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RESISTING THE READINGS:
NEW FEMINIST INTERPRETIVE STRATEGIES FOR
CATHER, WHARTON, AND FAUSET

BY

Delecia Seay Carey

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1993

ABSTRACT
RESISTING THE READINGS:

NEW FEMINIST INTERPRETIVE STRATEGIES FOR
CATHER, WHARTON, AND FAUSET

BY

Delecia Seay Carey

This study attempts to provide resisting readings of
Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Jessie Fauset, three
American women writers who have been variously addressed by
the feminist interpretive community. In addition to offering
rereadings of selected works by these writers, the study
seeks to propose new feminist interpretive strategies. It
undertakes, that is, to use Cather, Wharton, and Fauset
criticism as the basis for a critique of the limits of
current feminist approaches to women's writing. While the
study seeks to expose some of the blindspots of feminist
critical practice in the field of American literary studies,
its ultimate aim is to elaborate strategies whereby American
feminist literary criticism.might become more responsive to
postmodern critiques of subjectivity.

The most important theoretical assumption of this study
is that it is necessary for the feminist interpretive

community to fully theorize its interpretive strategies and

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capitalize upon a self-conscious awareness of its own
prejudices and assumptions by altering those strategies
‘which, when carefully examined, prove to be detrimental to
the goals of feminist literary criticism. In other words, as
this study shall attempt to demonstrate, it is necessary for
feminist literary critics to begin to read women writers
resistingly in much the same way Judith Fetterley suggested
in The Resisting Reader (1978) that women should read male
writers. .A resisting reading of Cather, Wharton, and Fauset
reveals that the willingness to interrogate women writers and
the texts they create does not conflict with the feminist
commitment to attaining and defending equal rights for all
women. Instead, it gives women the tools to more fully
recognize their participation in their own oppression as well
as in the oppression of other women. As this study
demonstrates, the project of feminist literary criticism
involves reading texts differently from how they have been
read in the past. As a result, as members of the feminist
interpretive community, we will be different because of our

reading.

Copyright by
DELEC IA SEAY CAREY
1993

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to many individuals for the emotional,
intellectual, and financial support that enabled me to
complete this study, and I would like to take this
opportunity to thank some of them.

First, I am grateful to the Michigan State University
College of Arts and Letters both for the Dean's Recruitment
Fellowship, which supported me during my first three years of
graduate study, and for the College Dissertation Fellowship,
which freed me from.my teaching responsibilities and allowed
me to devote an entire semester to the completion of this
project. Without the generous support of the College, I am
certain I would have fallen far behind schedule.

I am.grateful to my undergraduate mentors, Professors
Catherine Freis and Judith Page of Millsaps College, who gave
me the confidence to pursue a graduate degree. I also extend
my appreciation to Professor Geoffrey Harpham of Tulane
University, who first sparked my interest in literary theory
and made me believe that it was something I could master.

Thank you to Lorraine Heart and Rosemary Ezzo who gracefully

took charge 0
a prcject 53

Thanks g

vi

took charge of the many administrative details that accompany
a project such as this.

Thanks goes to my committee members: Professors Ellen
Pollak, Larry Landrum, and Marcia Aldrich. Not only did they
devote many hours to reading my comprehensive exams and my
dissertation, but they always offered valuable advice and
posed challenging questions. I am especially grateful to
Professor Pollak for her careful editorial suggestions; I
know I am,a better writer because of them. I also appreciate
the care with which my outside reader, Professor Joyce
Ladenson, considered this study.

NO project like this can be completed without the help
of friends, and I have been fortunate to have had the support
of many. For the most valuable advice I received about
dissertation writing, I thank Robert Robinson. For constant
encouragement and gentle prodding, I thank Virginia Unkefer.
And not only for allowing me to use his printer to print this
document, but also for carefully reading all 387 pages of it,
I thank Peter Morris. His excellent suggestions--many of
which I no doubt foolishly ignored--made this a better
project, and his kind commendation helped give me the
confidence to submit it for defense.

I offer my deepest gratitude to my dissertation director
and friend, Professor Katherine Fishburn. Without her, this
project never would have been completed. Professor Fishburn

has been more than generous with her time, her ideas, and her

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vii

encouragement. She made me think of myself as a scholar
rather than a student. If I am.ab1e to give to my students
and colleges a measure of what Professor Fishburn has given
to me, I will count myself a success.

Finally, I owe special debts and thanks to my parents,
Bill and Nedra Seay, and my husband, Tom.Carey. My parents
sacrificed and invested in my education for many years to
build the foundation that made this work possible. This
dissertation represents, among other things, the achievement
of the dreams they enabled me to have for myself. My
husband's role in this project has been more immediate. I
cannot thank him enough for refusing to think of me as
anything but a professional. Tom's willingness to move one
thousand miles from Mississippi, his ability to survive
indefinitely on Chinese take-out, and his confidence in my
ability to complete this study were essential to its success.
I know I will spend the rest of my life buoyed by his loving

encouragement, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

PREFACE

PART ONE :

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THEORIZING THE PEMINIST
INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER ONE: THE AMERICAN FEMINIST

ii.

iii.

iv.

vi.

INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY
Interpretive Communities
American Feminist Literary Criticism

Feminist Literary Criticism
and WOmen's Liberation

Feminist Literary Criticism and
Expressive Realism

Feminist Literary Criticism
and the New Criticism

Feminist Literary Criticism
and Postmodernism

CHAPTER TWO: RE-READING THE FEMINIST

ii.

iii.

iv.

vi.

INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY
Breaking the Connections:
Resisting Experience-Based
Approaches to WOmen's writing

Feminist Literary Critics/
”Ethical Critics"

Bearing the System:
Identifying Multiple
Subject Positions

"Female Ingenuity":
A Study of Subtexts

Moving Towards a Resisting Reading

The Possibility of Reading

viii

18

3O

40

42

45

53

53

62

66

7O
73
77

PART TWO :

READING WOMEN WRI TERS

CHAPTER THREE: READING WILLA CATHER

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

vi.

Willa Cather and the
American Literary Tradition

The American Feminist
Interpretive Community
Reads Willa Cather

Reading My Antonia

"A Painful and Peculiar Pleasure":
Towards a Resisting Reading

of My Antonia

Reading Sapphire and the Slave Girl

”But These Things Are Beyond Us":
Towards a Resisting Reading of

Sapphire and the Slave Girl

CHAPTER FOUR: READING EDITH WHARTON

i.

ii.

iii.

iv.

vi.

Edith Wharton and the
American Literary Tradition

The American Feminist
Interpretive Community
Reads Edith Wharton

Reading The House pf Mirth

"She Had Saved Herself Whole":
Towards a Resisting Reading

of The House of Mirth
Reading The Mother's Recompgnse

"Rewarded for Having Given
Up Her Daughter”: Towards a Resisting

Reading of The Mother's Recompgnse

84
84

84

94
106

116

143

155

184

184

197
212

224

245

255

CEHI'ER

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CHAPTER FIVE: READING JESSIE FAUSET 271

i. Jessie Fauset and the
American Literary Tradition 271

ii. The American Feminist
Interpretive Community
Reads Jessie Fauset 282

iii. ”Living in Some Sort of Story":
Towards a Resisting Reading of

The Sleeper wakes 292

iv. ”I'm Just Miss Nobody":
Towards a Resisting Reading
of There is Confusion 296

v. ”She Saw Her Life Rounding Out
Like a Fairy Tale": Towards a
Resisting Reading of Plum Bun 309

vi. "Give Me Peace and Security,
A Home Life Like Other WOmen”:
Towards a Resisting Reading

of The Chinaberry Tree 324

PART THREE: THEORIZING A NEW FEMINIST
INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY 336
CHAPTER SIX: RESISTING THE READINGS 336

WORKS CITED 365

PREFACE

Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar--well-known editors of

The Morton Antholpgy of Literature by women (1985) and

authors of a book on nineteenth-century women writers, The

 

Madwomgn in phe Attic (1979), as well as a two volume follow-
up study of twentieth-century women writers, No Man's Land
(1988, 1989)--show in great detail throughout their works the
many ways women writers respond to the restrictions of their
society by "subverting patriarchal literary standards" (1979,
73). In this respect the two are representative of a large
number of American feminist literary critics of the past two
decades. Their work to define a female literary tradition
has been groundbreaking. Along with many other feminist
literary critics, Gilbert and Gubar were responsible for the
recovery of long neglected women writers. In addition, they
developed interpretive strategies that enabled us to read and
understand women writers in new and valuable ways. But their
work, and that of many other feminist literary critics of
their generation, has not been without major flaws. While
admirable, the assiduous efforts of Gilbert and Gubar as well
as most other American feminist literary critics to bring

women writers "into the sisterhood" are also reductive.1

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Gilbert and Gubar insist, for example, that the most
important fiction of Willa Cather and Edith Wharton
"dramatized their discontent with what they saw as a
crippling but inexorable feminization of women” (1989, xii).
Nevertheless, the two critics go on to assert that ”despite
all [the] evidence that Edith Wharton was neither in theory
nor in practice a feminist, her major fictions, taken
together, constitute perhaps the most searching-~and searing-
-feminist analysis of the construction of 'femininity'
produced by any novelist in this century" (1989, 128).

The chief problem with this analysis of Wharton, Cather,
and other women writers--and a problem that is characteristic
of much American feminist literary criticisms-is its absolute
insistence that every woman writer is a nascent feminist
engaged in either covert or overt subversion of the
patriarchy. Such a reductive clinging to the unified story
of female oppression limits feminist literary criticism in
significant ways. It becomes impossible to recognize, among
other things, the ways in which women writers are products of
as well as protestors against their society. A second
significant flaw in fig Man's Land--and other works like it--
lies, not with the women writers Gilbert and Gubar include,
but with the ones they omit. For example, in the almost 650
pages these critics devote to twentieth-century women writers
in their two volume book, they mention Jessie Fauset, a

Harlem.Renaissance novelist of the same generation as Cather

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and Wharton, only once: they promise that she will figure in
the third volume of No Man's Land, which has yet to appear.
Like Elaine Showalter and Ellen Moers, two other feminist
critics writing in the late 19703, Gilbert and Gubar employ
interpretive strategies that are based on notions of personal
experience. Such strategies apparently make it difficult for
them to critique a woman writer unlike themselves (white,
middle class, well educated). WOmen writers like Jessie
Fauset thus become invisible in the new, feminist canon just
as they had been in the old, traditional one. Critical
blindspots such as these, which riddle American feminist
literary criticism, constitute the subject of "Resisting the
Readings: New Feminist Interpretive Strategies for Cather,
Wharton, and Fauset.”

In an attempt to understand how the interpretive
strategies favored by feminist literary critics evolved,
Chapter One, "The American Feminist Interpretive Community,"
examines the history of feminist literary criticism. Chapter
Two, "Re-Reading the Feminist Interpretive Community,"
critiques the interpretive strategies employed by the
feminist community and proposes new interpretive strategies
that can be applied to women's writing in order to correct
the problematic readings which continue to characterize
feminist literary criticism. Chapters Three, Four, and Five
use Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Jessie Fauset as

examples of the ways feminist literary criticism.has

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historically dealt with women writers as well as examples of
the way new interpretive strategies can revolutionize a
feminist understanding of women writers and readers. In an
attempt to provide resisting readings of these three
important American women writers who have been variously
addressed by feminist critics, this study offers rereadings
of selected works by Cather, Wharton, and Fauset. As I
conduct resisting readings of the texts, I attempt to resist
not only the novels themselves, but also the previous
readings of them. The study undertakes, that is, to use
Cather, Wharton, and Fauset criticism as the basis for a
critique of the limits of current feminist approaches to
women's writing. While it seeks to expose some of the
blindspots of feminist critical practice in the field of
American studies, its ultimate aim is to elaborate new
interpretive strategies whereby American feminist literary
criticism might become more responsive to postmodern
critiques of subjectivity.

Chapter Three begins by tracing the critical reception
of Willa Cather in an attempt to demonstrate how interpretive
communities that do not share a feminist commitment to what
Elizabeth Meese has called the "discourse of liberation" have
nevertheless shaped feminist readings of women's writing.

For example, Cather's earliest critics were intent on proving
her "Americanness" and focused most of their critical

attention on her prairie novels. Given the claims of

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originality feminist critics often make, it is ironic that
their selection criteria are so highly influenced by Cather's
male critics from the 19403 and 19503, who, like the feminist
interpretive community, analyzed My Aptonia more than any
other Cather novel. A resisting reading of that novel
reveals ways the feminist interpretive community has
overlooked Cather's overriding concern with racial, national,
and sexual "difference,” and the way it stunts success in her
fictional world. Moving on to her most neglected novel,
Sapphire and the Slave Girl, a resisting reading illuminates
equally disturbing aspects of Cather's oeuvre that feminist
interpretive strategies have not allowed us to recognize.
Chapter Four, which takes as its subject Edith Wharton,
begins with an attempt to demonstrate how the degree of
acceptance afforded a woman writer by the male critical
establishment influences her treatment at the hands of the
feminist interpretive community. Unlike Cather, who was
fully embraced, Wharton has always had an ambivalent
relationship with the critical establishment. Consequently,
feminist critics have found it slightly easier to resist her
fiction. The chapter also further develops the idea that
many of the interpretive strategies traditionally employed by
feminist literary critics subvert, rather than promote, the
feminist interpretive community's effort to contribute to the
"discourse of liberation." For example, feminist Wharton

scholars who persist in defining Lily Bart as a unilateral

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victim participate in the patriarchal gesture of denying
female agency. By providing resisting readings of The House
e:_Mi;ph and The nethep's Reeohpense this chapter
demonstrates how postmodern critical strategies can
successfully be appropriated for the feminist study of women
writers.

Chapter Five is a study of Jessie Fauset, a woman writer
whose name is seldom recognized despite the fact that she was
one of the most important and influential figures of the
Harlem.Renaissance. As I have suggested, her neglect is due
in part to the fact that the feminist critical community has
not yet developed interpretive strategies that allow us to
sufficiently examine the complicated interactions of race,
class, and gender in the work of women writers. Thus, as
this chapter demonstrates, the primary task of becoming
resisting readers of Jessie Fauset lies in resisting the
tendency to advocate connection between text or author and
reader without questioning the assumptions such connections
make about what constitutes women writers and women readers.
This chapter provides resisting readings of four works by
Jessie Fauset: The Sleeper wakes, There is Confusion, ELSE

un, and The Chineherpy Tree.

The most important theoretical assumption of this study
is that it is necessary for the feminist interpretive
community to fully theorize its interpretive strategies and

capitalize upon a self-conscious awareness of its own

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prejudices and assumptions by altering those strategies
which, when carefully examined, prove to be detrimental to
the goals of feminist literary criticism. In other words, as
this study shall attempt to demonstrate, it is necessary for
feminist literary critics to begin to read women writers
resistingly in much the same way Judith Fetterley suggested
in The ResTstTng Reader that women should read male writers.
A resisting reading of Cather, Wharton, and Fauset reveals
that a willingness to interrogate women writers and the texts
they create does not conflict with a feminist commitment to
attaining and defending equal rights for all women. Instead,
it gives women the tools to recognize more fully their
participation in their own oppression as well as in the
oppression of other women. As this study demonstrates, the
project of feminist literary criticism involves reading texts
differently from the way they have been read in the past. As
a result, as members of the feminist interpretive community,

we will be different because of our reading.

NOTES

11n Feminist Literapy Histogy (New York: Routledge,

1988) Janet Todd observes this phenomenon in the treatment of
Jane Austen by the feminist interpretive community: "In the
beginning of the feminist critical enterprise there was
considerable effort to bring Jane Austen into the useable
female past . . . to bring her into the sisterhood" (100).

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PART ONE

THEORIEING THE FEMINIST INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER ONE

THE AMERICAN FEMINIST INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY

Interpretive Communities

All readers, whether they acknowledge it or not, belong
to at least one, if not more than one, interpretive
community. The innocent, objective reader does not exist;
"he" is a myth. Furthermore, no interpretive community
stands alone, bravely and gloriously insulated from.the
literary heresies surrounding or preceding it. Rather, all
interpretive communities are, at some level, related and
indebted to each other. The American feminist interpretive
community is especially interesting in this respect.1
Feminist critics differ in their affiliations with other
interpretive communities; hence, a single, monolithic
feminist interpretive community cannot be said to exist.
However, there are numerous similarities among American
feminist literary critics, and this study will attempt to

examine and critique the interpretive strategies shared by

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10

most members of this loosely affiliated interpretive
community.

Coming into its own in the 19703 and closely connected
to the socio-political women's movement of that era, feminist
literary criticism has always purported to be unique and
distinctive, a response and reaction to what it has described
as the mainstream, patriarchal literary criticism that
dominated English departments prior to its emergence. In
many ways, feminist literary criticism was, and still is
today, highly colored by its own unique agenda originating in
that women's liberation movement. In other distinctive and
relatively unexamined ways the feminist interpretive
community inevitably carries within it many of the prejudices
and assumptions of those interpretive communities out of
which it arose and which have continued to influence it since
its emergence.

For the purposes of this analysis I intend to rely on a
definition of the term "interpretive community" that is as
simple and as inclusive as possible.2 It is my hope that in
this way I will be able both to explore and to expose aspects
of American feminist literary criticism which have remained
hidden by less contextual studies without encountering some
of the problems of vagueness or omission that a more
complicated or exclusive definition of interpretive community
might pose. An interpretive community is a group of readers

who share similar ideological repertoires as well as similar

11

interpretive strategies. These three elements are
interconnected and mutually constitutive: interpretive
communities construct ideology, which constructs interpretive
strategies, which in turn construct interpretive communities.
I do think it is necessary, however, to regard interpretive
communities as literally as possible. In her book
Essentially Speaking Diana Fuss suggests that feminist
critics need to "theorize essentialist spaces from which to
speak and, simultaneously . . . deconstruct those spaces to
keep them from solidifying" (118). In addressing the
question of whether autonomous, individual readers
(specifically in the case of this project women readers who
are feminists) read ontological texts (specifically texts by
women writers) I think it is imperative to begin by
theorizing an essentialist space in which we are free to
grant a priori status to both readers and to texts.3 Part of
this project, however, will entail deconstructing that very
space in order to reveal how feminist interpretive
communities have operated on texts by women writers in the
past as well as to indicate how, as feminist readers, we
might begin to analyze such texts in the future.

Membership in an interpretive community is usually
constituted by that group's self-definition and by
recognition on the part of individual members that they
belong. However, because all interpretive communities are

not located within the academy and thus may not have

ievelcped the s
shclars typica
conscituted in
'9 dafinition <
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.ians t

12

developed the same sense of self-consciousness that literary
scholars typically possess, this self-definition may not be
constituted in a uniform way. In other words, according to
my definition of interpretive community, women who habitually
read nothing but romance novels clearly constitute an
interpretive community in spite of the fact that unlike
academicians they do not publish manifestoes or hold
conferences. One general rule of thumb that is especially
useful for identifying interpretive communities is to apply
the criteria suggested by Janice Radway: members of an
interpretive community all "select, use, and operate on
printed texts in certain socially specific ways" (1984, 55).4
Hence, an analysis of an interpretive community will entail
an examination of the social, historical, and cultural forces
which shape the group. In addition, it is crucial to
remember that an individual reader may belong to more than
one interpretive community at a time. It is imperative that
we acknowledge that individual interpretive communities do
not and cannot operate independently of one another.

The fact that all interpretive communities are related
will become a central feature in my analysis of how the
feminist interpretive community functions. In speaking of
language, M. M. Bakhtin claims that because it is not a
”neutral medium" it cannot pass "freely and easily into the
private property of the speaker's intentions” (294). This is

because before words are ever uttered they have been colored,

13

or as Bakhtin puts it "overpopulated," by the intentions of
the people who have used the words in the past (294). The
same may be said of the interpretive strategies employed by
individual readers within interpretive communities. All
readers encounter texts through the screen of the previous
readings of those texts by members of their own as well as
other interpretive communities. Even when a specific text
has never before been read, its first readers encounter it
through the grid of their own interpretive strategies and,
perhaps to a lesser degree, those of other interpretive
communities. Interpretive strategies are never neutral, and
neither are they unique to their respective communities.
Once again, Bakhtin provides a way for us to articulate this
phenomenon: "There are no 'neutral' words and forms--words
and forms that can belong to 'no one'; language has been
completely taken over, shot through with intentions and
accents” (293). The same may be said of interpretive
strategies and interpretive communities; private ownership of
interpretive strategies by interpretive communities is as
impossible as private ownership of words.

While we can certainly imagine an "Ur" interpretive
community--the first readers of the first words--it is
impossible to define their "intentions and accents."
Nevertheless, all subsequent readers have brought with them,
in some form.or other, the interpretive strategies of that

original community. In other words, at some point the

14

individual beliefs or ideologies of some members of the "Ur"
community evolved so radically that they no longer found
their former interpretive strategies acceptable. As a
result, they formed a second interpretive community. This new
community inevitably carried with it many "intentions and
accents" appropriated from.the "Ur” community. Thus, it
becomes clear that Bakhtin's claim that the "word in language
is half someone else's" can be extended to the interpretive
strategies a community employs. Leaping many generations
into the present, we can easily find contemporary examples of
this phenomenon. The interpretive strategies of the
deconstructive interpretive community did not spring like
Athena from.the head of Derrida. Rather, they evolved as
Derrida and other critics like him seized upon the
structuralist interpretive community's attention to binary
oppositions and then attempted to demonstrate how such
oppositions ultimately dismantle themselves. In some
respects, one could object that the structuralist
interpretive community already contained the
deconstructionist interpretive community within it. The
interpretive strategies employed by each group are quite
different, however, and the self-definition of members
belonging to each group are distinctive. we can therefore
regard structuralism.and deconstruction as two separate
interpretive communities which nevertheless illustrate the

connections between all interpretive communities.

I second
say give rise
”anected, m
It is importa

535 prCfOH nd

“to“

13118

3‘98 acre '1:

15

A second related objection to which these observations
may give rise is that if all interpretive communities are
connected, then we do not need to theorize them.individually.
It is important, however, to stress that while there are deep
and profound similarities between interpretive communities,
there are also radical differences which must be recognized
because they lead to the significant differences between the
interpretive strategies employed by members of each group.
Even more importantly, it is clear that while these profound
similarities between and among interpretive communities exist
in theory, in practice they are seldom, if ever,
acknowledged. Consequently, interpretive communities are
incapable of fully theorizing their own interpretive
practices because they are blind to their origins. I believe
it is necessary to stress the interconnectedness of all
interpretive communities because a failure to do so results
in a false sense of isolation and uniqueness on the part of
individual critics. Such insufficient theorization leads to
textual readings that are unable to acknowledge many of the
"intentions and accents" that produced them. For example,
when feminist literary critics, ignoring completely the many
fully developed immigrant characters in M Antonia, focus
exclusively on Antonia and Jim Burden in their studies of
Willa Cather's novel, they are unable to recognize the ways
they are simply following in the footsteps of the New Critics

‘Who first called the novel a "masterpiece” in the 19403.

It is 12;)
interpretive c
bU-Iever, but I
facilitate and
articulates ti“.

1“!

UMP
The 15331
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with the

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light C :

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16

It is important that we view the interconnectedness of
interpretive communities not as something to be overcome,
however, but rather as something that, when recognized, will
facilitate and enrich understanding. Hans-Georg Gadamer
articulates this beautifully in Truth and Method (1960,
1991):

The important thing is to recognize temporal distance as

a positive and productive condition enabling

understanding. It is not a yawning abyss but is filled

with the continuity of custom and tradition, in the
light of which everything handed down presents itself to

us. (297)

The more we illuminate the ”continuity” of interpretive
strategies between interpretive communities, the more fully
we will understand our own understanding. Gadamer believes
that readers bring their own biases, or what he calls ”fore-
meanings," ‘with them to the texts they read, but he also
realizes that each reading of a text is influenced by the
readings that have preceded it. Consequently, although he
does not utilize the term "interpretive communities" Gadamer
is acutely aware of how all readings are interconnected.5 In
PhiToeophical Hermeneutics (1976) he explains, "It seems to
me that there can be no doubt that the great horizon of the
;past, out of which our culture and our present live,
linfluences us in everything we want, hope for, or fear in the

future" (9). According to Gadamer, whether or not

individuals he
these texts he
the: ward , (
products of t!
intercocnecm
The fee;
Flilty Cf fa:
mafpretive .
""037128 its

M
sztemra v
a y

t

17

individuals have read historical (or traditionary) texts,
those texts have contributed to that person's identity. In
other words, Gadamer argues that interpretive communities are
products of the readings that have preceded them and are thus
interconnected (1960, 340).

The feminist interpretive community has been especially
guilty of failing to acknowledge its debt to other
interpretive communities, and thus has sometimes failed to
recognize its own interpretive strategies. One way
contemporary feminist literary critics can avoid reproducing
such failures is to utilize reader response criticism.

Reader response criticism.and Stanley Fish's theories of
interpretive communities give us necessary tools for
understanding how the feminist interpretive community
operates. .A common complaint about reader response criticism
is that it is descriptive, in the sense that it attempts to
explain what people do when they read, rather than
prescriptive, in the sense that it tells us how we should
read.‘ But it is crucial to understand what we "naturally” do
as we read as members of an interpretive community before we
move on to try to develop a prescription for a better kind of
reading. Otherwise we will never be able to correct any of
the flaws already existing in our critical reading system.

In the ensuing analysis I shall attempt to show that those
flaws are legion, but correctable, in the feminist

interpretive community.

18

American Feminist Literary Criticism

Analyzing the history of feminist literary criticism
might seem a redundant task if one considers the many
detailed books and articles on the topic that have emerged in
recent years.7 Previous attempts to explore and define
feminist literary criticism have made valuable contributions
to our understanding of this movement, but these works have
for the most part failed to situate feminist literary
criticism within the larger critical culture. By examining
the literary criticism written by feminists since the 19703
as the product of a feminist interpretive community, it is
possible to look at such work contextually. In one of the
first works of feminist literary criticism, Sexual Politics
(1970), Kate Millett called for critics to take into account
”the larger cultural context in which literature is conceived
and produced" (xiv). The time has come to take this project
one step further and examine feminist literary criticism in
the context of the social, historical, and cultural forces
that shape it. If we look at feminist literary criticism.as
the product of an interpretive community, we will be able to
recognize how the ”intentions and accents" of the women's
liberation movement as well as a variety of schools of
literary criticism.have shaped the interpretive strategies
employed by the feminist literary critics who have, in

Jenathan Culler's words, ”mastered the system” (1975, 120).

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19

In the following pages, I shall attempt such an analysis. In
order to contextualize my own critique of American feminist
criticism I shall first briefly trace the history of its
development.

The connections between the women's liberation movement
and the feminist interpretive community were not openly
acknowledged by most early feminist literary critics.

Because Elaine Showalter has been involved in tracing the
history of feminist literary criticism almost from its
inception, it seems worthwhile to examine her construction of
its development. Showalter divides feminist literary
criticism.into two branches: the study of literature written
about women--"feminist critique"--and the study of literature
written by women--”gynocritics" (1979, 128). While in "Toward
a Feminist Poetics” Showalter acknowledges the importance of
approaching women's literature with "historical awareness,"
she does not seem to admit to much ”historical awareness"
with respect to her own critical project. She briefly
mentions that there are ”activists” practicing feminist
literary criticism, but she does not trace the connections
between these theorists and the the women's liberation
movement (1979, 127). Showalter thus effectively de-
historicizes the project of feminist literary criticism, and
most critics following her have perpetuated this blindness.

.Although Annette Kolodny asserts that "without

'consciousness raising,’ [there would be] no feminist

literary cr
feminisc li
her atterpt
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20

literary criticism," like Showalter, she does not situate
feminist literary criticism within its activist context in
her attempt to describe its development(1980, 163). Rather,
in "Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the
Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary
Criticism? (1980), she illuminates what she regards as the
important achievements of the school. According to Kolodny,
the most important achievement of feminist literary criticism
has been to call into question "that dog-eared myth of
intellectual neutrality" (1980, 163). Interestingly, while
Kolodny seems unwilling to explore many of the assumptions
and prejudices that shape feminist literary criticism itself
and prevent it from achieving a so-called neutrality, she
does suggest that feminist literary criticism is indebted to
other critical methodologies. Kolodny calls for a
constructive use of these other theories: "Our task is to
initiate nothing less than a playful pluralism, responsive to
the possibilities of multiple critical schools and methods,
but captive of none, recognizing that the many tools needed
for our analysis will necessarily be largely inherited and
only partly of our own making" (1980, 161). Ultimately,
Kolodny's position, while not initiating a contextual
exploration of feminist literary criticism, does suggest an
early awareness of the usefulness of such a project.

In 1984 Elaine Showalter returned again to the subject

of the history of feminist literary criticism in her essay

mn's Tine
3:31:1st '.
of its attest;

418:4?! Cf;t;

21

"women's Time, women's Space: Writing the History of Feminist
Criticism." This essay is particularly interesting because
of its attention to the "professionalization" of feminist
literary criticism and because of Showalter's shift towards
seeing feminist literary criticism contextually. Instead of
posing a traditional approach to the study of its history,
Showalter suggests that critics should emphasize the
relationships between women which resulted in feminist
literary criticism and implies thereby that the relationship
between feminist literary criticism and the women's
liberation movement which gave rise to it would be a fruitful
one to explore (1984, 31). It becomes even more clear that
this is her purpose when she describes the intimate
relationship between her own activism and her literary
criticism:
It was not until I joined the women's liberation
movement in the spring of 1969 and began to teach a
course on women and literature, that the personal became
the critical, and that my passionate interest in women's
writing began to define itself as feminist criticism.
It was not isolation, discrimination, radical politics,
the structuralist controversy, or an Oedipal rebellion
against Cleanth Brooks that made women feminist critics,
but the polemical force, activist commitment, powerful
analysis, and sense of mutual endeavor that came out of

the women's movement. (1984, 34)

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a‘:er ignoriflg ‘
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“rough feminist
were that she
State of affairs

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22

It seems reasonable to wonder why Showalter suddenly
began to advocate an analysis of the relationship between the
women's liberation movement and feminist literary criticism
after ignoring that relationship for over a decade. The
answer becomes obvious a few pages later when she observes,
”If in its origins feminist criticism derived more from
feminism than from criticism, we could argue that today the
situation is reversed" (1984, 36). Showalter plaintively
observes that some women (and even some men) are coming to
feminist literary criticism without earning their union card
through feminist activism. Showalter seems blissfully
unaware that she is at least partially to blame for this
state of affairs. Her insistence, and that of others like
her, on suppressing the ideological connections between
women's liberation and feminist literary criticism in the
early articulations of feminist literary theory made it
easier for other interpretive communities to appropriate the
interpretive strategies of the feminist interpretive
community. It also made it possible for feminists themselves
to ignore important connections.

Pierre Macherey has observed that "the language of
ideology" is always hidden in a literary text, and the
critic's job is to look for the gaps and silences which are
"eloquent by [their] very absence" (60). Certainly, as we
look back with a critical eye upon the attempts of the

American feminist interpretive community to articulate its

aster? ‘9 can
Shoalter's ‘6
absence 0‘ any
:25 silencer

staging We

sexist 11‘ I
emulated, a
essence. 553"”

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23

history we cannot help but notice that, with the exception of
Showalter's rather unusual essay, there is an "eloquent"
absence of any reference to the women's liberation movement.
This silence, it seems to me, points towards the powerful
shaping force the ideology of women's liberation had upon
feminist literary criticism. It was a power too strong to be
articulated, a power which can only be revealed through its
absence. Showalter, Kolodny, and other important feminists
buried the connection between the women's liberation movement
and feminist literary criticism at a time when many more
people than today were openly hostile to the aims and
ideology of women's liberation. These critics no doubt found
it necessary to downplay the connection between feminist
literary criticism and feminism. But by 1984, with an
audience which was more aware of, and perhaps more
sympathetic towards the women's liberation project, Showalter
may have felt that she could address the connections more
directly. Additionally, as she herself observes, by 1984
when ”WOmen's Time, WOmen's Space” first appeared, feminist
literary criticism had gained considerable status in the
academy and could perhaps afford making its connections to a
still somewhat unpopular and misunderstood political movement
more overt. One of the goals of this study is to continue
Showalter's efforts to foreground the way the women's
liberation movement has shaped the interpretive strategies of

the feminist interpretive community.

Although I
criticism exi51
fainist inter;
the project of
sierrately uncle
fermist litera
readers Who she
sililar interp:
consider to be
interpretive c:
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binaries viz.
that More att

GI

«aeration mow

24

Although many fine histories of feminist literary
criticism.exist, no critic has adequately contextualized the
feminist interpretive community.8 If we are to forge ahead in
the project of feminist literary criticism, we must
adequately understand our past. In my quest to explore
feminist literary criticism as the product of a group of
readers who share similar ideological repertoires as well as
similar interpretive strategies, I intend to emphasize what I
consider to be the two most important facets of the feminist
interpretive community: the political agenda that has shaped
feminist interpretive strategies and the other interpretive
communities which have influenced the criticism. I believe
that more attention needs to be paid to how the women's
liberation movement constructed the feminist interpretive
community both in the early years when the connection was
:more overt and in more recent years when that connection has
been, for various reasons which deserve exploration, more
covert. In addition, as feminist literary critics, we must
pay more attention to the identities of individual members of
the feminist interpretive community. By this I mean our
identities with respect to our traditional roles as lovers,
‘wives, mothers, and caretakers; our radical efforts to revise
or reject these roles; as well as our identities as
professional readers, scholars, teachers, and critics. The
way these roles shape the feminist interpretive community and

the interpretive strategies it employs are crucial. we also

see: to explol
corstroct the
backgrounds s.
illuainate Haj

farist one .

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5"

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25

need to explore how feminist literary critics are taught to
construct their readings of texts and how our educational
backgrounds shape our own community. In this way we will
illuminate ways other interpretive communities shape the
feminist one. we also need to think about how the feminist
interpretive community "selects, uses, and operates on"
texts. Why are feminists involved in the study of
literature? What do we use texts for in both our classrooms
and in our scholarship? What do we think texts can g9: If
we thoroughly understand these factors, we will be able to
move forward and reshape the feminist interpretive community
in such a way that we make productive and life-giving changes
where necessary while still preserving the best and most
essential features of the project of feminist literary
criticism. Obviously, this is a complicated metacritical
project.

The first step towards defining feminist literary
criticism as the product of an interpretive community
involves, it seems to me, identifying how individual members
of that community construct their self-definition and
recognize their common ties. In general, feminist literary
critics possess a high degree of self-consciousness with
respect to their unique academic project. However, they tend
not to possess the same kind of awareness regarding the
historical context of that project. Turning to some of their

proclamations will, I believe, reveal not only the grounds

for 'tlse sir;
are members c
res-eal some c
56131 the in
item? crit

Kate xi:

333? crrt
’a‘

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literary crit

26

for "the simple knowing” on the part of feminists that they
are members of an interpretive community, but will also
reveal some of the hidden ideological and critical constructs
behind the interpretive strategies employed by feminist
literary critics.

Kate Millett, one of the first practitioners of feminist
literary criticism.and the person to whom all historians
refer as a foremother, does not use the phrase ”feminist
literary criticism" to label her project. She calls the as-
yet unnamed theory "something of an anomaly, a hybrid,
possibly a new mutation altogether” (xiv). Two years later
in an anthology entitled Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist
PepspeetTves (1972), Susan Koppelman Cornillon does not name
the new interpretive community either but observes that the
essays contained in the anthology constitute "new forms of
analysis" and ”new directions for women in reading and
understanding fiction" (x). In that same anthology, Fraya
Katz-Stoker comes closer to naming and defining the feminist
interpretive community:

In seeking to destroy patriarchal ideology in order to

better the position of women in society, feminist

criticism is a political act. Feminist criticism is a

materialist approach to literature which attempts to do

away with the formalist illusion that literature is

somehow divorced from the rest of reality. (326)

In a very she:
as becoming <
approaches--s<
centuries of 1

In 1975 ;
collection of
self-C0nsr:ious
53d artiC‘dlate
like, mnOVan'

21erPI8t1VQ C

FeminiSts

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27

In a very short period of time feminist literary criticism
was becoming defined as an alternative to other critical
approaches--something radically different that could correct
centuries of literary misreadings and literal oppression.

In 1975 Josephine Donovan edited an anthology entitled
Eemihiet Literepy CTTtTCism: Explogatione Th Theopy. This
collection of five essays was one of the first systematic and
self-conscious attempts to define feminist literary criticism
and articulate the direction such criticism was beginning to
take. Donovan's position statement for the feminist
interpretive community is clear and concise:

Feminists believe that women have been locked off in a

condition of lesser reality by the dominant patriarchal

attitudes and customs of our culture. we find these
attitudes and customs reified in the institutions of
literature and literary criticism. Feminist critics--
like feminists in every area--are engaged in negating

these reifications. (74)

.As far as Donovan and the other critics collected in Fethist
LTtereTy CTTtTcish.were concerned, the project of feminist
literary criticism was nothing more and nothing less than to
effect a radical corrective of the position women hold not
only in literary texts but also in society.

A decade after the appearance of Donovan's pioneering
collection, Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn edited a

collection of essays in which they wrote, "Feminist literary

critics atten
ideology, foc
literary for:
imitations

the self-def:

@Pfession of

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339.32%, as ‘
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28

critics attend to the collusion between literature and
ideology, focusing on the ways ideology is inscribed within
literary forms, styles, conventions, genres and the
institutions of literary production" (5). The emphasis in
the self-definition has shifted in subtle ways away from the
oppression of individual women to the more abstract concept
of ideology. The essays collected in Elaine Showalter's 1985
anthology The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on WOmen,
Literature, and Theopy posit several definitions of feminist
literary criticism. Even the title of the collection is
interesting in respect to its definition of the literary
:movement, as it seems to be differentiating the literary
criticism contained in the book from that articulated a
decade earlier by critics like Donovan. The major
difference, it seems to me between Showalter's "new“ feminist
criticism.and the "old” criticism of the 19703 seems to be
its vocabulary rather than its substance. Whereas Donovan
called outright for a "politically motivated" criticism,
Showalter modifies her demands as she writes, "The task of
feminist critics is to find a new language, a new way of
reading that can integrate our intelligence and our
experience, our reason and our suffering, our skepticism.and
our vision" (141-142).

In some respects one might say self-definitions of
feminist literary critics in the 19803 grew more

sophisticated as feminist critics adopted the language of

mre tradit.
criticism 0:
farther and
rhetoric, f;
Patti "any I
'ti'ie very 15
'mitnents

:3 define C:

29

more traditional critical schools. Feminist literary
criticism of the late 19803 and early 903 has clearly moved
farther and farther away, at least with respect to its public
rhetoric, from the notion of ”negating reifications” of the
patriarchy to questioning, in Catherine R. Stimpson's words,
"the very language in which we now articulate" feminist
commitments (5). It has become increasingly more difficult
to define or label the feminist interpretive community as the
community itself has lost some of its earlier confidence in
the ability of language ever to define or label. I believe,
nevertheless, that such a project must be undertaken if
feminist literary criticism is to continue to remain true to

its original purpose.

Ferris:

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and the Hex
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in";

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30

Feminist Literary Criticism and WOmen's Liberation

In order to clarify what that purpose is, we must
examine the connections between feminist literary criticism
and the women's liberation movement. A great deal of
literature was produced in the late 19603 and the early 19703
dealing with the women's liberation movement.9 And since that
time several informative histories have been written.10 In
trying to capture the essence of that momentous period of

change in the history of the United States, I shall rely in

part on STsterhppg Ts Powerful: An Antholpgy of writings from

the WOmen's Liberation Movement (1970). Robin Morgan edited
this anthology, wrote its introduction, and does an admirable
job of analyzing a movement at whose center she exists. The
central truth of the women's liberation movement is,
according to Morgan, that "no matter what we are, say, do, or
believe, there is no getting away from.the shared, primary
oppression of being female in a patriarchal world” (xxxv).
The primary force for change in the women's liberation
:movement is personal experience: "WOmen's liberation is the
first radical movement to base its politics--in fact, create
its politics-~out of concrete personal experiences” (Morgan
xvii). The insistence that women rely on their own personal
[experience as an oppressed population echoes through Morgan's
introduction as well as through all of the contributions to

her anthology. She asserts, "we've learned that [concrete

personal] ex
shared by ev
Personal res
oooclusion M
e'v’angelicalz
I hOpe
Change
Wiener:
EIE35ers
EXlSts
peIsQna

L.
shape a

31

personal] experiences are 223 our private hang-ups. They are
shared by every woman, and are therefore political" (xviii).
Personal responsibility is crucial. In her ringing
conclusion Morgan leaves no doubt that her goal is
evangelical:

I hope this book means something to you, makes some real

change in your heart and head . . . This is not a

movement one "joins." There are no rigid structures or

membership cards. The WOmen's Liberation Movement
exists . . . in your mind, and in the political and
personal insights that you can contribute to change and

shape and help its growth. (xxxvi)

The repetition of the words "change" and "personal
experience" in Morgan's introduction illuminates the core of
the new feminism out of which feminist literary criticism
arose.

The idea that ”consciousness raising" and change are
central to women's liberation emerges everywhere throughout
its literature. In the introduction to woman in Seszt
Society (1971) the editors argue that ”To recognize the
political nature of woman's condition, to see that it
constitutes one-half of a binding relation of power to
jpowerlessness . . . is vital to any understanding of women's
liberation and of the women's liberation movement" (Gornick
.x—xi). Recognition was to be immediately followed by

:reNolution. In her book The Dialectic of Sex: the Case for

Ferinist Rev:
air of the ne
once/class s
fiu'(16).

several assur
may hid-1e:
573telr-aticalj
Sxial 5.13:9:
System nee-fie:
:Ef'a‘re the Si
fiEurO'n De:
‘Eiip‘ists ha;
achieved: so:

There c.

32

Fethist hevoTution (1970) Shulamith Firestone proclaimed the
aim of the new feminism: "overthrow of the oldest, most rigid
caste/class system in existence, the class system based on
sex” (16). The women's liberation movement operated under
several assumptions that were, at least in these early works,
rarely hidden. First, feminists believed that women were
systematically discriminated against under the male-dominated
social system (patriarchy). Second, they agreed that this
system needed to be changed. 11 Third, they maintained that
before the system could be changed women needed to recognize
their own personal experience of oppression. And, finally,
feminists had faith that once recognition was sufficiently
achieved, women could successfully overthrow the patriarchy.
There can be no doubt that the feminist interpretive
community initially evolved through a connection between this
political movement and literary critics. And many of the
early feminist literary critics were fully conscious of these
connections as they made them central to their literary
criticism. In 1971 Lillian S. Robinson flatly observed,
"Feminist criticism, as its name implies, is criticism with a
Cause, engaged criticism! (21). In 1972 Nancy Burr Evans
declared that women readers needed to move beyond
"identification through mutual oppression" to "awakening" and
Waction" (311). Florence Howe's essay "Feminism and
Literature” (1972) is a good example of the self-

consciousness many early feminist literary critics possessed

33

with regards to their connections to the women's liberation
movement. Howe draws upon the women's liberation movement's
emphasis on personal experience as she states that the
initial connection between feminism and literature exists "in
our consciousness about our lives" (255). In an
autobiographical sketch Howe traces a direct line between her
"political consciousness" about her own life, her political
activism on behalf of herself as well as blacks in
Mississippi, her efforts to change her classroom, and the
resulting literary criticism, of which this essay is a prime
example (260). In an attempt to demonstrate the way feminist
literary criticism functions, Howe describes a group of women
reading Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening who come to
"recognize their relationship to Edna and [draw] strength,
not despair, from it" (274). The strength they draw,
according to Howe, lies not merely in recognition or
"consciousness raising," but also in the fact that "from a
feminist's point of view, literature has a significant social
function for the future” (267). This social function is to
effect societal as well as personal change, a cornerstone of
‘women's liberation thinking. Two ways Howe believes this
change can be effected is by the discovery of more role
:models for women readers and by the creation of literary
histories that include women (276).

Three years after Howe's essay appeared, Marcia Holly's

important article "Consciousness and Authenticity: Toward a

Feminist Aes
Feinist lit
conscious th
liberation a
that 'accura
'consciousze,
Stet- * 'nu' ~
90.} ‘3“:
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exafltiyfia 1H1

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via.
Pain
8 3
at;

34

Feminist Aesthetic" was published in Donovan's collection,
Fethist Literapy Criticism. If anything, Holly is even more
conscious than Howe of the connections between women's
liberation and feminist literary criticism. Holly insists
that "accurate criticism" can only be achieved after
”consciousness-raising": ”In order to recognize sexual
stereotyping and authenticity in a literary work, we must
first bring to a conscious level our own fundamental and
perhaps erroneous beliefs about the nature, character, and
destiny of women” (40). Before feminist critics can begin to
examine literary texts, according to Holly, they must examine
themselves. Holly is explicit about the political nature of
”most thoughtful communication," including literary
criticism. She insists that feminist literary criticism is
not only political, but it is also revolutionary because it
attempts to change society: "For this reason, our work has
become integrally bound with our lives; and because we are
involved in changing our lives, in discovering alternatives
for women, our criticism is not abstract--it is immediate,
concrete, emergent, even unpolished” (46). Like Howe, Holly
believes that feminist literary criticism ultimately must
help women achieve the goals of women's liberation. Another
early feminist literary critic, Cheri Register, was even more
blunt than Howe or Holly in her insistence that the women's
liberation movement and feminist literary criticism are

integrally related. Register suggests that the woman reader

 

'coapare tI
characters
ofcauses .
(24). Many
ofyarxist

~25: ‘;
”W t.

'6

‘5

35

"compare the problems encountered by female literary
characters with her own . . . explain similarities in terms
of causes . . . and decide on appropriate political action”
(24). Many early feminist literary critics shared the belief
of Marxist critics that political action and change should be
the ultimate goals of literary criticism.

A question we must ask, I believe, is why by the late
19703 feminist literary critics were no longer insisting in
their writings that the work of literary criticism is to
effect political change. The connections between women's
liberation and feminist literary criticism.seem.to grow
increasingly abstract, and the reason for this change is a
matter of some contention among feminists as well as other
literary critics. Toril Moi accuses Holly, a critic who
deemed herself revolutionary, of being a naive humanist who
cannot recognize her own collusion with the patriarchy (8).
On the other side of the debate Nina Baym expresses her
hostility towards critics like Moi and complains that
"feminist theory addresses an audience of prestigious male
academics and attempts to win its respect" (1984, 45). While
both accusations are at least in part valid, the resolution
to the debates taking place in feminist literary criticism
between critics like Moi and Baym is complicated. While
feminist literary criticism must always address the dual
goals of illumination and change, it is important to

recognize that this commitment can be expressed differently

 

by differen
interpretiv
criticism a
last realiz

it arose on

as tho:

oh “ ‘
N‘ a'aKenc

1'31 the fez:

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36

by different feminist literary critics within the feminist
interpretive community. If we think of feminist literary
criticism as the product of an interpretive community, we
must realize that it has never operated in a vacuum. Rather,
it arose out of other interpretive communities and continues
to be influenced by them to this day. Like any other
interpretive community, it too is constantly reshaping its
interpretive strategies. It is not enough to restrict our
analysis of the feminist interpretive community to questions
of women's liberation. Early feminist literary critics as
well as those operating today are much more than simply women
with awakened consciousnesses. In order to fully understand
how the feminist interpretive community functions we must
explore some of the other aspects that construct it,
including the ways in which other interpretive communities
have shaped it.

,Although the women's liberation.movement has often been
accused of being a movement of middle-class white women, from
the beginning it did manage to encompass a certain amount of
cultural and class diversity. While many black women
directed their energies towards race equality rather than
sexual equality, there was nothing inherent in feminism
preventing minority women (or poor women) from.recognizing
their oppression under the patriarchy and thus participating
in the political struggle to overthrow it. Feminist literary

criticism, on the other hand, while it emerged as a result of

 

the women ' 3
its foundim
criticism, (
This inplie:
scholars tY!
RY Years a
literary SCf
CC'VEr" SCZpE
of the Wine:
and talk ab,
page in tr.
the: litera:
".'.‘.‘.e..v;3reti",‘5
of t -

alt

geeseration f

e the .
:13
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the
chum
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‘ Q
"any 0.

'1
.I'

it»
s‘joug
4
I.
z. t ‘ *9
Rails.

37

the women's liberation movement, was not as egalitarian as
its founding sister. In order to practice feminist literary
criticism, critics had first to be trained literary scholars.
This implies a certain amount of class privilege. Literary
scholars typically have the means and the leisure to spend
many years as students. Then after graduating, even feminist
literary scholars usually spend their lives in the "ivory
tower,” somewhat secluded from the marches and picket lines
of the women's liberation movement. Being paid to read books
and talk about them.constitutes a ”privilege" of which most
people in the world can only dream. we must always remember
that literary critics, including members of the feminist
interpretive community, belong to an elite class. As members
of this elite class of literary scholars, many first
generation feminist literary critics, including Florence
Howe, Elaine Showalter, and Josephine Donovan, received
doctoral degrees before they began to practice feminist
literary criticism. It thus seems a worthwhile project to
examine the other interpretive communities that influenced
'these early critics and then expand this exploration to
include the interpretive communities that continue to
influence the feminist interpretive community today.

