .
1210:1220. (Cambridge. MA. 1983) and Larry Hay. W

W. (Chicago,
1980). '

247

 

this view, if a seer was helpful, then the occult was not
immoral.

Film helped in fragmenting the campaign against seers,
but seers still had to respond to changing views of
consumption. By 1920 both arrests and seer advertisements
appeared in limited numbers in the dailies. That did not
mean, however, that prophecy was dead; seers had simply
changed their methods of visibility. In the 1870s, 808 and
well into the 90s, seer ads emphasized the power of the self
by evoking gender, race, ethnicity or nation. The power to
help people with family problems, health, and.money came
directly from the seer's person. Starting in the first
decade of the twentieth-century, but becoming full-blown by
the:mid-teens was the tendency to emphasize things not
necessarily associated with the seer's body, such as
institutional affiliations, education or lessons, or
merchandise. The following were ads typical of New York
seers during the time of police raids:

LESSONS taught in astrology. Prof. Gustave Meyer,
famous astrologer, 725 Washington st., Hoboken, N.J. .

ATTENTION--Lessons taught in astrology. Mme. Lindauer,
astrologer, 231 west 16th st., ground floor.

MADAME A, ONE, 125 East 126th; spiritual books,
Occidental crystals, fortune telling cards (pictures),
mailed, 50c.s
With fortunetelling for a fee criminalized, the
"Clairvoyants" column in the classified section disappeared,

and ads such as these appeared in the "Personals" along with

 

58New York World classified ads, November 3, 1912.

248

ads for products sold to remove "superfluous hair" and
announcements such as ”GIRL, 22 months, for adoption. . . "
Seers advertising in the.Amsterdam News, while still
emphasizing their African connections, focused on the sale of
herbs. Signifying a new desire on the part of occult workers
to be aligned with institutions, the editors included seer
ads in church notices under "Spiritualiste"59 ‘This signified
a fundamentally different approach to occult workers, which
reflected seers serving a function integrated into a diverse
socio-religious world, such as the creation of the Black
Spiritual Church represents.60

Styles of San Fransisco seers at this time show similar
changes in advertising despite the fact that prophecy-for-
profit was legal. By 1917 the numbers and size of ads in the
Sen Fransisco Examiner had been significantly reduced (the
same trend in Chicago had begun aLmost ten years before
criminalization). Many ads reflected a focus on the newly-
developed institutions of occult practice, such as the ads
for the Society of Astrological and Astro-Mathematical
Research which ”relies on natural laws in establishing facts.
we also observe professinal ethics and do not publish the
identity of our clients." The First Temple and College of

Astrology offered all the services seers had in the past, but

 

59The Amsterdam News never relegated seers to the classified ads,
and included seer ads among those for other goods and services or put
them in the church notices. see D. Alexander ad, January 10, 1923 and
church notices, April 1, 1925.

“sac Bans n. Boer. WWW:
Bsanenss_fs_8asian. (Knoxville. 1984)

249

no single astrologer appeared in the ad.‘61 These institutions
could have existed as formalized.churches or schools, or they
could have been simply the room at the same address a seer
had advertised previously without institutional affiliation.
Regardless of the characteristics of the institution, the
significance lies in the fact that seers now chose to
highlight them in their ads. Rather than rely on the
carnivalesque, they evoked the ”respectable" form of school
or church.

Criminalization and changes in economic culture had
finally forced seers to change their ads in response to
criticism they had ignored throughout the latter half of the
nineteenth-century. As stated in.chapter five, Alan
Trachtenberg has shown that American culture in the late
nineteenth-century began to privilege the importance of
products over the people who produced them. Thomson and
Barnum and to a lesser extent Douglass reflected this
emerging ethos of ”preper' consumption in the mid- to late
nineteenth-century in their discussions of seers. At the
same time, science had professionalized and Americans
increasingly privileged science as a way of knowing, which
alienated women from the most respected professional arena.
James, Chesnutt, and Davis exemplified the ambivalence with
which Americans embraced female professionalism by focusing

on the occult worker.

 

“San Fransisco Examiner classified ads, March 5, 1916.