Many of the early feminist literary critics received
‘their formal academic training in the 19503 and 19603.
Although the New Criticism was firmly entrenched in the

academy by this time, these young women were no doubt also

 

taught by pr
Gerald Graf f
Stanley Fish
groiessional.
Earthen Arno
“‘5 SFRitua.
could be appj
@rovenent ,
153‘33 this It.
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Critics IWare
‘oo Viewed 1:
thGy felt the

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49 Primary c

9 Out 01
83:;
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3' ”be

.ng o
921.3 not has
1:5“ at least
midi“ con
~s Minds and

38

taught by professors who did not subscribe to its tenets.
Gerald Graff defines such pre-New Critical scholars by using
Stanley Fish's adjective "anti-professional": "These anti—
professionals looked back for inspiration to Victorians like
Matthew Arnold and JOhn Ruskin, seeing literature as a moral
and spiritual force and a repository of 'general ideas' which
could be applied directly to the conduct of life and the
improvement of the national culture" (6). wayne C. Booth
names this kind of criticism "ethical criticism" and calls it
”the most important of all forms of criticism" (44). It is
clear that at least some of the early feminist literary
critics were practicing a kind of "ethical criticism." They
too viewed literature as the repository of social norms, but
they felt that these norms were badly in need of reformation.
The primary objective of the feminist interpretive community,
coming out of the women's liberation movement, was to change
society. If these critics had seen literature as having no
objective power, if they had not thought it could do
something to influence the real lives of real women, they
*would not have concerned themselves with it. It is clear
‘that at least the early feminist literary critics shared the
.Arnoldian confidence that literature influences and shapes
-the mdnds and consequently the behavior of those who read it.
‘Unlike Arnold, however, they saw that the influence of

literature could sometimes be negative.

 

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xzfidence in t
been taught to
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39

These feminist literary critics attributed their
confidence in the power of literature to the way they had
been taught to read. Marcia Holly writes, ”Hadn't we been
taught, after all, that literature is humanist, that it shows
the authenticity of lives, of personal psychology, of social
interaction?” (38). Susan Koppelman Cornillon agrees that
readers "[look] to literature, and especially fiction, for
answers, for models, for clues to the universal questions of
who we are or might become" and suggests that feminist
literary criticism is necessary in order to help women
discover answers that are not always obvious in patriarchal
texts (ix). Florence Howe goes so far as to suggest that
”learning” is the fundamental purpose of reading literature
(255). Speaking of Showalter, Moi observes, "she believes
that a text should reflect the writer's experience, and that
the more authentic the experience is felt to be by the
reader, the more valuable the text" (4). This confidence
that literature has power both to construct (false) realities
and to change existing systems is an important aspect of all
literary criticism.evolving within the feminist interpretive
community. Even the most postmodern or deconstructive
feminist readings still contain traces of the "ethical

critics'" confidence in the power of the text.

 

Feminis

Related,
and authority
literary Cris:
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'eiPIessive I
latherine 5e;
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4O

Feminist Literary Criticism and Expressive Realism

Related, perhaps, to the impulse to grant texts power
and authority inherited from the ”Arnoldian" school of
literary criticism is the impulse on the part of the feminist
interpretive community to insist that texts display traits of
"expressive realism." Because "expressive realism” is what
Catherine Belsey calls a ”commonsense position," it is
difficult, if not impossible, to find any overt articulations
on the part of feminist literary critics that they rely on
this theory. Critics who possess expressive-realist
presuppositions admire most works which depict life
"truthfully”; for them the measure of a good work is how
well it corresponds to the critic's own personal experience
(Belsey 11). It is easy to see how the women's liberation
movement with its emphasis on personal experience could
translate itself into an expressive-realist approach to
literature. For critics who subscribe to expressive-realist
tenets, according to Belsey, "The text is seen as a way of
arriving at something anterior to it: the convictions of the
author, or his or her experience as part of that society at
that particular time" (13). Quite often, for members of the
feminist interpretive community, the text was seen as an
instrument for understanding the reality of the position of
women, either within the text or at the historical period in

which the text was written or situated.

 

Another u
critics which
aiopt was the
e[Pressing one
aperience of 1
thirds the "r
it causes read.
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km the tende:
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“313133.; 89",!

41

Another unexpressed prejudice of the expressive-realist
critics which the feminist interpretive community seemed to
adopt was the tendency to see texts as single-faceted,
expressing one solitary and coherent truth about the
experience of women. Jonathan Culler calls this a tendency
towards the ”rule of unity" (1975, 230-38) and suggests that
it causes readers to "naturaliz[e] the text and to ignor[e]
or reduc[e] the strangeness of its gaps and silences" (232).
Both the tendency towards ”expressive realism" and the "rule
of unity" emerge in the documents of early feminist literary
criticism; several illustrative examples can be seen in the
essays found in Donovan's collection Feminist Literagy
Criticism (1975). Marcia Holly asks that literature be
"realistic," that it ”go beyond inapplicable cliches to
suggest authentic rather than apparent motivations” (43). As
a result of this requirement, she also insists that
literature must be analyzed ”within the context of what is
true about sex-traits and what are unthinking, myopic, and
male-serving assumptions" (45). Cheri Register calls for a
”prescriptive" feminist literary criticism that will "set
standards for literature that is 'good' from a feminist
viewpoint” (2). What is "good" (or "ethical”) seems to be a
story that illuminates the oppression of a woman under the
patriarchy, and many feminist literary critics have worked
diligently to demonstrate how often this pattern is repeated

in literature.

 

Feminis

Complica
commity's "
to-ards “exp:
strong presen:
39542181 to C:
'femininity' 1
exhiiCitly C0:
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it retained 9:

en critics

tat they were

is

42

Feminist Literary Criticism and the New Criticism

Complicating and related to the feminist interpretive
community's "anti-professional" prejudices and tendency
towards "expressive realism" and the "rule of unity” was the
strong presence of the New Critical interpretive community.
Designed to counteract what critics saw as the excesses and
"femininity” of the Arnoldian school, New Criticism
explicitly contradicted many of the foundational tenets of
the former school. And while the New Criticism itself ceased
to be an "innovative and original School" by the late 19503,
it retained enormous power. As Vincent B. Leitch observes,
”Often critics practicing New criticism . . . were unaware
that they were doing so: the ideas and methods of the School
had become so deeply embedded and broadly generalized among
critics as to form the very essence of 'criticism'" (26).
The feminist interpretive community was certainly not immune
to New Criticism, and because its ”ideas and methods" helped
shape feminist interpretive strategies, they are worth a
brief examination.

A concise and revealing analysis of New Criticism can be
found in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
(1974). There Cleanth Brooks sets forth the primary aim of
this group of critics who hoped to "purify" literary
criticism. According to Brooks, "the 'new critics' have

characteristically attempted to deal with the literary object

 

iself rather
Brooks and or
text's 'origi
literature an
W from the
" PIaCtice,

‘35 its relia.
tens. Acccr1
Criticism rea<
a: 5“th ha<

21.5 moment 0:

43

itself rather than with its origins and effects" (568).
Brooks and other critics like him saw elements like the
text's ”origins and effects" as extrinsic to the study of
literature and advised scholars to turn their full attention
away from them.and towards the "structure of a work" (568).
In practice, the most distinguishing feature of New Criticism
was its reliance on rigorous ”close reading” of literary
texts. According to Leitch, "the formalist readings of New
Criticism reached completion when structural unity, balance,
or harmony had been demonstrated. Numerous forces of
tension, conflict, and divergence were processed to attain
this moment of structuration" (31). Thus, the New Critics
suppressed ambiguity in their readings as effectively as the
most rigorous "expressive-realist" critic. Toril Moi has
observed that "though American feminist critics from Kate
Millett onwards have consistently argued against the New
Critics's ahistoricism, this has not prevented them from
uncritically adopting the aesthetic ideals of the very same
New Critics” (47). This connection between the feminist
interpretive community and New Criticism.becomes particularly
clear when one remarks, as does Moi, Annette Kolodny's recipe
for a rigorous feminist aesthetic:

The overriding task of an intellectually vigorous

feminist criticism as I see it, therefore, must be to

school itself in rigorous methods for analyzing style

and image and then without precondition or preconceived

 

conclus
berks.
ad our
greater
Particu.
Structu:
of its :
73* Politicaj
Myer, Wen
iithin the Ca

44

conclusions to apply those methodologies to individual
works. Only then will we be able to train our students,
and our colleagues, to read women writers properly, with
greater appreciation for their individual aims and
particular achievements (goals which I am convinced must
structure any legitimate literary criticism, regardless
of its subject). (1975, 50)
The political goals of the feminist interpretive community,
however, were far removed from those of the New Critics.
Within the category of "origins and effects” so despised by
New Critics lie many of the things with which feminist
literary critics are most concerned such as "sources,"
”social backgrounds," ”the history of ideas,” and "the
political and social effects of literature" (Brooks 568).
However, feminist literary critics were not overly concerned
or cautious about appropriating the interpretive strategies
of the New Critical community when necessary. And in many
cases they were not even aware that such appropriations were
being made. I believe it is only in retrospect that we can
Texplore the ramifications of such adoptions, a project that
‘will become clearer as I begin to explore feminist readings

Iof Cather, Wharton, and Fauset in the following chapters.

semis

 

These thfe
egressionism,

examples of in:
interpretive CC
the fact that ‘
another, they ‘
remity t0da‘
:hecretical so
they too have

Psychoanalytic
have been part

$5! up
i. ‘he Hadwon

45

Feminist Literary Criticism.and Postmodernism

These three strands--Arnoldian ethical criticism,
expressionism, and New Criticism--are the most obvious
examples of interpretive communities that shaped the feminist
interpretive community from its beginnings. And in spite of
the fact that these disparate schools actually contradict one
another, they continue to shape the feminist interpretive
community today. As the years have passed and other
theoretical schools have taken center stage in the academy,
they too have shaped the feminist interpretive community.
Psychoanalytic criticism, Postmodernism, and French feminism
have been particularly important. Charges like Nina Baym's
in ”The Hadwoman and Her Languages" that feminist literary
critics have merely adopted these new "isms” to impress male
critics perhaps hold a grain of truth. Feminist literary
critics, like all scholars, contend with the rigors of life
in the academy, which include publication requirements.
Scholarly journals publish "trendy," "current” articles;
hence, some feminists may very well find themselves adopting
critical stances they do not hold just to maintain their
jobs . It is the nature of an interpretive community to adopt
‘the best, or most useful, aspects of the ideas emerging
within other contiguous communities. As Fish argues,

interpretive communities never remain stagnant (1987, 429) .

 

One poter
interpretive c
feminist liter
meant for t
very nature re
attempt to grg
heady beqah
iu‘tefpretive (

46

One potentially important force shaping the feminist
interpretive community is postmodernism. Interestingly,
feminist literary critics have been rather slow to adopt this
movement for their purposes. Although postmodernism by its
very nature resists definition, it is important that we
attempt to grasp its major tenets before exploring how it has
already begun and might continue to influence the feminist
interpretive community. Along with deconstructing the notion
of truth, postmodernism calls into question the humanist
confidence in subjectivity and the stability of the self.
Just as truth is constructed, so is identity: "Human reality,
for both sexes, is a construct” (Hutcheon 159). The radical
jpotential of postmodernism.for feminism is clear. As a
construct rather than a "truth," patriarchy becomes
immediately more vulnerable to deconstruction. And
postmodernism gives us the vocabulary to describe the female
subject as a "subject in history, subject to history and to
his story" rather than as a universal subject (Hutcheon 177).

Feminist theorists have explored at length the potential
of postmodernism for reshaping feminism.12 Less attention,
however, has been paid to how postmodernism can reshape the
feminist interpretive community. Most postmodern feminists
vflu: analyze literary texts focus on contemporary texts which
self-consciously address ”the postmodern condition. "13 Few
have considered how we might apply postmodern analyses to

modern or pre-modern texts by women writers or to ourselves

h“.
V..-

u...

H’-
b..-

h“.
‘.‘

:‘w

U“

47

as an interpretive community. One reason for this may be the
power previous feminist readings of women's writing assert
over the development of the feminist interpretive community.
In addition, it is difficult to impose postmodern constructs
on texts whose authors clearly possessed a modern or
Enlightenment confidence in a unified subjectivity. Literary
critics, including feminist literary critics, also may be
reluctant to employ postmodern theories in their analysis
because they erroneously believe that the postmodern project
of questioning notions of ”authorial originality and
authority” eliminates the possibility of analyzing texts.

But I believe the greatest reason for the hesitation on the
part of feminist literary critics to incorporate
postmodernism into their work is the difficulty many have in
reconciling the feminist political project with
postmodernismfs skepticismtabout the centrality of individual
experience. This issue must be addressed, rather than
ignored, by the feminist interpretive community. As I turn
'to a critique of the feminist interpretive community and then
eventually pose suggestions for ways to revise its
.interpretive strategies, postmodernism will play an
increasingly central role in my discussion. What makes
postmodernism especially important in an analysis of the
femminist interpretive community is that it comprises a
theoretical approach that can not only illuminate many of the

flawfls in the community as it currently stands but also open

48

the door for the kind of productive revisions that are
necessary if the feminist interpretive community is to
continue to thrive as a political and critical force in

literary studies.

49

NOTES

1The kind of feminist criticism to which I shall be
referring throughout this dissertation is typically called
”Anglo-American." However, as Janet Todd points out in
Feminist Literary History (New York: Routledge, 1988) this is
something of a misnomer when scholars make no references to
British feminists in their examinations of Anglo-American
feminism.(73). Since I am dealing primarily with American
feminists and since my goal is to contextualize these
critics, I believe it is most appropriate to refer to the
American feminist interpretive community rather than apply
the more commenly used tag of ”Anglo-American." When I do
not specify ”American feminism" or "American feminist
interpretive community,” it can be understood that this is
the group to which I make reference.

2The term.”interpretive community” as it is employed in
this study is derived from Stanley Fish's definition in is

There a Text in This Class: The Authority of Interpretive

Communities (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980). Fish claims,
”interpretive communities are made up of those who share
interpretive strategies" (171). According to Fish this
symbiotic relationship allows us to understand agreement:
Wmembers of the same community will necessarily agree because
they will see (and by seeing, make) everything in relation to
that community's assumed purposes and goals" (15). Members
of an interpretive community are predisposed to arrive at
agreement before they ever encounter a text because, as Fish
asserts, ”these strategies exist prior to the act of reading"
(171). According to Fish, an interpretive community is made
up of a group of individuals and the interpretive strategies

‘they collectively employ.

3Of course, as Chris Weedon indicates in her book
Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theog (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1987), it is important to remember that this "a
priori status" is constructed in language: "Meanings do not
exist prior to their articulation in language and language is
not an abstract system, but is always socially and
historically located in discourses” (41).

50

‘In Reeding the Romance (Chapel Hill: The U of NOrth
Carolina P, 1991) Janice Radway examines a group of habitual,
"compulsive" romance readers. She has since described these
women as members of an interpretive community in "American
Studies, Reader Theory, and the Literary Text: From the Study
of Material Objects to the Study of Social Processes,"
Aeerican Studies in Transition, ed. David Nye and Christen
Hold Thomsen (Odense: Odense UP, 1985) 29-51 and
”Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The
Functions of Romance Reading," Daedalus 113 (1984): 49-73.

5Steven Rendell suggests a connection between Fish and
Gadamer in "Fish v. Fish,” Diacritics 12 (1982): 49-56.

‘Russell J. Reising argues the opposite in "Can Cultured
Reading Read Culture?: Toward a Theory of Literary
Incompetence," Tulsa Studies in WOmen's Literature 10 (1991):
67-77. Reising objects that ”For Fish, Culler, and Mailloux,
the respective constructs of interpretive communities,
literary competence, and interpretive conventions are not in
any way natural or value-free, but are themselves constructs
produced by and largely in the service of preserving or
rationalizing a theoretical status quo” (69).

7See for example Annette Kolodny, "Dancing Through the
:Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice and
Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism," The New Feminist
Criricise, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon, 1985)
144-167; Toril Moi, SexualZTextual Poiitics: Feminist
Literary Theory (London: Routledge, 1985); Elaine Showalter,
”Toward a Feminist Poetics," IheNew Feminist Criticism, ed.
Elaine Showalter (new York: Pantheon, 1985) 125-143; Elaine
Showalter, "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” The New
Feminisr Criticism, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon,
1985) 243-270; Elaine Showalter, "WOmen's Time, WOmen's
Space: Writing the History of Feminist Criticism," Feminist
Issues in Litera Scholarshi , ed. Shari Benstock
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987) 30-44; Janet Todd, Feminist
:Literary History (New York: Routledge, 1988).

°Neither of the more important recent book-length
studies of feminist literary theory-~Toril Moi's

SexuallTextual Politics: Feminist Literag Theog (London:
Routledge, 1985) and Janet Todd's Feminist Literag History
(New York: Routledge, 1988)--follow Showalter's somewhat
tentative lead in examining the connections between feminist
literary criticism and the women's liberation movement.
These authors rather fall back on Showalter's earlier
distinction between "feminist critique” and "gynocritics,"

, ... . I s \
.- ufl \l. I‘» A. h. 0‘ t \i\

. . . - Vs

. .1. uh In 5 s ,s \ tr. A. i I
v t 1‘ .5... is yes -t s LW Md» NH 2% ”N .. u .s t N . \ «\u\\ we a I u\e:. \
. a a.. .J .. F. .0. . o .. u ,s y s u. 53 ~.. a .-

:G I “I H u. "I a G. t on .I. G: a A .J!\ “V. A.\ guy v. .s\ Wu :\ ‘n- . u . 3‘. -s v a \u. a e

. . I ..
D M. LN ktmkw n h:-H

51

consequently erasing the social and historical forces shaping
both branches of feminist literary criticism.

9See for example Jo Freeman, "The New Feminists," Nation
24 February 1969: 241-244; Casey Hayden and Mary King, ”Sex
and Caste,” piperation April 1966: 35-36; Juliet Mitchell,
"WOmen: The Longest Revolution," ew Left Review
November/December 1966: 11-37; Shulamith Firestone, Tee
Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York:
‘William.Morrow, 1970). Important contemporary essays as well
as an extensive bibliography can be found in Robin Morgan,
ed., Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from

the WOmen's Liperation Movement (New York: Random House,
1970).

1°See for example Steven M. Buechler, WOmen's Movements
in the United States (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers UP,

1990); Marcia Cohen, The Sisterhood: The Inside Story of the

WOmen's govement and the Leaders Who Made It Happen (New
York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988); Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding

of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale UP, 1987);
Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Ropre of woeen'e
Liperation in the Civil Right's Movement and the New Left
(New York: Knopf, 1979); Sara M. Evans, Bprp for Liberty: A
History of Wbmen ip America (New York: The Free Press, 1989).

111n Feeipist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, New
Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988), Alison M. Jaggar
differentiates between four different versions of feminism:
liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism, and
socialist feminism. These four types of feminism are most
obviously different with respect to how they envision the
changes society must necessarily make in order to accommodate
feminism.

12See for example Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism

and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990);
Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential WOman: Problems of Exclusion
in Feminist Thought, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988); Jane Flax,
Thinking Fragments: zsychoanalysis, Feminism, and

geetmoderpispiip rhe Copteppprary West (Berkeley: U of
California P, 1990).

13Hutcheon's book A Poetics of Postmodernism (New York:
Routledge, 1988) is a good example of this as is her book
Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (waterloo,
Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1980). An equally fine
example of a postmodern feminist literary critic dealing
exclusively with contemporary texts is Elizabeth A. Meese's

52

sions: Re-F' rin Feminist Criticism.(Urbana: U
of Illinois P, 1990).

 

2‘!

CHAPTER TWO

RE-READING THE FEMINIST INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY

Breaking the Connections:

Resisting Experience-Based Approaches to WOmen's Writing

The most important consequence of the intimate
relationship between the feminist interpretive community and
the women's liberation movement is the enormous emphasis
early feminist literary critics placed upon personal
experience. One of the rallying cries of the women's
liberation movement was "the personal is political."

However, a literary criticism based on personal experience
does not necessarily lead to the kind of changes women like
Robin Morgan envisioned. There are some severe problems with
a theory that appeals to connections between ”women's
experiences" as they are expressed in a text and those felt
by a reader. {A feminist theory of women reading women's
writing that advocates connection between text or author and
reader without questioning the assumptions it makes about
what constitutes women writers and women readers ultimately
misrepresents every individual for whom it purports to speak.

Postmodern feminist theorists remind us of one reason

53

54

uncomplicated connections like this cannot be made. Jane
Flax speaks for many when she observes that "The single most
important advance in feminist theory is that the existence of
gender relations has been problematized. Gender can no
longer be treated as a simple, a natural fact" (627).
Acknowledging that "woman” is a socially defined term rather
than a universal signified clearly will complicate any
discussion of women writers, readers, or subjects, but a
refusal to take our criticism in such a direction will
ultimately curtail the feminist project by leaving many women
out of the discussion.

As a consequence of acknowledging that "woman" is a
socially defined term, critics are beginning to recognize
that its definition varies over time. As a result of this
realization some women's historians suggest that "social
myths or stereotypes" may prevent us from understanding the
actual behavior of women. Furthermore, these preconceptions
prevent us from seeing that the signifier "woman" may have
been "differently inflected,” for example, for Victorians
‘than it is for contemporary Americans (Greene and Kahn 17-
18). According to Jane Flax, gender relations vary over time
because ”the structure of gender as a social category [is]
shaped by the interactions of gender and other social
relations ," and these relations do not remain constant (624).
Thus, it is deceptive to assume that "woman" is always

understood in the same way. What defined a "woman" reader or

MI

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55

a ”woman” writer in the mid-nineteenth century may no longer
apply to that category today. The feminist interpretive
community, because of its desire to use literature to help
women recognize their own oppression and then change their
lives, often has suppressed or ignored aspects of
traditionary texts by women writers which precluded
identification. In their desire to define relationships
between women readers and writers or texts by women, they
have neglected to consider important historical differences.
In addition to preventing readers from recognizing how
their experiences did not conform to those of women
represented in traditionary texts because of the gaps between
historical periods, the interpretive strategies of the
feminist interpretive community have sometimes prevented
readers from being able to see the variety of ways gender was
experienced within the same historical time period.
Categories like race and class interact with that of gender
and cause it to be differently inflected for different
jpeople. Virginia WOolf considered the effect of poverty and
wealth on the minds of women, and admitted that her
experiences as a woman were highly colored by the fact that
she had an independent income and a room of her own (4) .
Black feminist critics are quick to point out that their
experiences as women should not be assumed to be identical to
those of white women. bell hooks is representative of the

many critics who argue that when the word "woman" is used it

56

refers to white women, while the word "black" refers to black
men (87-88). Valerie Smith points out that separating issues
of gender, class, and race creates false dichotomies: "The
meaning of blackness in [the United States] shapes profoundly
the experience of gender, just as the conditions of womanhood
affect ineluctably the experience of race" (47). Jane Flax
observes that feminists often have difficulty recognizing
differences between women, and illustrates this fact by
contrasting Barbara Smith's understanding of "home" and that
of some white middle-class women. Both groups erroneously
assume the universality of their own conceptions (639).
Ironically, reliance upon our own personal experiences often
has blinded us to those of others. The powerful pull of the
women's liberation movement's emphasis on personal experience
has masked the crucial fact that different women, although
they may live in the same historical period within the same
society, experience being a woman differently.

Feminist critics since at least the early eighties have
been alerting us to the dangers of refusing to acknowledge
the socially constructed nature of the term "woman” and what
we define as women's experience, although the connection
lbetween this experience-based critical tendency and the
women's liberation movement has not been adequately explored.
More recently, the discussion has shifted from a
consideration of group identity to individual identity.

Critics have been suggesting that individual women experience

57

and define their own positions as gendered subjects
differently at different times in their lives. Nancy Fraser
articulates this position in an essay entitled "The Uses and
Abuses of French Discourse Theories for Feminist Politics"
(1990). She contends that "no one is simply a woman."
Rather, one has a multi-faceted identity which includes one's
religion, race, class, political and philosophical ideology,
and gender (84). When I am in church, the fact that I am.a
Christian may be.more important to me than the fact that I am
a woman, but when I try to justify to an unsympathetic course
coordinator the inclusion of more female writers than male
writers on my "Introduction to Fiction" syllabus, then my
self-definition as a woman may play a dominant role.
Furthermore, although I presently identify myself as a
feminist, twenty years from now I may have gravitated to a
theoretical or philosophical position in which my identity as
a gendered subject is less important. To use Fraser's words,
I am.not--nor will I be--always a woman "in the same degree"
(84). It is time for the feminist interpretive community to
recognize how a fierce reliance upon a fixed and stable
understanding of what constitutes "women's experience" and
"women's identity” forestalls any discussion of the various
facets of individual identity.

What the postmodern critique of feminism makes clear is
that the feminist interpretive community cannot speak of "the

vmxman reader" or ”the woman writer” and assume that these

:hrasu
r are

5:: L.

58

phrases refer to some common experience of being a woman
reader or writer. The fact that gendered identities are not
stable either across or within seemingly related groups is
the first major reason we should not try to make simple
generalizations about the signs of gender in either
individuals or texts. Because gender is a shifting,
problematic category, it is naive to assume we will always be
able to recognize its marks. A theory of reading that has as
its foundation the relationship between the way the author
experiences womanhood and the way the reader experiences
womanhood will strangle any but the most narrow and self-
serving readings of women's fiction. This method of reading
restricts itself to only one aspect of the definition of the
word ”woman.” As Judith Butler has observed, "By conforming
to a requirement of representational politics that feminism
articulate a stable subject, feminism . . . opens itself to
charges of gross misrepresentation" (5). (As will become
clear when we turn to feminist readings of Cather, Wharton
and Fauset, the feminist interpretive community is indeed
guilty in many instances of "gross misrepresentation" with
respect to women's experiences. I hope in the following
pages to suggest some ways to reconcile the project of
women's liberation with that of feminist literary criticism
so as to correct some of these faults.

The women's liberation movement's emphasis on personal

experience is not the only factor responsible for the

i .
‘46-

59

restriction on the part of the feminist interpretive
community to only a single aspect of the definition of the
word ”woman." The race and class privilege of many members
of the feminist interpretive community has contributed to
these exclusions. As I have already mentioned, most early
feminist literary critics were white and middle class.
Judith Butler provides an opening for a more elaborate
discussion of the consequences of the exclusionary practices
of such critics and how clearly it is antithetical to a
feminist reading of women's writing. She observes that "the
insistence upon the coherence and unity of the category of
women has effectively refused the multiplicity of cultural,
social, and political intersections in which the concrete
array of 'women' are constructed" (14). Mary Jacobus
supports this position with her suggestion that relying on
woman's experience as the basis for a theory of reading
creates an ”illusory wholeness" that denies any differences
between the gendered subjects on either side of the text (5).
To put it bluntly, the phrases "woman reader" or "woman
*writer” as they are usually employed refer to a white,
middle-class, heterosexual, college educated woman reader
with a fixed and stable sense of self-definition
corresponding to the fixed and stable way society has defined
her. These phrases exclude race, class, and lifestyle
preference as significant variables in feminist literary

criticism. Jean E. Kennard suggests that by positing a

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60

monolithic reader feminist criticism "operates from a limited
or inaccurate definition of its terms" (63). A middle class
white woman who bases her literary criticism upon her own
personal experience will produce middle class white readings
of texts by women writers.

In the event that a member of the feminist interpretive
community does venture outside of her own immediate personal
experience, her fixed and rigid understanding can not only
refuse to take into account the fact that a lesbian or black
or lesbian black woman might experience gender differently
from.herself, but it might actually exclude those individuals
from the category of woman altogether. In addition, on those
occasions when the feminist interpretive community does take
into account the fact that a black woman may experience
gender differently, the tendency is to discuss black women as
if they were all the same. In some ways it seems to be
easier to impose a monolithic definition of race than it is
to impose a monolithic definition of gender. we become
imprisoned by our generalizations. The same holds true for
the lesbian woman. There may be a thousand different
‘variations and ways of identifying one's self as a lesbian,
Jbut.if we talk about it in our literary criticism, there is
only one Lesbian Woman. This situation has begun to be
somewhat ameliorated with the movement of more minority women
into the academy, but it is definitely something we must

contend with when we read older works produced by the

61

feminist interpretive community. In addition, it is not
merely the white, heterosexual, middle-class, feminist
literary critic who must resist the shaping force of these
early critics. As I will demonstrate in Chapter Five when I
turn to black feminist studies of Jessie Fauset, the powerful
force of mainstream feminist interpretive assumptions
continues to influence, either directly or indirectly, all
feminist literary criticism, including that by women who do

not identify themselves as white, heterosexual, or middle

class.

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62

Feminist Literary Critics/"Ethical Critics"

Another aspect of the feminist interpretive community
that we must explore more fully is its characteristic leaning
towards "ethical criticism." As Wayne Booth observes in rpe
Coppepy we geep (1988), ethical criticism of literature
"plays at best a minor and often deplored role on the scene
of theory” (25). But from its inception feminist literary
criticism has contained strong, if disguised, assumptions
concerning the ethical function of criticism. At its most
radical, this critical confidence in the power of literary
texts has led to a kind of cultural imperialism in which the
feminist interpretive community "bans" damaging texts.
Pornography is an extreme example of this. Citing another
example of feminist readers avoiding texts, Booth suggests
that a woman reader might resort to "some feminist novelist
of the 19803" if she needed to find reassurance or
reinforcements of her own beliefs rather than confront the
challenges of ethical criticism (414). He seems to assume
that a member of the feminist interpretive community will
inevitably be forced by her ethical position to challenge and
resist depictions of women which conflict with her political
agenda. I think that when we consider how the feminist
interpretive community has historically operated we can see
that there are other alternatives to avoiding potentially

challenging texts.

 

63

It is the "ethical" bent of the feminist interpretive
community that leads critics to search diligently, indeed
almost desperately, for ”good" role models. Using any
critical means possible, feminist literary critics "make"
every woman character in the texts by women writers aware of
her oppression and engaged in active resistance to it. In a
1975 essay Cheri Register decreed that "a literary work
should provide role models, instill a positive sense of
feminine identity” (20). Janet Todd observes this phenomenon
in the treatment of Jane Austen by the feminist interpretive
community: "In the beginning of the feminist critical
enterprise there was considerable effort to bring Jane Austen
into the useable female past . . . to bring her into the
sisterhood” (100). At times, when one looks at early
American feminist literary criticism, it does indeed seem
that the critics were able to view every woman writer as a
nascent feminist and every woman character as a rebel against
the patriarchy. This will become even more evident when we
turn to critical studies of Cather, Wharton, and Fauset. It
is important to remember, however, that it was at least
partially the desire on the part of feminist literary
critics, stemming from their relationship to the women's
liberation movement, to empower women readers and help them
change their lives that led them to commit what some of their
harsher critics have called "anti-intellectual” critical

acts. For these ethical critics, there was more to

 

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than its "literariness." Rather than possessing,
>i accuses, a “wholesale lack of theoretical (or
try) awareness" these critics possessed a
(somewhat lacking today) in the meaning behind
Lcal project and in the value of the goals of their
>. They were the consummate ”ethical critics."
lition to being ”ethical critics," members of the
Lean feminist interpretive community were primarily
in texts which lent themselves to an "expressive
:itique and corresponded to Culler's "rule of
ren.when reading texts which might be viewed as
ase tenets, feminist literary critics employed
re strategies that reduced the texts they analyzed
a story. The story they inevitably uncovered in
rses was one of women's oppression. Their concern
assing a text into a coherent whole was undoubtedly
their New Critical bent towards defining unified
2 particular story they chose to uncover was
>portive of their affiliations with women's

The consequences of these interpretive
were important in the 19708, but they also
> shape feminist literary criticism today.
re strategies based on the assumption that the
:ience all woman have in common is their oppression
.archy conceal any recognition of the varied ways

and do exercise power in both fictional and

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65

material worlds. Ironically, feminist critics who define the
female gendered subject as unilaterally oppressed participate
in the very oppression they are trying to reveal.

Nancy Fraser addresses this point, insisting that the
"right kind" of theory would give women a position other than
that of mere passive victim. She argues that we need to
understand how, although women are usually in subordinate
positions, they still "participate in the making of culture"
(Fraser 86). Jane Flax reminds us that while it is important
to address how women are almost always involved in "relations
of domination," if we focus entirely on women as victims, we
find it easy to ignore the sinister implications of the fact
that women are not always on the bottom in a "relation of
domination" (642). The observations of both Fraser and Flax
point towards Foucault and his theories on the operation of
power. According to Foucault, the idea that power operates
as a strictly repressive force is "wholly negative, narrow,
[and] skeletal" (61). Foucault believes that power operates
from bottom to top as well as from top to bottom. It is
significant that so many feminist literary critics, not
knowing the condition of all women's lives, are so eager to
flatten them into one-dimensional objects of oppression.
Although many women have certainly been oppressed in the
material world, it cannot strengthen the feminist project to
allrnw our uni-dimensional understanding of "woman" to

contribute further to women's disempowerment.

I

 

66

Bearers of the System:

Identifying Multiple Subject Positions

In addition to disguising the way women can exercise
power, the interpretive strategies of the feminist
interpretive community that privilege the "rule of unity"
prevent critics from recognizing the moments when women
writers, women readers, or women characters move from being
victims of the patriarchal system to being bearers of that
system. Feminist critics frequently suggest that women
readers internalize male reading strategies. Kolodny,
Showalter, Gilbert, and Schweickart follow Fetterley in
suggesting that women readers become "immasculated" when they
employ traditional reading strategies in their encounters
with male-authored texts.1 In some respects all six of these
important feminist literary critics seem to be agreeing with
Nancy Fraser's suggestion that women are not always women "in
the same degree" (84). All apparently believe that this
internalization of masculine reading strategies is the
natural result of being a woman reader in a society dominated
by male readers and male texts. The implications of these
observations are far greater than these critics have
apparently recognized, and they point to another reason why
the affinity on the part of the feminist interpretive
community for ”expressive realism” curtails feminist literary

theory in unfortunate ways. First, notions that women

 

 

 

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67

readers internalize masculine reading strategies suggest that
women readers have, as a part of their identity, masculine
(or at least androgynous) characteristics. Second, it
implies that women readers have no control over their initial
internalization of these characteristics. Critical
attention has usually focused on the critics' suggestions
that corrective steps must be taken to overcome
"immasculation." WOmen readers must attempt to eradicate
their initial disposition to be male readers by becoming
”resisting readers" and ”[exorcising] the male mind that has
been implanted in [them]" (Fetterley xxii). we ought not,
however, to ignore the fact that "resisting reader" theories
inadvertently break down the notion of ”woman" as a unified
subject. Although the idea of becoming "resisting readers"
implies that women should attempt to retrieve their unified
identity as "women," it also simultaneously suggests the
possibility that women are not always in possession of
unified identities. Furthermore, women's fractured identity
lies, at least initially, beyond their conscious control. In
short, we cannot posit a monolithic woman reader because, as
Jonathan Culler notes, sometimes a woman reader becomes a
male reader (1982, 50-51).

While Judith Fetterley and other feminist literary
critics perhaps inadvertently point to the instability of the
unified subject ”woman reader, " none of them take what seems

to me to be the obvious second step. Surely if we agree that

 

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68

I can be more than one thing at once--a spouse, a teacher, a
scholar, a daughter, a friend--and that in some of these
roles my position as the gendered subject "woman" will be
more dominant than in others, we must also agree that if I
write, my writing will not always be based in my identity as
”woman.” If we cannot posit a single "woman reader,” how can
we be so sure that women's writing reflects some unified
”woman's experience?” If women can read ”male,” then they
surely can write "male” too. WOmen writers are members of
the same society that pressures women readers to adopt "male”
reading strategies. Writers internalize these pressures in
the same way readers do.2 It does not seem at all
unreasonable to suggest that women write what we (in an age
before our problematized definitions) could call "male
texts." I do not think it is inconceivable that as a member
of a patriarchal society, I have internalized some of those
values. If we realize that there are many facets to the
gendered subject woman, then we can also realize that a woman
*writer has the ability to write texts that simultaneously
explore the effects of women's oppression and celebrate the
instruments of that oppression. A woman writer can
simultaneously be a feminist and a bearer of the patriarchy.
:Katherine Fishburn has asked whether it is not racist to
ignore sexism in Richard wright. In the same vein, I ask
whether it is not sexist to ignore sexism or racism or any

(other'manifestation of our patriarchal society in women's

 

 

 

69

writing. By looking only for signs of "woman's experience"
in women's writing, we reduce the potential for women's
writing to be seen as anything besides didactic lessons in
oppression. Furthermore, we risk "connecting” with some
aspect of our society as reflected in a text which we
actually should ”resist” if we are to further serve our
interests as feminist literary critics. If imaginative
literature does in any way reflect the material experiences
of the author, then women's writing must bear the signs of
the culture from which it emerges. It is absurd to assume
that by some miraculous power women writers are able to fully
resist the patriarchal society in which they write.
Interpretive strategies which reduce women's writing to

rebellious stories of oppression and resistance do just this.

70

"Female Ingenuity”: A Study of Subtexts

A particularly clear example of the consequences of this
kind of interpretive strategy is provided by Susan Lanser's
essay "Towards a Feminist Narratology” (1986). Lanser
examines ”Female Ingenuity,” a narrative poem by an anonymous
woman writer that, when read straight through, seems to
express the speaker's complete and utter happiness with her
new husband.3 If one reads only every other line of the poem,
however, it tells the story of the speaker's misery and
oppression. Lanser demonstrates that "beneath the 'feminine'
voice of self-effacement and emotionality . . . lies the
'masculine' voice of authority that the writer cannot
inscribe openly" (349). Lanser also identifies a third text
which connects the surface text and the subtext by showing
tum» “the two versions reveal not opposing but related truths"
(351). Ultimately, both the subtext and the surface text are
illustrations of the "terrible contours" of a patriarchal
society. The flaw in Lanser's reading is that it allows us
to consider ppiy the woman writer's protest against the
conditions of a patriarchal society which clearly victimizes
her. It privileges the subtext of protest and obscures any
other subtexts.

The narrator of the poem.Lanser examines complains to
her friend that she has married an "ugly, crass, old,

disagreeable, and jealous" man who embarrasses her by his

alcoi

rise;

71

alcoholism.and vile behavior (1. 13). She finds herself
miserably trapped in this oppressive relationship. But the
thing that makes this marriage most intolerable to her is the
fact that her ”former gallant lover is returned" (1. 35, 37).
She writes, "I might have had him” (1. 37, 39). Another
subtext which Lanser does not identify in this poem is the
speaker's internalization of the very restrictions against
which she protests. She is unable to envision happiness for
herself which does not involve marriage. Lanser's assumption
that the speaker is a unified subject whose identity is
primarily constructed around her resistance to patriarchal
oppression privileges the subtext of resistance over the
subtext of internalization. Looking for only one subtext in
the narrative has dangerous consequences. Clearly, if we
”connect,” even with the speaker's protest, we are agreeing
that it is a shame she couldn't have married a nicer man.
Unless we become strong, resisting readers we can not
question whether the speaker in Lanser's poem ought to have
had to marry at all. Perhaps, as members of the feminist

interpretive community, we would like very much to believe

 

that the writing of women is always a self-conscious protest
against and deconstruction of patriarchal oppression. As
Lanser's essay illustrates, however, our own prejudices
regarding female identity, as well as the prejudices of the
women writers we read, are simply too deeply ingrained to

allow'us always to tell stories that are consistent with the

A.

72

feminist political project. As a feminist critic, Lanser was
no more able to resist patriarchal assumptions than the woman

writer she critiqued.

73
Moving Towards a Resisting Reading

Two feminist critics have examined women's writing as a
simultaneous celebration and subversion of the patriarchy.
The first, Janice A. Radway, writes primarily about popular
romance novels. Her theories, however, are important and
applicable to so-called serious literature as well. A sharp
division between popular culture and high culture is as false
a dichotomy as the one often made between women as readers
and women as writers. Radway points out the critical
consensus that romance novels ”perpetuate patriarchal
attitudes and structures . . . by continuing to maintain that
a woman's journey to happiness and fulfillment must always be
undertaken in the company of a protective man" (1983, 53).
Apparently, critics have no problem recognizing that women
romance writers celebrate patriarchal standards in their
fiction. Yet these same readers seem to believe that more
canonical women writers completely escape the taint of their
society. It may be that since ”patriarchal attitudes and
structures" are less obvious in wuthering Heights (1847) than
in a novel by Victoria Holt, they are merely easier to
ignore. Another equally reasonable possibility is that since
a novel like wuthering Heights was already at least
moderately canonical before the advent of feminist literary
criticism, critics worked harder to naturalize the text, so

to speak, and by rigorously employing feminist interpretive

74

strategies bring Bronte "into the sisterhood." In any case,
before Radway, romance novels lay beyond the realm of serious
feminist critique.

The most interesting aspect of Radway's research lies in
her consideration of the role of the romance reader. She
suggests that the flaws in previous analyses of romance
novels lie in the fact that the people who were doing the
analyzing were not themselves romance readers (1983, 55). By
considering the reader-—her understanding of what is
happening in the romance novel, and her motive for reading--
Radway reveals a subversive element to these novels. There
is more going on in a romance novel than merely the
legitimation of the social order through a conservative
"recommendation of conventional gender behavior" (1981, 141-
2). On the basis of an extensive survey of romance readers,
Radway concludes that women read romance novels because of a
deep dissatisfaction with their own lives (1983, 68). If in
reading romances women discover and are comforted by
idealized, traditional marriages, this does not nullify the
fact that romance reading is a protest against the material
oppression these women experience (1983, 71). Radway
concludes that we must consider how romance novels
simultaneously reaffirm.and question patriarchal institutions
(1983, 72). When feminist critics read canonical women's
writing they make a mistake that is the precise inverse of

the one Radway observes in traditional critics of popular

 

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-.

75

ovels. That is, although feminist critics are quick
w canonical women's texts question patriarchal

ans, they ignore the reaffirmation of patriarchal

as that often accompanies that protest. Radway

tes that popular women's writing is never simply
triarchal or feminist. The importance of her

is surely not limited to romance novels.

Miller is a second critic who pushes towards a
reading women's writing that does not necessitate
axts by women in a one-dimensional way. In her
WOmen Writing About Men (1986), Betsy Draine

that Miller "neither reifies nor ignores sexual

a" (167). Miller argues that women readers are

me confusion and androgyny which they practice in
lives as survival mechanisms. When the feminist
ive community encounters women's writing, however,
3] to see that women have necessarily written out of
ambiguity" (2). She asks an extremely provocative
"Can a woman be innocently a woman as she reads, or
ites?" (11). Although Miller never directly

nis question, she goes on to describe how women

a in themselves” and suggests that this may prevent
directly expressing a vision that is purely their
5). Miller then focuses on points in women's novels
3 characters disrupt the narrative continuity. By

; male heroes who do not conform to traditional

76

masculine standards, women writers are able to subversively
express an alternative vision from the traditional male one.
women writers describe men "stripped of their stern swords
and pens" and thus express their desire for an alternative
experience (162). Miller complicates notions of gender in
important ways, and her suggestion that women "carry men in
themselves" is radical. But because she seems to imply that
somewhere behind the text there actually does lie an
"innocent” woman writer and reader, her reading is not as
radical as it might be. Both Radway and Miller,
nevertheless, explore reasons that interpretive strategies
based in ”expressive realism" and the "rule of unity" may be
inadequate for the feminist interpretive community to employ

when reading women's writing.

77

The Possibility of Reading

As I have demonstrated, the strong connection between
the women's liberation movement and the feminist interpretive
community contributed to the reliance of feminist literary
critics on interpretive strategies that read texts as single-
faceted, expressing only the solitary and coherent truth of
woman's common experience as an oppressed group, implying,
inevitably, that woman is somehow strictly "apart from"
rather than being also "a part of" her society. And, as I
have also shown, this practice ironically contributed to the
oppression of many women whose liberation was originally
envisioned by the women's movement. The attraction many
feminist literary critics felt for such interpretive
strategies, however, was not solely due to their affiliation
with the women's liberation movement and their perceived role
as ethical critics. The overlap of the New Critical
interpretive community and the feminist interpretive
community certainly strengthened the tendency on the part of
feminist critics to suppress ambiguity and discern unity in
every textual encounter. The "moment of structuration" which
New Critics unceasingly sought can easily be seen to
correspond to the feminist interpretive community's reduction
of women's writing to the depiction of "good" role models and
studies in female oppression. Early feminist literary

critics were taught to read with this close attention to

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78

detail and with concern for unifying and suppressing
ambiguity. Thus, the New Critics' affinity for close textual
readings is apparent in the interpretive strategies of the
feminist interpretive community, as is its reluctance to
consider elements not represented directly in the text. Even
those studies which intended to demonstrate a historical,
politically radical reading of women's writing relied, as we
shall see, on close textual readings as their primary means
of argument and support. New Critical interpretive
strategies were so powerful that they often effectively
prevented feminist literary critics from turning away from
the text itself in their readings. Thus, the fruitful realm
of the gaps and silences of a text was all but ignored by the
feminist interpretive community. This omission is especially
problematic in a study of women writers, because so often
meaning lies in what the woman author can per say because of
class or race or gender constraints. And although most
feminist literary critics voice dismay at the ahistoricism of
the New Critics, they sometimes fall into the trap of viewing
the literary work as an autonomous artifact. Even after New
Criticism began to lose favor in the world of literary
theory, it still continued to be employed, either consciously
or unconsciously, by many literary critics.

Patrocinio P. Schweickart suggests that ”the feminist
story may yet end with the recognition of the impossibility

of reading” (56). What a contextual analysis of the feminist

79

interpretive community reveals, however, is not the
"impossibility of reading" but rather the impossibility of an
"innocent" feminist reading, untouched by the overlap of
other interpretive communities. What makes these overlaps so
significant is not simply that they existed in the past, but
that they continue to shape our literary criticism today. In
other words, although we may now, in a more "enlightened" age
of feminist literary criticism, recognize the blindspots of
our foremothers and attempt to compensate for them in our own
work, their concerns and their prejudices as shaped by the
interpretive communities that influenced them continue to
exert an influence on us today. Especially when we read
texts by women writers who have been extensively examined by
the feminist interpretive community, we will be reading
through their (now recognized as) flawed grid. The aspects
of texts upon which we decide to focus, and even the
particular texts we choose to analyze, are in many respects
influenced by these early American feminist literary critics,
who were in turn influenced by many other interpretive
communities. we cannot really escape the "intentions and
accents” which produced their readings, but we can become
more aware of them. (As I shall demonstrate in the following
chapters, we must become resisting readers, and sometimes
what we must resist is our own feminist interpretive

community.

80

Postmodern reading theories point towards many of the
difficulties inherent in traditional feminist interpretive
strategies. Feminist literary critics, however, have
sometimes been reluctant to consider incorporating
postmodernism into their interpretive strategies because they
are afraid that the conclusion that will be reached is that
the entire project of reading women's writing is impossible.
Just at the moment when women's writing is gaining legitimacy
in the academic curriculum, postmodern approaches to
literature seem to be directing us towards the conclusion
that there is no such thing as women's writing. Along with
Jane Marcus and Nancy Hartsock, suspicious feminists ask why
it was not until previously silenced subjects gained the
power of speech, and hence subjecthood, that the whole
concept of subjecthood became suspect (Marcus 297, Hartsock
196). It seems to me that any feminist theory seeking to
use postmodern ideas must address these legitimate and
important objections. Clearly, the signifier "woman" has
been unnecessarily restricted by being made to stand for a
unified human being who is white, middle-class, heterosexual,
and the possessor of a uterus. This fact, however, does not
‘mean we must cease talking about women as reading subjects or
writing subjects. Instead we must realize that subjecthood
is a more complicated and multi-faceted issue than we have
formerly taken it to be. At times, for political purposes,

we may still find it necessary to essentialize and to base

 

81

our criticism on notions of "experience" that postmodernism
would disallow. For as Diana Fuss has observed, "adherence
to essentialism is a measure of the degree to which a
particular group has been culturally oppressed” (98). (As I
shall demonstrate in the following chapters, however, there
are ways the feminist interpretive community can reconcile
its many political and aesthetic agenda in order to at once
hold and deconstruct the essentialisms central to so much
feminist literary criticism- As I hope to show, reading
women's writing is not impossible, even if it is more
difficult than we have been willing to believe.

I have chosen to examine the novels of Willa Cather,
Edith Wharton, and Jessie Fauset because criticism of their
work represents the wide range of responses the feminist
interpretive community has exhibited towards women writers.
First held up by the mainstream critical community as a
"great” American author, Willa Cather has been fully embraced
by feminist literary critics. Edith Wharton's literary
reputation was less secure than Cather's when feminist
literary critics began to reread her in the 1970s.
Consequently, as I shall demonstrate, her position within the
feminist canon has been somewhat more ambiguous than
Cather's. And Jessie Fauset was completely ignored by most
interpretive communities until the 1980s. When feminist
literary critics undertook to reread her, they rejected

Fauset outright. Clearly, the reception of these three women

82

writers varies widely. Consequently, because the readings
that follow are dependent on the readings that have preceded
them, the kinds of resisting readings I will offer of Cather,
Wharton, and Fauset in the following pages will also vary.
These readings are not intended to replace older feminist
readings. They are intended rather to stand beside previous
readings in order to enrich and complicate them. This is an
inherent feature of the model of resisting reading of women's

writing that I hope to develop in what follows.

83

NOTES

1Annette Kolodny, ”Dancing Through the Minefield: Some
Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a
Feminist Literary Criticism,” The New Feminist Criticism, ed.
Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon, 1985) 144-167; Elaine
Showalter, "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness,” The New
F 'nist Criticism, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon,
1985) 243-270; Sandra Gilbert, "Patriarchal Poetry and WOmen
Readers: Reflections on Milton's Bogey," PMLA 93 (1978): 369-
382; Patrocinio P. Schweickart, "Reading Ourselves: Towards a

Feminist Theory of Reading," Gender and Reading: Essays on
Readers, rexts and Contexts, ed. Elizabeth A. Flynn and

Patrocinio P. Schweickart (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP,
1986) 31-62; Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A

Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1978).

 

2Annis Pratt refers to something similar when she speaks

of "textual ambivalences" in Archetypai Patterns in WOmen's
Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981) 15.

3The poem "Female Ingenuity" was first published in
Atkipeon's Casker in April 1832. Lanser quotes the entire
poem in her essay, and I have used her reprint as the text
for my analysis.

 

 

 

I‘JL

Liver
:

PART TWO

READING WOMEN WRITERS

CHAPTER THREE

READING WILLA CATHER

Willa Cather and the American Literary Tradition

Willa Cather's position as one of the most important
American women writers is seldom disputed. In 1990 Cather
was the only American woman to appear in the revised greer
Booke pf the wegterp WOrld (Encyclopaedia Britannica);
fifteen books and more than fifty articles on Cather appeared
between 1989 and 1990 alone. Occasionally critics have
attributed Cather's prominence to feminist efforts at the
recovery of women writers and canon reformation.1 But,
despite occasional lulls, Cather's literary reputation has
never truly languished, and as Stephen L. Tanner observes,
"renewed interest in Cather was well under way before 'canon'
txmaame a buzz-word” (232).2 Feminist critics who approach
Cather are not rescuing her from.obscurity. Rather, they are
encountering her through the screen provided by the many

layers of traditional analyses preceding them. As I have

84

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85

argued, the overlap of other interpretive communities
necessarily influences any feminist analysis. Consequently,
before turning to an analysis and critique of the American
feminist interpretive community's use of Cather, it is
crucial that we briefly examine her original critical
reception. Particularly central in this analysis will be an
examination of the terms of Cather's initial "canonization,"
because those standards continue to shape in powerful and
significant ways how she is read today.

It is true that almost from the time of her earliest
publication some critics have described Willa Cather as a
writer with a feminist agenda. In its 1913 review of Q
Pioneers! the hpston Evening Transcript argues that the book
is indirectly "an embodiment of the feminist theory" (E. U.
S. 18). And one of the first books to treat Cather at length
was Josephine Jessup's 1950 study The Faith of Our Feminists.
Nevertheless, this strain of early criticism is a relatively
minor one, and Cather herself disavowed any feminist
affiliations (O'Brien 1987, 124-5). There is another strain
of Cather criticism, however, that has had a much more
powerful shaping force in her critical reception. For while
early critics did occasionally note a feminist bent to
Cather's writings, they were far more concerned with
demonstrating how she contributed to a uniquely American
literary tradition. Placing Cather in the mainstream of

American literature, as it has traditionally been defined by

86

literary critics, has been a perennial concern of a
significant portion of those scholars who seriously consider
her work. As we begin to examine some of the early books and
essays on Cather and then move forward to explore more recent
critical accounts, it will become apparent that this concern
was important not only in securing Cather's position in the
canon of American writers, but also in determining her
treatment by subsequent literary critics, including feminist
literary critics.

It is important to recognize that the earliest reviews
of Cather's work did not express a concern with locating her
in a tradition of American letters. This is because in 1912
when Cather published Alexander's Brid e, and for at least
the next decade afterwards, it was a matter of some
contention whether there was even such a thing as American
literature. In 1918 Van wyck Brooks suggested in Letters and
Leegerehip that America was on the verge of its own great art
and philosophy but would not achieve it until ”a race of
artists, profound and sincere, have brought us face to face
with our own experience" (127). The next year H. L. Mencken
reviewed hyrhhrphie (1918), claiming that America "may even
be said to have no national literature at all" (138). But
almost as soon as literary critics did begin to define a
distinctly American literary tradition, they also began to
associate Willa Cather with that tradition as one of its most

representative practitioners. Most formal criticism on

87

Cather appeared after 1920. As her treatment at the hands of
this initial interpretive community continues to shape
contemporary readings of her work, it seems appropriate to
begin my consideration of Cather with a brief exploration of
dominant critical understandings of American literature
followed by an assessment of the ways Cather has been
regarded as conforming to that tradition.

Nina Baym's classic analysis of theories of American
literature, "Melodramas of Beset Manhood" (1981), traces the
evolution of American literary criticism. According to Baym,
”The earliest American literary critics began to talk about
the 'most American' work rather than the 'best' work" (65).
A.standard of "Americanness," rather than a standard of
"excellence” came to determine whether or not a work would be
considered canonical: ”Inevitably, perhaps, it came to seem
that the quality of 'Americanness,‘ whatever it might be,
constituted literary excellence for American authors" (Baym
65). This standard evolved gradually, but by the 19508 With
the publication of works such as Virgin Land by Henry Nash
Smith.(l950), The American Adam by R. W. B. Lewis (1955), and
The American Novel and its Tradition by Richard Chase (1957)
it had solidified into what Baym.calls the "myth of America."
According to Baym.this myth recounts ”a confrontation of the
.American individual, the pure American self divorced from
specific social circumstances, with the promise offered by

the idea of America” (71). The promise of America is very

88

simply the promise that an individual will "achieve complete
self-definition" (71). One important ingredient in this
quest for self-definition is the unsettled wilderness,
because as Baym.argues it is by asserting his identity upon
the land that the American hero achieves the promise of
America (71). In this essay Baym goes on to insist that
women writers were unable to construct fictions which
narrated the ”myth of America" because of the "lack of fit
between their own experience and the fictional role assigned
to themP'within the myth, namely that of ”antagonists in a
man's story" and the ”virgin land" (75). Baym.asserts that
”If one accepts current theories of American literature, one
accepts as a consequence . . . a literature that is
essentially male" (65). Her argument at this point is based
on the essentialist premise that a woman writer is trapped by
her gender; she is always a woman "in the same degree."
Consequently, the woman writer is prevented in some way from
imagining herself or another woman as a participant in the
”myth of America.” Baym falls into the feminist trap I
describe in Chapter One of assuming that women can only be
(protestors against the patriarchy. It is my contention,
however, that the writings of Willa Cather embody the "myth
of America" Baym has identified as characteristic of those
(male) texts recognized as traditionally belonging to the
canon of American literature. Furthermore, turning to early

«:ritical evaluations of Cather's work will demonstrate that

89

the grounds for her initial inclusion in the canon of
American literature was her articulation of this very myth.
Bernice Slote suggests as much in the bibliographic
essay published in Sirteen Modern American Authors (1974), a
work in which Cather was the only woman writer represented.
According to Slote, most of Cather's early critics were
concerned with ”her materials of the pioneer west and the
individual, her type of realism, and her view of society"
(41). Individualism is the focus of Carl Van Doren's 1921
assessment published in The Nation. He asserts that a
central theme in Cather's fiction is ”the struggle of some
elect individual to outgrow the restrictions laid upon hims-
or more frequently her--by numbing circumstances" (92). The
struggle to surmount the stifling forces of civilization as
represented by ”clumsy towns, obese vulgarity, [and] the
uniform of a monotonous standardization" become the central
concern of Cather's stalwart individuals, according to Van
Doren (92). Lloyd Morris continues Van Doren's consideration
«of individualism in Cather's work in his North American
iReview essay "Willa Cather" (1924). Morris is one of the
first critics to describe Cather as a distinctly American
*writer claiming, "Her preoccupation with the pioneer brings
Miss Cather's work within the main trend of American
.literature during the past century" (641). ‘Linking Cather's

writings to those of Emerson and Whitman, Morris argues that

90

the work of these three Americans established a national
philosophical and emotional direction:
It established the cult of the individual; it
distinguished between individualism.and egotism by
formulating the democratic ideal; it taught the pioneer
virtues of independence, self-reliance and perseverance;
it substituted for the repudiated discipline of the past
an epic vision of the national future. (641)
Describing her central theme as "the effort of the individual
to overcome the obstacles offered by circumstance and to
control or dominate environment," Morris clearly sees Cather
as articulating the "myth of America" (644). A third critic
who identifies in Cather many of the characteristics Baym.has
found to be representative of traditionally canonical
American literature is Lionel Trilling. In a 1937 he!
Republic essay Trilling observes that Cather's primary
concern iS‘With ”the tonic moral quality of the pioneer's
life" and their "striving after new worlds" (11). Like Van
Doren and Morris, Trilling recognizes Cather's concern with
guest, but unlike them, he notes despair behind the dream of
”pre-adolescent integration and innocent community with
nature" (11). Trilling's analysis of the role of the
wilderness or "frontier” in the quest Cather's characters
make for independence is significant.
‘Van Doren, Morris, and Trilling are only three examples

of the many early critics who identified a concern with

91

guest, individualism, and landscape in Cather's work. Their
assessments appeared several years before these qualities
were systematically codified by critics like Smith, Lewis,
and Chase and accepted as the defining characteristics of
American literature. But certainly these essays not only
represent the growing desire of critics to identify qualities
of ”Americanness” in literary texts, but also point towards
Cather's eventual status as a securely canonical author. And
by the 1956 publication of Howard Mumford Jenes' book rhe
Erontier and American Fiction, Cather's position in the canon
as a result of her articulation of the "myth of America" was
clear. Jones argues that the frontier plays a central role
in Cather's work, representing "timelessness" and a return to
the "elemental” (95). Cather's frontiers also represent,
according to Jones, "the stark power of individuality to
shape itself” (91). Jones' assertion recalls Baymfs claim
that American literature as it has been traditionally defined
offers, through the frontier, the promise that "a person will
be able to achieve complete self-definition" (71). Clearly,
Jones builds upon previous assessments of Cather to situate
her work within the mainstream of American literature. And
Jones” position is consistent with that of Cather's earliest
critics who all saw her as representative of rather than
rebellious against the main trends of American literature.3
ILater critics have not always shared this early concern

‘with situating Cather as an "American" author. One reason for

92

this is that once Cather was firmly established within the
canon of American letters, it was no longer necessary to keep
"legitimizing" her by proclaiming her ”Americanness."
Nevertheless, Cather's position as a specifically American
woman of letters continues to be a minor theme in her
critical reception. Chief among these works are two essays
by noted Cather critic John J. Murphy. In the first, "Willa
Cather and Hawthorne: Significant Resemblances" (1975),
Murphy asserts that, "As an American writer, [Cather]
inherited the concerns, attitudes and material that make our
greatest writers alike enough to define a national
literature" (161). Much as Van Doren, Morris, and Trilling
had half a century before, Murphy defines these American
concerns as "the need . . . for a world of one's own making"
(167), "alienation" (169), and "the Fall of Man" (174).
Murphy's second essay on Cather's position within the
.American literary tradition, ”Nebraska Naturalism in Jamesian
Frames" (1984), suggests that Cather embodied the literary
ethos of her day. She fused the ”romantic, adventurous
:material called for by the naturalists" and a "Jamesian
perspective" to produce work that is representative of both
of the dominant streams of American literature in the early
twentieth century (232) . Others who seek to show that Cather
is representative of her age include David Stouck who
recognizes "such perennial American themes as the romantic

dream of success, the quest for an innocent pastoral retreat

93

and the idealization of male comradeship” in her fiction
(1977, 259) and James woodress who calls her ”one of the most
significant American novelists" (xiii).4 .As we shall see in
the next section, this dominant critical trend poses
significant, but often unacknowledged, problems for the
feminist literary critics who seek to show Cather's

subversion of rather than her subjection to dominant trends

in American literature.

94

The American Feminist Interpretive Community

Reads Willa Cather

The fact that Cather's early critics, as well as many of
her later critics, clearly had no trouble identifying her as
a participant in the dominant tradition of American
literature is highly significant in light of her later
treatment by the feminist interpretive community. Nina Baym
and others have identified the traditional theories of
American literature by which Cather has been so readily
assimilated as "male.” Consequently, many feminist literary
critics who study Cather are concerned with showing that she
actually does not conform to the standards of Americanness
identified by Lewis et. al. Feminist critics, while desiring
to confirm Cather's status as a major, canonical author, wish
to do so on distinctively female grounds rather than than the
ones that have formerly been applied. Furthermore, feminist
literary critics have exhibited a disarming level of
ignorance with respect to both the ways their own readings
are shaped by those of previous Cather scholars as well as
‘ways their readings are shaped by their own political and
aesthetic assumptions. It is to representative examples of
such critical omission and commission that we shall turn our
{attention in the following analysis of the American feminist

.interpretive community's treatment of Willa Cather.5

95

Since the 19708, feminist literary critics have been
eager to bring Willa Cather "into the sisterhood." Both the
feminist desire to claim.Cather and the difficulties posed by
such a task are clearly illustrated by Ann Douglas' essay,
”Willa Cather: A Problematic Ideal” (1982). One thing that
makes this essay especially important in a consideration of
the feminist interpretive community's treatment of Cather is
Douglas' open revelation of her interpretive strategies.
Douglas clearly identifies the foundation of her feminist
critique as the search for a connection between self and
author. This connection should lie, according to Douglas, in
the common emotions of ”neurosis and alienation" resulting
from woman's position as victim in a patriarchal society
(15). And, as this brief survey of the feminist interpretive
community's critical reception of Cather will reveal, many
critics have indeed searched for this kind of connection with
‘Willa Cather. Feminist critics often focus particularly on
Cather's sexual ambiguity as a lesbian in a world that saw
the love of women for each other as unnatural.

The second thing that makes Douglas' essay significant
is her recognition that Willa Cather may not have held the
position of a neurotic and alienated victim of her society:
"The fact remains that Cather did not sleep with monsters, as
Adrienne Rich has said a thinking woman must do. Cather was
liberated from certain torture chambers which have confined

her equally talented sisters" (15). Asking, ”What right did

96

[Cather] have, a woman in this society, not to suffer?,”
Douglas concludes, "I [can] not call Cather my own" (15).

The basis for Douglas' rejection of Cather lies in the fact
that Cather does not share the crucial, common, "female”
experience: "The only thing Cather failed to realize was the
meaning of the oppression . . . we can and must complain that
she has not herself fully experienced, explored, and
documented the disease” (18-19). Douglas recognizes Cather's
celebration of the freedom and power associated with being a
woman, but she uses this celebration as the grounds for a
rejection of Cather. Douglas points directly to what I
believe is the central flaw in American feminist literary
criticism. Clearly, there is a problem when, as feminist
literary critics, our only options are either to identify
neurosis and alienation and oppression in the women writers
we study, or to reject these women writers outright. ”Willa
Cather: A Problematic Ideal" illustrates the need for a
feminist literary criticism that will be more inclusive and
less reductive, a literary criticism not founded in an appeal
to some so-called "woman's experience,” a literary criticism
like the one that will result when we become resisting
readers of women writers. That the feminist interpretive
community badly needs such a reading theory is further
.illustrated by a consideration of some of the other feminist

analyses of Willa Cather.

ft!

122'

97

Another work that reveals the flaws inherent in
traditional American feminist literary criticism is Shirley
H. Heller's, 20th Century American WOmen Authors: A Feminist
hpprpeeh (1975). Demonstrating the dominant trend in
feminist Cather criticism in the 19703, Heller argues that
”Her first three major novels placed Miss Cather among the
early feminist writers” (29). Heller locates Cather's
feminism in the heroines like Antonia Shimerda whom she
describes as "an archetypal, earth mother depicted in mythic
proportions with only the positive side of the archetype
showing” (30, emphasis mine). Heller concludes, "Willa
Cather's women all succeed in a man's world” (31). Heller's
approach exemplifies the strong connections between women's
liberation and feminist literary criticism. Clearly, a
critic like Cheri Register who suggested in 1975 that "a
Aliterary work should provide role models, instill a positive
sense of feminine identity" (20) would applaud Heller's
analysis of Antonia Shimerda. Equally clearly, we must now
reconsider this wholesale willingness to seek only a single
story--that of a woman who struggles against oppression--in
texts by women writers. This story reveals not only women's
liberation's affinity for personal experience, but also
feminist literary criticismfs tendency to conform to Culler's
rule of unity in the effort to produce "ethical criticism."

:Reducing our literary criticism to any of these approaches

98

severely curtails the potential meaning we can discover in
the texts we analyze.‘

As in all fields of American literature, there now
exists a generation of Cather critics who have, from the time
of their dissertations, approached the author from a feminist
perspective. Briefly turning to an analysis of the critical
career of two individuals, Susan J. Rosowski and Sharon
O'Brien, will help to illustrate the trends in feminist
Cather scholarship over the past twenty years. Susan J.
Rosowski's essay "Willa Cather's Pioneer WOmen: A. Feminist
Interpretation" (1978) is particularly central to any
consideration of the feminist interpretive community's
treatment of Cather. Not only does this essay represent one
of the earliest Cather publications by this influential
feminist scholar, but it also confronts head on the dilemma
faced by feminist critics who attempt to reconcile Cather's
canonical status with their need to bring her "into the
sisterhood." Rosowski, while perhaps not consciously aware
of this dilemma, states the problem.clearly:

Critics have long recognized the pioneer theme

characteristic of Willa Cather; yet the significant fact

that Cather develops this theme in a manner that runs
against the main tradition of American literature has
been virtually ignored. Put quite simply, this

tradition is a masculine one, and Cather's most forceful

99

pioneers--Alexandra Bergson and Antonia Shimerda—-are

women. (135)
Rosowski's critical dilemma stems from the fact, illustrated
earlier, that Cather achieved her initial recognition because
critics perceived her to be depicting the (male) "myth of
America.” Her feminist commitments prevent Rosowski from
acknowledging Cather's affiliation with this male story,
while they simultaneously compel her to affirm Cather's
position as the dominant figure in a newly configured canon.
But Rosowski does not actually argue for new, female, terms
of canonization. Rather than questioning the "myth of
America" as a standard of literary excellence, Rosowski
inserts a female character into the old, accepted, American
story of ”the frontier waiting to be tamed by the noble
pioneering spirit" (136). Rosowski's approach clearly
demonstrates how the overlap of an older, traditional school
of literary criticism shapes the feminist interpretive
community by continuing to dictate the terms of literary
excellence. In addition, Rosowski's desire to illuminate
Cather's portrayal of powerful female protagonists reflects
the women's liberation movement and its commitment to a
literary criticism of female empowerment. Seen together,
these two impulses both reveal the powerful pull of
expressive realism in literary criticism, and they also
illuminate the inherent danger for feminist critics of

Searching for a single story in a text by a woman writer.

100

The single story we uncover may very well not be the one we
actually want to tell.

Subsequent work by Rosowski and O'Brien continues to
illustrate the difficulties faced by feminist literary
critics writing out of a male-dominated critical culture.
Other early essays by Rosowski suggest that Cather's novels
can be viewed as bildungsromans that depict female characters
who eventually reach a successful state of self-definition.7
O'Brien shares Rosowski's concern with identifying female
heroes in her early work on Cather.8 Both critics initially
relied on essentialist arguments and a commitment to
expressive realism in their work, but by the late 19803 they

took tentative steps away from such reductive approaches.

Rosowski's 1986 book The VOyage Perilous: Willa Cather's
Bppehrieieh.illuminates the chaotic, gothic underside of the

romantic imagination that can be found in Cather's novels.
Rather than demonstrating how Cather conforms to already
established literary traditions, Rosowski shows her re-
inventing a literary genre "when resolution is thwarted and
(irreconcilables triumph" (207). Thus, this book leads away
from simple readings that conform to the tenets of expressive
realism and towards less reductive notions of women's
writing.9 O'Brien also moves towards a plural perspective in
her later Cather work, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice
(1987).10 While she opens doors by suggesting that more than

one story may get told in Cather's fiction, however, O'Brien

101

continues the long-standing critical trend of focusing on
Cather's treatment of the "myth of America."11

The consequences of this focus on the ”myth of America"
are significant. For while both Rosowski and O'Brien suggest
that Cather imprinted a particularly feminine cast on the
myth--thus making it tell a feminist story--their theories do
nothing to address the fact that the myth itself, no matter
its hero(ine), constitutes an imperialist tale steeped in
Anglo-American, patriarchal values. Unknowingly
demonstrating the strong influence of more traditional
interpretive communities on their criticism.as they continue
to focus on the old myth, these feminists illustrate the
power of the women's liberation movement's commitment to
positive role models by refusing to consider or explore any
of the sinister implications of Cather's re-telling the
traditional, patriarchal story. Furthermore, the
concentration O'Brien and other critics focus on those novels
that most clearly fit within the confines of traditional
.American literature leads them to neglect Cather's other
novels that present alternative versions of America. By
.refusing to locate Cather strictly within existing literary
conventions and by suggesting that her novels might be read
in more than one way, Rosowski and O'Brien indicate the
critical potential of a resisting reading of Cather's
fiction. Nevertheless, their work also clearly demonstrates

the blindspots of current feminist interpretive strategies.

102

It is important to remember, however, that because one
interpretive community builds upon another, any progress we
make now in developing new strategies will only be successful
because we stand upon the shoulders of these critics. we
must acknowledge our debt, because while their work may
indeed be flawed, our work could not exist without it.
Critics like Rosowski and O'Brien establish the foundation
for both the necessity of a resisting reading of Cather's
fiction and the ppssibility of such a reading.

One of the only feminist critics to analyze Cather from
a perspective that does not rely on essentializing, '
mythologizing interpretive strategies is Jane Rule. Rule's
exploratory aim in her 1975 book Lesbian images is, "to
discover what images of lesbians women writers have
projected," and she herself claims to have left analysis and
judgment out of her text (3). What is most significant about
her work is the fact that Rule is not as eager or as willing
as many of her contemporaries to consider issues of gender in
simple, reductive ways. For example, one of her chief
criticisms of Freud is that he "did not examine the narrow
conventional concepts of 'masculine' and 'feminine,'" a fault
I have shown to be common in much feminist literary criticism
as well (35). Rule also feels no obligation to identify only
positive female role models in women's writing: "I can expose
the negative morality that is not only imposed from without

but expressed from within a number of the brilliantly

103

articulate women I am about to discuss" (11, emphasis mine).
The obligation to present only positive role models in her
literary criticism is not one Rule acknowledges. She
identifies the chief flaw in previous considerations of
Cather to be the overriding concern of her critics to misread
her novels in their obsessive attempts to prove Cather's
lesbianism. 12 She argues against an essentialist approach
which assumes first that Cather is a lesbian and second that
as a lesbian she is incapable of imagining heterosexual
relationships. Like O'Brien was to do ten years later, Rule
objects, "What actually characterizes Willa Cather's mind is
not a masculine sensibility at all but a capacity to
transcend the conventions of what is masculine and what is
feminine to see the more complex humanity of her characters"
(80). In her refusal to essentialize and in her willingness
to identify both positive and negative aspects in a text by a
woman writer, Jane Rule is one of the very few feminist
literary critics to successfully integrate some of the
strategies the feminist interpretive community ought to
employ as resisting readers. And she did so almost twenty
years ago.

Another critic, writing fifteen years after Rule, also
suggests some of the potential new interpretive strategies
hold for the feminist interpretive community. In her essay
fiA.Code of Her Own: Attitudes Toward women in Willa Cather's

Short Fiction” (1990) Jeane Harris objects to the trends that

104

have caused critics to "dismiss aspects of her personality
too complex to fit into established categories of feminist
literary criticism” (81). Harris' chief objection is that
critics have ignored Cather's misogyny. Speaking of O'Brien,
Harris observes that her "effort to make Cather 'fit' into a
female literary tradition” is distorting and reductive.
Speaking of Cather's short story "The way of the WOrld"
(1898) Harris argues that it indicates "Cather's
internalization of the male values and attitudes that
permeated late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century
America” (85). Through an examination of this and other
short stories, Harris concludes that Cather's misogynist
attitudes demonstrate that she does not "sit comfortably
among other American women writers in a female literary
tradition" (89). Harris' essay is important because it
alerts us to the dangers present when we, as feminist
literary critics, force Cather into an essential female
literary tradition through our analysis of her fiction. But
Harris does not provide a way for us as feminist literary
critics to claim Cather as our own while simultaneously
acknowledging aspects of her fiction that we cannot claim.
.Harris also does not recognize that Cather is not alone in
(her uncomfortable fit with what has been traditionally
recognized as an American female literary tradition. Like
talJL‘women writers, Cather is a participant in the very

society against which she also sometimes protests. And a

105

resisting reading of women's fiction will allow us to

recognize all this and more.

106
Reading My Antopia

As a way of demonstrating both how the feminist
interpretive community operates on specific texts and the new
possibilities inherent in a feminist theory of resisting
reading of women writers, I would like to turn to Willa
Cather's novel My Antonia. This narrative is related from
the perspective of Jim Burden, a middle—aged railroad
executive remembering his childhood in Nebraska. Jim focuses
primarily (but not exclusively) on his memories of a Bohemian
immigrant girl named Antonia. In the end, Antonia remains in
Nebraska where she is the mother of many children, and Jim
lives, somewhat unhappily it seems, in the East. My Antonia
appeared in 1918 and has received more critical attention
than any other work in the Cather canon.13 John J. Murphy
calls My Antonia ”one of the two novels that establish
[Cather] as a major American novelist of the twentieth
century" (1989, 6). Robert Gregory refers to My Antonia as
Cather's most solidly canonical novel (95) , and David Stouck
calls it "the novel most often considered her masterpiece"
(1982, 224). Given the considerable critical attention
focused on M Anton'a, I believe it provides the best
possible case study of how other interpretive communities
have shaped the feminist interpretive community and its
consideration of specific texts. Furthermore, the extensive

consideration of My hptonia by the feminist interpretive

107

community itself provides ample opportunities for
demonstrating the radical potential that resisting reading
approaches hold for reshaping our understanding of women's
writing.

The earliest reviews of this novel were almost uniform
in their celebratory tone. Even H. L. Mencken, famous for
his satiric, cutting remarks in Smart Set wrote, ”Miss
Cather, in 'My Antonia,' has written a better novel than any
Englishwoman of like experience has written in ten years"
(March, 138). A reviewer in The Nation deemed the novel
"among the best of our recent interpretations of American
life” ("Two Portraits" 523). In addition to their uniform
praise for the novel, these early reviewers were united in
their conception of the main subjects and themes of hy
Antonia. Observing Cather's focus on the western pioneers,
Mencken asserts, ”She discovers human beings embattled
against fate and the gods, and into her picture of their dull
struggle she gets a spirit that is genuinely heroic, and a
pathos that is genuinely moving" (February, 144). Randolph
Bourne titled his pie; review of My Antonia "Morals and Art
from the west" and wrote, ”This story lives with the
hopefulness of the west” (5). And in his joint review of hy
.Antonie and Ohe of Ours (1923), Herbert S. Gorman observed
that "Threading the book, almost as important as the tale, is
'the land” (7). From the first, reviewers focused on the

aspects of this novel which conformed to the ”myth of

108

America." And even today this perspective continues to
remain central in most critical considerations of the text,
including feminist critiques.

Literary critics, taking their clue from the reviewers,
have continued for the most part to focus on Cather's
treatment of the west and the "myth of America" in hy
Antonia. Most of the essays on this novel that appeared
between 1955 and 1975 addressed Cather's manipulation of
narrative voice and her use of setting. Consequently, these
works devoted a great deal of attention to the narrator, Jim
Burden, and his gradual self—discovery in the midst of the
expansive western wilderness. One of the earliest critical
essays on Willa Cather's My Antonia appeared in the hperican
Qparteriy in 1958. In "'My Antonia': A Frontier Drama of
Time," James E. Miller explores the structure of the novel
and finds that "It is in the drama of [Jim's] awakening
consciousness, of his growing awareness, that the emotional
structure of the novel may be discovered" (53). The struggle
Miller identifies as central to the novel is the struggle "to
re-create and assert existence" upon the land (53). It is
the myth of America that he and many subsequent critics
identify in My hhtonia.1‘ In 1962 Robert E. Scholes uses R.
‘W. B. Lewis' theory of the "heroic innocent" and his
confrontation with the environment to explicate Cather ' 8

novel (31). And in his book The American Novel from James

Fenippre Cooper to William Faulkner (1965) wallace Stegner

109

identifies the theme of the novel as ”the American orphan or
exile, struggling to find a place between an Old world left
behind and a New werld not yet created" (41). According to
Stegner, Cather's narrator, Jim Burden, carried the
"quintessentially American burden" of imposing self upon the
environment (47-8). This desire to read the novel as the
story of an individual's struggle for control over the
environment and the right to assert individual autonomy is
also expressed by Terence Martin. Martin observes that "In
Willa Cather's novels of the west, the land, raw and
unsubdued, stands out as the initial force to be confronted"
(87). Martin sees that confrontation between individual and
the land as the central fact of My Antonia and argues that
Jim attains a sense of self-definition by remembering his
past: "From Jim we have learned of the land, the various
people who work the land, and the change which the passing of
a generation brings about" (100). Each of these critics is
united in his perspective on the text; each focuses on Jim
Burden, rather than Antonia, and each attempts to demonstrate
how Jimfs quest for identity through his relationship to the
land exemplifies the rugged individualism characteristic of
the ”myth of America."15

When the first feminist analyses of My Antonia began
appearing in the 19703 they were highly influenced by the
prevailing critical concern with Jim Burden and the myth of

{America represented in the novel. This was an influence,

however, that
never acknowlq
seemed to ass
and towards A
feminist nove
apparently un
bias.“ As we
first serious
”mum!!- e
1&8qu Crit
“5 Blanche t
M“ Sex in
projeCt' and
than mrely .
life. (147) .
53 it fits t .-
precede her,
novel ”0mm
characters t:

110

however, that critics apparently seldom recognized and almost
never acknowledged. Instead, these early feminist critics
seemed to assume that merely turning attention away from Jim
and towards Antonia would demonstrate that Cather's was a
feminist novel, a fact that previous readers had been
apparently unable to recognize because of their patriarchal
bias.16 .As we have seen, 1975 marked the year of Cather's
first serious consideration by the feminist interpretive
community. But there were occasional examples of feminist
literary criticism appearing before 1975, and one of these
was Blanche H. Gelfant's 1971 essay "The Forgotten Reaping—
Hook: Sex in My Antonia." Hers is clearly a feminist
project, and she begins by suggesting that the novel is more
than merely "a splendid celebration of American frontier
life" (147). Significantly, her strategy is not as radical
as it first appears. For, like most of the critics who
precede her, Gelfant continues to orient her reading of the
novel around the land and the efforts of individual
characters to subdue it. The central difference between
Gelfant's consideration of the westering myth in My Antonia
and that of previous critics is that she is fully cognizant
of the important connections between female sexuality and the
fertile wilderness so central to the "myth of America."1'7
Coming as it did, before the feminist interpretive community
'was fully established, Gelfant's essay does not share the

feminist concern with identifying positive role models in

mn's writin
powerful shapi
of fly Antonia.

in the novel pi

 

the text, and
conform to a w
Cather was PCS
American dream
Susan J.
With W
transcends he:
achieve "Unive
imam actiVitiI
althOUgh Cathe

Ruse,» She als

 

111

women's writing. Her essay does illustrate, however, the
powerful shaping force of the concern with the "Americanness”
of hy_hprppie. Gelfant's concern with the "myth of America"
in the novel prevented her from.considering other aspects of
the text, and her desire to naturalize the text--make it
conform to a unified story--prevented her from exploring ways
Cather was possibly both celebrating and denigrating the
American dream in her complicated novel.

Susan J. Rosowski and Sharon O'Brien deal extensively
with My Antonia. In 1978 Rosowski suggested that Antonia
transcends her "type" as a traditional pioneer woman to
achieve "universal values characteristic of the most fully
human activities" (142). And in 1981 Rosowski observes that
although Cather presents Antonia as an "archetypal mother and
muse," she also "gives her female character the strength to
break through conventional roles imposed upon [her]" (270).
In speaking of the conclusion of My Antonia in which Jim
Burden transforms Antonia into an Earth Mother, Sharon
O'Brien argues that this stereotype, in the hands of a woman
‘writer, is affirmative rather than limiting (1982, 286-87).
*The political and critical frameworks of these scholars do
not allow them to admit the possibility that the Earth Mother
stereotype is just as limited in Cather's hands as in those
of her male predecessors.“ Neither Rosowski nor O'Brien are
.able to construct critical paradigms that might allow us to

"claimfl Cather without having to insist that her novels

always enact t
shall see, a r

us to do just

 

After the
increasingly t

topic Of CODSJ

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1986 essay .3
Lesbian Writer
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entirely unawa

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decided to Wril

 

112

always enact the affirmation of feminist values. But, as we
shall see, a resisting reading of Cather's fiction will allow
us to do just that.

.After the mid 19808, feminist literary critics began
increasingly to focus upon sexuality in My hhtonia. In
addition, Cather's sexual orientation became a more important
topic of consideration among scholars. Judith Fetterley's
1986 essay ”hy Antonia, Jim Burden and the Dilemma of the
Lesbian writer" is representative of the mainstream of Cather
criticism since the early 19808. In this provocative and
insightful essay Fetterley graciously acknowledges her debt
to earlier scholars, especially Gelfant. But she seems
entirely unaware that she is also following in the footsteps
of more traditional literary critics. Fetterley builds part
of her argument upon the claim that Cather consciously
decided to write hy hptonia "as a man about men” and suggests
that the book represents her "deep-seated resistance" to
capitulation to convention (132). Like a significant portion
of the scholars who have studied M Anton'a, Fetterley
focuses on the role of the landscape in the novel, and like
many feminist critics who have wrestled with this complicated
text, she narrows her consideration of the landscape to
Cather's representation of Antonia as an Earth Mother
figure.19 ‘While, as we have seen, Rosowski and O'Brien found
this figure to be an affirmation of female power, Fetterley

argues that Cather presents Antonia as an Earth Mother figure

at the end 0‘
“The text of
the image wh
calling intc
asserts" (13
merits wit]
conventiona;
Lingam, 8m
Vho are Ear
disillusmn
archetypal

COHVentiOHa
critique of

OI...a

Stet}. Of a

113

at the end of the novel in order to attack that very image:
"The text of My Antonia radically undercuts the premises of
the image which occupies its center [the Earth Mother], thus
calling into question the value of the very conventions it
asserts” (136). Fetterley carefully traces a long series of
moments within the novel in which women who do not possess
conventional characteristics of female goodness, like Lena
Lingard, succeed while the female characters, like Antonia,
who are Earth Mothers, meet disappointment and
disillusionment. The result is a deconstruction of the
archetypal story: "the conventional enshrinement of the
conventional image of the earth mother undermined by a
critique of the premises upon which the convention is based;
or . . . a patriarchal story co-existing with a feminist
story" (138). So, like the others, Fetterley reveals the
story of a woman writer who articulates the never ending
female struggle against patriarchy and oppression. Part of
becoming resisting readers involves a more aggressive effort
to resist modeling our critical approaches after those who
have gone before. For while they have certainly revealed
significant and valuable aspects of the texts they read, they
have also concealed other elements that a resisting reading
can, as we shall see, uncover.

One critic, Katrina Irving, has already illustrated some
of the possibilities inherent in turning our attention away

from the standard subjects of literary criticism of hy

Ming-the
characterizat
the Use of E1
Irving indirc
approaches t.
in Cather ' 5

already reco
ethnicity an
reveals mme
Antonia is j
cether IEpea
the C°mflfunit
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assumptiOns
desire to d.

Concern Wit'
mile] 38 in

States ' n I

114

hptonie--the landscape, the narrator, and the Earth Mother
characterization of Antonia. In "Displacing Homosexuality:
the Use of Ethnicity in Willa Cather's My Antonia" (1990)
Irving indirectly reveals the weaknesses of previous feminist
approaches that have been incapable of reading those moments
in Cather's fiction that stress something other than the
already recognized paradigms. By considering issues of
ethnicity and class, rather than gender and sexuality, Irving
reveals moments in which "The discursive construction of
Antonia is inseparable from her economic exploitation, and
Cather repeatedly gestures to the economic imperatives behind
the community's hegemonizing impulse" (91). Irving argues
that Cather was attempting to ”point out the ethno-centric
assumptions of [the] midwest community" and that Cather's
desire to deal with ethnicity "displaced” her own personal
concern with homosexuality (92). Perhaps unfortunately,
however, Irving declines to see the ethnic issues in the
novel as important ones in their own right. Rather, she
states, ”I read Jim's oscillating attitude to Antonia as a
repetition of Cather's own uneasiness with her female and
lesbian self" (93). Because she refuses to consider that
Jim's attitude towards the immigrant girl might represent a
larger societal prejudice against the immigrants themselves,
not just what they symbolize sexually, Irving's argument is
not as original as it might be. But Irving's essay does

suggest that there is more in Cather's fiction than simply

Earth Mother
reading of 5

critical alt

115

Earth Mothers and disguised lesbians. Turning to a resisting

reading of My hhtonia will allow us to focus on those

critical alternatives.

116

"A Painful and Peculiar Pleasure":

Towards a Resisting Reading of My Antonia

Before turning to a resisting reading of hy hhtohia, I
think it is appropriate to review briefly what such a reading
entails. One thing that feminist critics often neglect to do
is define the project being undertaken. As Elizabeth Meese
observes, it is essential that feminist literary critics
begin by defining their basic goals and assumptions. As
feminist literary critics we are, to use wayne Booth's term,
"ethical critics” who are attempting to participate in the
ongoing feminist project of contributing to the "discourse of
liberation.” Ours must still be ”criticism.with a Cause."

As we have found over the past twenty-five years, however, it
is not enough--it is in fact dangerou8--to restrict our
literary criticism to the search for positive female role
models and women authors or characters who resist the
patriarchy. It is also dangerous to insist that texts by
women writers tell only one story. In our important quest to
change the material reality of women's lives through literary
criticism, we have begun to realize that we cannot obscure
the ways in which women contribute to their own oppression.
Such concealment leads inevitably, if indirectly and
unwittingly, to a celebration and perpetuation of anti-

feminist values and ideas.

In and
nnproductiv
readers of
resist the
feminist in
political g
relying on
and instead
ml’tiplicit
“5t resiSt
in the text
APpiling th
Gem“strate
semen “rite

Having
Cather nOVQ

IQViSiOnary

said in the

117

In order to move beyond such reductive, and ultimately
unproductive, critical approaches, we must become resisting
readers of women writers. First, we must recognize and then
resist the overlap of other interpretive communities into the
feminist interpretive community when such overlaps negate our
political goals. Second, we must resist the attraction of
relying on Culler's "rule of unity" in our literary criticism
and instead be willing to identify and accept the
multiplicity inherent in texts by women writers. Finally, we
must resist our own impulse to identify only our ideal selves
in the texts by women writers that we read and critique.
Applying these three steps to a reading of My Antonia will
demonstrate the radical potential that a resisting reading of
women writers holds for the feminist interpretive community.

Having received more critical attention than any other
Cather novel, My Antonia seems an unlikely subject for a
revisionary critic to address. But in spite of what has been
said in the past, there is still a great deal left to
consider about this complicated novel. In part this is
because, as I have demonstrated, previous critics have
concentrated on the same three aspects Of the text: Jim
Burden as narrator, the Land as subject, and Antonia as
representative female character. These topics were selected
for consideration by the novel's early reviewers and have
continued to concern critics, including feminist critics, for

seventy-five years. One of the first things we can do as

resisting rea
iron the trac‘
text that has
interpretive
this novel is
turn 0f the <
Migrant, ar
the novel 8!!
in"iiqrants, ‘
reason fer 1”.
concern most
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Characters. 1
light detrac
even femillis
by these ea:

118

resisting readers of My Antonia is turn our attention away
from the traditional topics and focus on an aspect of the
text that has been virtually ignored by all previous
interpretive communities. One of the primary concerns in
this novel is the position of immigrants in America at the
turn of the century. Antonia, as I have said, is a Bohemian
immigrant, and at least half of the other major characters in
the novel are new arrivals to the United States. But, as
immigrants, these characters have been ignored. The major
reason for this critical neglect probably stems from the
concern most early scholars had with issues of "Americanness"
in texts by American writers. An extensive focus on those
characters in this novel who are most clearly not American
might detract from its "Americanness." And, as we have seen,
even feminist literary critics followed the lead established
by these early studies. Furthermore, feminist literary
critics, perhaps unconsciously, found Cather's treatment of
the immigrants somewhat difficult to "naturalize." As we
shall see, it is impossible to read some of these passages
and regard them as articulations of a feminist "ideal self."
But focusing our attention on Cather's depiction of
"foreigners” in My Antonia will reveal some important, and
previously ignored, aspects of the novel that may eventually
contribute a great deal to a feminist articulation of the

”discourse of liberation."

The 1
deals exte
Nebraska p
throughout
establishe
'American'
then. As
employee I
With his ,
NGhraska.
in the '1]
daughter .
Jake 39pm
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hedoes n

119

The first book of fly Antonia, entitled ”The Shimerdas,"
deals extensively with immigrants and their position on the
Hebraska prairie. And while immigrants continue to appear
throughout the novel, the tone taken towards "foreigners” is
established early. With very few exceptions, all the
"American” characters either disdain the immigrants or pity
them. As the novel opens Jim, accompanied by a family
employee named Jake, is crossing the country by train to live
with his grandparents on their farm near Black Hawk,
Nebraska. The conductor immediately informs them of a family
in the "immigrant car” who speak no English and have a
daughter Jim's age. Jim is too shy to visit the girl, and
Jake approves of his decision, informing him that "you were
likely to get diseases from.foreigners."2° :Before we even see
Antonia or her "foreign" family, the novel leads us to
associate them.with ignorance and disease. These
associations continue throughout the text. On his first
visit to Antonia's family, Jim is confronted with many things
he does not understand. Antonia, so thankful that he has
taught her a few English words, tries to give Jim.her silver
ring. He views this gesture as "reckless and extravagant"
and is astounded at the behavior of "these people" (729).

His description of Mrs. Shimerda's bread baking habits also
serves to set the family apart as "other”:

I remember how horrified we were at the sour ashy-gray

bread she gave her family to eat. She mixed her dough,

120

we discovered, in an old tin peck-measure that Krajiek
had used about the barn. When she took the paste out to
make it, she left smears of dough sticking to the sides
of the measure, put the measure on the shelf behind the
stove, and let this residue ferment. The next time she
made bread, she scraped this sour stuff down into the
fresh dough to serve as yeast. (732)
The "we" in Jim's shocked description of sour dough bread
baking customs designates other "Americans" who no doubt rely
on more civilized leaven such as yeast. Furthermore, the
Shimerdas are clearly associated with animals in his
description, as they use a horse feed container for baking.
Jimfis Grandmother Burden shares his horror at the inability
of these recent immigrants to conform to Nebraskan customs.
On a later visit to their home she worries that they may be
eating prairie-dogs and observes, "Where's a body to begin,
‘with these people? They're wanting in everything, and most
of all in horse-sense" (762, emphasis mine). Later, Jim is
disconcerted when Mrs. Shimerda wraps food in a "quilt
stuffed with feathers" to keep it warm (791). Neither Jim
nor his grandmother are able to recognize the "horse-sense"
'of people who manage to make bread without yeast, eat meat
*without domestic animals, and warm food without fire. As
readers, we are free to recognize the irony behind their

jpronouncements, but the sustained pattern of negative

cements a
read again:
One 0
association
lair. Jim
grandparent
i'Ooden hous
house is a
AS we
399 nc
Shelvi

earth

121

comments and attitudes makes it clear that to do so is to
read against the grain of the text.

One of the clearest illustrations of this is the
association made between the Shimerda's home and an animal's
lair. Jim.devotes considerable attention to describing his
grandparents' beautiful home claiming, “ours was the only
wooden house west of Black Hawk" (722). Their comfortable
house is a sharp contrast to the Shimerda's dugout:

As we approached the Shimerdas' dwelling, I could still

see nothing but rough red hillocks, and draws with

shelving banks and long roots hanging out where the
earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one of
those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the
same wine-colored grass that grew everywhere . . . then

I saw a door and window sunk deep in the draw-bank.

(726)

Repeatedly, this house is compared to an animal's lair and
its inhabitants to animals. Grandmother Burden calls it a
”cave” and says, "It's no better than a badger hole; no
proper dugout at all” (726). Later when Jim takes Antonia
and her sister Yulka for a sleigh ride he observes that they
were "glad to get away from.their ugly cave" (753). Otto
Fuchs, another Burden employee, reports that the Shimerdas
"stick in that hole in the bank like badgers" (757). And
even Antonia remarks that her sleeping quarters are "warm

like the badger hole" (760). But the clearest evidence that

the Shimerd
their immig‘
for being "«
the prairie-

The pr;
hrwn earth.
:mderground
Jim and Antc
birds 0f sur
It was alwa}
and disappea
the Shimerda
findergmufld.
pity, Bu t J
for what it
Nominate
mld live 1
ml" Jim 1'

122

the Shimerda's degrading living conditions are connected to
their immigrant status, and are in some way what they deserve
for being "other," can be seen through Jimfs meditations on
the prairie-dog town.

The prairie-dog town extends over ten acres, and dogs,
brown earth-owls, as well as rattlesnakes inhabit the
underground nests. The owls hold a special fascination for
Jim.and Antonia: "we used to wonder a great deal about these
birds of subterranean habit . . . we felt sorry for the owls.
It was always mournful to see them.aome flying home at sunset
and disappear under the earth" (731). The comparison with
the Shimerdas is obvious. Like the owls, they do not belong
underground. And also like the owls, they are the objects of
pity. But Jimfs next observation is particularly startling
for what it reveals about his attitude towards the
unfortunate family: "But after all . . . winged things who
would live like that must be rather degraded creatures"
(731). Jim is completely incapable of seeing that the
Shimerdas, victims of poverty and circumstance, do not
deserve or desire to live in a cave, and his observations
suggest that they, like the owls, are "degraded creatures."
Otherwise, they would surely not consent to live in a hole in
the ground.

.A third instance in Book One that helps establish the
frame through which immigrants are viewed in the novel is the

confrontation between Jake and Ambrosch, Antonia's older

hrother.

‘a distinc
Jake, acti
Ambrosch a
harness, J
Bohemians,
the dirt a
and Jake k
descriptic
revealing;
(796, mph
Calls Ont,
Y°“' (795,
ain't the

123

brother. According to Jim, the result of this conflict was
”a distinct coldness between us and the Shimerdas" (795).
Jake, acting for his employer, Grandpa Burden, had loaned
Ambrosch a horse collar. Asking Ambrosch to return the
harness, Jake receives, instead of the object he loaned the
Bohemians, "a collar that had been badly used--trampled in
the dirt and gnawed by rats" (796). The two young men fight,
and Jake knocks Ambrosch, unconscious, to the ground. Jimfs
description of the response of Antonia and Mrs. Shimerda is
revealing: "They came on, screaming and clawing the air"
(796, emphasis mine). The animal imagery continues as Jake
calls out, "You're a damned ungrateful lot, the whole pap; of
you” (796, emphasis mine). He informs Jim, ”These foreigners
ain't the same . . . They ain't to be trusted" (796-797).

And Jim assures him, "I'll never be friends with them again,
Jake . . . I believe they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch
underneath" (797). Jim essentializes the Shimerdas and, by
extension, all "foreigners." He eventually reconciles with
.Antonia and her family, but he also remembers her behavior in
the weeks after the incident when, taunting the boys, she
‘would ”clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing
‘voice" (797). This unflattering portrait of Antonia
<contrasts sharply with many of his fond memories, but it also
serves to remind us that Jim cannot forget the animal-like
qualities that lurk "underneath" his immigrant heroine.

Because of its reliance upon notions of unified subjectivity,

the feminist
positive sid
resisting re
novels by m
portrait of
wholly so.
subject to i
the foreign
Anothe
lM‘liqrants.
large tam
families in".
text Sugges
desires in
indicatiOns
Pu€113, hims
des'Cribes a
experienCec

relative t

124

the feminist interpretive community has viewed ”only the
positive side" of Cather's portrait of Antonia. If, as
resisting readers, we are willing to look for multiplicity in
novels by women writers, we can recognize that Cather's
portrait of Antonia, while in many respects positive, is not
wholly so. Such a reading reveals Cather's position as
subject to a society which held many negative notions about
the foreign ”other."

Another way the text systematically dehumanizes
immigrants is by repeatedly associating "foreigners" with
large families and the attendant sexual activity such
families imply in an age before effective birth control. The
text suggests that "these people" cannot control their sexual
desires in an appropriate, "American" way. One of the first
indications of this pattern occurs in Book One when Otto
Fuchs, himself an immigrant and an employee of the Burdens,
describes a ”funny story" about some adventures he
experienced on his passage to America. He was asked by a
relative to look after a pregnant woman traveling to meet her
husband in Chicago. Otto claims that the woman "played a
sorry trick on him" by delivering three babies and that her
fertility drew unwanted (and embarrassing) attention: "The
first-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman,
‘took an embarrassing interest in Otto, and often inquired of
him about his charge" (756). The interest of these wealthy

passengers highlights the exotic aspect of immigrant

sexuality :
story' see:
context of
sexuality 4
Jim 1:
in the now
apparently
the novel .
in Minneso
ten years
the ‘Wealth
their larg
Emily, hc

'Chris Lir

125

sexuality represented by this fertile woman. Otto's "funny
story" seems somewhat out of place unless viewed in the
context of the many tales about immigrant fertility and
sexuality appearing in My Aptopia.

Jim is an only child, and many of the "American" couples
in the novel such as the Gardeners and the Cutters are
apparently childless. The only large "American" family in
the novel are the Barlings; but, while Mr. Harling was born
in Minnesota, his wife "lived in Christiania until she was
ten years old" (807). Furthermore, the Harlings are among
the wealthiest families in Black Hawk, well able to care for
their large brood of children. Speaking of the Lingard
family, however, who are Norwegian immigrants, Jim.observes,
”Chris Lingard was not a very successful farmer, and he had a
large family" (817). Mr. Lingard's failure in America is
linked to his failure to control the population of his
family. When Lena, Tiny, Anna, and Jim go on a picnic
together, the girls discuss the hardships of large families
'where there are always "plenty of live dolls to nurse" (863).
.And the "scandalous" story Jim relates about the "three
:Marys" further emphasizes the lascivious sexual behavior
associated with ”foreigners":

Mary Dusak had been housekeeper for a bachelor rancher

from Boston, and after several years in his service she

was forced to retire from the world for a short time.

Later she came back to town to take the place of her

frie
The
expll
The 'expl<
with the '
discrimina
Ante}
As she tej
illicit s:
was a POO]
Antonia 81
and CCNice:
”other mo:
treat her
Millers 1
Shimérda'
YOUng WOW
Antonia 01

{894). H.