250

 

Seers responded to these new social models by
appropriating the idea of a professional society to their
needs by establishing schools and professional ”research"
societies through which they told fortunes. They also
organized into churches, which often had elements of
"investigation.” Seers discarded the strategy that
emphasized the self, a strategy that could work in a culture
which focused on producers and in which some remnant of the
rural carnivalesque (such as that described by Sedgwick,
Hawthorne and Irving) remained as a romantic. Seers had
adapted their advertising to fit a more alienating model of
production and consumption. However, this new strategy de-
emphasized the role of the disenfranchised self as a means of
knowing. By adapting to the new models, professional
prophecy--as portrayed publicly by seers themselves--
practitioners were assimilated into the dominant culture.
Occult work had survived these changes, and seers would
continue to sell fortunes and provide advice and services for
low prices, but in the symbolic marketplace their own bodies

were no longer a highly-publicized source of capital.

251

Conclusion: Occult Workers and Lower-Class History
Give them a quarter's worth of wonder.

--Dolly Parton, quoted in Pamela Fox, “Recycled
'Trash',“ expressing her approval of her cousin's
role as "Alligator Girl" in a local freak show.

Pamela Fox has argued that Dolly Parton's approach to
self-presentation emerges from a gendered class system that
seeks to erase or contain the artistic and cultural
expressions of lower class women. Parton's presentation
reveals that she relishes the carnivalesque as a method of
countering the attempted erasure. Rather than judge her
cousin's participation in a freak show negatively, Parton
sees the show as :method of escape and fulfillment.1 As
Fox's study shows, working-class appropriation of dominant
notions of what constitutes respectability strongly persists
as a feature of working-class cultures in America. .As a
study of a working-class declaration of talent and skill
during the birth of the notion of professionalization as a
measure of worth, the story of occult workers is similar to
Fox's story of women country music singers. Occult workers'
use of symbols, like Parton's, shows that lower-class people
demonstrate their class identification in a variety of ways
independent of higher-class values. This appropriation shows
that "working-class culture” is, as Joanna Kadi notes, ”not

an oxymoron. '2

 

lPamela Fox. "Recycled 'Trash': Gender and Authenticity in

Coutnry Music Autobiography.“ (Anggiggn_gn§;:gzly, 50 (2, June 1998):
260.

2Joanna Radi, “working Class Culture: Not an Oxymoron,” in
W. (Boston. 1996): 17

252

From.the beginning of the mass popularization of occult
work, seers have appropriated higher-class symbols and
reworked them as their own. Mediums took the ”innocence” the
middle-class so wanted to see in others and used it to
justify their receiving money for channeling spirits.
Additionally, they reworked the paradigm of "simplicity" to
criticize class inequality, and unfortunately for later
occult workers, used the same notions to justify their own
privileged race or/and gender positions. Later occult
workers adopted personae used by middle-class writers as
foils to the "self-made men" and adapted them to their own
claims on professional status. As the:middle-class struggled
‘with female professionalism, seers reworked their advertising
to stress not the self but churches, schools, or products.
This allowed them.to continue their work in an environment
which was becoming more and more hostile to their claims that
disenfranchisment qualified them to be good doctors,
financial advisors, and counsellors. As the history of
occult work in the late nineteenth-century shows, this was
not a group without agency.

Occult workers' appropriation of symbols shows the ways
in which working-class people engaged in cultural debate.

The significance of this participation lies in the fact that
occult workers used this debate to help the communities in
which they lived, to earn money independently of bosses or
time clocks, and to express themselves artistically.

253

To a certain extent, the class dymanics of occult work
remain. Even though the contemporary new age bookstore tends
to focus on products, psychic hotlines offer services like
those offered by seers in the nineteenth-century: help in
love, health, and financial matters. The occult still means
help for a relatively low fee. Seers also advertise
femaleness and ethnic "otherness" as major qualifications for
fortunetelling. Emphasis on ethnicity has been diminished,
but most seers, when they indicate a gender, indicate
femaleness. Of the fourteen seer ads in the 1998 Harris;
W, four picture females (face shot only), two
.African-Americans (LaToya Jackson and Mother Love) and two
Euro-Americans (Brigette Nielsen and Laura Bryan Birn, ”Soap
Opera Star"). One advertises ”Native American Readings;" one
offers dream interpretation, and others specialize in past
life readings, psychics, astrology, and numerology. Brigitte
Nielsen's picture appears beside the "Witches of Salem”
graphic emblem. New age bookstores abound in books and
products that evoke Eastern, ancient Celtic, or Native
American philosophies. Many of the performative aspects of
prophecy, such as these, are similar to those of the
nineteenth-century, in which identity was at once static and
dynamic, self-conscious and.minstrelic. Fortunetelling
survives in the twentieth-century as evidence that in ”a
quarter's worth of wonder" resides an immeasurable amount of

political possibility.