{Ulfillin
Sines a c.
“fol-Signs
Conform

-f0reigne

he I.

126

friend, Mary Svoboda, who was similarly embarrassed.

The three Marys were considered as dangerous as high

explosives to have about the kitchen. (840-1)
The "explosive" sexuality Jim and his community associates
with the ”foreigners" is simply one more way they
discriminate and label.

Antonia herself is not protected from this designation.
As she tells Jim, her parents' marriage was the result of
illicit sexual activity. Before her marriage Mrs. Shimerda
was a poor girl who worked for Mr. Shimerda's mother.
Antonia suggests that the noble and the peasant became lovers
and conceived a child: "They said he could have paid my
mother money, and not married her . . . he was too kind to
treat her like that” (861). Apparently following in her
mother's footsteps, Antonia takes a lover; unlike Mr.
Shimerda, however, Larry Donovan does not marry the pregnant
young woman. Jim's response is telling: "I tried to shut
.Antonia out of my mind. I was bitterly disappointed in her.
I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity"
(894). Be is actually unable to forgive Antonia for
fulfilling his expectations, the expectations he has held
since a child that "underneath" Antonia is like all the other
”foreigners.” Even in her later life, Antonia continues to
conform to Jim' 8 accepted notions of the behavior of
"foreigners." Seeking news of his friend, Jim discovers that

her marriage to a young Bohemian was what he might have

predicted:
He stays a
find her a
Antonia, C
children.
'disappoi;
asset as 1'
Bdenic pa:
threatens

It is
Anteniavs
Children 5
reminiSCey

We t1

St3i:

Outs.

toge.

127

predicted: "they were poor, and had a large family" (912).
He stays away for many years claiming, "I did not want to
find her aged and broken" (912). When he finally does visit
Antonia, Jim.is amazed and enraptured by her "ten or eleven"
children. Her fertility, that aspect that once seemed so
”disappointing" and "foreign," he transforms into her chief
asset as he depicts her as the Earth Mother reigning in an
Edenic paradise. Married and middle-aged, Antonia no longer
threatens Jim.

It is significant that Jim realizes the magnitude of
Antonia's accomplishment as a mother only when he sees her
children spilling out of the "fruit cave," a structure
reminiscent of Antonia's first home in America:

we turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the

stairs first, and the children waited. we were standing

outside talking, when they all came running up the steps
together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and
brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable
explosion of life out of the dark cave into the

sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment. (918)

'The cave Jim.describes is eerily reminiscent of the womb, as
.Antonia's children spring forth from its depths. Clearly the
(association between the Shimerdas' status as "degraded"
immigrants, their first cave home, and Antonia's fruitful
womb are strong. Throughout the novel human fertility has

been linked to immigrants and the primitive sexuality Jim

associates

the Earth M
he cannot 15
families in
”other.“

It is
that there
“rise Above
Significant.
assimilate
Their ass i
the Englis
additiOn,
tamilies.
Ea“3993 tr
Anton 3&1:

flat 8&9

128

associates with them. It seems clear that whether we view
the Earth Mother as a limiting or an affirmative archetype,
we cannot forget the negative pattern associated with large
families in this novel. It is one more sign of the ”foreign”
"other.”

It is important, however, not to lose sight of the fact
that there are many examples of immigrants in My Antonia who
”rise above" the conditions of their nationality.
Significantly, these characters are always the ones who
assimilate most thoroughly with the ”American" community.
Their assimilation is clearly represented by their mastery of
the English language and by their financial success. In
addition, very few of the "successful" immigrants have
families. The first important example of a character who
manages the transition from "foreigner" to "American" is
.Anton Jelinek. Like the Shimerdas, he is a Bohemian, and we
first see him when he arrives to help the family after the
despairing suicide of Antonia's father. Jim is struck by his
assertive, mature manner as he strides into their kitchen, ”a
strapping young fellow . . . handsome, warmphearted, and full
«of life" (781). The reason Jelinek did not visit the
Shimerdas before their tragedy is because he has been busy
earning money, eager to make his fortune in America.
Significantly, he has also been working to erase the
«iifferences between himself and his neighbors: ”Since winter

began he had been going to the school by the mill, to learn

must a
nice 'lady
emphasis 11
age, Antor
the Shiner
Jelinek is
Anton Jelj
two 531001
eStablis‘m
as respect
makes his
J‘elinek i
SalOOn, a

Anot

Armr1Can

so in Dar
Statement

Nick, 0r

life ' am

She {Ema

129

gpgligp, along with the little children. He told me he had a
nice 'lady-teacher' and that he liked to go to school" (781,
emphasis mine). Ironically, although she is the appropriate
age, Antonia is never allowed to go to school. But unlike
the Shimerdas, whose only English lessons come from.Jim,
Jelinek is anxious to assimilate. Eventually, "Handsome
Anton Jelinek" rents his homestead and opens one of the only
two saloons in Black Hawk. Jim recalls that his
establishment was ”admitted, even by the church people, to be
as respectable as a saloon could be" (849). And when Jim
makes his pilgrimage back to Black Hawk many years later,
Jelinek is still a successful businessman, still running his
saloon, and, apparently, still childless (935).

Another major character in My Antonia who achieves the
American dream is Lena Lingard. And, like Jelinek, she does
so in part by remaining childless. One of the first
statements she makes in the novel is, "I don't want to marry
Nick, or any other man . . . I've seen a good deal of married
life, and I don't care for it" (816). And, true to her word,
she remains single her entire life. Lena apprentices herself
to a dressmaker in Black Hawk and soon is, as the dressmaker
had predicted, quite successful at her trade. She moves to
ILincoln, establishes her own shop, and reunites with Jim who
is there attending college. Lena has assimilated so
successfully that Jim cannot recognize her: "She was so

lquietly conventipnalized by city clothes that I might have

passed her
nine). Jir
in a way t]
wonderful 1
Certainly :
Jim and Le:
other seem
deClaratio:
Metheart
that a VOm
Jim could
Isna, She
p0ignant i
SpeeCh hab
Lena.
like
Speal
impu:
Fisk.

130

passed her on the street without seeing her” (877, emphasis
mine). Jim admires and respects Lena's success and views her
in a way that he could never see Antonia: "It seemed to me
wonderful that she should have got on so well in the world.
Certainly she had no one but herself to thank for it" (878).
Jim.and Lena become lovers, although their affection for each
other seems rather tepid. But their affair makes Jim's later
declaration to Antonia, "I'd have liked to have you for a
sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything
that a woman can be to a man,” particularly ironic (910).
Jim could never accept Antonia as a lover because, unlike
Lena, she would always be a "foreigner” "underneath." One
poignant illustration of this is Jim's comparison of the
speech habits of the two young women:
Lena's talk always amused me. Antonia had never talked
like the people about her. Even after she learned to
speak English readily there was always something
impulsive and foreign in her speech. But Lena had
picked up all the gopventional expressions she heard at
Mrs. Thomas's dressmaking shop. (886, emphasis mine)
1Lena's success at assimilation translates directly into
financial success, and at the end of the novel she is the
owner of an exclusive dressmaking shop in San Francisco. In
:many respects a "conventional,” Americanized woman, Lena
Ibecomes wealthy and successful, while Antonia, still

"foreign,” develops into an Earth Mother. It is not

necessary
other, but
'foreignne
just as it
results in
Recognizin
Women's e
avoid redu
identity . ..
Concern Hi
this other
The f
CODCQm Vi
race, nati.
gender and
CQrtainly'
Antonia Co}

I haVe SUf'

131

necessary to label one of these endings as "better" than the
other, but it is important to recognize that it is Antonia's
”foreignness" that leads to her status as an Earth Mother
just as it is Lena's ”Americanness" or conventionality that
results in her achievement of the American dream.
Recognizing these two very different articulations of
"women's experience” in My Aptonia is an effective way to
avoid reductively clinging to a unified notion of "women's
identity." It is only by resisting the prevailing critical
concern with Jim and Antonia that we are able to recognize
this other narrative embedded in the novel.

The feminist interpretive community has allowed their
concern with gender issues in My Antonia to obscure issues of
race, nationality and class. In fact, however, issues of
gender and nationality are completely entwined in this novel.
Certainly, I think it is still difficult to determine whether
Antonia constitutes a "positive role model." But I also hope
I have sufficiently demonstrated that it is not necessary to
codify her as entirely one thing or another. In fact, we
should strive to make room for multiplicity in our criticism.
It is important to be free to say that perhaps she is both
positive and negative. Or, even more importantly, perhaps we
must begin to consider her character, as well as all the
other characters we encounter in women's writing, without
relying on such binary notions as ”positive” and ”negative."

If we do focus on nationality as well as gender, we are able

to devel
Cather a
characte
in the o
the mill
owner; a
undisput
either '
Mn
when Vh
'OPPIess
0f their
that one
Certain ‘
overCOmi
“meal

Cat

COnfj
male cha

T»
WK), ”Th

travelin
Spite or
Char-afie-
Phaseche
reluctant

h
&
NauSe .

132

to develop a different picture of her character and what
Cather accomplished through it. There are certainly female
characters in the novel who constitute "positive role models"
in the old, feminist sense. Lena Lingard; Tiny Soderball,
the millionaire land speculator; Mrs. Gardener, the hotel
owner; and Frances Harling, the grain merchant all achieve
undisputed success. And they all do so because they are
either ”American" or "Americanized" women. Significantly, in
My Aptonia there are no examples of unconventional immigrant
women who have fully and successfully resisted the
"oppressive patriarchy” and thus surmounted the constraints
of their gender. It is time that we acknowledge the fact
that one of Cather's messages in My Antgnia is that only
certain women, "American" WOmen, are capable of fully
overcoming the restrictive circumstances associated with
being a woman in a male society.

Cather's prejudices regarding "foreigners" are
confirmed, in an unusual way, by her treatment of a black
male character, Blind d'Arnault. An entire chapter of Book
Two, ”The Hired Girls," is devoted to Blind d'Arnault, a
traveling pianist who has come to play in Black Hawk. In
spite of the considerable attention Cather devotes to this
character, literary critics have virtually ignored his
presence in the novel. Feminist critics have been especially
reluctant to consider this rather strange interlude both

because it seems completely at odds with the rest of the text

and becau
character.
reader cox
equality.
mlatto or
in his "ye
stereotype
amiable ne
subSerVien
“'0 additi
Chapter.
MInault;
depcil‘ts fr,
remarkable
of the inc:
PlaYS danm
tranSfOrmeC
full of Stl

hear him. t

133

and because the stereotypes Cather relies on in her
characterization of Blind d'Arnault are offensive to any
reader committed to contemporary, liberal ideas of individual
equality. Jim remembers Blind d'Arnault, as ”a heavy, bulky
mulatto on short legs” whose "white teeth” are ”all grinning"
in his ”yellow face" (829). Further relying on negative
stereotypes, Cather describes d'Arnault's voice as "the soft,
amiable negro voice . . . with the note of docile
subservience in it" (829). The adjective "docile” is used
two additional times to describe d'Arnault in the seven-page
chapter. He was "docile and obedient" as a child (830), and
d'Arnault remains "docile and happy" as a old man when he
departs from the crowd which has been listening to his
remarkable playing in Black Hawk (834). Apparently unaware
of the incongruous comparison, Jim also mentions that as he
plays dance music on the piano the "docile" d'Arnault becomes
transformed into ”some glistening African god of pleasure,
full of strong, savage blood" (834). Jim.ooncludes that "To
hear him, to watch him, was to see a negro enjoying himself
as only a negro can” (832). The chapter is a painful one to
read if one is aware of the power and the danger of such
derogatory, stereotypical language. Cather certainly does
not seem like a feminist "ideal self" in this chapter.

The one critic who does consider d'Arnault, John J.
Murphy, focuses on the description of d'Arnault's first

childhood encounter with a piano:

Thro

mout

134

Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its
mouth. He touched it softly, and it answered softly,
kindly. He shivered and stood still. Then he began to
feel it all over, ran his finger tips along the slippery
sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some
conception of its shape and size, of the space it
occupied in primeval night. It was cold and hard, and
like nothing else in his black universe. He went back
to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt
his way down into the mellow thunder, as far as he could
go. He seemed to know that it must be done with the
fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached
this highly artificial instrument through a mere
instinct, and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it
was to piece him out and make a whole creature of him.
(831-2)
Murphy concludes that d'Arnault illustrates powerful sexual
currents underlying the text: "Here, through Jamesian
sublimation, Cather follows Norris's dictum to plumb the
mystery of sex and search the innermost temple of the soul of
man" (1984, 236). I agree with Murphy's analysis, and I
would go further in observing that d'Arnault's association
'with sexuality parallels the associations Cather makes
between sexuality and the "foreigners" who people the novel.

Sexuality is something exotic, primitive; ultimately, like

d‘Arnault's
(832).
There
Cather desc
describe tr
us understa
use of the
issues that
coIIIIIunities
mmigrants
emPhaslizes
m and in
in the wood
had a glow

135

dflArnault's playing, it is ”barbarous" and "abominable"
(832).

There are several clear and specific ways in which
Cather describes d'Arnault with the same language she uses to
describe the immigrants. Examining these instances will help
us understand this character as well as Cather's problematic
use of the tropes of race and nationality in M Antonia,
issues that have long been ignored by all interpretive
communities. One thing the text emphasizes when describing
immigrants is skin color. Jim's first description of Antonia
emphasizes her dark skin and eyes: "[Her eyes] were big and
warm.and full of light, like the sun shining on ppggp pools
in the wood. Her skin was pgggp, too, and in her cheeks she
had a glow of rich, ggpk color. Her ppgpp hair was curly and
wild-looking” (727, emphasis mine). Years later, when Jim
returns to visit Antonia he describes her as "a stalwart,
ppggp woman, flat-chested, her curly ppgpp hair a little
grizzled" (914, emphasis mine). I do not think it is too
great a stretch to consider d'Arnault and his description as
”yellow" with hair like ”close-clipped wool" as related to
Antonia. Both are identified as "foreign" by the sign of
their physical appearance. In both cases, they are marked as
permanently disfigured by virtue of their difference from.the
Anglo-American norm. Furthermore, it seems to me that both
are exoticized: Antonia by her position as Earth Mother and

dernault by his position as African god. They are

simltanec
position <
'other" or
Anotl
head shape
but it is
The descri
disturbing
head, too;
f01ds of 11
3mm; t
no brain h
m~111<ile531y
SOCiEty?
descriptio;
to fullY 111
Mr mrk.

lingam wit

136

simultaneously objects of admiration and disdain, the only
position Cather's text seems to leave for someone who is
”other” or "foreign."

Another way the text distinguishes "foreigners” is by
head shape; this seems to be a special concern of Cather's,
but it is one that has never been remarked on by critics.

The description of Blind d'Arnault's head is perhaps the most
disturbing aspect of his characterization: "He had the negro
head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behind the ears but
folds of neck under close-clipped wool” (829). It is
shocking that this insulting description of a black man with
no brain has attracted so little attention. Has Cather
mindlessly bought into the assumptions and prejudices of her
society? Clearly she has in part. But we must turn to her
description of the head shapes of the immigrants in the story
to fully understand how this problematic trope functions in
her work. Shopping in Black Hawk, Jim encounters Lena
Lingard with her little brother Chris, the son of the
unsuccessful Chris, Sr. The twelve-year old boy seems
industrious and happy, as he has been working all fall in the
Norwegian church to buy his mother a Christmas present. But
Jim's description of the boy highlights the latter's
difference, as he calls Chris "funny" and "square-headed"
(821). Later, Jim's description of a Polish violinist whose
affection for Lena rivaled his own also focuses on head

shape: "His head was the shape of a chocolate drop, and was

covered wi
pointed or
one reason
The 6
when Jim r
one of the
her childr
learned at
Front} of i
out,' the
confirms h!
ohsemeS tj
fellows. w.
mins). J11
eXpreSSQS l

AmbrOSCh’

137

covered with dry, straw—colored hair that fuzzed up about his
pointed crown” (889). Presumably, Jim.oonsiders this anomaly
one reason the Pole is unworthy of Lena's love.

The emphasis on head shape becomes even more evident
when Jim.returns to Antonia's farm. Antonia tells him that
one of the things that is most important to her is raising
her children with "nice [American] ways," like those she
learned at the Harlings. And one of the things she is most
proud of is that "none of my daughters will ever have to work
out," the standard occupation for immigrant girls (921). Jim
confirms her success at raising ”American" children when he
observes that her two oldest sons are "straight, well-made
fellows, with gpr heads and clear eyes" (922, emphasis
mine). Jim reiterates this pronouncement later when he
expresses his sorrow at leaving Antonia's second son,
Ambrosch, "with his pleasant voice and his pipe pgag and
eyes" (935, emphasis mine). But Antonia has one son, her
favorite, who is not "Americanized." Leo is the only child
in the family who plays Mr. Shimerda's violin, and he plays
Bohemian songs (923). Jim also notes a connection between
Leo and his grandmother, observing that "His habitual
skepticism.was like a direct inheritance from that old woman"
(925). Most significantly, however, this boy who is clearly
the least ”Americanized" of all Antonia's children is
described in terms that loudly echo the description of Blind

d'Arnault: ”He hadn't much head behind his ears and his tawny

d'Arn
descr
Cathe

tunt

paSSa1

featu;

138

fleece grew down thick to the back of his neck" (924). Just
like d'Arnault, Leo's difference is marked by his head shape
and hair texture: he has no room in his skull for a brain and
his head is covered with something that resembles a sheep's
skin. It is not enough to dismiss Jim's description of Blind
d'Arnault as mere racism, although it is that. For these
descriptions, while painful, also function to illuminate
Cather's overriding concern with "difference" and the ways it
stunts success in her fictional world. Ignoring these
passages, as so many critics have done, obscures significant
features of the work and stunts our understanding of it.

If we return, in light of Cather's treatment of
immigrants and blacks, to her interpretation of the "myth of
America” in M Antonia, her version achieves significant, and
perhaps sinister, new meanings. On his first full night at
his grandparent's farm, Jim.attends family prayers and hears
Grandfather Burden read from the book of Psalms. The one
verse Jim quotes, "He shall choose our inheritance for us,
the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah," is central
(722). For although Jim.olaims he ”had no idea what the word
meant," it is clear to readers what the verse itself
signifies. The "chosen people" in this novel are
"Americans," and they achieve their success at the expense of
immigrants who, by their very presence, are always a threat
to that inheritance. This difficult balance is illustrated

by the puzzling story Antonia tells the Harlings about the

 

tramp
for a
toes 5
while,
sickne
him tn.
find 5:
angril}
though1
search
thl’ashi‘
tramp I
the pox.
I
bu

9C

139

tramp at thrashing time. Antonia was driving a grain wagon
for a NOrwegian family and was approached by a tramp: "His
toes stuck out of his shoes, and he hadn't shaved for a long
while, and his eyes was awful red and wild, like he had some
sickness" (825). The man asked for beer, and Antonia told
him that the NOrwegians did not have beer but that he could
find some if he went to the Bohemians. The tramp complained
angrily, "My God . . . so it's Norwegians now, is it? I
thought this was Americy" (826). Instead of going off in
search of beer, however, the man asked to help run the
thrashing machine. But to the horror of the workers, the
tramp proceeded to wave to Antonia and jump head-first into
the powerful machine:

I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses,

but the belt had sucked him down, and by the time they

got her stopped he was all beat and cut to pieces. He

was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to get him out,

and the machine ain't never worked right since. (826)
The tramp's suicide can be seen as the angry response of a
whole nation, "Americy," threatened by the powerful influx of
"foreigners" who, in spite of all prejudice and
discrimination, manage to survive and prosper and subdue the
land.

In many respects My Aptonia suggests that essentializing
and mythologizing "these people" is a more acceptable

alternative for ”Americans" than jumping into the thrashing

machine. 1
oversimpl.
tale of m
become re:
unified r:
moreover,
Jim Burder
slr'lltlathet:
have to it
at’titucle <
stupid- (E
ma“Y 0thI
father: .1
intelliger
distinctic

It is
of 903mgd
hot fol-Ced
identify e

140

machine. But such a reading constitutes a vast
oversimplification of the novel. To reduce the novel to a
tale of midwestern prejudice and discrimination is not to
become resisting readers. It is merely to replace one
unified reading with another. In order to make such a claim,
moreover, we would have to ignore instances when the views of
Jim Burden, and thus the text, are highly enlightened and
sympathetic towards the immigrants in the novel. we would
have to ignore his claim, for example, that he ”thought the
attitude of the town people toward [immigrant] girls very
stupid” (839). .And we would be unable to acknowledge, among
many other things, Jim's sincere admiration of Antonia's
father: ”There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the
intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal
distinction, of Antonia's father" (839).

It is moments like these that demonstrate the usefulness
of postmodernism for feminist literary criticism. For we are
not forced to choose a single subject position with which to
identify either the characters in a novel or the author of a
novel. we are no longer able to acknowledge only those
aspects of the text which support our own critical agenda.
For such a position would simply repeat the errors of
previous feminist critics who were able to consider only the
erminist" agenda that the text clearly does incorporate. we
must develop interpretive strategies that will allow us to

racknowledge the moments in Cather's novel that do not

represent :
anti-femin.
realize the
itself int:
accomodate
this is to
significant
COMunities
We are not
with our 0‘
alternative
and enrich
That in its
"Elle of Un-
tWards a I

141

represent our "ideal selves," indeed moments that represent
anti-feminist, patriarchal sentiments. But we must also
realize that such moments do not force us to throw the novel
itself into the shredder. Our interpretive strategies must
accommodate more than one method of reading. One way to do
this is to recognize that we do not have to deny the many
significant and revealing readings that previous interpretive
communities have made of this text. As resisting readers,
we are not necessarily attempting to replace those readings
with our own. Rather, we are attempting to provide
alternative strategies and readings that can stand alongside
and enrich the current understandings of women's writing.
That in itself will eliminate the danger of allowing Culler's
"rule of unity" to dominate our criticism. As we move
towards a resisting reading of My Antonia, it is my hope that
we will acknowledge the importance of considering the text's
attitude towards blacks and immigrants along with the many
other important aspects critics have long recognized in the
novel. Thus it will become evident that while Cather was
protesting many aspects of her patriarchal society, she was
also a product of that society, and she inevitably, if
unconsciously, celebrated some facets of turn-of-the-century
America that contributed to the oppression of women as well
as men. If we are able to acknowledge the many and
complicated facets of Cather, we will be better prepared to

see those things in ourselves. The importance of approaching

Cather and 0-
clear when w:

Gil—l.

142

Cather and other women writers in this way becomes even more
clear when we turn to a novel like Sapphira and the Slave

Girl.

The tr
and most or.
Slave Girl
first seem .-
critical re<
about the 0;
And, as I w:
ChaPter, a 1
can illustre
ConsiCleratic
the potentia
COns iderat 1C
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I 84%

during the y

h0m

{ECOlmts the

Ming lhis tr

143

Reading Sapphira and the Slave Girl

The transition from.My Antopia, one of Cather's earlier
and most critically acclaimed novels, to Sapphira and the
Slave Qir; (1940), her last and most neglected work, may at
first seem an awkward leap. But a brief exploration of the
critical reception of the later novel reveals a great deal
about the operation of the feminist interpretive community.
And, as I will demonstrate in the next section of this
chapter, a resisting reading of Sapphira and the Slave Girl
can illustrate both the importance of a feminist
consideration of neglected texts by established authors and
the potential of resisting reading to reshape our
consideration of the entire canon of women's writing.

The only novel Cather set in the state where she was
born, Sapphira and the Slave Girl takes place in Virginia
during the years just before the Civil war. The novel
recounts the story of Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, the slave-
owning mistress of a small plantation, and her husband Henry
Colbert, the rustic operator of a community mill. The ”Slave
Girl" of the title is Nancy Till, and one of her
responsibilities includes cleaning the mill where Henry
Colbert sleeps. Sapphira becomes jealous of the young woman
and plots to have her seduced by one of Henry's nephews. But
Sapphira's abolitionist daughter, Rachel, saves Nancy by

sending her to Canada on the underground railroad. The novel

conclude
who rema
slavery 1
should b-
fron 11L
driving,
’lique.
any othe:
Elm
Suggest 1
in Part 1
'myth of
In :
EXtIEme1}
that by 1
AmeriCan
reCipiem

PIiZe f0}

144

concludes with a reunion between Nancy and her mother, Till,
who remained in the service of the Colbert family after
slavery ended. Already, through this brief plot summary, it
should be clear that this novel is significantly different
from.My Aptonia. Not only in its setting, but also in its
driving, linear narrative, Sapphira and the Slave Girl seems
unique. It has also received less critical attention than
any other Cather novel, with the possible exception of ppgy
Gayheapp. Those assessments of the book that do exist
suggest that critics have ignored Sapphira and the Slave Girl
in part because they have been unable to identify Baym's
"myth of America" in it.

In general, the early reviews of the novel were
extremely favorable. It is important, however, to remember
that by the time Sapphira appeared Cather herself was an
American institution. Sixty-seven years old and the
recipient of several honorary degrees as well as the Pulitzer
Prize for One of Ours (1922), Cather had by this time
achieved a stature comparable to Eudora welty's in 1993.
Thus, when a reviewer like Morton Dauwen Zabel for The Nation
called the book one of Cather's five best it is fair to
assume that his comments might in part be a tribute to the
writer as well as the work (575). He was not alone in his
apparent admiration for the novel. Another reviewer, Henry
Seidel Canby, identified in Sapphira ”that delicate yet

powerful art of brief and significant narrative" and

observed t]
is needles:
called Sap]
Mary Ross <
most admire
honest depj
the m
called 3412.:
Which is nc
“d Symboli
that the re
Others She
B“ there r,
voice 3111011:

M: Clj

145

observed that ”all that is needed is included, and all that
is needless is left out" (5). The San Francisco Chropicle
called Sapphira the equivalent of Antonia (Gunsky 14), and
Mary Ross of the New York Herald-Tribune asserted that one of
most admirable aspects of the text was Cather's true and

honest depiction of black characters (1). In her essay for

the gppk of the Month Club News Dorothy Canfield Fisher
called Sapphira ”a lovely story of escape from human slavery,

which is not only literally and factually true, but deeply
and symbolically the truth” (284). James Woodress claims
that the reviews of Sapphira pleased Cather more than any
others she had received over her long career (1987, 488).

But there was one dissenting, and as it turns out prophetic,
voice among the major reviews of 1940-41. writing in The New
yorker, Clifton Fadiman suggested that Sapphira would not
become one of Cather's most enduring works because it is
”designedly minor in tone and content” (104).

Fadiman's predictions were accurate, but it is important
to realize that the main reason Sapphira was viewed as minor
was because it was not perceived to address the "myth of
America." Because Cather's final novel ranks last in the
amount of critical attention it has received since those
first euphoric reviews, it is an easy task briefly to survey
all the significant essays and chapters devoted to Sapphira.
Almost without exception all early critics of this novel, and

many later critics, ignore the issues of race and class that

are so cent
little over
years after
spam be
(93). And
aSpects of
Prairie nor
on the nove
9&1 lacks
' ' it is j
of life“ (.
342m a:
less harsh

Della]! Whi:

146

are so central in any work whose main subject is slavery. A
little over a decade after the novel's publication and four
years after its author's death, David Daiches declared
Sapphira below the standard set by Cather's earlier work
(93). And E. K. Brown, while admiring some of the technical
aspects of the novel, also ranks it as inferior to the
prairie novels (259). In the first critical essay to appear
on the novel, Paul C. wermuth claims, "Sapphira apd the Slave
gig; lacks much of the vitality of its author's best books .
. . it is largely a nostalgic picture of a long-vanished way
of life” (7). John H. Randall joins the chorus, calling
Sgpphipa an artistic failure (365). Lavon Mattes Jobes is
less harsh in his Upiversipy Review article, but the goal of
his essay seems to be to encourage readers to reconsider this
novel, which by 1967 had fallen into critical obscurity (77).
In "Willa Cather's Last Four Books" David Stouck attempts to
explain this obscurity by pointing to the new perspective
Cather adopted in her later life. He writes that by the
publication of Obscure Destinies in 1932 "the primary
objective of [Cather's] writing is no longer self-expression
but the desire to see human relationships from as many
vantage points as possible" (299). This shift is a shift
away from the rugged individualism.characteristic of her
early work, a characteristic that, as I have shown, earned
Cather a prominent place in the canon of American literature.

Because critics could not identify these characteristics in

Cather's l
inferior o
The f
Gir_l did nl
differed m.
Paradise"
relationsh
between Sag
Cather's I:
that in Si}
”Mush tn.
atmOYanCe ‘
Virgirlie c:
novel grow
critical if
liliehfeld

Which Perm:

147

Cather's last novel, they either dismissed the work as
inferior or otherwise ignored it.21 .
The first feminist assessments of Sapphira and the Slave
.QiIl did not appear until the 19803. And even then, they
differed markedly from those of My Antopia. In "Reentering
Paradise" (1980) Jane Lilienfeld focuses on Cather's
relationship with her mother, identifying correspondences
between Sapphira's relationship to Rachel and Virginia
Cather's relationship to Willa (163). Lilienfeld suggests
that in Sapphira Cather "fictionalized and thus worked
through the patterns of dominance, rivalry, anger, and
annoyance that had characterized her relations to Mary
Virginia Cather. All the mother-daughter relations in the
novel grow from these 'tangled strands'" (164). Focusing her
critical attention squarely on the white women in the novel,
Lilienfeld is able to ignore the issues of race and class
which permeate the text. Eugenie Lambert Hamner shares
Lilienfeld's concern with biography and, like her, she
deflects attention away from the issues in Sapphira, such as
racism. that might be inconsistent with a feminist world
view. Hamner's essay focuses on identifying the child who
observes the reunion between Nancy and Till at the end of the
novel as she explores the ramifications of Cather's possible
placement of herself directly into the text (352). In
addition, Hamner identifies powerful female characters in the

novel including Sapphira, Rachel, Nancy, and Till, ignoring

the import
this compl

'eer
final chap
(1986), fi
1984. Ros
that Of a

innocent h

148

the important ways issues of race shape issues of gender in
this complicated text.

"Sapphiga and the Slave Girl: An American Gothic," the
final chapter of Susan J. Rosowski's book The Voyage Perilous
(1986), first appeared as a Great Plains anrterly essay in
1984. Rosowski argues that the basic plot of Sapphira is
that of a Gothic novel full of drafty manors, evil villains,
innocent heroines, and valiant rescuers: "This basic plot is
so firmly presented that we respond to it as Gothic, though
we may not consciously recognize it as such" (236-7).
Rosowski identifies the many contradictions in the text,
including the ”graceful facade of civilization" that
disguises the "dark cruelty" of slavery and the ambiguous
character of Sapphira who is both "kind" and "cruel" (234-5).
Rosowski concludes that rather than being "escapist," the
novel represents a "distinctly modern search for meaning in
an estranged world” (239). But Rosowski's discussion
deflects attention away from Cather's consideration of
slavery and race in the text and instead focuses on the
larger and somewhat more abstract question of evil. The
:ramifications of how Cather chose to represent and explore
'this issue are large ones that feminist literary critics
would do well to explore.

By the mid 19308 critics were no longer eliding the

.issues of race, class, and gender in their discussions of

Sapphira and the Slave Girl. This is due in part to the

publicatiox
book by Mir
'paradox of
encounter”
relationshi
autobiogra;
(5)- Lapp;
novels she
ambiguity a
that it is
Cather's as
8591101119110“.
as a "Mixec
Sapph:
of he:
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S°°iai
reDre:
Gwin fault;
derlOped ‘
unquestiOH‘
relatiOnS :
#0 specula-
Qplicatio'

‘ Emrently

149

publication of Black and White WOmen (1985), an important
book by Minrose C. Gwin. Gwin's aim is to reveal the
"paradox of human pain and human connection in racial
encounter" through an exploration of cross-racial
relationships between women as depicted in novels and
autobiographies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
(5). Sapphira and the Slave Girl is one of five American
novels she considers. Like Rosowski, Gwin locates Sapphira's
ambiguity at the center of the text (132). Gwin suggests
that it is Sapphira's "moral ambiguity" that "implies
Cather's assessment of slavery as a complex, problematic
phenomenon" (137). According to Gwin, Cather views freedom
as a ”mixed blessing":
Sapphira's peculiar brand of evil emerges from a union
of her own egocentricity and the institution of slavery.
That same union, Cather indicates, can also produce
happy slaves and the comfort and ease of a traditional
social order, which is not perfect but not totally
repressive either. (147)
Gwin faults Cather both for neglecting to provide any fully
developed characters besides Sapphira and for accepting
unquestioningly the ambiguity of cross-racial female
relations she depicts in Sapphira (148-9). It is difficult
'to speculate on the reasons Gwin was able to see the racist
implications in the novel when so many feminist critics

apparently could not recognize the power dynamics in the

text. In 1
between won
previous C:
was not a C
others, she
like the W1
laintaining
Perhaps it
idol. In E
the feminis
of rage in:

haril:

entitled to

150

text. In part her subject, cross-racial relationships
between women, led her to address aspects of the text
previous critics could more easily ignore. In addition, Gwin
was not a Cather specialist. Unlike Rosowski, Arnold, and
others, she was not active in professional organizations,
like the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial, that are devoted to
maintaining and promoting Cather's literary reputation.
Perhaps it was easier for her to see the clay feet of the
idol. In any case, after Gwin, it was no longer possible for
the feminist interpretive community to ignore the way issues
of race inflect issues of gender in Sapphiga.

Marilyn Arnold addresses Sapphira in a 1987 essay
entitled "'Of Human Bondage': Cather's Subnarrative in
Sapphiga and the Slave Gigl." But despite the implications
of its title the essay gives little more than a nod to the
actual depiction of slavery in Sapphira. Arnold suggests
that there are two levels to Cather's slave novel: the
surface text, which constitutes a traditional "slave novel"
depicting the necessity of ending an evil system, and the
”underplot,” which represents slavery as a symbol for the
power of social customs and manners to enslave individuals
(324). According to Arnold, "On this second level Cather
sees the institution of slavery to be symbolic of a whole
culture in bondage to its own artificial code of conduct, a
code based on degrees of privilege that shackle everyone

regardless of color or station" (325). By shifting her focus

away from
Rosowski's
symbols fo
pwer. Th
depiction
that Cathe
class to a
obscure th
the very 5
Ann P
destruCtic
and of the
'at the no
Summons 13

(156" Rc

mahipulam.
attempts t
.ESSent id]
appropr ia1

“onseunm

especiall.

151

away from slavery in this way, Arnold's approach resembles
Rosowski's. Slavery and race, when viewed as abstractions or
symbols for something else, are shorn of their terrible
power. The painful task of coming to terms with Cather's
depiction of slavery is deflected; Arnold and others assume
that Cather was far enough outside this system of caste and
class to adequately critique it, and their assumptions
obscure the evidence that she herself was a participant in
the very system she attempts to critique.

Ann Romines views slavery in Sapphipa as a symbol of the
destruction of relationships between mothers and daughters
and of the political powerlessness of women. She claims that
"at the novel's center . . . is the conjunction of Sapphira's
enormous power and her humiliating helplessness as a woman"
(156). Romines equates Sapphira's passive aggressive
manipulation of power with her slave women and their "covert"
attempts to seize power. By her desire to identify an
"essential woman" behind Sapphira as well as Nancy, Romines
appropriates classic feminist interpretive strategies and
consequently minimizes the struggles of both women, but
especially of Nancy. Like Romines, Merrill Maguire Skaggs
focuses on Sapphira and sees her as the central concern of
I§§pphigg_gpg_ph§_§;gye_§ipl. Calling the novel
"ideologically unconventional," Skaggs suggests that Cather
"forces us to realize that Sapphira's sins and her virtues

spring from the same self-confident dependence on herself,

from her a
courage an
Skaggs ins
all its ch
asserts th
disappoint
characters
otherwise-

Sign:
address 31

as stbOls

Lee. Per
fieIllinist i
the Painfu

slaVery an

Cather's d
fanny, in
aInbivalenc
Poms-1119 o

interQSted

152

from her arrogant willfulness, and from.her unfaltering
courage and self-love” (177). Recalling Arnold's argument,
Skaggs insists that the novel illustrates the enslavement of
all its characters, blacks as well as whites (178). And she
asserts that Cather constantly revised stereotypes and
disappointed expectations in her depiction of black
characters in the novel: "Most roles—-social, sexual, or
otherwise--are reversed in this novel" (175).

Significantly, after Gwin, the first critic to directly
address slavery and race in Sa h' a, rather than view them
as symbols for something else, was British feminist Hermione
Lee. Perhaps because she is not part of the American
feminist interpretive community, Lee is free to acknowledge
the painful and awkward aspects of Cather's treatment of
slavery and race in Sapphira. Lee claims that "Built into
Cather's domestic history of a particular west Virginian
family, in the years leading up to the Civil war, was the
ambivalence about slavery which her novel re-enacted" (358).
Focusing on this ambivalence, Lee contends that "What
interested Cather was the everyday life of a family for whom
slavery was an existing circumstance" (359). According to
:Lee, Cather's focus was not on a war against slavery but on a
war within a family (360). But Lee is not as willing as her
predecessors to pass over the fact that in Sapphiga Cather
often appears to ignore the larger political issues of

slavery. She observes that "Cather's treatment of her black

characters
reading" (
the proble
precedence
keep getti
(355). Aft
obscure Ca
conclusion
Anyor
Walks
t01ey
but a
the ]
make
It is my c
[Cather's]
extremely
critic to
he Can add
having to
There

interprEti

153

characters is problematic" and makes for ”embarrassing
reading” (365). In addition, Lee suggests that for Cather
the problems of the miller, Rachel, and Sapphira take
precedence over those of Nancy and the other slaves, ”which
keep getting dissolved into picturesque pastoral scenes"
(365). After reading the many essays and books that ignore or
obscure Cather's treatment of slavery, I find Lee's

conclusion refreshing:

Anyone who has read Toni Morrison's Beloved or Alice
Walker's The Color Pupple will find difficulty in
tolerating Cather's version of black slavery as anything
but a dated historical curiosity. Nevertheless, within
the limits of her time and type, Cather was trying to

make us aware of a monstrous double history. (365)

It is my contention, nevertheless, that using ”the limits of
[Cather's] time and type" as an excuse for her fiction is an
extremely irresponsible position for a feminist literary
critic to take. Through a resisting reading, I would suggest
'we can address these limits thoroughly and directly without
having to reject the author or her work.

There are at least three reasons why the feminist
interpretive community has neglected Sapphira and the Slave
_G_i_.r;_. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the fact that
sapphipa was ignored.by the interpretive communities
preceding feminism. These critics were uninterested in

vanalyzing a Cather novel that so fully refused to be read as

an enactm
critics u
the judgm
ironicall
recognize
character
managed t
in the te
instead.

negleCted
Critics, 1
Character
wholly bar
300), In
reSists C'
have Sugg‘
Character
noggin

154

an enactment of the "myth of America." Feminist literary
critics unconsciously allowed themselves to be influenced by
the judgments of these scholars whose agenda were,
ironically, so different from their own. In addition, Lee
recognizes the novel's "embarrassing" depiction of black
characters. Most feminist critics who did address the novel
managed to deflect attention away from these painful moments
in the text, but many apparently chose to ignore the text
instead. Finally, the feminist interpretive community has
neglected this novel for the very reason one of its first
critics, David Stouck, identified: ”As a result we see the
characters as complex individuals, neither wholly good nor
wholly bad, but engagingly and sympathetically human” (1973,
300). In other words, the novel itself wholly and completely
resists Culler's rule of unity. As Rosowski, Lee, and Gwin
have suggested, Sapphira as well as many of the other
characters in the novel are ambiguous. It is virtually
impossible to naturalize the novel in the way typically
favored by feminist literary critics. There are simply no
characters in the novel who can easily be seen as ”positive
role models." But for this very reason it is high time that
the feminist interpretive community turn its attention to
this, Cather's last novel. As resisting readers we will be
able to identify many ways our study of this text can

contribute to the "discourse of liberation."

Towards a I

The tas
comunities _
m 5
there is [fine
resist. And
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asPeCtS of t
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ambiguity h.

155

"But These Things Are Beyond Us":
Towards a Resisting Reading of Sapphira and the Slave Girl

» The task of resisting the work of previous interpretive
communities is not as arduous for readers of §gpphi;a_ggg_§hg
§l§g§_§i§l simply because there is not as much to resist, but
there is much in the novel itself that a feminist critic mmst
resist. And those feminist critics who have analyzed the
novel have often, for this very reason, been free to explore
aspects of the text which they might ordinarily have ignored.
One aspect of the text that I consider central, and which has
received considerable attention, is Sapphira's ambiguous
character. It is important that feminist critics acknowledge
that as a fictional character Sapphira does not represent a
"positive role model” in the old, feminist sense. we must
also recognize that Sapphira's ambiguity does not disqualify
her or the novel from feminist consideration. Sapphira's
ambiguity has already been touched upon by Rosowski, Gwin,
and Lee. But one thing that has been insufficiently
recognized, even by these three critics, is the extent to
‘which Sapphira's "admirable" characteristics--her strength,
courage, and self-confidence--are dependent upon her
ownership of other human beings.

Book One of the novel is titled "Sapphira and Her
Household,” and in it Cather goes to great lengths to

establish Sapphira's character as neither entirely positive

mu 8W
accomp
contra
that a
resist
readin
women'
positi
her hu
”consi
qualit
(781).
'tOIEr
made]
(782 )‘
pr0P6]

aharac

156

nor entirely negative. One of the most effective means for
accomplishing this end is the sustained pattern of
contradictory descriptions and adjectives concerning Sapphira
that appear within the first few pages of the novel. By
resisting the feminist interpretive community's affinity for
readings that rely on a fixed and stable understanding of
women's identity, we can recognize the multiple subject
positions Sapphira holds. Sapphira appears at breakfast with
her husband and her voice is described as "mild," "bland" and
"considerate. «22 Very quickly, however, it attains an "icy
quality" as Henry Colbert contests her plan to sell Nancy
(781). During the same conversation Sapphira smiles
"tolerantly" and laughs "discreetly," but eventually the
reader is told that "Her small mouth twisted mockingly"
(782). It is when her absolute right to control her
property--to sell Nancy--is disputed that her negative
characteristics are revealed.

In addition to her facial expressions and voice,
Sapphira's ambiguity is emphasized by her physical
appearance. Cather informs us that Sapphira had once been "a
very active woman" and a "zealous" manager of the farm, but
is now confined to a wheelchair. Significantly, readers are
not informed of her disability until after the entire
lbreakfast conversation between Sapphira and her husband is
<3oncluded. The contrast between this strong, apparently

self-assured woman and her physical condition shocks readers

men, in '
realize ti
Pres
said
on t
she .

drew

unde.
DIOV¢

the j

157

when, in the next-to-the-last paragraph of the chapter, we
realize that Sapphira cannot walk:
Presently she rang for old washington. When he came she
said nothing, being lost in thought, but put her hands
on the arms of the square, high-backed chair in which
she sat. The old man ran to open two doors. Then he
drew his mistress's chair away from the table, picked up
a cushion on which her feet had been resting, tucked it
under his arm, and gravely wheeled the chair, which
proved to be on castors, out of the dining-room, down
the long hall, and into Mrs. Colbert's bedchamber. (782-
3)
This paragraph masterfully manipulates the reader's response.
For we are first impressed with the authority of this woman
who by a mere gesture can send an ”old man" scurrying. He
runs to open the doors, pull out her chair, and pick up her
footrest. Our expectation is that after he tucks the cushion
under his arm.Washington will step aside as Sapphira sweeps
out of the room, but Cather's phrase, "which proved to be on
castors," disappoints this expectation. Instead of the
dignified exit we anticipate, we see an invalid unable to
control her movement. But there is another kind of power
Sapphira exerts in this scene that can be easily overlooked.
For just as we recognize the fact that she can and does
control ”old” washington by mere gestures, we must also

acknowledge that this power stems from her position as a

white some
attains he
she exerts
proves tru
important
resisting
Cathe
chapter of
surPrisinq
t0 illuStr
Rachel 313
Cmell)’ ex
Wu: "As
HIS. Colbe
amiter-.ang

Thet] Cane

158

white woman who owns the black man who serves her. Sapphira
attains her stature and dignity strictly through the power
she exerts over her slaves, both male and female. This
proves true throughout the novel, and it is the single most
important aspect of the "ambiguity" with which we as
resisting readers must come to terms.

Cather introduces the "slave girl” Nancy in the second
chapter of ”Sapphira and Her Household,” and, not
surprisingly, uses this introduction as another opportunity
to illustrate Sapphira's ambiguity. Sapphira's daughter
Rachel Blake pays a visit to her mother and discovers her
cruelly exercising her authority over the enslaved young
woman: "As she went down the long carpeted passage toward
Mrs. Colbert‘s bedchamber, she heard her mother's voice in
anger--anger with no heat, a cold, sneering contempt . . .
Then came a smacking sound, three times: the wooden back of a
hairbrush striking someone's cheek or arm" (784). When
Rachel enters the bedroom she discovers Nancy ”crouching
beside [Sapphira's] chair;" Sapphira immediately dismisses
‘the woman saying, "You may go now. And see that you come
back in a better humour" (785). In the ensuing conversation
between Rachel and Sapphira she is described as "affable,"
”pleasant, very attractive,” "courageous,” "mischievous,” and
”quite gracious" (786-7). She asks Rachel about the health
rof one of their elderly slaves and compliments her daughter

for the many acts of kindness she has shown to the "common

folks' of 1
good frienc
ambiguous,
violence.
her ownersr
of her reac
owner, the
of the wood
0f the reas
t0 Others 5
as Slave 0.,
BY resist ir

the unified

159

folks” of their community saying, "well, you've surely been a
good friend to them, Rachel” (787). But the entire scene is
ambiguous, as Sapphira's pleasantness is undercut by her
violence. Clearly the source of Sapphira's authority lies in
her ownership of black humans. While merely by stepping out
of her reach, Nancy could have avoided being struck by her
owner, the terrified woman remains "crouching” within range
of the wooden hairbrush. It becomes clear that at least part
of the reason Sapphira can continue to be gracious and kind
to others is because of the power and authority she retains
as slave owner, a power represented by the cowering Nancy.

By resisting the impulse to reduce our feminist readings to
the unified story of female powerlessness, we are able to
interrogate Sapphira's use and abuse of authority.

Sapphira's power as a woman is dependent upon the
‘powerlessness of others.

Her ambiguity and its source are fully demonstrated by
Rachel's description of her mother's treatment of her slaves.
As an abolitionist who owns no slaves, Rachel's feelings are
not mixed: ”How she hated her mother's voice in sarcastic
reprimand to the servants! And she hated it in contemptuous
indulgence" (854). Confined to a wheelchair, Sapphira's
voice is her most powerful vehicle of control. She can speak
with indulgence, but scorn for those who obey her words
underlies them. Rachel senses the paradox represented by

Sapphira's treatment of her slaves and their continued

apparent 1
apparently
humans whc
then the c
had seen r.
seemed to
Sapphira's
the text rr
intention,
anthority
The c
COnsistem;
Vhich must
frequently
entirely b

DOVel .

160

apparent respect and affection for her. But neither she, nor
apparently Cather, is aware of the powerlessness of those
humans whose lives are conscripted by a system.which denies
them the capacity to resist. Later Rachel recalls that "she
had seen her mother show shades of kindness and cruelty which
seemed to her purely whimsical" (899). This ”whimsy" is
Sapphira's chief characteristic, but a close examination of
the text makes it clear that, whether or not it was Cather's
intention, Sapphira's ability to be kind rests upon her
authority to be cruel.

The overt statements about slavery in the novel
consistently support the position that it is a moral wrong
which must be eradicated. But these proclamations are
frequently undercut by the suggestion that slavery is not
entirely bad. Thus, the ambiguity of Sapphira's character is
extended to an ambiguity concerning the central topic of the
novel. In Book Three, for instance, Mr. Colbert, a devout
Christian, spends a great deal of time worrying about the
morality of owning slaves. After the funeral of Jezebel, the
oldest Dodderidge slave, Mr. Colbert agrees with the pastor
that ”for her, certainly, her capture had been a deliverance"
since it allowed her to become a Christian (838). In
general, however, "he hated the whole system of slavery"
(838). Colbert decides to buy his best worker, Sampson, from
Sapphira and send him.north ”a free man” (839).

Significantly, Colbert's decision is fraught with

 

con
the
who
bor;
hum
San;

ear:

hec‘
isi

Bab.

161

contradictions. He chooses Sampson to free because "of all
the negro men on the place, Sampson . . . was the only one
who might be able to get work and make a living out in the
world" (839). The implication that most blacks are inferior
humans is further supported by Cather's description of
Sampson's physical appearance: "His head was full behind the
ears, shaped more like a melon lying down than a peanut
standing on end” (839). Harking back to the description of
immigrants and blacks in M Antonia, this reference to head
shape suggests that while Sampson has a brain behind his
full, melon shaped head, his peers possess little in their
peanut heads. Finally, the text suggests that even the noble
Sampson does not really need freedom. The narrator states
that "he broke down" and begins listing numerous excuses why
he does not want his freedom. Sampson's list of objections
is interesting because it reveals the powerful force of a
Bakhtinian hybrid construction in this complicated novel:
But when it was his turn to speak, he broke down. This
was his home. Here he knew everybody. He didn't want
to go out among strangers. Besides, Belle, his wife,
was a slack worker, and his children were little. He
could never keep them.in a city as well off as they were
here. What ever had put such a notion in Mister Henry's
head? wasn't he real smart about his work? Belle, he
knew, wasn't much account to help down at the house, but

she was good to the chillun, an' she didn't do no harm.

Anyho
the m
and c:
town.
Many of Sax
with the se
believe the
Children WE
he was almc
fle- Ca
host romam
on Stock cl
offer Of f1
Idlke 1
SlaVery, ‘
”fibers .:

162

Anyhow, he'd a'most sooner leave the chillun than leave
the mill, when they'd got everything fixed up so nice
and could bolt finer white flour than you could buy in
town. (839)
Many of Sampson's "arguments" against freedom are replete
with the sentiments of anti-abolitionists. It is hard to
believe that any black man would have suggested that his
children were better off enslaved than free, much less that
he was almost more attached to his workplace than to his
family. Cather's naive insistence on viewing slavery in its
most romantic light is made evident by this kind of reliance
on stock cliches. Colbert accepts Sampson's rejection of his
offer of freedom, and "there it ended" (839).

Like her father, Rachel Blake does not fully support
slavery. Thinking about the system and puzzling over her
mother's "inconsistencies” such as her ”indulgence,"
”affection," and "patience" with the slave as well as her
commitment to caring for their physical needs, Rachel
nevertheless concludes, "It ain't put on; she believes in it,
and they believe in it. But it ain't right" (900). Because
Nancy's position as a slave "ain't right” and makes her
vulnerable to the lecherous Martin Colbert, Rachel asks her
father to help the young woman escape. Ironically, Henry
Colbert, while recognizing that Nancy is attempting an escape
for the preservation of her virtue, suggests that if she

attains freedom she will immediately become a prostitute: "A

 

pre
hou
won

the

in

is

WI

the
sla
the
'fr‘
rem
is 1

lit1

163

pretty girl like her, she'd be enticed into one of them
houses, like as not" (903). Incapable of viewing the black
woman as anything other than a sexual object, Henry suggests
that freedom will "ruin" Nancy in several respects: "She was
to go out from the dark lethargy of the cared-for and
irresponsible; to make her own way in this world where nobody
is altogether free" (904). The problems of freedom will be,
in Colbert's view and apparently in the view of the text,
worse in many respects than those of slavery.

Two remarkable passages deserve analysis because of what
they reveal about Cather's understanding of the dynamics of
slavery. As the first character to alert Henry Colbert to
the danger his nephew poses to Nancy, Sampson tells him, "I'm
'fraid Mr. Martin worries Nancy a right smart" (883). This
revelation is extremely disturbing to Colbert because Nancy
is his favorite: "Never before had anyone divined all his
little whims and preferences, and been eager to gratify them.
And it was for love, from dutiful affection. She had nothing
to gain beyond the pleasure of seeing him pleased" (885). By
insisting on viewing Nancy's work as a gift of lggg, Cather
obscures the extent to which it is enforced labor, the result
of slavery. Nancy may have nothing to gain by pleasing Henry
Colbert, but she has a great deal to lose should she
displease him. The life of every individual slave is fully
and wholly dependent on the whim of the master. The text

makes it clear that without Henry Colbert's strenuous

object
anothe
a volu
novel

anothe
instea
Nancy:
for to
into in
Scarce
Please
Simila
fShale
aPpare
his re
10Ver.
them.

becaus
that S
deflou
makes

SUCCUII

164

objections, Sapphira would have already sold Nancy to
another family. Nevertheless, Cather often presents Nancy as
a voluntary servant rather than a slave. Earlier in the
novel Henry becomes angry because Sapphira had ordered
another slave, Bluebell, to clean his room at the mill
instead of Nancy. This substitution makes him.appreciate
Nancy: ”He had never realized, until Bluebell took her place
for two days, how much love and delicate feeling Nancy put
into making his bare room as he like it. Even when she was
scarcely more than a child, he had felt her eagerness to
please himP (815). One disturbing thing both of these very
similar passages allude to is the vulnerable position a
female slave maintains with respect to her master. Although
apparently innocent of all the charges Sapphira makes about
his relationship with Nancy, Colbert still thinks of her as a
lover. She "divines" his desires and is ”eager to gratify
them! (885). Nancy puts flowers in Henry's copper tankard
because that is his desire; at least unconsciously he knows
that she would be in no position to prevent him.from
deflowering her should he so desire. It is not love that
makes Nancy such a faithful servant, nor would love make her
succumb to the sexual advances of either male Colbert.
Nancy's condition as an enslaved woman, unacknowledged by the
text, results in her submissive behavior. Maintaining an

ambiguous stance on slavery in Sapphira and the Slave Girl

and refusi:
to obscure
Minrc
the novel
characters
these blac
to Cather'
For like t
Characters
beCOme "AD
racism,
examoles c
Comm-legs
that the r
the Charag

165

and refusing to recognize many of its horrors allows Cather
to obscure some of the true evils of the system.

Minrose C. Gwin complains that none of the characters in
the novel except Sapphira are fully developed, the black
characters least of all (143). But turning our attention to

these black characters reveals some interesting similarities

to Cather's treatment of the immigrant other in My.Antonia.
For like the immigrants in My Antonia the ”admirable" black
characters in Sapphira and the Slave Girl are those who have
become "Americanized,” thus revealing Cather's incipient
racism. Jezebel, Tap, Sampson, and Till provide the major
examples of this phenomenon, but the novel is filled with
countless other characters who demonstrate by their example
that the more fully "white” (both physically and emotionally)
the character, the more successful that individual will be
‘within the world of the novel.

Jezebel and Tap are among the most fully
unconventionalized black characters in the novel, and they
both die during the course of the narrative. While Jezebel
is the matriarch of the Dodderidge slaves, she nevertheless
consistently manages to disappoint expectations that she
conform to Anglo-American behavioral patterns. Book Three,
"Old Jezebel,” is devoted to her story. Cather first
describes her as looking like "a lean old grey monkey" with
"grizzled wool” and a hand like a "cold grey claw" (825,

827). Like d'Arnault, she does not appear to be fully human,

and the st
Captured i
fierce can
slave was

through th»
continues '
'Anatomica‘
tall, stra.
a kind of ;
”Oman“ (83¢
that in gex
the refers,
human. He]
PQISOnal me
household“
Work in the

Outside , W“

166

and the story of her capture and early life confirms this.
Captured in Africa as a young woman, Jezebel came from "a
fierce cannibal people" (828). One of her first actions as a
slave was viciously to "[snap] like a mastiff" and bite
through the thumb of one of her captors (829). Cather
continues to imply that Jezebel is more animal than human:
"Anatomically she was remarkable, for an African negress:
tall, straight, muscular, long in the legs. The skipper had
a kind of respect for a well-shaped creature; horse, cow, or
woman" (830). The qualifier "for an African negress” implies
that in general black women are poor physical specimens, and
the references to animals locates her solidly as less than
human. Her first owner has her sleep in a barn because "her
(personal manners were too strong for even a Dutch farmer's
household,” and once she is employed by Sapphira she does not
‘work in the house or kitchen (831). Instead, she works
outside, with the men and the animals, managing the gardens.
But the clearest indication of her unregenerate nature lies
in the request Jezebel makes to Sapphira on her deathbed.
When asked if there is anything she might want to eat Jezebel
responds, "No'm, I cain't think of nothin' I could relish,
lessen maybe it was a li'l pickaninny's hand" (827). Still a
cauuiibal at heart, Jezebel rebelliously informs her mistress
that she has not, to the end, allowed her identity to become
erased. It seems that, almost as a consequence of this

refusal, she dies of self-induced starvation.

Althor
only chara<
Tap, one 02
becoming c<
dangling f]
the child 1
jolly mill
Throughout
stereotype
reSponsibii
Sapphira's

(

maSac

Cather ' w h

appreciat it

Sapphy, it
would 9‘90
Character
War, The
been able
Hugh in a
with a bil
.nrs. Blak

167

.Although the most obvious example, Jezebel is not the
only character in Sapphira to refuse to be "Americanized.”
Tap, one of the mill hands, is another character who resists
becoming conventional, and as a result he ends his life
dangling from a scaffold. In the last chapter of the book
the child narrator describes him stereotypically as "the
jolly mill boy with shining eyes and shining teeth" (936).
Throughout the novel he is depicted as conforming to the
stereotype of the "good darky." One of Tap's
responsibilities is to organize the bearers who carried
Sapphira's chair when she left the house. According to
Cather, ”he loved to wait on ladies" (825). Cather describes
him as a clown when, on Christmas morning, he expresses his
appreciation for the ”strong toddy” Sapphira serves the
slaves: "Tap, the mill boy, smacked his lips and said: 'Miss
Sapphy, if my mammy's titty had a-tasted like that, I never
would a-got weaned'" (900). Significantly, this minstrel
character is incapable of adjusting to life after the Civil
war. The child narrator observes, ”People said he hadn't
been able to stand his freedom" (936). After drinking too
much in a bar, Tap accidentally kills a man by striking him
‘with a billiard cue. He is condemned to death and hanged:
”Mrs. Blake and Till always said it was a Yankee jury that
hanged him: a Southern jury would have known there was no
real bad in Tap” (936). The text actually suggests that a

Southern jury would have assumed that neither Tap nor the

hla

HOt

tha
tho
his
nul.
(83!
assc
anir
to I
deing
free
Subn
Mart

app:

(880
blac

nu

168

black man he killed were fully human and thus his crime could
not be considered capital.

Sampson, on the other hand, is a man. And it is clear
that what allows him to achieve his fully human status are
those characteristics that make him similar to Henry Colbert,
his owner. Cather describes Sampson as ”a tall, straight
mulatto with a good countenance, thoughtful, intelligent"
(839). He possesses the physical characteristics the text
associates with whites, and he is never described in
animalistic or otherwise stereotypical language. In addition
to his good head shape, he possesses a ”manly, responsible"
demeanor (839). In spite of the fact that he refuses the
freedom Mr. Colbert offers him, Sampson does not behave in a
submissive way. After Nancy's screams alert the slaves to
Martin Colbert's failed attempt to rape her, Sampson
approaches the scene of the assault ”looking about him,--
looking at Martin Colbert, which it was not his place to do"
(880). Sampson does not submit to the "place” allotted for
blacks in this text, and for that the narrative rewards him.
Till tells her daughter that after the War "Mr. Henry got
Sampson a wonderful good place up in Pennsylvany, in some new
kind of mill they calls roller mills. He's done well, has
Sampson, an' his children has turned out well, they say"
(935). Sampson is conventionalized, and like Anton Jelinek

he "makes good” in the white world.

Withou1
character it
Significant
is that "she
(917). This
First, it es
regards blac
fact that T1
neqative at?
achild, Til

 

DOdderidge .

 
    
   

after her
are PIOfoun
imitate her
imitating
identified
barefoot to

miStreSS ' I

169

Without a doubt, the most successfully conventionalized
character in the novel is Nancy's mother, Till.
Significantly, one of the first direct statements about Till
is that "she was not, under any circumstances, a gay darky”
(817). This negative definition functions in two ways.
First, it establishes the fact that in general the text
regards blacks as "gay darkies." But it also makes clear the
fact that Till herself does not fit this or any of the other
negative stereotypes associated with blacks in Sapphira. As
a child, Till watched her mother, dressing for the slave's
New Year's party, catch on fire and die. Mrs. Matchem, the
Dodderidge's British housekeeper, took and raised the child
after her mother's death. The consequences of her upbringing
are profound: "Till was devoted to [Mrs. Matchem]; strove to
imitate her in speech and manner" (817). Till never stops
imdtating white people, and she is always more strongly
identified with whites than blacks. When her husband arrives
barefoot to drive Sapphira to town, Till complains to her
mistress, ”When I seen him wrigglin' his old crooked toes
yonder in the gravel, I was that shamed!" (797) . And when
Nancy is frightened by Martin Colbert's advances she does not
tell her mother because ”Till had been a Dodderidge before
ever she was Nancy' 3 mother . . . Anything that made trouble
between her and the Mistress would wreck the order of the
household” (899). It is this order that Till values above

anything else. In the epilogue Till appears to have retained

her 'place'
servant. :
such as a (
contains 1<
lives to se

Till':
who moves 1
status. A:
crouching j
the first i
Either wee;
COm'ageouS'
inability t
r"’primand c
falseh00ds
alvaYs to E
assOCiate ,
NancY is iI
“mi“ Con
resIDOnSibii

Cher r ies
I
tr

e

OUbles fc

170

her ”place” in the family and continues to be Rachel Blake's
servant. She treasures the tokens of the family's esteem
such as a gold brooch given to her by Henry Colbert which
contains locks of his and Sapphira's hair (937). And she
lives to see her daughter's successful return.

Till's daughter Nancy is the only character in the novel
who moves from an unconventionalized to a conventionalized
status. As I have mentioned, our initial view is of her
crouching in total submission beside Sapphira's chair. In
the first half of the novel she is almost always described as
either weeping or on the verge of tears: ”She was not
courageous” (803) . Connected to her lack of courage is her
inability to tell the truth. Cather writes, "If she felt a
reprimand coming, she sometimes lied . . . She didn't tell
falsehoods deliberately, to get something she wanted; it was
always to escape from something" (803) . Not only does Cather
associate her with dishonesty, but she also implies that
Nancy is irresponsible and foolish. On the morning that
Martin Colbert tries to rape her, Nancy has abandoned her
responsibilities and gone cherry picking: "She loved to pick
cherries, and she loved being up in a tree. Someway no
troubles followed a body up there; nothing but the foolish,
dreamy, nigger side of her nature climbed the tree with her"
(878) . This is evidently one of the passages that Hermione
Lee was thinking of when she said Cather's treatment of black

characters can be embarrassing. But rather than simply

ignoring

elderly w
within th
with her

not confo
the text.
acceptabi
Nine, "Na
descend f
in a long
this is 0
female ha
'darkY" o
Opulence

by the pr
to which

Till excl
Hatchem, .
Till, who

”the“? n

171

ignoring this passage or excusing it as the expressions of an
elderly woman, we can look at how it functions fictionally
‘within the text. And what it does is set this young woman
with her "soft darky laugh” aside as other because she does
not conform to the accepted, white, "American" standards of
the text. That these standards structure the canon of
acceptability becomes evident when Nancy reappears in Book
Nine, "Nancy's Return." The child narrator watches Nancy
descend from the stage coach and describes her as "a woman
in a long black coat and black turban" (931). Significantly,
this is one of the first times in the text that a black
female has been described as a "woman" instead of a "girl" or
"darky" or ”servant.” The narrator is impressed both by the
opulence of Nancy's black silk dress and gold watch chain and
by the precision of her beautiful speech (933). The extent
to which Nancy has become conventionalized becomes clear when
Till exclaims, "Nancy, darllin', you talks just like Mrs.
Matchem, down at Chestnut Hill! I loves to hear you" (934).
Till, who could not bear to help her daughter when she was a
"dreamy nigger," is captivated by the "tall, gold-skinned
woman" who returns to her.

As the most successful character in the text, Nancy
illustrates the power Cather invests in conforming to an
Anglo-American model. Cather's racism, then, does not extend
to demonstrating that no black characters can rise above the

oppressive conditions of slavery. Rather, she views those

characters wh
values and ch
transition to
resisting rear
mistake Simila
insist on def;
inability to \
human can ale:
those when ur
readings of Si
Chameters in
the patriarch
resign-n9 rea

DOSltions the

172

characters who most effectively embrace white, Anglo-American
values and characteristics as capable of making the
transition to success and freedom. It is important that as
resisting readers we acknowledge this. For Cather makes a
mistake similar to the one feminist critics make when they
insist on defining an essential woman. Her apparent
inability to view anyone who is not white and American as
human can alert us to the danger of refusing to acknowledge
those women unlike ourselves as women. Previous feminist
readings of Sapphira have disguised the ways in which women
characters in the novel are both victims of and bearers of
the patriarchal system in which they live. Becoming
resisting readers allows us to see the multiple subject

positions they, and Cather, occupy.

1See
Attitudes
tom
2Sha;
'Becoming
W
H. . Dav 1d 5
e 0 ' B
Criticism

173

NOTES

1See for example Jeane Harris, "A Code of Her Own:
Attitudes Toward women in Willa Cather's Short Fiction,”

Moderg Fiction Studies 36 (1990): 81-89.

2Sharon O'Brien traces Cather's critical reception in
”Becoming Noncanonical: The Case Against Willa Cather,"
ggading in America: Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy
N. Davidson (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1989) 240-258.
While O'Brien does note the important role feminist literary
criticism.has played in shaping Cather's critical reception,
like Tanner she does not attribute her canonical status
solely to feminist literary critics. In addition, O'Brien's
concern in this essay is to demonstrate Cather's fluctuating
canonical status as one example of the ways ”a male-dominated
publishing and critical establishment was attempting to
reduce her stature" (250). It is my contention, however,
that more important than those forces which attempted to
reduce her status are the ones which regarded Cather as a
representative of the American literary tradition and ensured
her continued position as an important and respected author
in the canon. I see O'Brien's essay as another example of
the preference the feminist interpretive community has for
viewing women writers primarily as victims.

3This becomes even more evident when we turn to the
early books on Cather, which began appearing in the 19508.
The first book length study of Cather was published in 1930.
In Willa Cathg; (New York: Robert M. McBride and Co., 1930)
Rene Rapin concludes that Cather's work is ”classical." In
Wiila Cather: g Critical Introduction (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell UP, 1951), the first book to consider Cather's entire
career, David Daiches is eager to situate Cather within the
larger American literary tradition. Daiches argues that
”rugged individualism” is centrally displayed in Cather's
novels: "She found it in nineteenth-century pioneers,
eighteenth-century Catholic missionaries, and seventeenth-
century French Canadians” (187). He contends that like other
American novelists Cather wrote about the pioneers, and that
”She was interested in the quality of their imagination, in
the passion and brilliance of their ideal, in their
discriminating acceptance of a vision, as well as in their

will power
remained a:
Cather, am
K. Brown's
also demon:
'Americanne
limited he]
their envii
or, at the
seeking in
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Bloom also
if America]
lter a<
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scholarshi]
°F America]
Since the :
deginitiOn

174

will power and endurance” (188). Daiches concludes, ”she
remained an American novelist” (189). The first biography of
Cather, and the only biography authorized by her estate, E.
K. Brown's Wiiia Cather (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953),
also demonstrates a concern with identifying Cather's
"Americanness” in her treatment of individualism: ”She
limited herself to a narrative of people seeking to master
their environment, to farmpfolk or missionaries or colonists,
or, at the opposite pole, to artists (and mainly singers),
seeking in their fugitive world to maintain their integrity
amid the tensions of modern life" (331). Edward and Lillian
Bloom also regard Cather as belonging to the "great tradition
of American writing” and the "main stream of great American
literary achievement” which included Cooper, Hawthorne,
Melville, and James (Willa Cather's Gift of Sympathy,
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1962: 237, 250). The
Blooms argue that what unites these writers is their
"earnest, mutual concern for the realization of an American
destiny,” expressed most clearly in Cather's case as she
regarded the frontier ”as a reaffirmation of traditional
American values" (238, 244).

4More recently, the trend in American literary
scholarship has been towards redefining those characteristics
of American literature that have generally been accepted
since the 1950s. Interestingly, while the terms of the
definition seem to be undergoing change, Willa Cather is
still regarded as a representative American writer. One
example of this can be found in Conrad Eugene Ostwalt's book

(After Eden: The Secuiarization of American Space ig the

Fiction of Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser (Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania: Bucknell UP, 1990). Ostwalt argues that in the

late nineteenth century the American dream.was undergoing a
radical transformation from an "agrarian and blessed state"
'to a secular, industrial state. Consequently, the old
American dream of possibility and opportunity was no longer
relevant to the American imagination. Ostwalt locates
Cather, along with Theodore Dreiser, at the center of an
artistic effort to reconcile the old American dream with the
new American reality: "Cather and Dreiser are important
because they were both affected by and participated in the
process of world destruction and reconstruction--in the
redefinition of American space from sacred to secular" (31).
In sharp contrast to Ostwalt, Tom Quirk identifies a
completely different common denominator in the American
jliterature of the early twentieth century. In his book
Bergson and American Cuiture: The Wo_r_id of Will; Cather and
Wallace Stevens (Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P,
1990) Quirk argues that the French philosopher Henri Bergson
and his recommendation to "take life by storm" led to a new
sense of ”vitality, optimism, confidence, progress, and hope"

in Americ
identifie
that this
at the ce
A 31
Middleton
Technigge
1990). C
Middleton
places he
What
GESpite t
situate c
And with
diStinctl
earliest,
different

5A 31
0f Willa t
amired :
her treat
1.epresem;
aweer in

175

in American popular rhetoric and thought (1). Quirk
identifies a Bergsonian point of view in Cather, suggesting
that this places her, along with wallace Stevens and others,
at the center of a distinctly American literary movement.

A slightly more traditional approach is Jo Ann
Middleton's in Wilia Cather's Modernism: A Study of Styie and
geghgiggg (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson UP,
1990). Comparing Cather to Hemingway, Joyce, and others,
Middleton argues that her use of omission and discontinuity
places her within the mainstream of modernism (10).

What all three of these 1990 books have in common,
despite their obvious dissimilarities, is the effort to
situate Cather within the mainstream of a literary movement.
And with the exception of Middleton, this movement is a
distinctly American one. These critics, like Cather's
earliest, seek to demonstrate that she is more alike than
different from her (mostly male) contemporaries.

5A sharp distinction can be drawn between the treatment
of Willa Cather from a feminist perspective in works that
appeared before the modern women's liberation movement and
her treatment in works appearing after 1970. Two of the most
representative pre-women's liberation feminist analyses
appear in Margaret Lawrence's The School of Femininity (New
York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1936) and Josephine Lurie
Jessup's The ngth of Our Feminists (New York: Richard R.
Smith, 1950). Lawrence's goal is to examine women's writing
appearing after the "feminist revolt," which she identifies
as taking place at the end of the eighteenth-century.
Lawrence suggests that "After women have put down all the
pent-up sorrows of womanhood in a world made for men by men;
and after they have satisfied themselves that they can hold
‘whatever they want to get in that world, we shall be racially
much further on” (11). She argues that Cather is one of the
first post-feminist writers because her work is ”totally free
from.the abiding sense of injustice . . . It is free from a
depressing sense of its limitation as feminine writing, and
(is also free from a subconscious effort to be masculine”
(357). .As astonishing as her c1aim.might appear to Cather's
JLater feminist critics, Lawrence asserts, "[Cather's] is the
work of a woman sure of herself as a woman in a land in which
in: is not difficult to be a woman” (357). No longer having
to contend with the petty indignities of sexual injustice,
Cather is, according to Lawrence, ”the great artist American
vunmen writers have produced" (357).

Josephine Lurie Jessup also identifies in Cather's work
the story of woman triumphant, and her message of triumph,
liJue Lawrence's, is not one a contemporary feminist is likely
to embrace. According to Jessup, ”As it appears in modern
fiction, feminism is an expression of woman's desire 'to be
herself'; that is, to measure attainment irrespective of

sexual fu
literary

'desire t
regards C
depiction
emasculat
circumsta
superior

of Cather
acceptanc
neither J
kind of s
sought in
unlike th
Political
raificati.
in texts .

176

sexual function" (10). Like many contemporary feminist
literary critics, Jessup locates Cather's feminism in her
”desire to exalt her own sex” (74). However, Jessup also
regards Cather as having accomplished this through her
depiction of strong female characters most noted for their
emasculatory power: ”Throughout Willa Cather's novels, no
circumstance is so variously detailed as the plight of a
superior man in the marriage trap” (60). Jessup's celebration
of Cather's feminism reeks strongly of anti-feminist
acceptance of negative female stereotypes. Ultimately,
neither Jessup nor Lawrence are concerned with uncovering the
kind of strong, independent women later feminist critics
sought in Cather's work. This is because these two critics,
unlike their successors, were not a part of an organized
political and literary movement committed to ”negating the
reifications" of patriarchal attitudes and customs reflected
in texts as well as in society.

‘Even in the their most recent essays, feminist critics
continue to follow traditional patterns as they approach
Cather. Warren Motley suggests in "The Unfinished Self:
Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and the Psychic Cost of a WOman's
Success," Wbmen's Studies 12 (1986): 149-165, that readers
respond to Cather's heroines because they are ”eager to find
strong, independent women in American literature" (149).
Analyzing the character of Alexandra in Cather's 1913 novel 9
2ionee;s!, Motley suggests that hers is not the triumphant
success most critics have identified in the novel. At one
point Motley seems to suggest that Cather is embracing and
celebrating the patriarchal values of "power and autonomy” in
the novel (149). However, his basic premise is hardly
radical, as he concludes that Alexandra's unhappiness lies in
her failure to reach and celebrate her essential female
nature, "emotions and sexuality” (149). Once again, his is a
return to the reductive criticism of essentialism and
expressive realism. Like Motley, C. Susan Wiesenthal reduces
Cather's novel 9 Pioneers! to the story of female sexuality
struggling to achieve autonomy in a male world. In ”Female
Sexuality in Willa Cather's 'O Pioneers!‘ and the Era of
Scientific Sexology,” gLiei 21 (1990): 41-63, Wiesenthal
concentrates on depictions of " 'deviant' female sexuality” in
O Pioneers! . She argues that after an initial rebellion
.illustrated by the loving friendship of Alexandra and Marie,
tuna female characters in the novel, Cather eventually submits
tx: ”the established sexual prejudices and stereotypes of her
day" by concluding the novel with a conventional marriage
(GO-J). Like most other feminist literary critics, Motley
auui‘Wiesenthal are primarily concerned with demonstrating how
either the author or her characters are victims of the
patriarchal system. And, of course, their approach conceals

any recogn:
perhaps la:

7"The
represents
literary t1
her effort:
as by an a1
already es1
'The direc1
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realizatior
difficult <
(313% Th:
that the e}
Oppression
Rosowski's
AW
. e 'cul1
lIl Cather 's
selVeS and
eVentually

177

any recognition of moments when Cather or her characters were
perhaps less victims than bearers of that system.

7"The Novel of Awakening,” Genre 12 (1979):313-32,
represents Rosowski's attempt to fit Cather into a different
literary tradition, that of the bildungsromag. But here too
her efforts are thwarted by essentialist assumptions as well
as by an attempt to consider Cather through the grid of
already established literary conventions. Rosowski argues,
”The direction of awakening follows what is becoming a
pattern in literature by and about women . . . The
protagonist's growth results typically not with 'an art of
living,‘ as for her male counterpart, but instead with a
realization that for a woman such an art of living is
difficult or impossible: it is an awakening to limitations"
(313). This critical approach is limited because it presumes
that the experience all women have in common is their
oppression under the patriarchy. Equally limited is
Rosowski's argument in ”Willa Cather's women," Studies in
1American Fiction 9 (1981): 261-275, where she suggests that
‘while "cultural myths" work to prevent the female characters
in Cather's novels from integrating their personal (feminine)
selves and their imaginative (masculine) selves, the women do
eventually succeed in integrating the ”ideal growth of the
two selves" (261-2). Heller's phrase "Willa Cather's women
all succeed in a man's world" (31) also seems to underlie
Rosowski's apparently more sophisticated early essays.

aO'Brien's 1975 dissertation, "Stronger Vessels: Willa
’Cather and Her Pioneer Heroines,” Harvard U, 1975, argues
that the female characters in three of Cather's early novels
represent new and powerful role models for women as these
characters achieve self-definition through connection to the
land, art, and the family.

The same year her dissertation was completed, O'Brien
published an important essay called "The Limits of Passion:
‘Willa Cather's Review of The Awakening,” WOmen and Literature
3 (1975): 10-20. Her analysis of Cather's scathing review of
Kate Chopin's ghe Awakening suggests that Cather's
denouncement stems not from misogyny (as it might seem to a
reader unfamiliar with the reviewer's gender) but rather from
Cather's awareness of the limits heterosexual passion places
upon women in a patriarchal society (14) . Because of her
awareness of these restrictions, O'Brien maintains, Cather
consistently depicted in her own writings sexual passion that
resulted in self-destruction (19). By constructing Cather as
‘a'unified subject, aware of and resistant to her own
oppression under the patriarchy, O'Brien misses the
opportunity to illuminate the more complicated ways her
identity was constructed by her society.

In
Cather a
Meme
Fleischm
especial
'the unw

9Tb)
Silences
Willa Ca
suggests
female c
(63). A.
[female]
it" (63)
differen‘
under th:
fEHIinist
mvement
aIglllrlent
°f Criti<
national
(58).
. Thi:
crltiCisr
reCent e:

that Cat]
the ritui
endings ‘

178

In "Mothers, Daughters, and the 'Art Necessity': Willa
Cather and the Creative Process," American Novelists
Revisited: Essa s in Feminist Criticism, ed. Fritz
Fleischmann (Boston: G. R. Hall, 1982) 265-298, O'Brien is
especially interested in demonstrating that Cather is not
"the unwitting captive of male views of women" (267).

9The trend is continued in Rosowski's ”writing Against
Silences: Female Adolescent Development in the Novels of
Willa Cather,” Studies in the Novel 21 (1989): 60-77, which
suggests that Cather was doing more than simply giving her
female characters "qualities ordinarily reserved for men"
(63). According to Rosowski, Cather "revised the terms of
[female] development and changed the metaphor for describing
it" (63). By showing that Cather is writing a new and
different story that is not centered in female oppression
under the patriarchy, Rosowski ventures into territory
feminist critics had abandoned since the women's liberation
movement. However, the radical potential of Rosowski's
argument is somewhat reduced as she returns to old standards
of criticism.and concludes, "Again Cather rewrote our
national myth and placed female creativity at its center”
(68).

This tentative movement towards new standards of
criticism is also demonstrated in one of Rosowski's most
recent essays, "Willa Cather's Subverted Endings and Gendered
Time,“ Cather Studies, vol. 1, ed. Susan J. Rosowski
(Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990) 68-88. Rosowski suggests
that Cather invites the reader ”to take his or her place in
the ritual of storytelling" and thus provide alternate
endings which "offer symbols and, through them, meaning of
another order" (86, 81).

1°Another example of this kind of thinking is O'Brien's
"The Thing Not Named: Willa Cather as Lesbian writer," Signs
9 (1984): 576-599. O'Brien's essay is one of the first, and
most important, works to break the genteel tradition of
refusing to name Cather a ”lesbian." But what actually makes
'this essay radical is her suggestion that, while Cather's
sexual orientation should play a role in a feminist analysis
tof her work, to read her novels as simply the story of one
vumman's struggle with an oppressive patriarchal society that
names same-sex love unnatural is reductive:
Noting that Cather uses male masks is important, but on
what grounds do we assume that a male character is not
"really” male but female? To argue that most of her
male characters engaged in love affairs are not male at
all . . . is to question the writer's ability to
transcend self, gender, and sexuality by adopting other
selves; it is also to assume that, because Cather was a
lesbian, she was encoding a lesbian attachment whenever

she '
redu
Clearly, 1
multiple '

110'}
character
lyth of A1
realm fro:
literary 1
and epic,
(1987. 43:

12The

W
Co., 1960

13The
011 this b<
hands of (
W he
ChEISea 3‘

179

she was writing of heterosexual love--a rigid and
reductive view of her fiction. (597)
Clearly, O'Brien recognizes that Cather is capable of telling

multiple tales .

11O'Brien argues that Cather ”in granting a female
character the ability to grow her own fruit . . . revises the
myth of America, man's creation of an Edenic, gardenlike
realm from an untamed wilderness . . . she rewrites the
literary genres most often used to tell that story, pastoral
and epic, by placing a woman at the center of the narrative”

(1987, 432).

12The chief target of Rule's attack is John Randall, The

Lgndscapg and the Looking Glass (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1960).

13The extraordinary amount of critical attention focused
on this book is best represented by its treatment at the
hands of Chelsea House. Two volumes of critical essays on My
Aggggig have been edited by Harold Bloom: Antonia (New York:
Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) and My Antonia (New York:
Chelsea House Publishers, 1987). Bloom has edited one other
volume on Cather which also includes some essays on the
novel: Wiila gather (New York: Chelsea House Publishers,

1985).

1‘Miller's critical position culminates in his 1974
essay, ”My Ligtonia and the American Dream, " Prairie Schooner

48: 112-23, rpt. in Wiila Cather's My Mgonig, ed. Harold

Bloom.(New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987) 99-117.
(Miller begins his analysis by stating that like Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby and Hemingway's The Sun Also gises, Cather's
:My Antonia is "a commentary of the American experience, the
.American dream, and the American reality” (99). In speaking
tof the American dream, Miller is clearly referring to the
same dream to which Nina Baym refers: "[My Antonia] is, in
some sense, about a national experience--the frontier or
pioneer experience--and its rapid diminishment from the
national memory" (101) . Miller argues that Cather questions
some of the fundamental principles of that dream in the text,
but he does not conclude that she has deconstructed the
dream. Rather, hers is an exploration in which the narrator
retraces the steps of the dream: "Jim is in search of the
American past, his past, in an attempt to determine what went
wrong, and perhaps as well what was right, with the dream"
(101). For in the final analysis, none of the characters
actually fulfills the American dream, according to Miller
(103) . In contrast to the arguments of his earlier essay and
those of other scholars, Miller does not determine that My

Antonia depicts the happy achievement of the "myth of

America.'
emty rea
in Jim Bt
novel ofi
explainir
believes
dream (1(

”am
dealt ext
same crit
David Daj
of the We
it tells
American
Ithaca, 1;
calls 12L
Slibject 1'
the LOOki
m
Weft th
PlOneern
Cather's
W

180

America." Rather, he sees the novel as an account of the
empty reality behind "the lost promise, the misplaced vision"
in Jim Burden's life (108). According to Miller, Cather's
novel offers the possibilities of the American dream without
explaining its apparent failure. But Miller apparently still
believes that Cather revered the potentials offered by the
dream.(108).

1”The book-length studies of Cather appearing before 1975
dealt extensively with My Antonia and generally followed the
same critical approach as the journal essays and reviews.
David Daiches analyzes the novel in a chapter titled ”Decline
of the west" and concludes that, although the book is flawed,
it tells of ”salvation" attained by "rooting . . . in the
American soil" (Willa Cather: A Critical Introduction,
Ithaca, new York: Cornell UP, 1951: 56). John H. Randall
calls My Antonia an "agrarian idyl" and claims that "its real
subject is man's right relation to nature” (The Landscape and
the Looking Glass: Willa Carher's Search for Value, Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960: 148). Edward and Lillian Bloom
assert that the land itself is a refuge for the "righteous
pioneer" and functions as Cather's "principal symbol": "Miss
Cather's attitude toward the land [in My Antonia and Q
Pioneersl] is one of almost pious exaltation, for she sees it
as a place of communion for idealistic pioneers" (Willa
Cather's G'ft of S ath , Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP,
1962: 27). James WOodress' comments in his first book on
Cather are probably the most representative. (James woodress
has written two book length studies of Willa Cather. The
first,‘Willa Cather: Her Life and Art [New York: Pegasus,

1970], was part of the Pegasus American Author series. The
second, much longer work, Willa Cather: A Literary Life
[Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987], is the closest we will
probably ever have to a definitive biography.) Writing in
1970, woodress called My Antonia "Willa Cather's greatest
‘work" and referred to Antonia as "the madonna of the Wheat
Fields and the embodiment of the American westering myth"
(179-80). This concern with locating My Antonia within the
:mainstream.of American literature was nOt a minor one. And
'the success that woodress and others had in their attempt to
establish the novel's "Americanness” is illustrated by its
continued dominant presence in the canon of American
Jliterature from the time of its initial publication.

1‘Interestingly, in his 1975 American Literary
Scholarship essay David Stouck observed that "Willa Cather
for the most part resists feminist critics" ("Fiction: 1900
to the 19303," ed. James Woodress [Durham Duke UP, 1975]
271) . But only four years later he remarked, somewhat
disparagingly, in the same publication that "there is usually

a femini
the 1930
[Durham:

176!
addition
signific
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country,
grow fer
be a celc
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18
the Eartr

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“Few York
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mqepende

181

a feminist reading of Cather to report on" ("Fiction: 1900 to

the 19303," Mgericag Literary Scholarehip, ed. James woodress
[Durham: Duke UP, 1979] 234).

17Gelfant argues that Jim Burden is afraid of sex. In
addition, he is unable to achieve the larger and perhaps more
significant mastery of the land that sex with a woman
represents. Consequently, "Jim.aublimates by traversing the
country, laying it open by rail; and because he sees the land
grow fertile and the people prosper, he believes his story to
be a celebration" (150). Jim's story in My Antonia is not a
celebration. Rather, according to Gelfant, it is a depiction
of the failure of the American dream. Significantly, Gelfant
suggests, but does not claim outright, that the dream has
failed because it is inseparable from ”normal [heterosexual]
sex," something that is "barred from [Cather's] fictional

world” (147).

1“Another feminist critic who considers Cather's use of
the Earth Mother stereotype in My Antonia is Deborah G.
Lambert. Her 1982 essay, “The Defeat of the Hero Autonomy
and Sexuality in M Antonia," American Literature 53 (1982):
76—90, Rpt. in Willa Cather's M Antonia, Ed. Harold Bloom
(New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987), represents a
different approach to this topic than the one taken by
Rosowski and O'Brien. Instead of demonstrating how Cather
revises this limiting type and transforms it into a feminist
story of affirmation and power, Lambert maintains that My
(Antonia's conclusion constitutes a "betrayal of female
independence and female sexuality” (131). Lambert arrives at
this conclusion after arguing at length that Cather's status
as a professional woman and a lesbian placed her in such
severe conflict with her society that she was forced, as a
‘way of self-preservation, to deny both her ”womanhood" and
her lesbianism. These "painful denials," Lambert argues,
make themselves apparent in her fiction through celebrations
of the Earth Mother, ”one of our most familiar stereotypes,
one that distorts and reduces the lives of women" (131).
:Lambert points towards Jim Burden, the male narrator of My
‘Antonia as Cather's ”way out of facing great anxiety" because
it provided a conventional, male way to view her fictional
‘world.that was not in conflict with larger social dictates.
Much like Douglas' essay, which appeared that same year,
Lambert's suggests that the fact that Cather did not (or
could not) write novels depicting oppressed women who triumph
after painful struggles makes it impossible for feminist
scholars to "claim" her novels. But unlike Douglas, Lambert
does locate within Cather's own life a bitter and unceasing
struggle against a patriarchal society that could recognize
neither her professional success nor her personal desires.
By turning to this personal struggle and searching for its

signs in <
literary 1
account 0:
struggle,
not lose :
apparentlj
others, c<
case the a
valiant, .'
patriarch:

19Cat
that the 1
m
had nothil
But I Mg]
and it V101
Does Not 1
Cdther' N0

182

signs in Cather's fiction Lambert continues the feminist
literary tradition of reducing women's writing to a unified
account of that all-powerful story of women's oppression,
struggle, and sometimes survival. It is important that we
not lose sight of the fact that Lambert's thesis, while
apparently at odds with those of O'Brien, Rosowski, and
others, continues to impose the tale of a woman--in Lambert's
case the author rather than her characters--engaged in a
valiant, if not always victorious, battle against the

patriarchy.

19Cather herself claimed in an interview with Rose Field
that the presence of the landscape had nothing to do with My
Metonia's greatness: ”That it was powerfully tied to the soil
had nothing to do with it. Antonia was tied to the soil.
But I might have written the tale of a Czech baker in Chicago
and it would have been the same” (”Restlessness Such as Ours
Does Not Make for Beauty,” rev. of M Antonia, by Willa
Cather, New Mork gimes Book Review 21 Dec. 1924: 11).
Clearly, it is not a good idea to take Cather's words too
seriously; she was known to deliberately mislead critics.
But I think it should also be clear that returning faithfully
like lemmings to the critical assessments of other
interpretive communities can mislead us as feminist literary

critics.

2“Willa Cather, My Antonia, 1918 (New York: The Library
of America, 1987, vol. 1 of Willa Cather: Eariy Novels and
Stories, ed. Sharon O'Brien, 3 vols., 1987-1992, 707-939)
716. Future references to the novel follow this edition and
are made parenthetically within the text.

21By the mid 19708 Sapphira's status as an inferior work
'was generally accepted, and the critical tone shifted away
from attack and towards reclamation. Critics used the novel
'to»demonstrate and support their various agenda, none of
‘which included identifying the text as representative of
mainstream American literature. Significantly, very few of
'these essays approached Sapphira from.an overtly feminist
perspective. Two critics, Paul Borgman and Richard Giannone,
analyzed the novel from a Christian perspective. Borgman saw
:it as Cather's finest representation of the perfect union of
hope and faith: " apphira and the Slave Girl is a subtle and
finely wrought dramatization of [God's] love” ("The Dialectic
of Willa Cather's Moral Vision,” Renascence 27 [1975]: 148).
Anni Richard Giannone identified a three part movement in the
ncnnel from enslavement to liberty ("Willa Cather and the
Unfinished Drama of Deliverance," Prairie Schooner 52 [1978]:

213).
In her biographical reading of the novel, Marilyn Arnold
links the disappointments and tragedies of Cather's life in

183

the late 19308 to the ”escapist" tone of Sapphira a novel
which.”repudiates the present and settles for order and peace
alone" (”Cather's Last Stand," Research Studies 13 [1975]:
246). Rather than judging the novel in a negative way
because of what she identifies as its escapism, however, as
many earlier critics had, Arnold concludes that Cather's
insistence on placing order and peace at the center of the
text is fieppMire's chief asset.

22Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Giri, 1940 (New
York: The Library of America, 1990, V01 2 of Wiiia Cather:

Late Novels, ed. Sharon O'Brien, 3 vols, 1987-1992, 775-939)
781. Future references to the novel follow this edition and
are made parenthetically within the text.

CHAPTER FOUR
READING EDITH WHARTON

Edith Wharton and the American Literary Tradition

In general Edith Wharton's critical reception can be
said to be more mixed than Cather's. While many critics have
clained for her the status of a "great" American novelist,
others deemed her second rank and suggested that her work
would not survive the test of time to become "classic." The
primary reason for this ambivalent response lay in the fact
that Wharton's novels were not viewed as depicting the "myth
of America” that had begun to be regarded as the chief
characteristic of ”great" American literature.

The most important consequence of the mixed reception
Wharton ' 8 work received at the hands of its initial
interpretive community is her subsequent treatment by the
American feminist interpretive community. Since the 19703
most feminist critics have focused on demonstrating how
Wharton's fiction reflects feminist values and a feminist
agenda. Like Cather's feminist critics they concentrate on
the female characters in her novels and attempt to reveal the

many ways these characters struggle against the patriarchal

184

185

society's constant efforts to thwart and oppress them. In
other words, these feminist critics work diligently to bring
Wharton ”into the sisterhood," much as their colleagues had
with Cather. There is, however, a significant minority of
feminist critics who are reluctant to admit Wharton into the
"sacred sorority." These critics do not hesitate to
illuminate Wharton's anti-feminism and point towards ways she
negates rather than reifies a feminist agenda in her
writings. Interestingly, Wharton's anti-feminism is no more
blatant than Cather's, yet the feminist interpretive
community has been almost completely unable to address
aspects of Cather's work that are difficult to reconcile with
the political agenda of feminism. It is Wharton's relatively
tenuous status as a canonical figure that allows the feminist
interpretive community to question her position as a feminist
writer. Because Cather was commonly regarded as the foremost
American woman writer of her era, there is much less at stake
when critics reveal the faults in Wharton's attitudes and
treatment of women than there would be if such a gaze were
turned to Cather. Ironically, the standards of a previous
interpretive community, which caused critics to reject
Wharton for not depicting the "myth of America, " shape the
feminist interpretive community. Unconsciously, critics have
been enabled by Wharton's lesser status 'to interrogate her in
ways impossible with Cather. Although Wharton's rejection by

her initial critics allows feminist critics to be more

186

critical of her, it also leads some of them to ban her from
the feminist canon. Unfortunately, the interpretive
strategies of the feminist interpretive community have yet to
evolve to the point where, in spite of revealing flaws in a
woman writer's treatment of women in her fiction, it is
nevertheless possible to ”claim" that writer for feminism.
But employing a resisting reading will allow us as feminist
literary critics to surmount the obstacles posed by
essentialist assumptions and binary readings of women's
*writing and consequently "claim" any woman writer, including
Edith Wharton, for feminism.

[Although she was not universally admired, during her
lifetime Edith Wharton was often referred to as one of the
‘most important American novelists of her era. In 1916 Henry
James, who by then was well-respected as a literary critic as
well as a novelist, neglected to mention any American writers
except Edith Wharton in the chapter of NOtes on Novelists
entitled "The New Nevel" (353-356).1 While his opinion may
have been influenced by the fact that he and Wharton had
grown to be close friends by this time, it was one shared by
many Americans. Yale professor Henry Seidel Canby wrote in
Defieitiegs: Eeeaye in gontertperary Criticism (1922) that her
‘work.is ”a credit to American literature” and "a fruit of our
soil” (216). And five years later William Lyon Phelps

declared in gentieth Century American Novels (1927) that "By

common consent, Edith Wharton stands at the head of American

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contemporary writers of fiction; and her career is almost
synonymous with the century” (12). But perhaps the greatest
testimony to Wharton's central position in the literary world
of the early twentieth century is her popular success. In
1906 Wharton earned about $27,000 from royalties on The House
of Mirrh (Joslin 1987, 194), a sharp contrast to the $2,000
Cather earned in 1918 for My Antonia (woodress 1987, 300).
Wharton's novels were always widely reviewed, and there were
seldom any negative responses.2 Reviewers like R. D. Townsend
often placed Wharton ”among the leaders in American fiction”
(119). But this position of leadership was not an
unquestioned one.

E. K. Brown, Cather's first biographer, was also a
Wharton scholar, and his ambivalent response to her work
illustrates the difficulties Wharton posed to literary
critics of the early twentieth century.3 In an essay entitled
”Edith Wharton,” Brown clearly expressed his admiration of
Wharton, praising her "severe truthfulness," "conscious
artistry,” ”penetrating exploration of character," and
”clarity of . . . social observation” (65, 67, 70, 71). But
.it is Brown's criticism of Wharton that is most revealing
because it points towards the reason for her marginal status
in the American literary canon. For Brown finds Wharton's
chief fault to be her failure to accurately portray American
life: ”her direct knowledge of America was slight; and she

had not opportunities for enlarging it . . . Nor was her

188

point of view, her essential and natural point of view, a
fruitful one from which to survey the American scene" (69).
In spite of the fact that Wharton "overcame the huge
deficiencies of her knowledge remarkably well," Brown
concludes that ”little of [her performance] will endure" (70,
72). This critical tendency to equivocate with respect to
Wharton's literary worth based on the inauthenticity of her
portrait of America contrasts sharply with the high praise
accorded Willa Cather. As we have seen, Cather received
accolades precisely because of the supposed accuracy of her
depiction of American life. Wharton's rejection on the
grounds that she failed to depict the "myth of America" was
not limited to E. K. Brown's assessment.

As early as 1915 Robert Herrick had objected that "there
is little of importance" to be found in Wharton's attempts at
”painting in our national canvas" (41). Assuming that the
chief task of an American novelist is representing America,
Herrick deems Wharton a failure because "She has rarely
caught [America's] more significant notes or tried to peer
.beneath its obvious superficialities, nor has she been warmly
charmed by its kaleidoscopic glitter" (42) . One of the most
influential American literary scholars of the early twentieth
century, V. L. Parrington, echoed Herrick's complaints: "She
has done notable things , but she has paid a great price in
alrxafness from her own America. There is more hope of our

literature in the honest crudities of the younger naturalists

189

than in her classic irony; they at least are trying to
understand America as it is" (154). And immediately after
her death critics like Wilson Follett tempered their praise
of her oeuvre with complaints that she would have been a
better novelist had she understood American life more fully.
Follett suggests that most of Wharton's work "will not today
bear rereading" because the author had never truly made ”the
discovery of America” (2). He regrets that she never
attempted "larger ventures upon a more rugged terrain" (14).
Wharton's failure to depict the "rugged individualismP and
thus the ”myth of America” that was required by American
literary critics ensured her marginal place in American
literary history.

And that her place was indeed marginal, at least until
the advent of feminist literary criticism in the early 19703,

is nowhere more evident than in Alfred Kazin's important 1942

volume, 0;; Native Grounds : An Interpretation of Modern

flgig' g groee Li tereture. Appearing less than ten years
before Henry Nash Smith's Vir’ gin Lagd (the 1950 work Nina

Baym cites as initiating the critical movement towards
identifying "essential Americanness" in American literature),
On Native Grounds clearly participates in that influential
movement. In his preface Kazin asserts, "our modern
literature in America is at bottom only the expression of our
modern life in America" (viii). And in his discussion of

Willa Cather, Kazin praises, as had so many of her critics,

190

her ability to ”see in the pioneer society of the west a
culture and distinction of its own" (250). Cather receives
some of Kazin's highest praise as he calls her a "consummate
artist" and admires the "strength" and "radiant
craftsmanship” of her work (257, 255). Wharton, on the other
hand, was the object of Kazin's strictest censure. Declaring
that ”a great artist, even a completely devoted artist, she
never became," Kazin cites Wharton's chief fault as being her
lack of understanding of American society: ”She had no
conception of America as a unified and dynamic economy, or
even as a single culture" (82). Rather than viewing her work
as the product of a literary movement, which would have given
it literary worth, Kazin declares it to be a purely
individual product of "many personal maladjustments” (77).
Something purely personal could never, in Kazin's estimation,
have national significance. It becomes clear then that the
very category which served to gain for Willa Cather her
canonical status--her "Americanness"--helped to relegate
‘Wharton to the periphery of American literary history.
Interestingly, Wharton was herself aware of this
movement in American literary criticism and as much as
predicted her fall from national prominence in a 1927 essay
ironically entitled "The Great American Novel." In one
respect Wharton's essay appears to be a direct response to
and a bitter complaint against the objections critics like

Herrick and Parrington had made concerning her neglect of the

191

American scene. She declares, "literary criticism in modern
America is a perpetual incentive to standardization" (243).
In other respects, however, the essay emerges as a perceptive
analysis of the trends in American literary criticism that
were beginning to take shape at this time. Wharton
introduces the essay by observing that the term ”American
novel” has increasingly begun to appear in reviews and
advertisements. She goes on to remark that in such a context
"American novel" designates "much narrower social and
geographical limitations” than the mere country of origin of
an author (229). Wharton is precise, if somewhat bitter, as
she enumerates the requirements of the "great American
novel":
The novelist's scene must be laid in the United States,
and his story deal exclusively with citizens of those
States; furthermore, if his work is really to deserve
the epithet "American," it must tell of persons so
limited in education and opportunity that they live cut
off from all the varied sources of culture which used to
be considered the common heritage of English-speaking
people. The great American novel must always be about
Main Street, geographically, socially, and
intellectually. (230)
Edith Wharton had good reason to know that these were the

expectations of literary critics.