254

APPENDIX

255

(my: 7,}???
_ ’ "ii ‘

I
'1

‘ ‘

 

#6:?“ M
s; ‘33 i

I

Figure l-A. Medium reveals how he uses the cover of darkness to
convince seance participants that spirits and not the medium play the
instruments brought to the seance room. A. Medium, '
W (New York, 1975 [reprint 1922 edition]).

256

 

 

 

 

 

./ " / ’
{V110 /9'_ ,% léf’éL/

Figure 2-Cora L. V. Hatch-Scott-Richmond, frontispiece, H. D. Barrett,
(Chicago, 1895). Early elite mediums relied
on their audiences' notions of beauty and innocence to ply the trade.

257

 

 

 

 

 

The sound, old-Isshioncd prcscription of a blond gentleman

Figure 3-Artist's depiction of a visit to the seer's home, accompanying
the article by Olivia Howard Dunbar, "The Survival of Sorcery,"
Harper's Weekly, September 21, 1912. Women seers made room for
occult work in their daily household routines.

258

 

Vern, in n hushed and solemn voice. culled for silence.

Figure 4-Artist's depiction of Vera, frontispiece, Richard Harding
Davis, W (New York, 1908). Authors from Hawthorne to
James and Davis saw the medium as an enchanting yet malleable young
woman who could easily become the victim of evil-mind

manipulators.

259

 

THErWURlD'
ELAIH

 

Shctellsyour
nnmef age
and occ’upn-
tron) your
m o t"): e A":
maiden name.

 

 

 

J

4’

 

~.Vs
cople who have been

Coming from a race of
rinirxoyunts for thousnn s or years. her read-

ing or your past and present. as we as your
future life will nmuzv you. Sin: is acknoul-
mired in press and public win-rover she has
bt‘i'l'l to he the greatest cluirvuyant they have
over mimulimi.

Pandora

the- Future of Humankind .

 

Strange nmi {nacinnilng rm- tho words that
“come from—thc-culiimted iipmof-thisrumst in-

 
 
  
 

 

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teresting women. n" ..eoe cam ofllfe has
already taken her iproug all .the Rim
psychic schools 01' Egypt india and Europe.“ It,
seems. indeed. as it her kn otfledge Inns: some}
from that mysterious world of which we, III
would know. yet. She
looks as tar away into the dim .tnystemourns-i,t
turn—the gr eat beyomi—across tdnrkc
which separates the bum man bod ram thank-i:
ting soul-and that which is to be is told. he}
s'upurated are brought together. toes are made
friends. lost property is rem vered. the mist-II
brushed away {n- -m business ventures. the hand-
i's so guided that failures are averted. thei-
earth a surface is nxplored. itu trensureslsla
bare to her mysterious pcr'ceptlve salad. and?
while she gives names. dates (acts and My
urea her visitor sits dum tuim ed at them-'
elation: she makes to thin. She is surgly'n
woman or the eupas sin
She will forfeit 5530 wlhcre she tailstom"
you how to fascinate any one you desire. hurt
to make your euciuins your :riends. «Wu
seedy murringo with the one or your choi
ves you good luck and makes you success
11 your business, removes evil lnhenemlfl‘b.
unites the separated. gives you lucky number-z.
locates the exch' 5 buried treasures. settles the.
old cats!" that time has placed beyondthe'
lawyer' a shrew :
Letters Answered 0011(1th Date. and Place
(.81th Lock of Rain. Six Wines 5,-

Free
Special This Week. ' '
$5 Celebrated Lite Reading.
rin tag is d. and Save
ins—Market street-1148

_ Sumo DOOL Fowzerj s _8tudio, ..

 

 

    

 

Figure S-Pandora's ad, San Francisco Examiner advertisement, March
1 1, 1906. One of the few to use a photograph.

260

Figure 6-1'he Medium Mrs. Dr. Clark's ad, San ii, "1"":

Francisco Examiner ad, .

seersoften combined titles such as "Mrs. Dr. "
ers

or "The Reveren

Aprll8,1900. Women

261

MEDIUM
rszfiS DR CLARK

 

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Figure 8-Professor Akpan Aga's December 20, 1922
advertisement in the Amsterdam News.

263

BIBLIOGRAPHY

264

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