192

Those critics who faulted her for failing to depict the
"real life" of the country often singled out Wharton's 1911
novel Ethag Frome as an outstanding exception to her general
neglect of authentic Americans. The novel is certainly not
typical of Wharton's fiction. It is set in the rural New
England village of Starkfield and recounts the story of three
inarticulate and poorly educated individuals--Ethan Frome,
his wife Zenobia, and their servant Mattie--as they struggle
against their own desires as well as the ”cold" and ”starved"
‘winter environment of Starkfield. Robert Herrick argued that
alone of all Wharton's novels Ethan Frome ”betrays the secret
of her true power" (41), and E. K. Brown thought the novel
would be one of her few enduring works. Wilson Follett paid
it his highest tribute, calling Ethan Frome "an authentic
American classic" (2) . Wharton was undoubtedly considering
critics like these when she wrote in her autobiography, "I am
far from thinking 'Ethan Frome' my best novel, and am bored
and even exasperated when I am.told that it is" (209). But
as she makes clear in "The Great American Novel,” while she
did not accept or condone the critical standards beginning to
dominate American literature in the early twentieth century,
Wharton had a good understanding of what made Ethan Frome
more acceptable to American literary critics than any of her
other novels.

There is another factor contributing to Edith Wharton's

relative critical neglect that, while no doubt related to her

193

refusal to depict the "myth of America, " deserves separate
consideration. And that factor is the content and tone of
many of the early book-length studies of her work. As was
the case with Cather, the first book-length study of Wharton
to appear was in the Modern American Writers series edited by
Ernest Boyd. But unlike Renee Rapin's analysis, which refers
to Cather as a ”great" writer who possesses ”sustained power
[and] breadth of vision and of compass" (1), Robert Morss
Lovett's book Edith Wharton (1925) focuses far more on
Wharton ' s limitations than her accomplishments . Lovett finds
it "regrettable" that Wharton was so alienated from her
”native land” both physically and in her writings (7) . And
he concludes, ”She lacks the power of imagination to follow
the leadings of her experience and the phenomena of her
environment into other fields, to transpose the themes of her
chamber music into larger harmonies and discords of the full
orchestra” (86) . To paraphrase Lovett's dense and flowery
prose, Edith Wharton is not a great writer. The second book
written in English on Edith Wharton was Percy Lubbock's
biography, gortrait of Edith Wharton (1947) . The influence
of this book on Wharton's literary reputation cannot be
underestimated. In her examination of the Wharton papers at
Yale, Katherine Joslin discovered letters between Lubbock and
Wharton ' s literary executor, Gaillard Lapsley, that indicate
that both men believed that Wharton was in danger of

disappearing immediately from the literary consciousness of

194

the nation. Joslin suggests that the biography Lubbock wrote
supported this low opinion of its subject: "With Lapsley's
blessing on Lubbock's pronouncements, Edith Wharton emerged
after her death as a marginal writer and woman" (194) . The
most remarkable aspect of Lubbock's portrait is its absolute
refusal to seriously address Wharton's status as an artist.
In the introduction Lubbock unaccountably insists that "any
critical handling" of the books would be inappropriate (v).
And in his conclusion he suggests that it is merely the eiz_e
of her oeuvre, rather than its quality, that earns her the
title of writer (240) . Other Wharton scholars have pointed
to the significance of Lubbock's "portrait." R. W. B. Lewis
observes that "the book's most striking characteristic . . .
is the subtly distributed malice towards its subject, a
careful muted downgrading of Edith Wharton as a human being
and a writer" (516) . Wharton's negative reputation endures.
More recently, the feminist scholar Susan Goodman indicated
the difficulties she has encountered in her attempts to
counter some of the long—standing assumptions about Wharton
that were established by Lubbock's biased account (26, 31,
164 n.8) .

Two other books on Wharton that appeared relatively

early both classified her as a novelist of manners. In Edith

Wharton: A §tudy of her Fictiog (1953) Blake Nevius suggested

that while she was an undoubted master of the form it was

nevertheless mastery of only a minor genre (9) . And Marilyn

195

Jones Lyde focused exclusively Wharton as a novelist of
manners in Edith Wherron: gonventions and Moraiity i9 the
Werk of a Novelist (1959). But perhaps the most significant
early contribution to Wharton scholarship, after Lubbock's
biography, was Irving Howe's collection of essays published
in 1962. This collection is remarkable in part because of
the large number of negative essays that appear in it. In
addition to an essay by O. D. Leavis that concludes that
Wharton was not a great artist (88) and an essay by Lionel
Trilling that refers to Ethan Frome as a "factitious book"
(137) Howe selected for inclusion in this volume the essays
by Brown, Parrington, and Kazin to which I have already
referred. His collection is quite unusual; no writer deemed
worthy of a collection of critical essays devoted to their
‘work has ever been more disparaged in such a volume than
Edith Wharton. Thus, twenty-five years after Wharton's death
a student turning to her would discover in the local research
library few, if any, books to indicate that she was a worthy
subject for consideration. This is in marked contrast to
‘what such a scholar would discover on Willa Cather. Twenty-
five years after her death Cather had been the subject of six
significant and highly complimentary critical studies, two
favorable memoirs, and one collection of extremely laudatory
critical essays.‘ The significance and impact of the

contrasting critical reception of these two writers will

196

become evident as we turn to the feminist interpretive

community's consideration of Edith Wharton.

197

The American Feminist Interpretive Community

Reads Edith Wharton

The fact of Edith Wharton's marginal status in the
American literary canon has enabled some members of the
feminist interpretive community to interrogate her work in
ways that were impossible with the more canonical Willa
Cather. Nevertheless, the large majority of feminist
literary critics who began to seriously consider Edith
Wharton in the 19703 have been intent on bringing her "into
the sisterhood" by demonstrating how her work depicted
feminist concerns. For these critics the largest difference
between Wharton and Cather lies in their respective depiction
of female characters. Because there are few, if any, female
protagonists in Wharton ' s work who obviously appear as role
models for feminist readers, the tendency has been for
feminist critics to focus on the ways Wharton demonstrated
the insidious and powerful hold of the patriarchy over women.
Thus the feminist interpretive community has hailed Wharton's
work not because it provided examples of women who triumphed
over the oppressive constraints of the patriarchy (as
Cather's work has been viewed) but rather because it
demonstrated the difficulty (if not the impossibility) of
such a triumph. As I explained in Part One, this kind of
critical approach poses some significant dangers for the

feminist interpretive community. Interpretive strategies

198

that reduce the position of all women represented in a text
to that of victim actually contradict many of the stated aims
of feminist literary criticism. This critical position
ironically, and I believe unintentionally, supports the very
system feminist literary critics are trying to reveal and
change. As I argued in Chapter Two, feminist critics who
define the female gendered subject as unilaterally oppressed
participate in the very oppression they are trying to reveal.
As we turn to some specific examples of feminist literary
critics who have worked to bring Wharton "into the
sisterhood," I will demonstrate more fully how many of these
efforts actually have deconstructed themselves.

As was the case with Cather, one of the first sustained
treatments of Wharton from a feminist perspective came from
Shirley H. Heller.5 Heller's 1975 discussion of Wharton is
particularly interesting because it illustrates the
difficulties her novels pose to an interpretive community
torn between the desire to identify positive female role
models in women's fiction and the desire to locate feminist
explorations of patriarchal power in the work of women
writers. Heller attempted to do both. Heller claims that
Wharton is "firmly in the feminist movement" because of her
depiction of women characters: "Edith Wharton was an early
feminist novelist whose heroines have white goddess
characteristics and are elevated above the men and the

society around them" (21). But she also recognizes the fact

199

that Wharton's women characters are often defeated by that
very society and its "male-oriented" social conventions.
Speaking of the heroine of The House of Mir' t1; Heller
observes, "Innately a strong, beautiful woman, Lily is
destroyed through excessive role-playing in the only role
society valued or offered the woman for fulfillment" (23).
Heller's conclusion foreshadows that of most other feminist
literary critics. For her ultimate argument is that although
Wharton desired for her female characters to attain
liberation and happiness, she could not imagine a way for
them to achieve this status under their patriarchal society.
Margaret B. McDowell's assessment of Wharton's female
characters in her essay, "Viewing the Custom of Her Country:
Edith Wharton's Feminism" (1974) emphasizes this aspect of
Wharton's fiction. McDowell suggests that Wharton's feminism
is "implicit rather than explicit" (523). She suggests that
Wharton's feminism consists primarily in asking questions
about women's role in society rather than in providing
solutions, alternatives, or role models for women (529).
McDowell argues that there are some women in Wharton's
fiction who revolt against social patterns and grow beyond
them, but many more fail to do so (530). McDowell, like
Heller, sees that the alternatives for women in Wharton's
fiction are few and grim: "Repeatedly she questions the
validity of a woman's submitting to the restrictions imposed

upon her in a male-oriented society. But Wharton' 9 final

200

comment on woman's relationship to her world would seem to be
that she purchases freedom at great risk within a relatively
static society" (538). Both critics, by suggesting that
Wharton primarily conceives of her women characters as
victims and by locating her feminism in that very perception,
are reifying rather than negating patriarchal critical
constructs . Furthermore, they miss the opportunity to
creatively interrogate Wharton's apparent acceptance of her
society's view of women as object in and victim of the
patriarchy. Their assumption that Wharton's depiction of
woman as victim constitutes a protest against the system that
victimizes her deserves some reconsideration. And McDowell
and Heller are simply the two earliest feminist critics in a
long line of scholars who adopt such interpretive strategies.
In an aptly titled essay, "The Feminist Takeover of
Edith Wharton" (1989) , James W. Tuttleton complains about
"the appropriation of Mrs. Wharton by the sorority of
feminists" (10). Tuttleton perceives "a new battle
developing for control of Wharton criticism" as increasingly
more feminists publish books and essays on this important
writer (10). Tuttleton objects to this "takeover" because,
as he sees it, "Mrs. Wharton's fiction does not serve very
well to buttress the ideology of a feminism engaged in an
attack on men, their domination, and cruelty, on marriage as
such or on the so-called patriarchy" (11) . As childish as

his complaints may seem, it is at least clear that Tuttleton

201

is correct in his observation that feminist scholars are
increasingly the dominant voices in Wharton criticism.

Within ten years of the publication of R. W. B. Lewis's
biography in 1975, four important, book-length, feminist
studies of Wharton were published. A brief survey of these
works will illustrate, contrary to Tuttleton's claim, the
value and significance of these feminist voices. But it will
also show that Tuttleton is in many respects accurate when he
points to the uniformity of the feminist song.

The most important feminist analysis of Edith Wharton is
Cynthia Griffin Wblff's 1977 book A Feast ef WOrds: rhe
Triumph of Edith Wharton. This book is a combination of
literary criticism and psychological analysis, and it is
central not only to Wharton criticism, by virtue of what it
reveals about her life and art, but also to feminist literary
criticism in general, by virtue of being an exemplary model
of feminist psycho/literary biography.6 The basic question
that concerns WOlff is what compelled Edith Wharton to write,
given the fact that the conditions of her society "positively
discouraged" any such activity (5). WOlff suggests that
Wharton's entire life was characterized by an unceasing
struggle against the restrictions imposed upon her by this
same patriarchal society. She further argues that these
restrictions were most clearly represented by the forbidding
presence of Wharton's mother, Lucretia Jones: "[Wharton's]

anger toward Mother had inspired her not with active

202

rebellion but with its opposite, excruciatingly strict rules
to govern what it was allowable to say and even to think"
(53). According to WOlff, it was only through painfully
struggling to achieve independence from repressive social
forces (represented most clearly by her mother) that Wharton
was able to become a writer. And even then, as WOlff
demonstrates through elegant readings of her novels, Wharton
continued to explore the consequences of being a woman in a
society so effectively designed to thwart female ambition:
"She summoned up worlds of fiction that articulated the
feelings and conflicts that had been so unprofitably pushed
aside; and as she worked with those fictional worlds--shaping
them, giving them order, making decisions about theme-she
slowly learned to master her problems" (54). But WOlff's
readings also demonstrate that while Wharton may have
personally "mastered" the problems presented to her by her
society, she rarely depicted women in her fiction who managed
to do likewise.

This tendency to view Wharton's work as the articulation
of the unfortunate position of women in a male dominated
society continues in the three other books published on
‘Wharton in the early 19808. In Egirn_flherree;e_ergereer_yirh
America (1980) Elizabeth Ammons argues that Wharton's entire
oeuvre demonstrates her insightful awareness of the
constricted lives women are forced to lead in American

society. Ammons addresses the fact that Wharton's heroines

203

never seem to be allowed to achieve either conventionally
happy endings or the happy ending that was beginning to
become a possibility for New WOmen in American society.
According to Ammons, Wharton's refusal does not represent a
"reactionary" or "unconcerned" attitude. Rather, in Ammons's
view, it represents Wharton's conviction that the conditions
of American society offered no possibility of happiness for
American women: "The culture, in Wharton's opinion, offers
them no means of realizing their dreams. Lily Bart, Justine
Brent, Mattie Silver, Sophy Viner, Charity Royall: all end up
in bondage to the past not because Edith Wharton was cruel
but because the liberation, the 'progress,' that America
boasted of for women was, in her view, a mirage" (48-9).
Ammons sees Wharton as interrogating her society in her
fiction and ultimately concluding that it destroys the women
*who inhabit it, hence her "argument with America."

Like Ammons, Carol wershoven explores the representation
in Wharton's novels of ways women are thwarted and oppressed
by’a.society whose rules all favor masculine autonomy and
femdnine dependence. In The Female Intrhder in the Novels of
Edith Wherton (1982) Wershoven analyzes Wharton's fiction to
demonstrate how "the woman in society is . . . trapped--by
rules (such as the double standard) not of her own devising,
by a materialism that makes her only the chief ornament in
her husband's establishment, and by a society that encourages

her to remain a child, 'innocent' of reality and protected

 

204

from life" (16). wendy Gimbel further emphasizes the
victimization of female characters in Wharton's fiction in
Egirh Mharten: Orphaney ahd Survival (1984). Gimbel goes so
far as to suggest that there is no possibility for women in
Wharton's fictional world ever to overcome the conditions in
which they are trapped: "The victim is the woman, the passive
creation of the patriarchy. Whatever individual talent the
female may have, it is not strong enough to withstand the
powerful force which demands her continued infantilization"
(10).

In an essay entitled "Muzzled women" (1987) the well-
known novelist and feminist philosopher Marilyn French also
notes Wharton's seeming reluctance to depict female
characters as anything other than victims of their
patriarchal society. French's response is interesting, as
she expresses feelings of outrage because Wharton refuses to
grant her female characters the kind of autonomy that she
herself experienced in life. I introduce French at this
point because her essay reveals some of the latent
essentialist assumptions in the work of other feminist
critics who center their analysis on Wharton's depiction of
*woman as perpetually oppressed. Asking the question, "Why
have so many woman authors helped to preserve the built-in
constrictions all women suffer from, the sense we have that
‘we can have one thing or another but not both and certainly

not three or four of the things we dearly want," French

205

betrays her assumption, and that of many other feminist
literary critics, that the most basic component of female
identity consists of an innate sense of inferiority and
suffering (223). And while French faults Wharton for
relentlessly focusing on female victimization (unlike Ann
Douglas who, it will be remembered, used much the same logic
to condemn Cather for refusing to view women as victims) she
nevertheless confirms this as an innate, essential feature of
women.

French, WOlff, Ammons, Wershoven, and Gimbel are united
in their insistence that Wharton's fiction articulates, first
and foremost, the unified story of woman's oppression under
the patriarchy. And while, as their eloquent and persuasive
readings demonstrate, this is by no means a minor or
insignificant aspect of Wharton's oeuvre, their readings also
illustrate some of the dangers inherent in interpretive
strategies that completely reduce women's writing to this
unified story. For such interpretive strategies obscure the
many other stories inhabiting a Wharton novel, some of which
support, rather than reveal and critique, the society so
central to Wharton's "argument with America." .A resisting
reading of Wharton allows us to examine the alternative
stories her novels tell, but before turning to the texts
themselves I think it would be useful to look at some of the

feminist critics who have broken away from the dominant

206

position of viewing Wharton's work as the articulation of the
story of female oppression.7

One of the first feminist critics to challenge this
dominant critical position was Lois A. Cuddy in her 1982
essay "Triangles of Defeat and Liberation: The Quest for
Power in Edith Wharton's Fiction." Cuddy argues in this
essay that if one considers all of Wharton's novels it
becomes evident that her women characters evolve from female
dependence to female superiority (18). Cuddy's position is
interesting because in moving beyond the "woman as victim.of
the patriarchy" interpretation and suggesting instead that
woman is victorious eyer the patriarchy Cuddy is aligning
herself more with the feminist critics of Cather than those
of Wharton. Speaking of Wharton's heroines Cuddy asserts,
"Always the social outcasts, these women nevertheless evolved
from positions of terrifying vulnerability [The House of
Mirrh], to tenacious self-interest [Ethan Frome], to the
masterful self-assurance, assertiveness, and independence of
the modern woman [The Age of Innocence]" (25). I would like
to suggest that by 1982 when this essay first appeared
Wharton had finally, by virtue of the Lewis and WOlff
biographies as well as Ammons's excellent critical study,
reached a level of canonical stature approximating that of
Cather's. Thus, it is possible that some feminist literary
critics felt a sense of urgency to bring Wharton "into the

sisterhood" in new ways that would allow them to identify

207

positively instead of negatively with her women characters.
It perhaps became important, therefore, to develop new
interpretive strategies that would allow for different kinds
of readings, such as that produced by Lois A. Cuddy.

Another critic who engages in a similar reconsideration
of Wharton is Frances L. Restuccia. In "The Name of the
Lily: Edith Wharton's Feminism(s)" (1987), Restuccia suggests
that it is possible to view even Wharton's seemingly most
thoroughly oppressed female character, Lily Bart, in a
positive light. Significantly, Restuccia is aware of the
danger of reductive feminist readings that simplify women's
writing to the story of women's oppression: "one must beware
of the inadequacy of even 'feminist' readings of Lily Bart
that stress single-mindedly her ontology as an art object as
they resemble tellingly (disturbingly) the Lily Bart
perceived by Lawrence Selden--practitioner of the law" (224).
Restuccia argues that Wharton's feminism in The House of
:HL£EQ (and, implicitly, in her other novels) lies not merely
in her depiction of Lily's position as victimized object of
her patriarchal society, but also in Wharton's refusal to
define her heroine in a fixed, phallogocentric way:

Wharton's feminism, then, reflects a tension very much

alive in contemporary feminist theory: the apparent

incommensurability of a social, humanist feminism that
advances a position (in this case, women who yield to

"'the temptation to be a beautiful object' . . . [are]

208

destroyed by the consequences of that temptation," as

Judith Fetterley writes),8 and a more literary feminism

that refuses definable positions for their masterliness,

'wishing to maintain perpetual openness and

inaccessibility. (224)

Thus, Lily becomes admirable and strong because she refuses
to be defined. Restuccia cites an important sentence from
The Mouee er Mirth to support her argument, one that bears
repeating: "Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of
hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break
than a stiff one" (qtd. in Restuccia, 224). Restuccia's
reading of The House of Mirth is in many senses a resisting
reading because it refuses, in her words, to "ascribe clear,
single meanings to things, to wash away their ambiguity"
(227). And Restuccia is joined by other feminist literary
critics who are reluctant to accept the traditional readings
of Edith Wharton.

One of the most important, and most radical, of these
renegade feminist literary critics is Julie Olin-Ammentorp.
While far from questioning the significance of the work
conducted by WOlff, Ammons, Fetterley, and others, Olin-
Ammentorp observes that "the work of these feminist critics .
. . raises issues of the limitations . . . of current
feminist literary criticism" (237). One of the most
important questionable assumptions Olin-Ammentorp locates in

feminist Wharton criticism is the implication that Wharton

209

herself "was a kind of inherent feminist" (237) . Observing
the common feminist effort to find evidence of Wharton's own
feminism in her depiction of women characters who are
unjustly bound by the restrictions of a patriarchal society,
Olin-Ammantorp rightly reminds us that such single-minded
concerns can cause feminist critics to "overlook" other
important aspects of Edith Wharton, such as her apparent
misogyny (237) . Olin-Ammentorp also objects to the kind of
interpretive strategies that allow critics to ignore
Wharton's treatment of male characters: "A re-examination of
Wharton's fiction . . . demonstrates that the social
structures of Wharton's fictional world cause male waste as
much as female" (238) . Olin-Ammentorp considers at length
the male characters in The House of Mirth in order to support
her claim that Wharton saw equally the dangers society posed
for men and women. Her conclusion is that feminist literary
critics have failed to consider the full complexity of Edith
Wharton. Like Restuccia, Olin-Ammentorp challenges the
feminist tendency to settle for single-dimensional
understandings of female identity, and as such her analysis
also takes steps towards becoming a resisting reading.

At this point it seems reasonable to ask why some
feminist literary critics of Wharton have managed to break
out of the essentialist traps characteristic of much feminist
literary criticism while feminist critics of Cather have

been, for the most part, unable to initiate such important

210

critical steps. I would argue that Wharton's status as a
less solidly canonical figure than Cather has allowed her to
be more easily embraced by feminist literary critics who wish
to challenge traditional readings of her work. It is easier
to be a resisting reader of Edith Wharton than of Willa
Cather because in Wharton's case there is less to resist. In
addition, a less affirmative explanation of this trend in
Wharton criticism may be the fact that since the "voice of
the fathers" as represented by such critics as Parrington,
Kazin, and even Brown, has to some extent rejected Wharton,
feminist literary critics are unconsciously willing to risk
not fully bringing Wharton "into the sisterhood." Critics
like Olin—Ammentorp can afford to point out Wharton's
misogyny, thus risking that Wharton will prove an
unacceptable member of the feminist canon, because she has
already been deemed unworthy of belonging in the masculine
canon.

Since 1990 several new books analyzing Edith Wharton
from a feminist perspective have appeared, and it is apparent
that many of these works break old trends and take steps
towards a resisting reading of this important woman writer.9
Susan Goodman refuses to reduce Wharton to either the
[complete champion of women or their utter enemy in her 1990
book.Edith Wharton's WOmen: Friends and Rivals. Instead, she
suggests that it is important to reconsider aspects of

‘Wharton's identity that have traditionally been viewed as

211

"mutually exclusive" (2). In Edith Wherton's retrers rrom
rhe Qnderyerld (1991), Candace waid also refuses to view

Wharton in the context of binary oppositions and instead
argues that "a consideration of Wharton's ambivalent view of
women must take into account her preoccupation with writing
and the very possibility of the woman writer" (4). And,
finally, Gloria C. Erlich returns to the subject of Edith
Wharton's sexual identity in her 1992 book The Sexual
Educarion of Edith Wharton to argue that "interrelated
identity systems--the filial, the sexual, and the creative--
are reflected in Wharton's work" (xi). What all three of
these works have in common, despite their disparate
conclusions, is the refusal to conform to the old models of
literary criticism or to be trapped by essentialist notions
of identity. It is approaches like these that, when fully
realized, will propel feminist literary criticism.into a new

era.

212

Reading 1he House of Mirrh

Ihe Mohse or Mirrh (1905) is the logical place to turn
to examine the various ways different interpretive
communities have treated Edith Wharton's individual works.
Critics are unanimous in declaring it Wharton's first
important book, and despite the fact that her Pulitzer Prize
winning novel, Ihe Age of innocence (1920), was more highly
acclaimed at the time of its publication, The House of Mirth
has always received more critical attention than any of her
other works. Julie Olin-Ammentorp calls it Wharton's "best-
known as well as . . . most astutely criticized" novel (237).
The Mouee of Mirth covers two years in the life of a young
woman, Lily Bart, who is a high society New Yorker living at
the turn of the century. Twenty-nine years old when the
novel opens, Lily does not possess an income that will allow
her to continue to live the high-stakes life she enjoys.
Throughout the course of the novel, however, she rejects each
of the many options presented to her that would allow her to
remain in her social milieu, and in the end she dies alone in
a shabby boarding house from an overdose of chloral. Like
Cather's My hhtenia (1918), The House of Mirth had been the
subject of considerable critical attention before it became
the focus of feminist analysis. Consequently, an examination
of the novel's critical reception provides a good opportunity

to explore ways the feminist interpretive community has been

213

influenced by the overlap of other interpretive communities.
Furthermore, as a resisting reading will demonstrate, in
spite of the many valuable interpretations that have appeared
over the years, the potential usefulness of The gouge er
Mirrh for feminist critique is far from.exhausted.

The initial reviews of the novel were not as uniformly
favorable as those of My Antonia. However, as Deborah
Lambert notes in an essay entitled "1_e_§ehee_er_Mirrh:
Readers Respond" (1985), reviewers were generally consistent
‘with respect to what they considered the central topics of
the novel. Critics focused primarily on "the novel's
implicit morality . . . the character of the protagonist, the
structure, and the narrative stance" (Lambert 72). One of
the most striking characteristics of the reviews is their
effort, either implicit or explicit, to define The House of
:fiiEEfl as a society novel, a novel of manners. Calling the
book "one of the few novels which can claim to rank as
literature" the reviewer for The Saturday Review labeled rhe
Houee of Mirrh "a biting criticism of modern civilisation"
(313). In a review published in The Critic, Mary R. Ford
declared the novel to be a "brilliant social satire" (311).
‘And in "Mrs. Wharton's Latest Nevel" rhe_ihgepehgehr's
reviewer proclaimed that W "is a story of
society life, its refined ferocities, its sensual
extravagances, its delicate immoralities and, above all, the

tragedies which underlie its outward appearance of mirth and

214

prosperity" (307). In every case, while reviewers of The
gouge er Mirrh often, as Lambert observes, commented on the
character of Lily Bart or the structure of the novel,
considerably greater weight was devoted to comments on
Wharton's representation of manners, of what Lionel Trilling
has called "a culture's hum and buzz of implication" (1957,
200). Even today this emphasis has continued to characterize
criticism of The House of Mirt .

It is ironic that while almost all early reviews noted
Wharton's thorough examination of a segment of American
society, she was nevertheless denigrated, both before and
after the publication of The House of Mirth, for not being
"American" enough. In a letter to William Crary Brownell,
one of her editors at Charles Scribner's Sons, Wharton
complained bitterly of what she regarded to be unfair
criticism of her work: "I have never before been discouraged
by criticism . . . but . . . the assumption that the people I
‘write about are not 'real' because they are not navvies and
char-women, makes me feel rather hopeless. I write about
'what I see, what I happen to be nearest to, which is surely
better than doing cowboys de chic" (91). If her novel was as
thorough a consideration of the New York upper class as
almost every critic claimed, then it was certainly in that
respect "American." But what is equally clear about American
literary criticism is that in order to be classified as

fiAmerican," novels must be about a certain class of

215

individuals who are actively pursuing the "myth of America."
Had Wharton consented to write about "cowboys de chic" her
literary reception would no doubt have been entirely
different. As it was, by writing about what she knew, she
relegated herself to the category of novelist of manners
rather than American novelist. But to be fair, it must be
said that she herself contributed to this evaluation with the
comments she made about The House of Mirth in her
autobiography, A Backward Glanee (1934). In speaking of the
genesis of the novel, Wharton wrote that once she had decided
on her subject she was puzzled as to how to develop that
subject into a novel of significance:
In what aspect could a society of irresponsible
pleasure-seekers be said to have, on the "old woe of the
world," any deeper bearing than the people composing
such a society could guess? The answer was that a
frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only
through what its frivolity destroys. Its tragic
implication lies in its power of debasing people and
ideals. The answer, in short, was my heroine, Lily
Bart. (940)
Thus, when literary critics proceeded to read The House of
(Mirrh almost exclusively as a novel of manners they were
following not only the lead of Wharton's early reviewers, but

her own lead as well.

216

Two of the most influential early critical assessments
of The House of Mirth were republished in Irving Howe's 1962
collection of Wharton essays. In "The House of Mirrh
Revisited" (1962), Diana Trilling considers Wharton's status
as a securely upper-class woman and asserts that "Her social
position enabled her not merely to bring the fact of high
society into literature in all its concreteness and
authenticity . . . but also made it uniquely possible for her
to perceive the complex and subtle interplay between our
personal destinies and the destiny foredained [sic.] by our
particular social situation" (104-5). Trilling reiterates
her assessment of Wharton as an exemplary novelist of manners
later in the essay when she argues that The House of Mirth
"is nothing if not a novel about social stratification and
the consequences of breaking . . . taboos" (105). Trilling's
conclusion is that Lily's death demonstrates "the absolute
power of society over the life of the individual" (117). In
"A Reading of The House of Mirth," which was first published
in 1962 as an introduction to the novel, Irving Howe confirms
Trilling's assessment and observes that "Each step in Lily's
decline allows Mrs. Wharton to examine the moral ugliness of
still another segment of the wealthy class" (123). Both of
these early critics, and most who followed them, regarded
‘Wharton's novel as a critical, yet fair, exploration of the
patterns of behavior which regulated the lives of a specific

class of people. In other words, they classified the work as

217

a novel of manners.1° This classification was solidified in
1975 with the publication of Gary H. Lindberg's book Meirh
Therren ahg the Novei of Mahners. Arguing that "Edith
Wharton's major subject is the impact of social organization,
an issue closely allied with the thematic base of the novel
of manners," Lindberg suggests that Lily Bart's primary
function in The House of Mirth is as a "social product" (12,
122).

When feminist literary critics first began to turn their
attention to The House or Mirrh in the mid 19708, they did so
without questioning its designation as a novel of manners.
Most feminist critics agreed that the novel was an
exploration of the relation between the individual and
society. Feminist critiques of The House of Mirth as a novel
of manners differed from.previous readings primarily because
of new efforts to demonstrate ways the novel revealed how
society, because of its patriarchal basis, was particularly
dangerous for women. The first important feminist analysis
of The Mouse of Mirth was Cynthia Griffin WOlff's essay "Lily
Bart and the Beautiful Death" (1974). In this essay WOlff
explores how late nineteenth-century social attitudes about
female beauty and women's role in society structured Lily's
life and eventually led to her death. According to WOlff,
the widely held view of woman "as an essentially 'artistic'
creation, worthy of representation and innately disposed to

'appropriate' behavior" prevented Lily from achieving a well

218

developed self-image (324). WOlff suggests that the last
scene of the novel in which the dead Lily is beautifully
displayed demonstrates Wharton's realization of "the
psychological distortions, the self-alienation, that a woman
suffers when she accepts the status of idealized object"
(338). It is interesting that, while WOlff's is clearly a
feminist analysis, she does not point fingers at the
patriarchy or suggest that Lily has no responsibility for her
own fate. According to WOlff, if a woman had "significant
real life roles to play" she would probably not be overly
influenced by the "aesthetic-moral" ideology of her society
(324).

In "The Temptation To Be a Beautiful Object: Double
Standard and Double Bind in The House of Mirth" (1977) Judith
Fetterley develops the feminist implications of WOlff's
argument in a different direction. Fetterley suggests that
while The House of Mirth is certainly a novel of manners, it
is one that focuses specifically on the gendered implications
of social regulations:

Lily's experience is not simply the result of her being

a member of a particular socio-economic class at a

particular point in time; it is equally the result of

her being a member of a sexual class. The tragedy of

Lily Hart is peculiarly the tragedy of an upperclass

woman faced with "the temptation to be a beautiful

219

object," which such a society presents to its women, and

destroyed by the consequences of that temptation. (200)
Fetterley identifies the basic "hum.and buzz" of Lily's
society to be patriarchal privilege and the corresponding
female objectification and oppression. Another feminist
literary critic who adopts Fetterley's stance is Cathy N.
Davidson who argues that in The Hohse of Mirth "WOmen . . .
are constrained not just by the dubious beauty ethic of
society but also by the prevailing double standard of the
time" (10). In "Another Sleeping Beauty: Narcissism in rhe
House of Mirrh" (1980) Joan Lidoff declares, "Lily is an
inevitable victim of destruction by social institutions'
collective necessities" (519). In another feminist essay,
Carolyn L. Karcher compares The House of Mirth to The Wings
of the Dove, a novel by Henry James, and suggests that such a
comparison reveals Wharton's aim, which was "to explore the
factors that restrict women like Lily to dependent roles and
condition them to regard themselves as 'beautiful objects'
destined for male consumption" (232-3). Fetterley, Davidson,
Lidoff, Karcher, and--to a lesser extent--WOlff are engaged
in similar critical efforts.11

These feminist literary critics attempt to build upon
past studies of The House of Mirth as a novel of manners as
they utilize existing interpretive strategies to construct
new'readings of the novel. And while their readings are

insightful and significant they adequately interrogate

220

neither the extent to which the novel promotes (in addition
to protesting) a patriarchal ethos, nor the possibilities it

provides its women characters to surmount the constrictions

of their society. Perhaps the most obvious reason feminist

literary critics have been unable to analyze the extent to
which the novel itself supports the society that destroys

Lily Bart is that the political constructs of feminism make

it very difficult to accommodate a woman writer whose texts
It is apparently

do not promote feminist values and goals.
always necessary to bring women writers "into the sisterhood"

in some direct way. Another reason feminist literary critics

have been unable to read Lily as anything other than the
victim of her society is that the critical framework provided

by viewing the novel as a novel of manners does not allow

consideration of the importance of individualism in The House

of Mirth. Interpretive strategies that allow us to consider

the importance of individualism in the novel will reveal

 

alternatives for women that remain hidden under the existing

c=J:‘:i_tical framework. A resisting reading of this novel, as I

sl'lall demonstrate, will enable us to understand more fully
But before

the true complexity of The House of Mirth.
turning to the text, I would like to examine some recent

fieIllinist interpretations of The House of Mirth that begin to
anorporate the kind of strategies that are needed to

ITe‘relutionize feminist literary criticism.

221

I have already mentioned one of the most important
revisionary feminist readings of The House of Mirth, Frances

L. Restuccia's 1987 essay "The Name of the Lily: Edith
Wharton's Feminism(s)." Objecting to the constant feminist
characterization of Lily as a unilateral victim, Restuccia

notes moments in which Lily betrays her perfect understanding
of the operations of her society and observes, "I_f Lily is

victimized, she is intelligent about it" (226, emphasis in

original). Restuccia goes on to note that the constant
emphasis on Lily's victimization constitutes a "reductive

approach" because "Wharton offers a proliferation of clues

1that Lily eludes triumphantly her male observers' attempted
What Restuccia refers to as

encapsulizations of her" (226).
Lily's "freedom from definition" constitutes her resistance

1:<> the patriarchal society in which she lives and its
In resisting

continual efforts to "fix" her as victim (229).
the feminist interpretive community's affinity for readings

that reduce female characters to the status of victim while

8 inultaneously refusing to adopt the alternative feminist

tactic of viewing female characters as all-powerful avenging
Another

aJigels, Restuccia produces a new kind of reading.

feminist critic who employs similar interpretive strategies
In her essay "Contractual Law, Relational

18 Elaine N. Orr.
lels‘ILsper: A Reading of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth"

( 1 991) Orr focuses on negotiation. Orr suggests that "the

QC>Il'1flicts in which [Lily] is engaged may not be as fated or

222

predetermined as previous readings have suggested, " and goes

on to examine ways Lily manages to explore alternatives to
the "great gilt cage" of her existence (55). The most

comforting alternatives Lily discovers in the text, according

to Orr, are encounters with other characters, "sometimes

physical holding and sometimes a mental awareness of
identification with others" (56—7) . Lily's discovery of "a

different way of being and relating" is the feminist subtext
Orr identifies in The House of Mirth (63). Like Restuccia,

Orr resists the impulse to read Lily as feminists have always

read her.
New feminist readings of The House of Mirth are also

suggested by two recently published books to which I have

already referred. Susan Goodman suggests that the most

inmortant scenes in the novel take place outside of the high
society world of the Trenor set and depict Lily's increasing

awareness of the power of female community: "Lily's economic
. . marks her closer identification with

and social descent .
her own sex; and though her world is restricted, it offers

more opportunity for emotional and spiritual growth" (49) .

As

3<><ziety she gains an inner strength that allows her to
Goodman argues that "Wharton's

Lily outwardly appears to be more of a victim of her

recognize its corrupt values.
JFridictment of society is not a comprehensive criticism of the

. Rather than banish the 'lady' to another land .

lady . .
Wharton believes society should redefine her" (60).

223

Candace waid proposes that Lily Bart "figures the
predicament of the woman artist as the novel tells the story

of a crisis about the place and the possibility of the woman

writer" (17). In her analysis of the woman writer in The

House of Mirth Waid focuses on illicit love letters written
by Bertha Dorset that wind up in Lily's hands and become one

way she can extract herself from the grinding poverty facing

her at the end of the novel. Lily refuses to use the

letters, and Waid demonstrates that the novel poses only two

undesirable alternatives for a woman writer: "The novel

imagines two untenable places for the woman writer: the

defiled underworld of experience and writing represented by

Bertha Dorset, and the literal death that results from Lily
Bart's refusal to use the power in her hands" (49). Both

Goodman's and Waid's books are limited in ways that
Restuccia's and Orr's essays are not because the former
critics are too committed to demonstrating the unified story

they identify in The House of Mirth, although the story they
find differs in significant ways from the usual feminist one.
But if our resisting readings are to be truly productive,

they must also resist the impulse to view women's writing in
The following reading

3 implified, reductive, or binary ways.

at The House of M'rth attempts to do just that.

224

"She Had Saved Herself Whole":

Towards a Resisting Reading of The House ef Mirth
Viewing Edith Wharton's novel The House or Mirth

exclusively as a novel of manners obscures some significant
subtexts embedded in the work. As with any reading designed
to uncover a single unified meaning, such interpretive

strategies collapse contradictions within the text that may

actually negate, or at least complicate, the interpretation

being promoted. As we have seen, every feminist reading of

The House of Mirth accepts Wharton's claim, and that of her
earliest reviewers, that this is a novel in which the "hum

Elnd buzz of implication" of upper class society at the turn
of the century is held up for viewing and dissection.
‘VVIIether feminist critics argue that Lily is the powerless
victim of her society, or that Lily manages to find some
lneasure of power within her society through human
c=C>11nections, they agree that Lily's position as a character
£31txruggling to maintain her position within that society is
indeed, as Wharton had claimed, the center of the text. And
wh :ile their analyses are certainly not without merit, it is
my contention that other, equally valuable, interpretations
‘:=‘:>Imld be developed if the feminist interpretive community
‘h":>lald resist the powerful shaping force of almost 100 years

erth of readings that assume The House of Mirth to be a

I‘nbxrel of manners. Should we be able to develop alternative

225

critical frameworks with which to approach this novel, we
would also be able to recognize other important stories
embedded in the text.

It is more complicated than one might imagine to simply
decide to impose a new and different critical construct upon
a text, especially one that has been as thoroughly examined
as The House of Mirth. For the instinctive response of any
member of an academic interpretive community, including even
me, is, "But The House of Mirth ie a novel of manners. What
else eeh it be?" At that point it is essential that we
remind ourselves as literary critics that categories like

"sentimental novel, "bildun sroman," and "novel of manners "

 

«are descriptive labels created by critics and then attached
to specific texts. A text itself is never intrinsically one
<11 the other category. But once we, as literary critics, do
attach a label to a text the label becomes a critical
<2<3nstruct that makes it extremely difficult for us to
(Ireaoognize aspects of the text that do not conform to our
understanding of what its definition constitutes. For
eStample, Moby-Dick has long been classified as an adventure
ITlovel about a man struggling to achieve a sense of identity
independent of traditional societal expectations. Gene
JE’43-.tterson-Black suggests that critics commonly assume that
-. Melville's chief interest was in melodramatizing
philosophical questions into a tediously studied 'quarrel

with God'" (108). But it would certainly be possible, and I

226

believe fruitful, to resist this critical construct and argue

instead that Moby-Dich is a novel of manners. In this way we
could explore how Melville depicted in a highly realistic

mode the subtle interactions, the "hum and buzz of

implication," of a whaling ship society. The famous sperm

squeezing scene or even Captain Ahab' s rousing speech might

be read in new, productive, and interesting ways if we were

no longer bound to view them as representations of a

metaphysical search for identity or God. This is not to say

that such a reading would negate the previous ones that have

stood for many years. It is simply to illustrate how

powerfully critical constructs shape our interpretive
strategies and interpretations and to suggest the productive
possibilities of employing various different interpretive
strategies as we attempt to read and understand women's
writing.

A discussion of Moby-Dick may still seem out of place in
the middle of a study of reading women writers, but there is
another reason I introduce Melville's classic American novel
at this time. For I would like to propose that in resisting
the interpretive strategies that have formerly been employed
to read Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mi th, we adopt
instead the critical constructs that have most often been

used to read Moby-Dick, Huckleber Finn, or The Great

QKinny-«all universally recognized American novels by male

llovelists. If we orient our interpretation of The House of

227

Migh towards demonstrating ways the novel, in Nina Baym' 8
words, narrates Lily's struggle, "untrammeled by history and

social accident," to achieve "complete self-definition," we

will be able to recognize some important new elements of this

much studied novel. A reading of The house of Mirth as an

adventure novel will not replace readings of it as a novel of

manners. Rather, the two readings will stand alongside of

each other, as they must, because each necessarily informs

and is informed by the other. I think it will be possible to

see that individualism is as important to The House of Mirth

as society and community are. Lily's struggle to define

herself independent of her society's requirements and
expectations eventually constitutes the kind of rugged
individualism rarely identified in women's writing. But a
resisting reading will also demonstrate that, at least in
this text, Wharton's view of female society is as negative
and misogynistic as Melville's, Twain's, or Fitzgerald's.12
The important difference between Wharton and these male
Writers, and one that will emerge in this reading, is that
urAlike them Wharton imagined both her rugged hero and the

.. el'lcroaching, constricting, destroying society" against which

she struggles in feminine terms. Her vision is ultimately

“are complicated and conflicted than theirs, but it is no
less significant. As the following analysis shall

qeluonstrate, applying postmodern notions of subjectivity to

228

The Hogse or Mirth can be extremely useful because it allows
us to recognize this very conflict.

The first chapter of The House or Mirth establishes
Lily's position as a stalwart individual searching for a
self-definition that is independent from the definition
established for her by her society. Lily initially appears
at Grand Central Station where Lawrence Selden notices that
"She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to
the platform or the street."13 From the beginning, Wharton
establishes her female hero as separate from rather than
connected to others. This separateness is further emphasized
Lby the ensuing conversation between Lily and Selden as they
share tea. Lily asks Selden whether he minds having less

rmoney than his friends and often "being tied down" by his
financial circumstances, circumstances that he shares with

Lily. When he responds that he often minds "horribly, " she

raissks, "But do you mind enough--to marry to get out of it?"

( 3L2). Selden immediately laughs and declares, "God forbid!"
JELley's evaluation of her own situation, as opposed to
'EB‘Eelden's, illustrates both her understanding of and her
‘51:i_8dain for the role she is expected to play in their
8Ceciety:

"Ah, there's the difference--a girl must [marry], a man

may if he chooses." She surveyed him critically. "Your
coat's a little shabby-~but who cares? It does n't keep

people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one

229

would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her

clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background,

the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but
they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are
expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop--and
if we can't keep it up alone, we have to go into

partnership." (12)

As Restuccia has observed, in this "feminist moment of
lucidity" Lily demonstrates her insight into the workings of
her society (226). And for the rest of the novel she
conducts a systematic campaign to establish a self-definition
independent of the one that is expected of her. Each time
she makes a decision, it is motivated by her desire to break
the bonds that tie her to her "encroaching, constricting,
destroying" society. Lily, like American heroes from
Leatherstocking to Huckleberry Finn, is engaged in active
resistance to established conventions.

Unlike that of Leatherstocking and Huckleberry Finn,
however, Lily's resistance is not immediately obvious. For
she does not, like them, strike off into the wilderness, but
remains for most of the novel in the midst of the very group
her behavior continually repudiates. After leaving Selden,
Lily boards a train bound for Bellomont, the country home of
her best friend Judy Trenor. Also on board and bound for the
same destination is an extremely wealthy but dreadfully dull

young man, Percy Gryce. With the expertise of a

230

professional, Lily "organize[s] a method of attack" and
proceeds to seduce Percy Gryce into believing in "the
advantage of always having a companion to make one's tea in
the train" (20). It certainly appears that Lily is accepting
Selden's advice to "take the plunge" and get a husband. She
tells her friend Judy Trenor that "Mr. Gryce and I are
getting to be very good friends," and Judy assumes that Lily
intends to marry Percy Gryce (47). But between Lily's first
meeting of Mr. Gryce on the train and the continuation of
their "courtship" at Bellomont, Wharton provides the reader
with some additional information about Lily's character that
makes her eventual rejection of Mr. Gryce understandable.
Lily is an orphan; she is as personally unconnected to
the society surrounding her as she was to the masses of
people at the train station. Furthermore, she recognizes the
vacuity of their existence and can imagine alternatives that
would not involve marriage to a man like Percy Gryce.
Wharton informs the reader that "She was beginning to have
fits of angry rebellion against fate, when she longed to drop
out of the race and make an independent life for herself"
(40). After one week at Bellomont when Lily is certain of
her ability to entice Mr. Gryce into a marriage proposal, she
gazes upon the members of the house party as they are
gathered for dinner and realizes, "How dreary and trivial
these people were! . . . She saw that they were merely dull

in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she

231

saw the poverty of their achievement" (57). The next day

Lily deliberately takes a series of steps that effectively
eliminates the possibility of permanently aligning herself
with this group through marriage to Percy Gryce.

After convincing the conservative Mr. Gryce of her
faithful church attendance and promising to accompany him,
Lily leaves Mr. Gryce standing at the altar, so to speak.

Her absence is no accident. Lily dresses in a "grey gown of
devotional cut" and borrows a prayer-book from her hostess,
but then she stops to consider the implications of her
actions. With a "smothered sense of resistance" Lily
realizes that should her plan succeed she would have to go to
church with Percy Gryce "every Sunday," and after considering
all the other social obligations that marriage to Gryce would
entail she decides not to attend church (59). Going instead
in search of Lawrence Selden, who had arrived at Bellomont
the night before, Lily discovers him in close conversation
with his former lover, Mrs. Dorset, another wealthy member of
their "set." Lily leaves the couple alone, but she is
quickly followed by Selden who asks her to accompany him for
a walk that afternoon. Although she has already promised her
afternoon to Mr. Gryce, Lily "excused herself from the walk
[with Gryce] on the plea of a headache: the horrid headache
'which, in the morning, had prevented her venturing to church"
(69). She spends the afternoon with Selden. The

consequences of her decision are severe: Mrs. Dorset, angered

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by Selden's obvious attraction to Lily, tells Percy Gryce
"horror" stories about Lily's past, and, "thoroughly
frightened," he "run[s] straight home to his mother" (79).
Feminist critics usually interpret this incident as either an
example of the extent to which Lily is the victim of an
uncaring society, or as one in a long series of unfortunate
incidents in which Lily, unable to decide what she wants, is
punished for her indecision. But I think there are many
things in the text that point to this incident as a
deliberate gesture on Lily's part explicitly designed to
sever the ties between herself and the society she clearly
recognizes as corrupt.

The conversation between Lily and Selden on their
afternoon walk verifies her agency as well as her conscious
effort to achieve self-definition through a rejection of her
society. Wharton's description of Lily's emotions as she
sets off with Selden is significant: "There were in her at
the moment two beings, one drawing deep breaths of freedom
and exhilaration, the other gasping for air in a little black
prison-house of fears" (67). Lily is not unconscious of the
grim possibilities life within her society provides, nor is
she unconscious in her efforts to escape them. When Lawrence
Selden tells her, "My idea of success .. . is personal
freedom," Lily responds eagerly (70). She tells him, "that's
just what I've been feeling today," and it is clear that her

gestures have indeed all been designed to allow her to

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achieve the self-definition that will accompany the
attainment of "personal freedom" (71). Selden asks Lily
whether she has ever considered the fact that marriage to a
wealthy man would actually make her unhappy, and Lily
answers, "Often and often . . . But it looks so much darker
when you show it to me!" (74). As their conversation
continues and becomes more intimate, they discuss the
possibility of marriage to each other. Most critics suggest
that Lily refuses Selden's offer of marriage because he is
not wealthy enough to support her, but a close examination of
the passage reveals that Selden neither offers marriage, nor
does Lily refuse him. When she asks him "Do you want to
marry me," he responds, "No, I don't want to--but perhaps I
should if you did!" (76). Rather than being an example of
Lily's selfish desire for a wealthy husband, I think this
conversation demonstrates her fuller awakening to the
possibilities of the "personal freedom" that she continues to
pursue throughout the novel. She is determined to escape the
"prison house."

Lily's escape route is somewhat circuitous. She does
not take direct steps to sever her ties with her destructive
"set" but rather deliberately engages in behavior, like
leaving Percy Gryce waiting at the church, which ensures that
she will gradually become further separated from the life she
despises. Knowing that Judy Trenor disapproves of Carry

Fisher, the divorcee who borrows money from her husband, Lily

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nevertheless asks Gus Trenor to help her out of financial
difficulties by managing her inheritance (87). Lily accepts
large sums of money from him, which she pretends to believe
are dividends from.investments he had made on her behalf.
She also develops a friendship with George Dorset, a married
man who has been made miserable by his wife's unfaithfulness
(124). Lily then appears at social events with individuals
who are less than highly respected by the upper class
society, the "new money" wellington Brys and the Jewish
businessman Simon Rosedale (118-19). Lily makes no great
effort to hide her actions, and they do not remain unnoticed.
Her cousin Grace Stepney takes it upon herself to report
Lily's infractions to her wealthy aunt, and Mrs. Peniston's
reaction is illustrative of the magnitude of Lily's
rebellion: "There remained in her thoughts a settled deposit
of resentment against her niece . . . It was horrible of a
young girl to let herself be talked about" (133).

Lily, for her own part, "knew that people were beginning
to talk of her; but this fact did not alarm her as it had
alarmed Mrs. Peniston" (136). She continues to "let herself
be talked about" in increasingly more obvious ways that have
the simultaneous effect of sealing her estrangement from
society and of allowing her to identify more fully with
Selden's "republic of the spirit." In what is certainly a

pivotal scene in the novel Lily poses in a tableau vivant at

a party given by the socially marginal wellington Brys. She

235

impersonates Reynolds's "Mrs. Lloyd," and the line between
herself and the painting she mimes is indistinguishable: "She
had shown her artistic intelligence in selecting a type so
like her own that she could embody the person represented
without ceasing to be herself" (141-2). Several spectators
voice their appreciation of Lily's display but suggest that
it reflects an unbecoming lack of modesty. Ned Van Alstyne
declares, "Deuced bold thing to show herself in that get-up;
but, gad, there is n't a break in the lines anywhere, and I
suppose she wanted us to know it!" (142). And Gus Trenor,
complains, "It's not her fault if everybody don't know [what
an outline Lily has] now . . . Damned bad taste, I call it"
(146). But for Lily the unconventional display of herself
"divested of the trivialities of her little world" gives her
"an intoxicating sense of recovered power" (142, 143). It is
for her a decisive act of "personal freedom."

The last and most decisive step Lily takes towards
achieving self-definition is her decision to accompany George
and Bertha Dorset on a Mediterranean cruise. As one of her
friends informs Lawrence Selden, the reason Lily has been
asked to accompany the Dorsets is common knowledge: "When
Bertha wants to have a good time she has to provide
occupation for George . . . The Silverton affair is in the
acute stage: it 's necessary that George's attention should
be pretty continuously distracted. And I'm bound to say Lily

does distract it" (197-8, emphasis in original). Lily is a

236

willing participant in a corrupt scheme that she certainly
knows even from the beginning will serve to further separate
her from her society. As she acknowledges after it is over,
"She had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part
in the affair was . . . to distract Dorset's attention from
his wife" (237). Lawrence Selden realizes the sense of
deliberateness with which she approaches her task when he
sees her with the Dorsets, and he thinks that she seemed to
be "poised on the brink of a chasm" (200-201). And when Mrs.
Dorset disappears with her lover and does not return until
dawn, Lily, not she, is the one to fall over the brink. For
Mrs. Dorset publicly accuses Lily of wanting to marry George
Dorset in order to deflect attention away from her own
infidelity, and she banishes Lily from the yacht. This
accusation is made in the presence of Dabham, the gossip
columnist for the "Riviera Notes," and news of it reaches
America even before Lily returns home where "she was publicly
branded as the heroine of a 'queer' episode" (245). The most
significant consequence to Lily of being turned off the
Dorset's yacht is that Mrs. Peniston disinherits her and
leaves Lily only ten thousand dollars upon her death. The
accumulated result of Lily's many deliberate deviations from
the confining requirements of her society is poverty. And it
is clear from the comments she makes to Gerty Farish that she
realizes perfectly the significance of her exile: "I

shouldn't have minded [being snubbed], you know, if I'd got

237

the money . . . it would n't have mattered, because I should
have been independent of them" (235). In actual fact,
however, her disinheritance does give her the kind of
independence she desired when she spoke to Lawrence Selden
about the "republic of the spirit." Because as he told her,
and she well knows, "it 's as hard for rich people to get
into as the kingdom of heaven" (72).

Resisting previous feminist readings that view Lily
entirely as victim allows us to see that she holds multiple
subject positions. Judith Fetterley has suggested that
"Lily's situation can best be described as a complex set of
double binds the end result of which is powerlessness,
paralysis, and death" (205). And many other feminist
readings see her "fall" as the unfortunate result of her
status as the passive victim of an inhumane society rather
than the result of deliberate action on Lily's part. But one
thing that points to the latter interpretation is Lily's
astute awareness of the consequences of being "talked about"
coupled with her relentless determination to make herself the
subject of gossip. In the first chapter of the novel Lily
refuses to accompany Selden to a restaurant because it is not
an appropriate action for a "jeune fiile a marier" (4). And
later in the novel she tells Gerty Farish that "the truth
about any girl is that once she's talked about she's done
for" (236). But Lily persistently allows herself, in fact

encourages herself, to be talked about, and the result is her

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exile from the world that so thoroughly constricts her
"personal freedom." For the rest of the novel, Lily avoids
the "encroaching, constricting, destroying" society from
which she had so successfully separated herself. Although
faced with the difficulties of having a small income and no
vocation, Lily gradually becomes more comfortable with the
"personal freedom" she has gained. Lily attaches herself as
a companion to Mrs. Gormer, a woman of the "social out-
skirt," but finds that even that environment is "only a
flamboyant copy of her own world" and soon grows
dissatisfied. She moves from this position to one as a
private secretary to Mrs. Norma Hatch, an even less socially
acceptable individual. Lily discovers an increasingly astute
ability to understand herself and the role she had abandoned
as she encounters these alternative groups: "For a moment she
found a certain amusement in the show, and in her own share
of it: the situation had an ease and unconventionality
distinctly refreshing after her experience of the irony of
conventions" (290). But even the society of Mrs. Hatch
ultimately proves too falsely confining, and Lily eventually
takes a job trimming hats for a milliner.

At this stage in her life, Lily has finally reached the
level of self-knowledge that is required of those belonging
to the "republic of the spirit." Her journey away from the
stifled confines of the society represented by the Dorsets

and the Tremors can be compared to Huck Finn's trip down the

239

Mississippi or Nick Carraway's trip to New York City. It is
a slow, gradual journey ending in an awareness not only of
self but also of those aspects of society that must be
resisted in order for self to be fully realized. The self-
definition she attains over the course of this journey,
however, is not liberating in any conventional feminist
sense. In her deliberate campaign to liberate herself from
the society she despises, Lily discovers that she, unlike
Huck or Nick, can find no other satisfying life. Lily
concludes that "Inherited tendencies had combined with early
training to make her the highly specialized product she was:
an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-
anemone torn from the rock" (316). Sadly, she sees her
future "stretched out before her grey, interminable and
desolate" (317). Rather than face this desolate future or
return to the now unacceptable life of her past, Lily is led
by her final achievement of "personal freedom" to commit
suicide.

It is important to recognize that Lily did indeed have
the opportunity to return to the society she had previously
rejected. For it is only through her final renunciation of
this group that the full significance of her "personal
freedom" can be appreciated. Simon Rosedale, a man just
beginning to infiltrate the "society" Lily despises, had long
been one of her most ardent suitors. After Lily returns to

America, he renews his offer of marriage under the condition

240

that she blackmail Mrs. Dorset with the letters she wrote to
Lawrence Selden when they were lovers. (Lily bought the
letters from Selden's housekeeper who mistakenly believed
they were written by her.) Although Rosedale loves Lily, he
only wants a wife who will "be of use" to him in his eternal
struggle to be accepted by "society." Lily at first refuses
his suggestion "with a promptness of scorn almost surprising
to herself" (275). But as the reality of her poverty begins
to grind upon her, she reconsiders her decision and decides
to use the letters to force Mrs. Dorset to re-admit her into
society, thus allowing her to marry Rosedale. On her way to
Mrs. Dorset's house, Lily stops to visit Selden, and the
conversation that passes between them confirms Lily's full
membership in the "republic of the spirit."

Lily begins their conversation by referring to their
first important discussion at Bellomont in which Selden spoke
to her of the importance of "personal freedom." She tells
him, "I have never forgotten the things you said to me at
Bellomont, and . . . sometimes when I seemed farthest from
remembering them . . . they have helped me, and kept me from
mistakes" (323). In truth, each of her actions since that
time was designed to help her achieve the kind of "complete
self-definition" they discussed, and at this point in her
life, Lily simply wants Selden to acknowledge and appreciate
her efforts: "She felt that she could not leave him without

trying to make him.nnderstand that she had saved herself

241

yheie from.the seeming ruin of her life" (323, emphasis
mine). And Selden does seem to understand as he tells her,
"The difference is in yourself--it will always be there"
(324). Lily tells Selden that she is planning to leave "the
Lily Bart you knew" there with him as she goes on to
repudiate all that old self stands for, but then she realizes
that such a step is impossible for her: "She understood now
that she could not go forth and leave her old self with him:
that self must indeed live on in his presence, but it must
still continue to be hers" (326, emphasis mine). Before
walking out of Selden's apartment for the last time, Lily
very consciously and deliberately throws Mrs. Dorset's
letters into the fire. Although Lily entered Selden's
apartment intending to destroy herself by giving up the
valiant battle she had fought against society, she leaves
with her self-definition still intact.

In "Melodramas of Beset Manhood" Nina Baym does not
suggest that women writers are incapable of inscribing the
"myth of America." But she does argue that "When a woman
takes the central role, it follows naturally that the
socializer and domesticator will be a man" (74). In
Wharton's novel The House of Mirth, however, the
"encroaching, constricting destroying" society is
represented, as it is in male myths, in feminine terms. The

social system in The House of Mirth is maintained by women

who vigorously enforce its every petty rule. Judy Trenor,

242

who abandons Lily after she borrows money from her husband;
Bertha Dorset, who publicly accuses Lily of unspeakable
infractions; and even Carry Fisher, who eventually "cuts"
Lily because of her association with Mrs. Hatch, all
represent as well as enforce the social codes. The only
characters who seem to consciously recognize the codes and
also suggest alternatives to them are men: Lawrence Selden
and, to a lesser extent, Simon Rosedale. To use Baym's
words, "the role of entrapper and impediment . . . is
reserved for women" (75). I think it is important that as
resisting readers of the novel we acknowledge that there are
aspects of this text that reinscribe patriarchal constructs
with as much rigor as any Mark Twain novel. Lily's death is
a difficult thing to reconcile with any feminist reading, but
I would like to suggest that it is the inevitable ending
available for a female hero whose must successfully struggle
against other women in order to claim her own identity. As I
have already suggested, Wharton's was a conflicted vision.
She was writing from within a literary tradition and a
society that accepted universal notions of women that did not
accommodate a feminist vision. She herself was not able at
all times to resist this ideology. This does not, of course,
make her text useless for feminist inquiry. But it is
something that as feminist literary critics we must

acknowledge. For if this is an action of which Wharton was

243

capable, we should realize that we ourselves can fall into
the same trap.

Reading The House of Mirth as an adventure novel about a
woman character's struggle to achieve "complete self-
definition" constitutes a resisting reading. It is, I
believe, the kind of reading Nancy K. Miller refers to as an
"overreading" (1986, 272).1‘ Ironically, it brings Wharton
back into the fold of the great American novel, the very
place from which she has so long been rejected. But it is
important to emphasize that this is not a reading designed to
replace the readings of Lily Bart and her novel that already
exist within the feminist interpretive community. Rather, if
we place it along side these readings it will allow us to
recognize ways we, as an interpretive community, have been
too eager to employ Culler's rule of unity. I think it also
reveals how our notions of gendered subjectivity easily can
deny Lily agency and reduce her to the simple status as
victim of her patriarchal society. we can see the conflicts
within American feminism between emphasizing women's
community with each other and women's independence from men.
A resisting reading prevents us from being able to ignore the
fact that, at least in The House or Mirt , women are as
responsible for the status of their society as the men who
supposedly control it. By acknowledging the many texts in

The House of Mirth resisting readers are able to see that the

244

novel is more than simply an account of the story of female

oppression.

245

Reading The Mother's Recappehse

Like Willa Cather, Edith Wharton did not publish her
first novel until she was almost forty years old; she
continued publishing novels until The Gode hrrive appeared in
1932 when she was seventy.115 (Cather was. sixty-seven when her
last novel, Sa hi a and the Slave Girl, was published.)

Also like those of Cather, Wharton's earlier novels receive
considerably more critical attention than the ones she wrote
towards the end of her life. It is commonly assumed that the
quality of Wharton's fiction steadily declined as she grew
older both because her mental powers diminished and because
her charity work in France caused her to be increasingly in
need of money, which she supposedly earned by pandering to
the literary tastes of the masses. But as Cynthia Griffin
Welff observes, this view is somewhat oversimplified (1977,
343). It does seem, however, that these assumptions have
effectively prevented literary critics from turning their

attention to her later novels, even novels like The Mother's
Recohpense (1925) that have much to recommend them to a
literary readership. Only three articles have ever been
published on this novel, and many authors of critical studies
on Wharton either fail to mention The Mother's Reco nse, or
refer to it only in passing. In the following pages I shall
attempt to summarize what little critical attention has been

devoted to The Mother's Recohpense before turning to an

246

exploration of how it can be useful for feminist literary
criticism. For just as looking for only one story in women's
writing can unnecessarily restrict feminist literary
criticism, reading only a few selected texts by women writers
(texts that have been selected by interpretive communities
other than our own) can provide us with a false understanding
of women writers and the novels they create.

The Mother's Recohpense recounts the story of Kate
Clephane, a woman who has left her little daughter and
overbearing husband to live a life of freedom and passion on
the French Riviera. As the novel opens, Kate's grown
daughter, Anne, has invited her mother to return to New York.
Kate happily assumes the role of "mother," until she
discovers that her daughter has become engaged to one of her
former lovers, Chris Fenno. Devastated, Kate tries to
prevent their marriage without confessing the reason for her
objections to Anne, but she eventually gives in to Anne and
returns to the Riviera to resume the life she had abandoned
for her daughter. Although there were a few negative
reviews, most agreed with Louis Bromfield who thought The
Mother's Recappense one of the best novels published in 1925
and praised the "technical skill" of Wharton's narrative (3).
Several critics called The Mother'e Recohpense Wharton's best
novel since The House of Mirth, and the reviewer for The
Bookman, John Farrar, referred to it as "the best of all her

novels" (70).16 As I have said, however, this tone of praise

247

has not continued to characterize criticism of The Mother's
Recohpense.

Typical of the harsh reception of the novel is Margaret
B. McDowell's assessment of it as "inconsequential" and
"inferior" (1976, 41, 142). But perhaps more telling than

what critics have said about the book is the fact that many

 

have failed to mention it at all. Blake Nevius essentially
ignores The Mother's Reco use, and it merits only one
paragraph in Geoffrey walton's book EgirhWharpen: A Critieal
Interpretation (1970). None of the critics in Howe's
collection of essays mention the novel, nor does Gary H.
Lindberg; Grace Kellogg refers to it only briefly in The Two
Lives of Edith Wharton: The WOman and Her WOrk (1965). Even
today, such reputable critics as Candace waid do not mention
the book. An observation Marilyn Jones Lyde made in 1959

sheds some light on this surprising omission, however. In

Edith Wharton: Convention and Morality Lyde comments that
"The Mother's Recohpense is the only [Wharton] novel with a

contemporary setting in which the moral dilemma is completely
independent of the social milieu" (162). For critics who
were accustomed to labeling Wharton a novelist of manners The
Mothe 's Reco nse, with its obvious emphasis on individual
rather than social morality, does indeed pose some problems.
Rather than finding a new critical construct with which to

approach the novel, most critics simply ignored it.

248

R. W. B. Lewis was the first critic to devote
significant attention to The Mother's Reco use, and since
the publication of his biography of Wharton in 1975, most
critics who consider her entire oeuvre at least mention the
work. Lewis called the novel Wharton's "most finely wrought
of a series of dramas about parents and children," and he
asserts that it is "very handsomely done and comprises a
searching and subtle portrayal of . . . acute human issues"
(464, 523). Interestingly, every critical consideration of
The Mether's gecehpense written since 1975 is either
explicitly feminist or is obviously informed by feminist
literary theory. For those critics who do consider the
novel, there is very little debate concerning the "human
issues" that are at stake in The Mother's Recohpense. Not
surprisingly, given the title of the novel and the fact that
the entire story is narrated from Kate Clephane's point of
view, she has been the central focus of every critical
examination of the text. And while critics have not always
agreed about the position Wharton takes towards her main
character, they are united in searching for the meaning of
Wharton's novel in that character and her role as "mother."
Many critics are divided as to whether Kate's refusal to tell
Anne of her affair with Fenno and her consequent return to
the Riviera constitutes a defeat or a victory for Kate in her

search for her identity as a mother, but this nevertheless

249

remains the central issue in their consideration of the
novel.

The earliest considerations of The Mother'e Reeohpense
tended to focus on whether Wharton judged Kate to be a good
or a bad mother. wo1ff is typical of this school, as she
argues that Kate is a woman who is desperately in search of
an identity but incapable of finding it because of her flawed
character: "Determined to launch into every day as if it were
her first . . . Kate has no sustained grasp upon her past;
and with no coherent sense of the past, she cannot keep track
of the present" (359). wo1ff argues that in coming to
America to resume her role as Anne's mother, Kate believes
that "She was born into selfhood" (364). But, according to
WOlff, her "insatiable needs" cause Kate to invest too much
of her self in her daughter and the role of "mother," thus
poisoning the possibility that she will ever be able to truly
embrace the role (369). WOlff argues that Wharton uses Kate
and the issue of motherhood to demonstrate "the
disintegration of individual character" (370). Elizabeth
Ammons also argues that Wharton's depiction of Kate is
intended to alert us to the irreparable flaws in her
character and to her fundamental inability to be a good
mother. Ammons insists that the novel illustrates Wharton's
belief that "women are meant to be mothers" (162). She
argues that Wharton approves of Kate's lonely return to the

Riviera as "the mother's recompense for abandoning her child

250

and leading a promiscuous life" (163). Constructed in the
late seventies and early eighties, the readings of both welff
and Ammons are, I believe, examples of the interpretive
strategies available to feminist literary critics who belong
to an interpretive community that asserts that a chief
function of feminist literary criticism is to illuminate the
positive role models provided by women's literature. Clearly
believing that Kate Clephane does not exhibit any positive
characteristics, both of these critics are led to argue that
Edith Wharton, the woman writer, renounces this obviously
unappealing character.

An alternative to arguing that Kate Clephane is depicted
as a bad mother in The Mother's Recohpense recently adopted
by some feminist literary critics is the argument that
motherhood itself is depicted as bad in the novel. In
verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and
Edith Whartoh (1990), Mary E. Papke suggests that in The
Mother's Recohpense "Wharton focuses on the complex desires
which constitute motherhood in conflict with the even more
complex desires which delimit individuation" (158). Papke
argues that Kate leaves Anne and returns to the Riviera when
she discovers that she cannot maintain herself as a mother
because "a mother is denied a self, a past, or a desire
beyond that of maternal love" (161). Gloria Erlich also
argues that motherhood cannot provide any of Kate's most

basic needs, and so she renounces it in favor of "an

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unanchored life . . . with a trusted woman servant" (147).
Neither Papke nor Erlich share the confidence of the earlier
feminist critics of this novel that motherhood represents the
peak of achievement for a woman in Edith Wharton's fictional
world.

Some feminist literary critics have gone even farther in
suggesting that Kate Clephane's is a successful quest for
self-definition. In one of the three published articles to
have appeared on The Mother's Reco nse, Adeline Tintner
argues that "Kate Clephane's difficulty in The Mother's
heeehpehee was going back to something she had really
elevated herself out of" (149). Tintner suggests that
Wharton viewed Kate's refusal to be defined in terms of the
"traditional roles of wife and mother" as an "accomplishment"
(149). Kate's attempt to resume those roles fails because
she cannot sacrifice her own identity: "[Kate] goes back to
the life that she had made for herself, a life divorced from
all aspects of her marriage, both the motherly aspects and
the wifely aspects. Her recompense is that she is given back
her own life" (151). In an essay which she claims is meant
to be "different from but complementary to" Tintner's, Keiko
Beppu argues that the anger and pain Kate feels when her
daughter announces her intention to marry is "an indication
of the pain of severance the mother feels at the time the
child becomes free of the parent" (166). Beppu suggests that

Kate is not prepared for this pain because her experience

252

with motherhood is so recent: "The fact of marriage is the
bone of contention, not necessarily the man involved: it
means the transferring of the daughter's love to someone
else" (166). When Kate returns to the Riviera, she has a
fuller sense of her identity because she now understands "the
whole spectrum.of female experience, which most importantly
includes a full knowledge of what motherhood means in light
of her own life" (167). Like Tintner, Beppu reads The
Mother's Recohpense as an affirmative articulation of a
woman's search for and discovery of her own self.

In marked contrast to these two essays is Lev Raphael's
"Shame in Edith Wharton's The Mother's Recompense" (1988).
Raphael's thesis is that "Kate's return to France is anything
but positive and hopeful because it caps a lifetime marked by
hiding, silence and flight . . . what dominates her entire

life, is shame" (188, emphasis in original). Raphael's

 

argument is similar to those put forth by feminist critics
who argue that Lily Hart is the helpless victim of her
society. He suggests that Kate's behavior indicates that she
has some deep and unspeakable wound in her past, and that her
sense of shame is deepened by her flight from her husband and
daughter as well as by her affair with Chris Fenno (192).
Raphael's reading, by reducing Kate Clephane's story to a
single unified meaning, effectively eliminates the
possibility that there is more than one narrative in

Wharton's novel: "Kate Clephane has never been deeply

253

understood as a woman crippled by internalized, unconscious
shame, and driven into lonely exile and silence, and that
lack of understanding has hindered an appreciation of
Wharton's real achievement in The Mether's Recehpehse" (200-
1).17

The most significant factor hindering a fuller
understanding of women's literature is the repeated effort by
feminist literary critics to view texts by women as telling
only one story. But this is not a mistake made by Susan
Goodman in Edith Wharton's WOmen (1990). Goodman observes
that The Mother's Recohpense has "many layered meanings," and
her excellent chapter on the novel makes no effort to reduce
those meanings to a single interpretation (109). Goodman
suggests that there are a great many questions the text
deliberately leaves unanswered, or answers ambiguously, and
she implies that the novel's meaning lies in its refusal to
simplify (113). In considering the novel's ending, always
the center of every analysis, Goodman argues that "Wharton's
[rebellion] against the three rules of domestic fiction:
women must marry if they are not to be parenthesized;
husbands by definition hold the balance of power in the
family; and a woman must use her influence to acquire power,"
results in her inability to discover a "satisfactory
alternative for disposing of Kate" (119). By viewing the
novel as an effort to unwrite the conventions of women's

fiction--as, that is, a metafictional text--Goodman denies us

 

the "pec
traditio:

goals of

 

 

254

the "peculiar pleasure" of being able to read it as a
traditional, single dimensional text. And that is one of the

goals of developing resisting readings of women's fiction.

255

"Rewarded for Having Given Up Her Daughter":

Towards a Resisting Reading of The Mother's Recoppense

One interesting aspect of the critical reception of
Wharton's novel The Mother's Recohpense is the fact that,
although all critics seem to agree with Lewis that it is a
novel about "parents and children," no critics pay even the
slightest attention to the child, Anne Clephane. Susan
Goodman calls Anne the "heroine" of the text, but her entire
analysis centers around the mother, Kate, as do those of
every other critic who considers The Mother'e Recohpense
(14). This restricted approach to the novel is no doubt due
in part to the affinity of the feminist interpretive
community for reducing the texts of women writers to a
unified story. By focusing on only one of the two important
women characters represented in the text, it is possible to
argue that the novel represents a single, fixed truth about
women's experience. Focusing critical attention on the
character of Anne Clephane as well as her mother complicates
any understanding of the novel. For whether or not one
argues that Kate Clephane constitutes a self-defined,
independent woman by the end of the novel, her daughter
clearly represents a radically different kind of female
experience. we must develop interpretive strategies that
will make it possible to view the daughter alongside the

mother, thus allowing us to reach a fuller understanding of

 

what 1
Such a
to unc
and is
m
writte
is imp
inpuls

writer:

irOnica

256

what Wharton might have been saying about women in her text.
Such a resisting reading will allow us, among other things,
to understand how the character of Anne Clephane both informs
and is informed by that of Lily Bart. Viewing together The
Mouse or Mirth and Th Mothe 's Reco nse, two novels
written twenty years apart, can demonstrate more fully why it
is important that feminist literary critics resist the
impulse to consider only canonically accepted texts by women
writers.

If, by turning our attention towards Anne, we resist the
feminist interpretive community's unified concern with only
the character of Kate in The Mother's Reco nse, we will,
ironically, discover more important facets of the mother's
character. Anne Clephane is her mother's recompense because
she is a young woman who has successfully achieved all the
dreams that her mother never managed to fulfill. Anne is
also living proof to her mother that the decisions and
sacrifices she had made by abandoning her husband and
daughter were justifiable. From her first appearance in the
novel, Wharton describes Anne as assertive, independent, and
self-actualizing. Upon the death of her grandmother she
sends a telegram telling her mother, "I want you to come home
at once. I want you to come and live with me."18 ‘The words
"I want," repeated twice, and "at once" are entirely
characteristic of this young woman who does not hesitate to

assert her desires and does not doubt that they will be

257

fulfilled. When Kate steps off the ship and is greeted by
her daughter, she is struck by Anne's height and her self-
possession. Anne's most prominent features are her "awful
brows," which remind Kate of her forbidding mother-in—law,
and her voice, which although not "unkind" or "cold" is
"constrained" (574). After formal greetings and
introductions are exchanged, Anne's first direct statement to
her mother is, "I'm not a handful now to any one but myself--
I'm in my own hands" (575). .And for the rest of the novel
Wharton portrays a young woman who not only assumes authority
over herself, but also exercises it effectively to achieve
her own desires.

One technique Wharton uses to characterize Anne is to
carefully describe the spaces she inhabits. Anne takes her
mother up to her rooms, which had formerly been her nursery,
and Kate is struck by the design of her "den." It is a
"sober handsome room" decorated with modern paintings,
pottery, and armchairs in which there is "an ungirlish
absence of photographs and personal trifles" (577). Kate
contrasts the room.to the "pink and white trifles congesting
her maiden bower," and thinks that Anne's efforts reflect a
marked departure from the norm: "'It's all your own idea,
isn't it?‘ she asked, almost shyly" (577). And Anne is
pleased to respond affirmatively. It is soon clear that even
this personal space is not enough to satisfy Anne's desire to

mark out her own space. Fred Landers, a friend of the family

 

and Inn:
her 0mm
tells B
(582).
studio,
discove
like a =
studio"
Chris Fe
rather 1
eXpresse
COnVErsa
must be
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have heal
aggreSsh
respects
0011f 111 e d,
important
her p0Sit.
Significal
to earn h
when

he
r Sense

 

258

and Anne's guardian, warns Kate that Anne intends to set up
her own studio where she can paint and be independent. He
tells Kate, "In the end Anne invariably gets what she wants"
(582). At first Anne does not allow her mother to see the
studio, but when she opens it for her "studio-warming" Kate
discovers an oversized version of her "den": "It looked more
like a great library waiting for its books than a modern
studio" (613). Significantly, when Anne falls in love with
Chris Fenno, their courtship is carried on in this studio
rather than at the family home. Like Anne, Lily Bart had
expressed a desire to decorate her own space; in her first
conversation with Lawrence Selden she told him jokingly, "It
must be pure bliss to arrange the furniture just as one
likes" (7). Sadly, Lily does not achieve this goal, and as
readers we must question why one heroine should succeed so
magnificently where the other fails. Anne seems never to
have been trapped by the society that Lily must so
aggressively resist. The former's freedom is in many
respects earned by the fact that her mother refused to be so
confined, while Lily's mother instructed her that her most
important role was to use her beauty as a tool to solidify
her position in society (The House of Mirth 35).
Significantly, Kate's rebellious defiance of convention helps
to earn her daughter the privilege of personal freedom.
Wharton clearly describes Anne's artistic ability and

her sense of vocation as a way of emphasizing her

 

indep4
she ac

that r

(n

ml:

 

259

independence and agency. When Kate first sees Anne's "den,"
she admires a painting of a magnolia branch without realizing
that her daughter is the artist:
She went up to it, attracted by its purity of colour.
"I like that," she said.
Anne's eyes deepened. "Do you? I did it."
"You, dear? I didn't know you painted . . . I

mean, not like this. It's very broad-~very sure. You

 

must have worked . . . "

The girl laughed, caught in the contagion of her
mother's embarrassment. "Yes, I've worked hard--I care
for it a great deal." (578, emphasis in original)

Anne's art is not simply a hobby. Once she establishes her
studio, she works there every morning and sometimes into the
afternoon. And her mother discovers that after a "good day's
work" her eyes are sometimes "still turned on her inward
vision" (621). Anne is a woman with a vocation at which she
excels. Unlike Lily Bart, who is a failure at her efforts to
learn "the delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat,"
Anne's work is something of which she can be proud and
something that others admire. While Lily was taught by her
mother to view herself as "a moment's ornament" (Wharton's
original title for The House of Mirth), Anne's mother showed
her by her own example that women are to live for something
other than merely conforming to society's expectations of

them.

260

Anne is anything but decorous, as she demonstrates both
by her appearance and by her voice. Kate remembers how as a
young woman her hair was painstakingly arranged for her
before she appeared in public when her maid, "with cunning
fingers, dividing and coiling the generous ripples of her
hair . . . [built] nests of curls about the temples and in
the nape" (600). In her present life, deliberately freed
from those oppressive restrictions, Kate's hair is arranged
more simply. Her daughter, although she has Kate's "own
hair," has never succumbed to the dictates of a society that
expects her to be "a moment's ornament." She wears her hair
always "clasped in close braids" (614). Anne also never
forces her voice to conform to societal expectations.
Wharton calls it "decisive," "firm," "and obstinate," as Anne
orders her mother to rest after her arrival (588). Later
Anne "decrees," "exclaims," and "shrills" (670, 694, 727),
and it is clear throughout the novel, as Wharton informs the
reader, that "Anne evidently did not expect to have her
decision[s] questioned" (588). This self-confidence and the
corresponding ability to speak out is not something that Anne
has had to earn. Rather, as Anne tells her mother, it is the
fortunate result of being abandoned as a child: "My life had
been rather lonely, but it had been very independent too"
(695). Ironically, therefore, the act that was shameful to
Kate because "a mother couldn't confess, even to her most

secret self, that she had willingly deserted her child,"

261

actually earned for that child the very personal freedoms for
which the mother herself had struggled (561).

This becomes most clearly evident in Anne's aggressive
pursuit of Chris Fenno. Six years before the novel takes
place Kate Clephane had a love affair with Chris. .After he
ends their relationship, Chris becomes a soldier and is
seriously wounded at Belleau wood. In the best tradition of
sentimental fiction, Anne nurses him in a convalescent
hospital in New York where they fall in love. As soon as
Chris discovers that Anne is Kate's daughter, however, he
leaves. But as he later tells Kate during a painful
conversation, Anne "won't give up" (658). Anne's inflexible
determination to have her own way regardless of appearances
is never more evident than in her relationship with Chris
Fenno. ‘After Anne and Chris are reunited for the first time,
she tells her mother, "I want you to be happy with me,
darling. I'm going to marry Major Fenno" (649). Kate is
anything but happy, but she is also unwilling to confess to
her daughter the reason for her dismay. Instead, she goes to
Chris and tells him that unless he promises to break the
engagement she will tell his mother the whole sordid story.
The next day Chris sends Kate a telegram that states simply,
"I am going" (662). As I have noted, much criticism of The
Mother's Recohpense attempts to determine why Kate objects so
strenuously to her daughter's fiance. Although that is an

interesting question, exclusive attention to it obscures the

 

equal
quest

trave.
"her :
confic
Anne's
Chris

tells

this "
depth

loOkin
Anne's
in an i

challex

 

262

equally important fact of Anne's relentless, and successful,
quest to marry the man she loves.

.After the engagement is broken, Anne and her mother

travel together. Kate recognizes her daughter's deep pain as
"her soul seemed to freeze about its secret," but she is also
confident that Anne will recover (665). She underestimates
Anne's determination, however. Believing that the reason
Chris refuses to marry her is because of her wealth, Anne
tells her mother, "I want to make over all my money to you .
. . I don't want it--I hate it!" (666). Kate is shocked by
this "wild revolt" because she realizes that it signifies the
depth and determination of Anne's love for Chris: "She sat
looking down at the bare brick floor of the room, and at
Anne's two feet, slim and imperious, planted just before her
in an attitude of challenge, of resistance" (668). Anne
challenges and resists every force that attempts to thwart
her desires, and Kate is forced to recognize her own "rage"
and "reserves of violence" in her daughter (668).
Ironically, considering the fact that she herself had
disregarded public censure, Kate tries to convince Anne not
to lower herself to begging for Chris' return. Anne's
response illustrates how well she has already learned her
mother's lesson: "My pride? What's pride, if one cares? I'd
do anything to get him back" (669).

Kate discovers the truth of Anne's declaration when Anne

tells her mother that she had gone to Baltimore immediately

 

after
engag
one i
inher
and 3
me so
then 1
causil
mOthez

from a

d.

i1

om
Althoug
recOgni
res"llt .
Wer he;
the Com
”rights.
to hEr C
Choosing

exercise

263

after she received the letter from Chris breaking their
engagement. She has also written him four letters, the last
one informing him that her mother has agreed to assume the
inheritance. Chris remains impervious to her pleas, however,
and she tells her mother, "It was not the money; he has told
me so. I've had a letter . . . I'm dismissed" (672). But
then Anne discovers that Kate was the person responsible for
causing Chris to break the engagement. She turns on her
mother like a "blanched Fury" and declares her independence
from any form.of parental control:
You don't know me; you don't understand me. What right
have you to interfere with my happiness? WOn't you
please say nothing more now? It was my own fault to
imagine that we could ever live together like mother and
daughter. A relationship like that can't be improvised
in a day . . . You must leave me to manage my life in my
own way. (675)
Although it is clear to the reader, Anne is unable to
recognize that her very ability to manage her own life is the
result of the fact that her mother "gave up all [her] rights"
over her (675). Through Anne's character, Wharton explores
the consequences of a society in which no one can exercise
"rights" over a woman's life. Anne Clephane has the "right"
to her own body and life, and she exercises this "right" by
choosing to marry Chris Fenno, just as her mother had

exercised similar "rights" by choosing to become his lover.

 

 

of the
to her
Lander:
pretty
OppOS i1
emphasi

Kate tc

f0]
inc
Vol
en,
mug

a YOu

questiOr

264

Anne's determination is emphasized throughout the rest
of the novel. Leaving her mother in New York, Anne retreats
to her Aunt's Long Island home for an extended visit. Fred

Landers tells Kate that "To be so savage with you she must be
pretty well geterpihed to have him.back" and reminds her that
opposition "will only make Anne more determined" (679,
emphasis mine). Anne sends her friend Nollie Tresselton to
Kate to intercede on her behalf, and Nollie tells Kate that
Anne "means to" see Chris again (682). And when Chris
himself confronts Kate, he tells her that they must face
Anne's "absolute deterpination" (688, emphasis mine). The
word "determination" is repeated three times during their
conversation, and Chris leaves telling Kate that Anne has
decided to marry him and that she should acquiesce to her
decision or risk never seeing her daughter again. Kate goes
to Anne and recognizes immediately her daughter's
determination:
It was clear that no compromise would be of any use.
Anne had obviously imagined that her mother had come to
forgive and be forgiven, and that Chris was to be
included in the general amnesty. On no other terms
would any amnesty be accepted. Through the girl's
endearments Kate felt, as never before, the steely
muscles of her resolution. (695)
As a young woman who does not "expect to have her decision[s]

questioned," Anne is a formidable opponent, even for the

 

moths
that
"she '

the e:

of be:
analys
of An:
what 5
have a

readin

 

265

mother who first modeled such assertive behavior. Realizing
that while Anne claimed to want both her mother and Chris,
"she wanted Chris Fenno infinitely the more," Kate announces
the engagement and gives the bride away at the wedding (704).
In a sense, my reading of Anne's character runs the risk
of being a traditional feminist "positive role model"
analysis. On one level I am pointing out the characteristics
of Anne that mark her as a rare female hero, one who decides
what she wants and pursues it until she is successful. As I
have already pointed out, there are dangers to this kind of
reading. Susan Goodman has observed that The Mother's
Recohpense is a many layered novel (109), and a reading like
mine--if it were allowed to stand alone--would certainly
obscure all but one meaning. There is more to this novel
than just Anne's admirable assertiveness, and it is essential
that as resisting readers we admit other narratives that can
complicate and enrich our understanding of the text. One way
of doing this is to remember the readings that, instead of
focusing on Anne, explore what the novel is saying about her
mother. But it is also important to recognize that even if
we only consider my reading of Anne we must acknowledge the
issues that may prevent us from accepting outright her status
as feminist hero. Wharton's portrait of Anne Clephane in The
Mother's Recohpense should lead us to question Ammons'
assertion that the elderly author had no confidence in the

possibilities America offered its New WOmen (49). On the

266

other hand, I believe the possibilities Wharton granted Anne
Clephane in her novel are sufficiently limited to lead us to
wonder about the extent and quality of her liberation. For
just like the author of "Female Ingenuity," Edith Wharton
seems incapable of imagining true happiness for women that
lies outside of marriage. If we focus our readings strictly
on Anne's "absolute determination," we can easily miss the
fact that what she is absolutely determined to do is get
married and voluntarily subject herself to the kind of life
her mother had fled--a life that her mother remembers as
"unnatural . . . horrible, intolerable and unescapable . . .
desolate and unavoidable" (708). As resisting readers we
must question whether Anne's ending is any "happier" than
Lily's, whether her self-definition or her "personal freedom"
is any more secure. Fortunately, as resisting readers, we
are also able--are indeed required--to allow for multiple

voices in women's writing.

 

 

267

NOTES

1Robert Herrick noted this distinction in his Meg
Republic essay ("Mrs. Wharton's WOrld," 13 Feb. 1915: 40-2).
NOt sharing James's high opinion of Wharton, Herrick
ironically observed, "The experts have told us again and
again that Mrs. Wharton's touch is the deftest [sic.], the
surest, of all our American manipulators in the novel form"
(40). .

2See for example Rev. of The house of Mirrh, by Edith
Wharton, Review of Reviews Dec. 1905: 757; Rev. of The Reef
by Edith Wharton, New York Sun 23 Nov. 1912: 13; Rev. of
Summer by Edith Wharton, New Republic 14 July 1917: 311; Carl
Van Doren, rev. of Glimpses of the Meeh by Edith Wharton,
Nation 2 Aug. 1922: 128; R. D. Townsend, rev. of Glimpses of
the Moon by Edith Wharton, Outlook 20 Sept. 1922: 119.

3Brown's book, Edith Wharton: Etude Critighe (Paris:
Librairie E. Droz, 1935), was a revision of his Sorborne
dissertation and is written in French. It was the second
full-length study of Wharton to be published. The essay
"Edith Wharton," to which I refer here is based on the
earlier book.

4Renee Rapin, Willa Cather (New York: Robert M. McBride
and Co., 1930); David Daiches, Willa Cather: A Critical
introduction (Ithaca, New York: Cornell UP, 1951); E. K.

Brown, Wiiia Capher: h Criticai Biography (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1953); John H. Randall III, The Landscape and the

Looking Gless: Wiila Qather's Search for Value (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960); Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D.
Bloom, Willa Cather's Gift of Sympathy (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois UP, 1962); James woodress, Willa Cather: Her Life
and Art (New York: Pegasus, 1970); Edith Lewis, Willa Cather
Living (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953); Elizabeth Shepley
Sergeant, Wilia Cather: A Memoir (Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1953); James Schroeter, ed. Willa Cather and
Her Critics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1967).

5Josephine Jessup also treated Wharton from a supposedly
feminist perspective in The Faith of Our Feminists (New York:

268

Richard R. Smith, 1950). According to Jessup, Wharton's work
revealed "woman struggling neither to be man's peer nor his
master but to exist as an independent entity" (98). Her
novels are feminist successes because "Edith Wharton assigns
the real gains of character to women. The men, fickle in
love and wavering in purpose, show only a steadfast
puerility" (16). Few feminist critics have followed Jessup's
lead in arguing that Wharton "attempts to show woman
preeminent, man trailing at heel" (14).

6Ten years after the publication of A Feast or werds,
Sharon O'Brien was clearly following WOlff's example when she
wrote her widely acclaimed biography of Cather, Willa Cather:
The Emerging Voice (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987).

7For other examples of feminist literary critics who
read Wharton primarily as articulating the story of female
oppression under the patriarchy see Elizabeth Ammons, "Cool
Diana and the Blood-Red Muse: Edith Wharton on Innocence and
Art," American Novelists Revisited: Essays in Feminist
Criticism, ed. Fritz Fleischmann (Boston: G. K. Hall and Co.,
1982) 209-224; Elizabeth Ammons, "The Business of Marriage in
Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Count ," Criticism 16
(1974): 326-38; Suzanne Poirier, "The weir Mitchell Rest
Cure: Doctor and Patients," WOmen's Studies 10 (1983): 15-40;
Judith P. Saunders, "Becoming the Mask: Edith Wharton's
Ingenues," Massachusetts Studies in English 8 (1982): 33-39;
Mary Suzanne Schriber, "Convention in the Fiction of Edith
Wharton," Studies in American Fiction 11 (1983): 189—201;
Mary Suzanne Schriber, "Edith Wharton: The Female Imagination
and the Territory Within," Gender and the writer's

Imagination: From Cooper to Wharton (Lexington: UP of
Kentucky, 1987) 157-186.

8Judith Fetterley, "'The Temptation To Be A Beautiful
Object': Double Standard and Double Bind in The House of

Mirt ," Studies in American Fiction 5 (1977): 200.

9For examples of other recent works on Wharton that
begin to incorporate (but to a lesser extent than Goodman,
waid, or Earlich) revisionary interpretive strategies see

David Holbrook, Edith Wharton and the Unsatisfactory Man

(London: Vision Press, 1991); Katherine Joslin, Edith Wharton
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991); Mary E. Papke, Verging

on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith
Wharton (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990); Lev Raphael, Edith

Wharton's Prisoners of Shame: A New Perspective on Her
Neglected Fiction (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).

269

1°Other early Wharton critics who explored The Houee of
Mirrh as a novel of manners include Louis Kronenberger,
"Edith Wharton's New York," The Michigan Qharterly Review 4
(1965): 3-13 and Michael wayne Vella, "Technique and Theme in
The Heuse of Mirth," The Markham Review 2 (1970): 17-20.

11For other examples of feminist analyses that view'The
House ef Mirph as a novel of manners see wai-Chee Dimock,
"Debasing Exchange: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth," PMLA
100 (1985):783- 792; Elaine Showalter, "The Death of the
(Lady) Novelist: Wharton's House of Mirth, " Representations 9

(1985): 133-49, Rpt. in The House of Mirth: huthoritative

Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism, ed. Elizabeth
Ammons (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1990. ) 320- 339; C. J.

wershoven, "The Awakenihg and The House of Mirth: Studies of
Arrested Development," American Literary Reaiism.l9 (1987):
27-41; Ruth Bernard Yeazell, "The Conspicuous Wasting of Lily
Bart," him 59 (1992): 713-734.

121m No Man's Land: The Place of the WOman writer in the
Twentieth Century 2 vols (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale UP,

1988-89), Gilbert and Gubar argue that while Wharton
sometimes appeared to hate women, what she actually hated was
"what women had been made to become" (vol. 1, 128).

1~3Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, 1905 (New York: The
Library of America, 1985, vol. 1 of Edith Wharton: Novels,
ed. R. W. B. Lewis, 2 vols., 1985-1990, 1-347) 3. Future
references to the novel follow this edition and are made
parenthetically within the text.

1-‘Nancy K. Miller calls for a feminist practice of
"overreading" which will tear the text away from the external
realities upon which it is constructed and in terms of which
it has already been read in "Arachnologies: The WOman, The
Text, and The Critic," The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K.
Miller (New York: Columbia UP, 1986) 270-295. As critics,
Miller argues, we can resist those aspects of a text by a
woman writer which seem to reinscribe the traditional
narrative, and "discover the embodiment in writing of a
gendered subjectivity" (272).

11"Wharton's last novel, The Buccaneers, was unfinished at
the time of her death; it was published posthumously in 1938.

16For examples of other favorable reviews of The Mother's
Recompense see "The Mother's Recompense," rev. of The
Mother's Recompense, by Edith Wharton, Times Literary
Supplement 14 May 1925: 332; Louise Maunsell Field, "Mrs.
Wharton Pictures New York Society of Today," rev. of The

270

Morher'e Recempense, by Edith Wharton, Literery higest
international Book Review 3 (June 1925): 463, 466; and Percy
Hutchinson, "Mrs. Wharton Brings 'The House of Mirth' Up to
Date," rev. of The Morher's Recompense, by Edith Wharton, Meg
York Timee Booh Review 26 April 1925: 7, 21.

1".As a gay man and a Jew, Raphael perhaps conducts his
reading from within an interpretive community that, while
differing in significant ways from the feminist interpretive
community, also stresses constructs of oppression and
victimization.

18Edith Wharton, The Mother's Reco use, 1925 (New York:
The Library of America, 1990, V01 2 of Edith Wharton:
Nevellas ahd Other Writings, ed. Cynthia Griffin welff, 2
vols, 1985-1990, 551-765) 558. Future references to the

novel follow this edition and are made parenthetically within
the text.

CHAPTER FIVE

READING JESSIE FAUSET

Jessie Fauset and the American Literary Tradition

After considering two of the most well-known American
women writers of the twentieth century, it may seem a
somewhat unexpected move to turn to a neglected writer like
Jessie Fauset. But my decision to include Fauset in this
study was a deliberate one, and it ultimately proved to be a
productive choice. Because of her neglect by virtually all
reading communities, I find myself doing a different kind of
reading of her work, a reading which responds less to
previous critiques and more to the novels themselves. The
readings posited in the following pages will provide the
context for further resisting readings when Fauset is
embraced more fully by the feminist interpretive community.
Deborah McDowell testifies to the extent of Fauset's
obscurity as she tells the sadly amusing story of her
experience when she informed her friends of her work on this
Harlem Renaissance writer. They asked, "Who is he?" (1990,
ix). My own experience has been somewhat similar. Because

my colleagues know that my present work is with women

271

272

writers, they do not question Fauset's gender, but they are
surprised to discover that the Harlem Renaissance boasts a
woman novelist other than Zora Neale Hurston.

The question of why Jessie Fauset belongs in a study of
early twentieth-century women writers is not one that I am
the first to address. In "New Literary History: Edith
Wharton and Jessie Redmon Fauset" (1987) Elizabeth Ammons
suggests that "Jessie Fauset stands as one of Edith Wharton's
most important peers and inheritors" (207). The central
issue Ammons addresses in this essay and in her 1992 book
Cenflicting Stories: American women Writers er the Tprn ihte
the Twentieth Centhry is what can be learned by eliminating
standard categories of literary periodization and instead
taking the work of women writers "as the starting point for
literary history at the turn of the century" (1987, 208).
Ammons points out the many biographical similarities between
Wharton and Fauset to suggest how various existing critical
constructs have falsely divided our consideration of these
two women writers (1992, 141-2). She goes on to note the
corresponding similarities in the fiction these women
produced and argues that "Fauset's critique of the economics
of marriage for women, of fairy-tale illusions of love and
salvation, of mother-daughter conflict and alienation, of the
tension between class and gender for women, all bring to mind
Wharton" (1987, 211-12). But Ammons' critique is not limited

to identifying only the similarities between these two women

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writers, and she proposes that race alters the treatment and
the perception of many "fundamental issues" in the work of
Fauset and Wharton (1987, 212). She concludes that if
feminist critics as an interpretive community resist the
impulse to separate the work of black and white women
writers, we will consequently recognize the destructive habit
of "setting up . . . race bound paradigms as universals, a
procedure which then . . . defines out of existence . . .
everything which does not fit" (1987, 215). Ammons'
conclusions suggest that if feminist critics employ new
interpretive strategies which no longer define Fauset "out of
existence" her fiction will be regarded as valuable on its
own as well as valuable because of how it forces us to
reconsider women writers like Gather and Wharton.

But if we are to work towards a reconsideration of
little-read women writers, we must not underestimate the
importance of making available information about them.and
their work. If a literary figure like Fauset is to emerge
from obscurity, it will in part be because we have provided
information to answer some of the most basic questions like,
"Who is [she]?" Let me begin by answering just such a
question.

Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) was one of the most
important and influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance.
In her role as literary editor of The Crisis from 1919 to

1926 Fauset fostered this nascent movement by publishing such

274

writers as Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes.

In his memoir The gig Sea (1940) Hughes refers to Fauset as
one of the people who "midwifed the so-called New Negro
literature into being" (218). At the same time Fauset was
"midwifing" the Harlem Renaissance by publishing the work of
others, she was also participating in it by producing her own
creative works. She was a prolific writer, publishing poems,
book reviews, essays, and fiction. Her fiction first
appeared in The Crisis in 1912, and she continued to write
both novels and short stories until the publication of her
last novel, Comedy American Style (1933). Some critics such
as Wilbert Jenkins suggest that Fauset's non-fiction writing
is actually more important than her fiction (14). And
certainly her voice was an important one, especially during
her Crisis years. Cheryl A. wall calls The Crisis "the most
influential black periodical in the country" and maintains
that "under [Fauset's] direction, The Crisis gained a
reputation for literary excellence that paralleled its
eminence in social and political affairs" (156).

But Fauset did not restrict her Crisis writings to
literary themes; she was also concerned with blacks in other
countries, black women, and black education. She sounded
distinctly ahead of her time when she complained of the
shortage of positive black role models available to children:
"There are no pictures of colored fairies in the story books

or even of colored boys and girls. 'Sweetness and light' are

275

of the white world" (qtd. in Aptheker, 357). Fauset's answer
to this dilemma was to create, with the help of W. E. B.
DuBois and Augustus Dill, a children's magazine called The
greyhies' Book. Its dedication, written by Fauset, speaks to
its admirable goals:

To children, WhO‘With eager look

Scanned vainly library shelf, and nook,

For History of Song or Story

That told of Colored People's glory,--

we dedicate the Brownies' Book. (qtd. in Sylvander,

115)
This "remarkable publication" ran for twenty-four issues, and
according to Fauset's biographer she wrote "hundreds of
signed and unsigned stories, poems, dialogues, biographies,
[and] articles" that appeared in the children's journal
(Sylvander 115). To an even greater extent than Cather or
Wharton, then, it is important that we recognize the many
ways Fauset's direct influence extended beyond the world of
Letters. At the same time, however, it is clear that when
she is remembered today it is most often as a novelist, and
it is to her fiction that I shall now turn.

Fauset told an interviewer in 1932 that "the first

publisher to see the manuscript [of her first novel, There Is
Confusion] explained as he rejected it, 'White readers just

don't expect Negroes to be like this'" (Starkey 219). In the

preface to The Chinaberry Tree (1931) Fauset stated that her

276

fictional goal was to depict "something of the homelife of
the colored American who is not being pressed too hard by the
Furies of Prejudice, Ignorance, and Economic Injustice" (ix).
Carolyn Sylvander argues that these fictional goals prevented
Fauset from.heing accepted by the American publishing
establishment (73). Clearly, racism shaped her critical
reception in ways unknown to Wharton and Cather. Turning to
the reviews of her second novel Pihm Bun (1929) we can get a
better picture of some of the forces contending against
Fauset as she attempted to establish herself as a black woman
novelist. Reviewers writing in the black press seemed as
concerned as Fauset herself to emphasize the authenticity of
her characters as well as of the portrait of black life she
presented in the novel. The reviewer for The Crisis praised
the novel because it "talks about the kind of American
Negroes that I know" ("The Browsing Reader" 125). This
reviewer goes on to observe that Plum Bun "will not attract
those looking simply for the filth in Negro life, but it will
attract and hold those looking for the truth" (138). ‘Writing
for O rtunit , another black journal, Gwendolyn Bennett
also stresses the "truth" of the novel's portraits asserting,
"I'll wager that Miss Fauset could match every incident in
her book with one from real life" (287). But Bennett does
concede that the book may not be "convincing to members of
the white race" (287). And, judging from its reviews, it was

not. The reviewer for the New Republic called the novel

277

"melodramatic and unreal" (235, emphasis mine). This
reviewer, it seems, was most incensed by Fauset's efforts to
portray what Bennett had called the "ordinary well-bred Negro
of intelligence and education" (287), as he complains that
Fauset has "disdained all use of dialect" and "discarded . .
. the full rich idiom of the colored race" (235). In the Meg
York Herald Trihune Books V. F. Calverton also objected that
Plum Bun was unrealistic: "The characters are obvious types,
and unfortunately are seldom remarkably real and convincing"
(14, emphasis mine). Just looking at the reviews of this
single novel, it quickly becomes evident that Jessie Fauset
was, from the first, embraced in quite different ways by two
separate interpretive communities: the white literary
establishment and the black literary critics.1 This dual
reception has continued to influence her literary reputation,
much as Wharton's reputation was affected by her mixed
reception. The obvious, and important, difference between
the two is that while Wharton's depiction of "America" caused
the split among her reviewers and early critics, Fauset's
portrait of "black America" divided her reviewers.

The peak of Fauset's literary reputation, at least until
the late 19808, is probably best represented by William
Stanley Braithwaite's 1935 Oppertunity article, "The Novels
of Jessie Fauset." Braithwaite claimed that Fauset belonged
in "the front rank of American women novelists in general"

and compared her to Jewett, Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow,

278

among others (49). He sidestepped this compliment, however,
by also asserting that "If my claim is extravagant . . . I am
quite willing to take an immediate chastisement, and leave to
posterity the relish of honoring with reiterated quotation
this morsel of critical extravagance" (49). Braithwaite's
slight equivocation concerning Fauset'sliterary merit was
magnified many times over by the literary critics who, soon
after Fauset stopped writing novels, began attempts to codify
and define the Harlem Renaissance as a literary movement.
Most critics found little of worth in the fiction of Jessie
Fauset, their assessments sounding more like her reviews from
the white, mainstream press than those fromforo-centric
publications.2 One of the first works to dismiss Jessie
Fauset appeared only three years after Braithwaite's
exuberant essay. In The Ne ro in American Fiction, Sterling
Brown calls Fauset "sentimental" and argues that despite her
claim to the contrary she is an "apologist" (142). In The
Negro Novel in America (1958) Robert A. Bone classifies
Fauset as a novelist of the "Rear Guard," a novelist whose
primary interest was white opinion: "They wished to apprise
educated whites of the existence of respectable Negroes, and
to call their attention . . . to the facts of racial
injustice" (97). He dismisses her work as "sophomoric,
trivial and dull" (101). This sentiment is echoed in hieeh

on White (1966) by David Littlejohn who says that nothing

Fauset wrote "rises above the stuffy, tiny-minded

 

 

279

circulating-library norm," and calls her novels "vapidly
genteel lace-curtain romances" (51). Unlike Littlejohn and
Bone, Nathan Huggins does not resort to name-calling, but he
too shares their low opinion of Fauset (146-148). Hiroko
Sato goes so far as to assert, "Jessie Fauset is not a great
writer. She is not even a good writer" (82), an assessment
shared by David Levering Lewis who argues that Fauset's
fiction relies on "melodrama . . . artifice . . . overwrought
prose and romantic development of plot" (235). The
overwhelming sentiment of these critics seems to be that
Braithwaite's praise was indeed overly extravagant.

Since these particularly critical assessments of
Fauset's contribution to American literary history come, for
the most part, from within the African American interpretive
community, race cannot be said to be a direct factor in her
dismissal. But it is quite clear that Fauset's poor critical
reception has a great deal to do with gender and class.
writing in Black on White David Littlejohn explains what
makes black fiction written since 1940 superior to the work
produced by Fauset, Nella Larsen, Ann Petry, and others:

The newer writers are obviously writing as men, for men,

however much they may take their characters and issues

from the worlds they have known best; and not as middle-
class Negroes for middle-class Negroes and the

occasional white curiosity-seeking slummer. (49)

280

Clearly, writing as a "man" and avoiding the middle-class as
the subject of one's art would be a difficult thing for a
black woman writer simply because those women who were
privileged enough to write usually came from the middle
class. And, as it will be remembered from the Plhm gun
reviews, these women were writing in an era in which
verisimilitude was still a highly valued literary attribute.
The critical standards of the interpretive community that set
out to define the Harlem Renaissance seemed to effectively
exclude women writers. There were, however, some voices to
counteract the dominant ones. Writing in 1965 Hugh M.
Gloster called Fauset's work "one of the major achievements
of American negro fiction" (139). And in Erom the Dark Temer
(1974) Arthur P. Davis asserted, "An unusual woman in several
respects, [Fauset] made a small but significant contribution
to the literature and to the intellectual climate of the New
Negro Renaissance" (94).

All critics, whether they vilify or valorize Fauset,
agree that she relies on formulaic narrative strategies in
her fiction. These formulae include that of the novel of
manners, the romance, and the classic fairy tale. The
central plot of all of her novels (except gemegy_hmerieeh
§E¥l§> as well as most of her short fiction is an expression
of what Colette Dowling has termed "the Cinderella complex."3
In general, the central character of each work struggles to

achieve independence and self-mastery. At the conclusion of

281

each text, however, she marries and looks forward to a life
in which she will be, in Dowling's words, "nurtured and cared
for and kept from harm's way" (15). This plot appears to be
so dominant in Fauset's fiction that it seems virtually
impossible for any interpretive community, including the
feminist community, to avoid viewing her texts through the

romantic critical paradigm.

282

The American Feminist Interpretive Community

Reads Jessie Fauset

Since the 19808 Fauset has regained, to some degree, her
status as a significant novelist of the Harlem Renaissance,
and her literary reputation has benefited most from feminist
efforts at the recovery of women writers and canon
reformation. Carolyn wedin Sylvander has written a
biography, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Black American writer
(1981), which deals extensively with her fiction, and Deborah
E. McDowell has edited a critical edition of her novel gihm
gem (1928, 1990) and is in the process of preparing an
edition of The Chinaberry Tree (1931). Fauset has not,
however, been fully embraced by the feminist interpretive
community. Barbara Christian, one of the first of the new

generation of re-readers of Fauset, leads the attack in hieeh
WOmen Novelists (1980) as she argues that Fauset's stories
"become bad fairytales" because she "[accepts] the literary
conventions of the nineteenth-century black novel" that
include a resolution through marriage (43). Hazel V. Carby
continues Christian's critique in her book Reconstructing
WOmanhood (1987):

Fauset adapted but did not transcend the form of the

romance. It is important that her work did reveal many

of the contradictory aspects of romantic conventions of

womanhood, but her imaginary resolutions to what were

283

social contradictions confirmed that women ultimately
had to be saved from the consequences of their
independence and become wives. (168)
As a result of her inability to "overread" Fauset's fiction,
Carby cannot see any way that Fauset's conventional plots
subvert the romantic ending. Instead, Carby sees Fauset's
conventional plots as a reflection of her conventional
personal ideology and dismisses her on grounds that sound
suspiciously like those cited by David Lewis and others who
repeatedly mention Fauset's "melodrama . . . artifice . . .
overwrought prose and romantic development of plot" (235).
Other feminist literary critics sound a similar cry. In
her introduction to Fauset in The Gender of Modernism.(l990)
Cheryl A- wall claims that the form of the sentimental novel
prevented Fauset from.conveying "the truth she wanted to
tell" (158). Apparently, wall believes that superficially
happy endings in which "the still courageous but chastened
heroine finds happiness with a protective yet more
understanding hero" cannot reveal anything "true" about the
experiences of black women in early twentieth century America
(158). Although Deborah E. McDowell is one of Fauset's
foremost defenders, and she believes that Fauset's novels
depict "the black woman's struggle for democratic ideals in a
society whose sexist conventions assiduously work to thwart
that struggle" (1985, 88), she nevertheless objects to

Fauset's use of the sentimental form. Despite her

284

recognition that "writers often employ literary and social
conventions that function as a mask behind which lie
decidedly unconventional critiques," McDowell does not see
how the marriages with which each novel ends could function
as a critique (1990, xxi). Instead, she concludes that
Fauset "[retreats] to a traditional value system" and "must
be finally seen as a traditionalist regarding women's roles"
(1985, 98). And Mary F. Sisney observes that Fauset's novels
are regressive as they "focus on marriage as a means for the
black woman to establish and maintain her place in society"
(173).

Why, we are led to ask, have feminist literary critics,
including black feminist literary critics, found it so
difficult to "claim" Jessie Fauset? What has prevented
feminists from rushing headlong to bring Fauset "into the
sisterhood," as they have Cather and even Wharton? This is
an important question and one that must be addressed if we
are to understand more fully how interpretive communities,
particularly the feminist interpretive community, operate.
The first reason I would suggest for Fauset's half-hearted
reception by the feminist interpretive community lies in her
outright rejection by the male critical establishment.
Although this claim may seem paradoxical, its validity
becomes evident if we consider how similar the complaints of
Christian, Carby, wall, and McDowell are to those of Brown,

Bone, Littlejohn, and Lewis. All single out Fauset's

285

romanticism and her failure to resist (overtly at least)
convention.

Why the overlap of this masculine interpretive community
would have such a powerful shaping force on the feminist
reception of Fauset, when similar complaints elicited no such
rejection from.Wharton's feminist critics, is a curious
question. Even the harshest Wharton critics grant her some
measure of respect, if not admiration. In contrast, Fauset
criticism is often quite disrespectful in tone. Perhaps
unconsciously, feminist critics have been influenced by this
barrage of negative criticism. Secondly, those male critics
who rejected Fauset were ostensibly conducting a radical act
of canon revision through their inclusion of black male
writers in the American literary tradition. While some
feminist literary critics like McDowell are aware that "Black
women writers . . . have frequently been excised from
[critical works] on the Afro-American literary tradition by
Black scholars, most of whom are male," the influence of such
excisions is apparently difficulty to resist (187). Perhaps
it is made more difficult by the power and by the good
intentions of black male scholars like Lewis and Huggins.

But an equally important explanation for the lukewarm
critical reception accorded Jessie Fauset by the feminist
interpretive community is the fact that interpretive
strategies do not exist that will allow feminist critics to

accommodate sufficiently the complex interactions of race,

286

class, and gender in the work of black.women writers like
Jessie Fauset. Barbara Smith insists that "A.Black feminist
approach to literature that embodies the realization that the
politics of sex as well as the politics of race and class are
crucially interlocking factors in the works of Black women
writers is an absolute necessity" (170). The overlap of
white feminist literary criticism--with its insistence upon
identifying only a single story in the work of women writers-
-prevents black or white feminist literary critics from
identifying subtexts of race, class, and gender in the work
of black women writers. As I have shown, ignoring such
factors in the work of white women writers like Gather and
Wharton is destructive; it is even more imperative I think
that feminist literary critics, whether white or black, learn
to recognize such interactions in the work of black women
writers. Doing so would, I believe, enrich our understanding
not only of Jessie Fauset, but also of white women writers
like Cather and Wharton. For as long as feminist critics
continue to use the old critical constructs of romance novel
and novel of manners to read Fauset's novels, they will
persistently run up against what appear to be her regressive
narratives. By becoming resisting readers of Fauset,
however, it is possible that we will find it much easier to
"claim" this woman writer as we learn ways to accommodate her

conservativism along with her radicalism.

287

In becoming resisting readers of Jessie Fauset, it seems
reasonable to begin by addressing her reliance upon the
formulaic fairy tale/romance plot and her seeming
capitulation to the traditional ending of love and marriage.
One approach to resisting this critical construct would be to
eliminate it altogether as we did with The House of Mirth,
and instead view the novels through the prism.of a different
narrative paradigm. As resisting readers, however, we can
also accept existing narrative paradigms and work to discover
alternative texts that may get told along side of the old
stories. Should we adopt such an approach with Fauset, we
could consider the fairy tale/romance plot as a metafictional
device.‘ If we make a conscious effort to understand the many
and complicated ways that race, class, and gender "inflect"
each other in Fauset's work, we will be able to
reconceptualize the romantic narrative paradigm.she uses.

It will become clear that this critical construct
functions in many ways. NOt only does Fauset's use of the
fairy tale/romance plot reify the patriarchy, but it also
provides a radical critique both of the fairy tale/romance
plot itself and of a society that provided few other
paradigms for middle class black women. Part of recognizing
Fauset's metafictional critique of the ending involves
understanding the social and historical context of her life
as a middle-class black American woman in the early twentieth

century. Understanding what life was like for Fauset and her

288

contemporaries, especially in relation to their ability to
conform to either of the prevailing stereotypes pertaining to
women of their era--that of the "new woman" and that of the
"angel of the house"--is crucial to understanding her
critique of the romantic ending. Although, as I will
demonstrate, Fauset was fully capable of imagining an
alternative to the love and marriage ending, she was acutely
aware that in her own life, as well as that of other black
middle-class women in the early twentieth century, such an
ending was also a fairy tale. In her famous statement about
writing as re-vision, Adrienne Rich observes, "until we can
understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot
know ourselves" (35). A resisting reading of Fauset's
fiction demonstrates that she understood the assumptions of
her world far more clearly than critics usually recognize.
The theories of the feminist narratologist Rachel Blau
DuPlessis can help us as we formulate interpretive strategies
with which to approach Fauset as resisting readers.
DuPlessis describes how some women writers are able to
exploit the connection they see between their lives and the
narrative conventions with which they must contend as they
create. In writing heyend the Ending (1985), DuPlessis
suggests that early twentieth-century women writers, because
they had reached the point where as a social group they could
successfully challenge the hegemony of the patriarchy, began

to develop narrative strategies that destabilize the

289

conventional plots. The most powerful of these strategies is
"writing beyond the ending": "writing beyond the ending means
the transgressive invention of narrative strategies that
express critical dissent from dominant narrative" (5); that
is, women writers began to develop alternatives to the
traditional romantic ending: they wrote "beyond" it. In
contrast to the novelists DuPlessis discusses, Fauset has
been most harshly criticized, in her day as well as ours, for
not "writing beyond the ending." She refused to allow her
characters to achieve the alternative endings to the romance
plot described by DuPlessis, such as successful careers.
Fauset's unwillingness to do so was not entirely a regressive
acceptance of "traditional values;" it was also a comment on
the fact that, as a middle-class black woman, she and most of
the characters she wrote about were not in a position to
"write beyond the ending," much less live beyond it.5 In what
follows I shall argue that it is our persistent refusal to
take into account the distinctive way race and class inflect
gender that prohibits us from seeing how Fauset's endings are
anything but traditional. If we are to understand the
alternative ways Fauset's endings function, we must develop
strategies that allow us to view them as metafictional
devices.

Fauset's use of the romantic ending functions as a
metafictional device in two ways. First, a close examination

of the representation of class, race, and gender in the

290

subtexts of Fauset's novels reveals a harsh critique of the
romantic ending: it is almost always impossible for a black
woman to achieve it in the fullest sense, and it is evidently
an unsatisfactory ending for those black women who do achieve
a version of it. Furthermore, if one examines the romantic
surface text in light of the subtext, it becomes evident that
Fauset is also criticizing the society that does not provide
many alternatives to the romantic ending for black women. By
applying Susan Lanser's technique of narrative analysis to
Fauset's novels, we will be able to see how the romantic plot
and the disguised protest against that plot both function to
reveal how class, race, and gender operate, in Elizabeth
Ammons' words, "as systems of oppression and silencing in
Afro-American women's lives" (1987, 211). Thus, in her
"construction of a fictional illusion" through the use of
traditional narrative techniques and in her "laying bare of
that illusion" through the deconstruction of those
techniques, Fauset uses the romantic ending as a
metafictional device (waugh 6).

Because so little criticism has been generated regarding
Jessie Fauset, it is not necessary (it would, in fact, be
impossible) to devote more than a brief paragraph to the
critical reception of her individual novels. And because, as
I mentioned earlier, one of the foremost tasks facing
feminist critics who truly desire canon reformation is the

dissemination of information regarding "minor" women writers,

291

I shall consider more than two works by Jessie Fauset.
Through an analysis of one novella, The Sleeper wakee (1920),
and three novels, There is Confusion (1924), lem Buh (1928),
and The Chinaberry Tree (1931), I hope to demonstrate how the
fairy tale/romance plot functions as a metafictional device

in Fauset's fiction.

292

"Living in Some Sort of Story":

Towards a Resisting Reading of The Sieeper wakes

One easy explanation for Fauset's persistent habit of
concluding her novels with fairy tale marriages is that she
was not progressive enough to imagine any alternatives other
than marriage for her female characters. Christian, Carby,
wall, and McDowell imply that such is the case. However, a
brief analysis of her first long work of fiction, the novella
The Sleeper wakes (1920), proves that Fauset was fully
capable of "writing beyond the ending." As Deborah McDowell
notes, Fauset "inverts the classical ending" in this story
about a young woman's search for happiness (1985, 89). The
Sleeper wakes tells the story of Amy, a young mulatto girl
who, according to the narrator, "was always living in some
sort of story."6 ‘With those words, Fauset immediately draws
our attention to the fact that this is a tale about a woman
who sees herself as enacting narrative paradigms. The
"fictional illusion" is instantly exposed in this story which
is so clearly about, in Nancy K. Miller's words, "the plots
of literature itself" (1985, 357). The story in which Amy
lives is that of the classic fairy tale, which, in fact, is
"the only reading that had ever made any impression on her"
(169). Eventually, she leaves her guardians, the Boldins
(like most fairy tale princesses she is an orphan), moves to

New York City, gets a job as a waitress by "passing" for

293

white, and waits "happy in the expectation of something
wonderful, which she knew some day must happen" (170). Of
course, since she is living in a story, something does
happen. She marries a wealthy, powerful, white man named
Stuart James wynne: "wynne loved her, and he could secure for
her what she wanted. 'And after all,‘ she said to herself
once, 'it really is my dream.come true'" (178).

It is easy for us to accept Fauset's next step as she
deconstructs the "happily ever after" ending. She has
already established the fairy tale as a metafictional device,
and merely goes on to demonstrate how impossible it is for a
black.woman to live happily in that story. wynne, it turns
out, is a violent bigot. Amy eventually tells wynne that she
is black in an effort to protect a servant whom he has
threatened to lynch. Her plan backfires as wynne divorces
her. Although wynne continues to support her, Amy (still
"passing") begins to work as a designer for a modiste; she
intends to donate her earnings to the Red Cross. Later,
wynne entreats her to return to him as his mistress, and the
narrator informs us, "At these words something in her dies
forever, her youth, her illusions, her happy, happy
blindness" (271). After her metamorphosis, Amy works very
hard to pay wynne back all the money he had given her. She
realizes that her independence gives her "a curious sense of
freedom . . . a feeling that at last her brain, her senses

were liberated from.some hateful clinging thralldom" (272).

294

Once Amy pays back "her sorry debt" she decides to return to
the Boldins, embrace the black race, and "set up an
establishment of her own" to design clothing for white women
(274). The conclusion of The Sleeper Wahes demonstrates that
Amy has learned the hard lesson Mr. Boldin tried to teach her
as a child: fairy tales are "not always true to life" (169).
By causing Amy's story to end with the hope of happiness and
success through independent female achievement, Fauset
demonstrates her ability to "write beyond the ending."
Although several critics, including Deborah McDowell,
have remarked on how Fauset does subvert the romantic plot in
The Slee r wakes, none have used the novella as a tool for
illuminating Fauset's longer works. It is important,
however, to consider this story in relation to the rest of
the Fauset canon, especially with respect to her use of the
romantic ending. This story's alternative ending can help us
recognize that Fauset's later decision to conclude her novels
‘with marriage was a calculated, conscious one rather than an
unconscious acceptance of tradition. It makes it easier to
see how we can justify "overreading" these novels in an
effort to discern Fauset's metafictional critique of the
ending. McDowell's question, "What accounts for Fauset's
retreat to a traditional value system after clearly promising
the opposite?" is still central (1985, 98). McDowell herself
provides a partial answer to this question by suggesting that

in her novels Fauset was led to conclude with traditional

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love and marriage endings because of constraints placed upon
her by the major (white) publishing firms (1985, 99). A more
complete answer to this puzzling question only becomes clear,
however, through an analysis of the surface texts, subtexts,
and connection texts of the novels in light of the historical
and cultural factors influencing black women's lives in the
early twentieth century. It will, I think, become clear that
Jessie Fauset demonstrated through her fiction how the
romantic ending was no more false to the experiences of black
women than its alternatives and how, in fact, because of the
social situations with which they were faced, it provided the
only realistic, if partial, avenue to happiness available to

many women.

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"I'm.Just Miss Nobody":
Towards a Resisting Reading of There ie Conrusioh

Fauset's first full-length novel, There ie Conrusion
(1924), can in some respects be read as a continuation of
Amy's story in The Sieeper wahes. At the conclusion of that
story Amy sets out to become a "citizen of the world," an
independent career woman who runs her own business and stands
on her own two feet. The two main characters in There is
Conf sion, Joanna and Maggie, each embark on similar quests.
Deborah E. McDowell argues that in this novel, which ends in
the marriages of both Joanna and Maggie, Fauset "curiously
repudiates" the position she had hinted at in The Sleeper
flehee, that "marriage can work to limit women's possibilities
for self-realization and autonomy" (1985, 93). One critic,
Joseph J. Feeney, does recognize a critique behind Fauset's
conventional plot in There is Confusion as well as her other
novels. In "Black Childhood as Ironic" (1980) Feeney
observes, "Fauset ironically undercut the romance-plots in
her four novels" (65). Significantly, however, Feeney does
not recognize the central role gender and class play in
Fauset's ironic subversion of the romance plot. He views the
"counterstructure" in Fauset's fiction strictly as a critique
of the prejudice and lost opportunities experienced by black

Americans in a white society (1979, 372). Thus, Feeney, like

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Fauset's other critics, misses a central aspect of her
critique.

On the surface, the routes Joanna and Maggie take to
achieve their dreams of success and happiness are quite
different. From the time she was a little girl Joanna was
determined to "be a great woman": "With Joanna success and
distinction were an obsession. It never occurred to her that
life was anything but what a man chose to make it, provided,
of course, he did choose to make it something."7 Maggie, on
the other hand, decided when she was a teenager that "one
avenue of escape lay through men" (58). Joanna sets about
achieving her ambition through long hours of practice and
dance lessons. Her goal is to become an artist and to "get
on the stage" by mastering and getting around the prejudice
she knows she will face. She outlines her plan for her
boyfriend, Peter, saying, "First, I'm going to get my
training up to the last notch, then I'm going to watch for an
opportunity and squeeze in" (98). Maggie is equally
confident that she knows how to reach her goal. She believes
Henderson Neal when he tells her, "I can take care of you--
you and your mother, too and I can dress you pretty, like
you'd ought to be, and with money and fine clothes you can do
a little lordin' on your own" (90). She marries him because
"he would place her on a pedestal" (90). But through the

course of the novel both young women are disappointed with

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the direction their lives take as a result of their early
determination and decisions.

Joanna discovers that it is not as easy as she had hoped
to master the prejudice of her society. She feels
disappointed and disillusioned: "She had been so sure. Her
art was so perfect, so complete that even Bertully, cynic
though he was, believed that in her case the American stage
must let down the bars" (147). Bertully, her dancing
teacher, takes Joanna to three theater managers trying to get
her a job, but they all refuse her because of her race.
Eventually, however, she does get a chance to dance on stage
at the District Line Theater. The theater is producing a
show called "The Dance of the Nations" which depicts dancers
from different foreign nations. Miss Sharples, a member of
the theater's board, explains to Joanna, "When it came to
America we had to have two or three dances represented, one
for the white element, one for the black and one for the red"
(226). Joanna is needed to represent the "colored American"
because the woman representing America "lays down on her job"
when it comes to that dance (227). Joanna is a great
success, and when the white woman quits Joanna adopts her
role as well, dancing in a mask. The show moves to Broadway,
and, "Joanna found herself becoming a sensation" (232).

Although she has finally achieved her dreams, Joanna is

unhappy:

299

For in spite of her vogue, her unbelievably decided

success, Joanna frequently tasted the depths of ennui.

She saw life as a ghastly skeleton and herself

feverishly trying to cover up its bare bones with the

garish trappings of her art, her lessons, her practice,

her press-clippings. (233)

The "Dance of the Nations" goes on the road before it finally
closes, leaving Joanna to wait until the next opportunity
arises. The next opportunity, surprisingly, is marriage to
her long-time beau, Peter Bye, who tells her, "I'm afraid
you'll have to give up your career, dear Joanna" (284).
Joanna, now a "shameless apostate," agrees telling him, "my
creed calls for nothing but happiness" (297).

Maggie's route to happiness seems quite different from
Joanna's, although as I have said the novel concludes with
both their marriages. She discovers that Henderson Neal is a
gambler, and, disenchanted with the pedestal, she divorces
him. Left on her own in Philadelphia, Maggie embarks on a
career working for Madame Harkness. This character is no
doubt modelled after Madame C. J. walker, the first black
woman millionaire. walker became wealthy by developing and
selling hair care products designed especially for black
women. Maggie tells Peter, "She's made me supervisor of
three of her branch stores, here in Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and washington, D.C. I have my little home here, my salary's

good. I make more than enough to live on" (137). Still

300

believing that the only way for her to "be" somebody was
marriage "with a man of distinction," Maggie attaches herself
to Joanna's temporarily estranged boyfriend, Peter (204).
Eventually, however, she realizes that this was also a
mistake. Maggie tells herself that she has decided to "be
what I want to be without depending on anybody" (256), and
tells a friend that she wants to do something "very different
that will take me as completely out of myself as though I had
been transposed to a fourth dimension" (258). Her friend
sets her up with a job where she can be truly happy for the
first time in her life. She goes to Europe to help run a
leave-center in France for black soldiers. Feeling needed
and useful, Maggie discovers "a new sense of value" through
serving others (259). After the war, Maggie marries her
first love, Joanna's brother Philip Marshall. He had been
gassed during the war, and Maggie devotes herself to him
because, as she tells him, "nothing would please me more than
to nurse you" (266). She stays with Philip until he dies,
"supplying and anticipating his wants and radiating an
ineffable peace" (288).

The surface text of There is Cohfusion seems to show
Fauset retreating "to a traditional value system after
clearly promising the opposite" as McDowell accuses her of
doing (1985, 98). However, examining the subtext of the
novel in light of the social and historical conditions of

black working women in the early part of the twentieth

301

century reveals that what Fauset is actually doing is using
the romantic ending as a metafictional device to criticize a
society which does not allow black women to find meaningful,
emotionally satisfying work outside the home. What needs
more clarification is why Fauset was unwilling to conduct a
more overt critique of traditional narrative structures by
"writing beyond the ending" as so many middle-class white
women writers were doing in the early twentieth century.
According to Rachel Blau DuPlessis, the women who were able
to fictionally depict alternative endings had "the economic,
political, and legal power to sustain and return to questions
of marriage law, divorce, the 'couverte' status, and their
access to vocation" (4). As a middle-class black woman in
America in the early twentieth century Fauset had less
economic, political, and legal power than white women with
Vsimilar educational and class backgrounds. She, along with
most other black woman in the country, especially had no
power to control her "access to vocation." A brief
examination of Fauset's employment history reveals how little
control she had over her own professional life in spite of
the fact that she was a well-educated, middle-class woman who
entered the work force just as life as a "new'woman" was
becoming a recognized alternative to marriage for many white
women.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University

in 1905, Fauset returned to the city where she grew up,

 

302

Philadelphia, and tried to get a teaching job, but no school
would hire her. Speaking of this incident Fauset said,
"When I graduated from [Cornell], I found the high schools
barred to me because of my color. Philadelphia, birthplace
of Independence and City of Brotherly Love--I have never
quite been able to reconcile theory with fact" (qtd. in
Sylvander 34). She eventually went to washington D.C. where
she taught at Dunbar High School for fourteen years. Years
later, in spite of the fact that she had a bachelor's degree,
master's degree, and seven years experience as the literary
editor of The Crisis, when Fauset began to look for a new job
as a publisher's reader she indicated that she would be
willing to work at home "if the question of color came up"
(Sylvander 65). Another job Fauset considered taking at that
time was that of a social secretary. Apparently, none of
these were realistic options, and eventually she went back to
teaching and continued to teach from 1927 to 1944. Of
course, there were some middle-class black women who did
achieve successful professional careers, but these women were
the exception rather than the rule.

While Fauset certainly experienced the constraints of
being a black working woman in America, she no doubt realized
that her situation was fortunate compared with that of most
black working women of the period. In 1920 38.9 percent of
black women worked, while only 17.2 percent of white women

worked (Giddings 196). Of these working black women, 85

303

percent performed agricultural or domestic labor as opposed
to about 25 percent of white working women (Aldridge 5).

Only 1.5 percent of all working black women held professional
and technical positions in 1910, and by 1940 the number had
risen to only 4.3 percent (Aldridge 6). Even the most well-
educated black women found that the career options open to
them were limited. As Bonnie Thornton Dill observes, "racial

discrimination constricted work options for Black women in

 

such a way as to seriously undercut the benefits of . 1
education" (141). According to Paula Giddings, many black
women working in manufacturing in New York City in 1919 had
been schoolteachers in the South (144). This is not to say
that there were no examples of successful black
businesswomen. As I have already mentioned, Madame C. J.
walker became the first black woman millionaire, and when she
died in 1919 she stipulated that her hair products company
always be run by a woman (Giddings 188). Examples like this
are rare, however, and Fauset definitely realized that a
black woman in America stood a very slim chance of becoming a
.Madame walker, or even a Jessie Fauset. The vast majority of
black working women between 1910 and 1940 were employed as
service workers, as agricultural laborers, or in low-level
manufacturing jobs. Net only were these jobs financially

unrewarding, but they were usually also emotionally

unrewarding. A close examination of the subtext of There Is

304

Coniusion reveals Fauset's protest against the inability of
black women to challenge their "access to vocation."

Both Joanna and Maggie are dissatisfied with their
experiences as working women in America, and it seems that
their unhappiness is primarily due to the kinds of jobs they
hold. Joanna's only real success comes when she adopts the
role of an "exotic" black woman; the white audience is
interested in her primarily because to them she is a "new and
original plaything" (231). And she becomes a star only when
a mask allows her to be transformed into a "typical" white
American (232). Even though she has achieved her dream,
Joanna is unhappy. In part this is because she continues to
struggle with racial oppression. Fauset writes that although
her face appears on advertisements for the show she is "never
alone," and although writers take photographs of her and her
sister they are "never published" (231). But an even greater
reason for her unhappiness seems to be the empty sense of
futility she experiences:

What she did want, she decided, was to be needed, to be

useful, to be devoting her time, her concentration and

her remarkable singlemindedness to some worthy visible
end. After all, she had worked hard and striven

tremendously--to be what? A dancer. (236)

Ultimately, Joanna's career of entertaining white people is

only a small step away from that of an old time minstrel, and

305

certainly does not seem to her to have a "worthy visible
and."

Maggie is not really happy in her job with Madame
Harkness, but, ironically, she is happier than Joanna who had
higher expectations of her career. In a 1918 article on
Harkness' prototype, Madame C. J. walker, George S. Schuyler
observed that she gave "dignified employment to thousands of
women who would otherwise have had to make their living in
domestic service" (qtd. in Giddings 189). Even after
succeeding as a supervisor for Madame Harkness Maggie claims,
"I'm just Miss Nobody" (258). But she does feel like she is
engaged in dignified work with a "worthy visible end" when
she goes to France to cheer and nurture the brave black
soldiers who were completely segregated from all the
pleasures wartime Europe could offer them. Unfortunately for
Maggie, the war doesn't last forever, and she is faced with
the prospect of returning to the same kind of life she left.

On the other hand, the male characters in the novel work
at jobs where they feel they are making a genuine
contribution to society. Many, including Peter, are doctors.
Before the war Philip founded an organization that sounds
remarkably like the N.A.A.C.P. He tells his family, "White
and colored people alike may belong to it . . . but it is to
favor primarily the interests of colored people" (129). Like
DuBois, he edits his organization's magazine, "The Spur."

This kind of satisfactory work is denied the female

306

characters in There is Conrueion just as it was denied most
black women of the early twentieth century. Maggie's
marriage to Philip is merely her attempt to extend beyond the
war the only satisfactory work she had ever experienced: "She
did not want him to be ill, but she adored his weakness, it
gave her her first chance to wait on him, to mother him"
(263). Joanna marries Peter because she had begun to feel
that "life . . . was not a matter of sufficient raiment,
food, or even success. There must be something more filling,
more insistent, more permeating" (233). Unable to discover
this "something" in her line of work, she concludes that she
might discover it to be found in "the essential, delightful
commonplaces of living, the kernel of life, home, children,
and adoring husband" (274). The fact that both of these
female characters get married at the conclusion of the novel
is not an indication that Fauset thought that a woman could
not achieve a sense that her life was leading to a "worthy
visible end" without marriage. Rather, it is an indication
of her realization that a middle-class black woman, because
of the employment opportunities available to her, might not
be able to do so. Thus, I think the romantic ending of this
novel serves as a critique of the society which allowed so
few options for black women. Further evidence of this
becomes clear when we examine the connection text of There is

W0

307

.A minor female character in this novel, Vera Manning,
illustrates clearly how effectively race prevents black women
from finding emotionally satisfying work. Vera grew up with
Joanna, but after they become adults she decides to "pass."
It seems that her primary reason is financial because she is
working in an office where she would not be welcome if her
race were known. Ironically, she took the job because her
plans to marry Harley Alexander, a young dentist, fell
through. vera tells Joanna, "You can't imagine--I couldn't--
the almost unlimited opportunities that these people have for
EQEL: for pleasure, for anything" (200, emphasis mine). It
is interesting that the first thing she mentions is the
freedom to work where she wants to. Years later, Joanna runs
into Vera again. This time Vera tells her how, still
"passing," she was able to go to Arkansas and conduct an
investigation for a newspaper about racial discrimination.
She tells Joanna that she felt like "a ministering angel":
"Oh, I hated myself for having spent all those foolish
months, years even, away from my own folks when I might have
been consecrated to them, serving them, helping them, healing
them . . . I tell you I feel as though I had found a new
heaven and a new earth" (270-271). Ironically, vera is only
able to find meaningful work when she is perceived as a white
‘woman. Significantly, she plans never to marry.

vera is the connection text between Maggie and Joanna's

attempts to find meaningful work and their eventual

308

capitulation to marriage. In her "passing" she emphasizes
the fact that the option of meaningful work is really only
available to middle-class, well-educated white women, or
women who seem to fit that description. Even Joanna had the
most success when she danced in a white mask. Thus it is
apparent how the subtext--Fauset's revelation of the limited,
unfulfilling options available to black women who work
outside the home--is an instance of the surface text--
Fauset's depiction of women who marry in an effort to achieve
happiness and a "worthy visible end." Only a middle-class,
white woman can become the "new“woman" of the early twentieth
century and achieve independence and a sense of self-worth
through work. Amy from.The Sieeper Wakes has no idea what
future awaits her as a black dress designer, although she
succeeded when she was "passing." Reading The Sleeper Wakes
in the light of There is Confusion, it seems that Fauset is
"second guessing" Amy's confidence that she will become a
"citizen of the world." She will always be a black woman
first, and in the world of this novel as well as Jessie
Fauset's world, that means certain exclusion from the working
world of America in the early twentieth century. This
connection text emphasizes the harsh critique behind the

ending in Jessie Fauset's novel There is Confusion.

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"She Saw Her Life Rounding Out Like a Fairy Tale":
Towards a Resisting Reading of Plum.§un

Fauset's second novel, Plum Bun (1928) also employs the
romantic ending as a metafictional device to critique the
society which has established that narrative paradigm.as the
standard for all women. While it has received more critical
attention than There Is Conf sion, critics have not generally
appeared to recognize its subversive message. Cheryl A. wall
calls it Fauset's most successful novel (1982, 83), and she
argues that Plum Bun "reveals a sophisticated understanding
about the politics of race and gender" (1990, 158). But
wall, along with McDowell and others, sees that the form
Fauset chose--the sentimental novel--did not allow her the
leeway necessary for a full indictment of the oppressive
systems of her society (1990, 158). Critics have noted,
however, Fauset's depiction of the the seductive and
appealing nature of the fairy tale. According to McDowell,
"It is apparent even as early as 1920 that Fauset was aware
of how folk literature--particularly fairy tales--serves to
initiate the acculturation of children to traditional social
roles, expectations, and behaviors, based on their sex"
(1985, 89). While my examination of There is Confusion
reveals that the female characters marry in an effort to
discover "something more fulfilling, more insistent, more

permeating" than what they were able to discover at work, the

310

surface text of Plum.Bun shows that the female characters
marry because they have been so effectiVely paralyzed by the
fairy tale that they cannot really imagine a life that exists
beyond the ending. Furthermore, the subtext reveals that the
conditions that might make it possible for a woman to begin
to imagine an alternative to marriage and the romantic ending
are not available to middle class black women in American
society.

If There is Confusion is the story of Amy's life after
she embarks on her voyage as "citizen of the world," Plum Bun
returns to the first half of The Sleeper wakes.
Significantly, and perhaps sadly, by the end of the novel,
the characters in Plum Bun do not seem to possess even Amy's
initial confidence that marriage will make all their dreams
come true. They have experienced too many disappointments to
fully believe the fairy tale, but have not experienced what
it would take for them to abandon it. Racism prevents black
women from full participation in the fairy tale, yet, as the
subtext reveals, since they have few other realistic options
they continue to cling to the romantic ending as a solution
to their empty, unhappy lives. This message, embedded in the
subtext, that the romantic ending will not satisfy or fulfil
the female characters, lends an even more ominous tone to
Plum.Bun than to There is Confusion or The Sleeper wakes.

Fauset deconstructs the ending without replacing it with any

311

alternative. Her vision as well as her critique is harsh
indeed.

Like There 's Confu ion, Plum hum tells the dual story
of two young women and their search for happiness. And, like
that novel, the two women in Pium Bun both marry at the
conclusion of the text, although they have traveled
distinctly different paths in their route towards the ending.
The two women are sisters, and the oldest, Angela, has only
one ambition: to "find and frequent" the "paths which lead to
broad thoroughfares, large, bright houses, delicate niceties
of existence."° The younger sister, Virginia, "meant some day
to invent a marvellous method for teaching the pianoforte"
(13). They grow up in a happy, conventional home on an
"unpretentious little street lined with unpretentious little
houses, inhabited for the most part by unpretentious little
people" (11). In the midst of all this unpretentious
littleness, however, the girls are constantly being infected
by Amy's sense that "something wonderful" will happen to
them. And the chief means for this infection is the fairy
tales around which they learn to structure their lives.

Their own mother interprets her life as a fairy tale. She
‘was working as a lady's maid and felt threatened by the
advances of her mistress' lover; the coachman rescued her and
saved her honor by delivering the mistress' messages to the
unwelcome paramour himself; they married and forever more "to

her he was God" (33). Not only do Angela and Virginia hear

312

their own mother's fairy tale, but they also listen to her
read the classic stories. Their mother concludes each
reading with, "And they lived happily ever after, just like
your father and me" (33). Never exposed to African American
folklore, which might have offered them other templates, the
girls learn important and indelible lessons about life

through Anglo-American versions of fairy tales.
According to Bruno Bettelheim in his book The Uses of

Enchahtment: The Meaning and Impertance of Fairy Taies
(1976), fairy tales always convey the same important message
to children: "that a struggle against severe difficulties in
life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence-
-but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets
unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all
obstacles and at the end emerges victorious" (8). The
surface text of glum Bun tells the story of two women who
wholeheartedly believe in the "happily ever after" ending,
but the subtext reveals that gender, race, and class prevent
them.from finding happiness because of their inability to
relinquish their confidence in the romantic ending. Feminist
critics have examined how damaging it can be for a woman to
identify with the story that most fairy tales tell. In most
classic fairy tales women are portrayed as either passive
princesses or wicked old witches (Segal 185). Like
Bettelheim, feminist critic Marcia Lieberman agrees that

children learn important lessons from fairy tales, but she

 

313

maintains that what female children learn is that
"submissive, meek, passive female behavior . . . is rewarded"
(390). Looking at Lieberman and Bettelheim's arguments it is
easy to conclude that female children learn from reading
fairy tales that if they are steadfast and dedicated in their
struggle to remain meek, they will be rewarded no matter what
obstacles they encounter along the way. The reward waiting
for them is marriage to a prince. Karen E. Rowe sums up this
position when she claims, "fairy tales are not just
entertaining fantasies, but powerful transmitters of romantic
myths which encourage women to internalize only aspirations
deemed appropriate to our 'real' sexual functions within a
patriarchy" (239). A black woman who has internalized this
dual lesson of dependency and perseverance is doomed to
failure, as Jessie Fauset demonstrates in Plum Bun. On the
other hand, however, as Fauset also demonstrates, she has
fewer options for achieving alternative endings than those
available to many white women of the early twentieth century.
The constricted possibilities for black women in gihm
arm, as in life, have as much to do with class as with race
and gender. The two sisters in the novel have been perhaps
more deeply affected by the middle-class values around which
they structure their lives than they have been by their
racial identity. Like Fauset, these young women find that
middle-class values and expectations limit their options in

significant ways. Elizabeth Ammons observes that the script

314

for Fauset's life was set by her class as much as by her
race: "The standard expectation for a woman of her background
and upbringing was to be a teacher, the only profession truly
open to black women at the turn of the century, and to become
active in race work and the club movement" (211). These
expectations are clearly the ones held for Angela and
Virginia, the two sisters of £ium.Bun whose parents want them
to become school-teachers, although "neither of them felt any
special leaning toward this calling" (34). And when Angela
finds her first teaching job, she discovers that she
"loathe[s] teaching little children," just as she had
anticipated (48). But Angela also discovers that her
happiness is not actually a concern of the world she is
expected to inhabit.

An examination of the surface text of Plum Bun reveals
the extent to which Angela Murray and her younger sister
Virginia have internalized the romantic myths provided by the
fairy tales which surrounded their young lives. The surface
text also shows how disillusioned the girls are when these
myths conflict with the class expectations and race
restrictions they face. Angela is especially unhappy with
her life and tells her sister that she is convinced that her
race is preventing her from getting "all the things I want
most" (78). Their parents having died, the sisters split
their inheritance and Angela takes her share to New York City

‘where she plans to "pass" as white and take lessons to help

 

 

 

 

 

315

her become an artist. She quickly decides that in order to
acquire the things she desires--friend8hip with clever
people, art, travel, and influence--she must marry a white
man. Steeped in the lore of the fairy tale, Angela tells
herself, "Marriage is the easiest way for a woman to get
those things, and white men have them" (112). Angela meets
two eligible men, Anthony Cross and Roger Fielding, and she
sets her cap for Roger because Anthony, as an artist, cannot
offer her the financial security she believes she needs.
Roger is attracted to her, and she believes he wants to marry
her: "She saw her life rounding out like a fairy tale" (131).
After discovering that Roger is a bigot she breaks off with
him, only to reconcile when she realizes how much she desires
his wealth and prestige. Like Amy, she believes that his
prejudice will change. But instead of asking her to marry
him, Roger asks Angela to become his mistress. At first she
resists, but eventually Angela and Roger become lovers.
.Although "no young wife in the first ardor of marriage could
have striven more than she to please Roger," he soon loses
interest (226). When they separate, Angela tells herself
that it is nothing to her because "she had never loved, never
felt for him one-tenth of the devotion which her mother had
known for her father" (232). But she never ceases to believe
that such a love awaits her.

Once Roger leaves, however, Angela realizes that

"Roger's passing meant the vanishing of the last hope of the

316

successful marriage which once she had so greatly craved"
(233). Her inheritance running out, Angela takes a job as a
fashion illustrator. She welcomes this opportunity to start
her life over again in a place where she could "form ties
which might be lasting," unlike the ones she formed with
Roger. She begins to think of marriage to Anthony Cross, her
first New York suitor, as the answer to her dreams. Her
experience with Roger has in no way diminished her
expectations of the rewards associated with the romantic
ending:
But now she saw [marriage] as an end in itself: for
women certainly; the only, the most desirable and
natural end. From this state a gifted, an ambitious
woman might reach forth and acquit herself well in any
activity. But marriage must be there first, the
foundation, the substratum. (274)
She confesses her love to Anthony, but he tells her they
cannot marry because he is engaged to another woman. As it
turns out, this other woman is Angela's sister, Virginia.
‘Anthony and Angela also both discover that each has been
"passing." Angela leaves New York for France where she
intends to complete her studies to become a great portrait
painter, and after several months Anthony follows her there
*where, presumably, they marry.
Angela's sister Virginia plays a relatively minor role

in the novel, but she does help us understand Fauset's

 

 

317

critique of the ending. Like Angela, Virginia cannot imagine
her life without a husband. From the time she was a very
young girl she dreamed of marriage to Matthew Henson in spite
of the fact that "he distinctly was not as handsome as her
father" (49). Believing himself to be in love with Angela,
Matthew barely notices Virginia until Angela leaves for New
York City. After her sister's departure he mistakes
Virginia's love for sisterly admiration and never acts on the
strong feelings he develops for her. Virginia leaves
Philadelphia and follows Angela to New York because she
believes Matthew does not care for her. In New York Virginia
attaches herself to Anthony, not because she loves him, but
because, as she tells Angela, "I'd hardly have thought about
Anthony or marriage either just now, if I hadn't been so darn
lonely" (355). But, unable to think about life by herself,
Virginia tells her sister, "I want a home . . . a home with
husband and children and all that goes with it" (355). She
‘wants these things so badly that she is able to consider
marriage to Anthony even though she still loves Matthew more.
The important thing, it seems, is not whom one marries but
:merely that one marries. Eventually, Virginia marries
Matthew, leaving Anthony for Angela.

Thus, it seems that the novel ends on the same note of
"happily ever after" as many fairy tales. The girls have
achieved the only option, aside from the classroom or the

club room, that is available to them as middle-class, black

318

women. An examination of the subtext, however, reveals three
things. First, the young women, because they are black
women, are not allowed by their society to explore options
for personal fulfillment and authentic living that lie
outside of marriage and the romantic ending. These
restrictions are magnified for them in part because of their
middle class status. Second, the men these black women
marry, because of their race, are prevented by their society
from assuming the role of the prince who can rescue the
princess from the most besetting dangers of her world. In
the case of Virginia and Angela these dangers are those
associated with being black in white America. Finally, the
novel poses no real hope that Angela and Virginia have found
what they, along with Amy, Joanna, and Maggie, have been
searching for: a sense of fulfillment and self-worth.

When Virginia and Angela attempt to find jobs in the
Philadelphia public school system, they meet the same kind of
opposition that faced Jessie Fauset. As Fauset informs the
reader, "although coloured children may be taught by white
teachers, white children must never receive knowledge at the
hands of coloured instructors" (Plum gun 48). There are not
enough "coloured" schools, and Angela remains unemployed for
a while as she waits for a job. And just as she expected,
.Angela hates teaching little children, although she thinks
she might enjoy teaching drawing to adults (a job that would

be closed to her because of her race.) Her sister fares no

319

better. Virginia longs to teach music, but as Angela informs
her, "You know perfectly well that there are no coloured
teachers of music in the public schools here in Philadelphia"
(34). In leaving Philadelphia Angela demonstrates her
'willingness to consider an option other than the romantic and
middle-class ending, and her sister, in following her later,
shows that she too is open to change. But Angela's only work
is as a fashion illustrator, and she loses that job when she
discloses that she is black. This experience leaves her
feeling disillusioned and seems to push her farther towards
thinking about marriage as her only option. She tells
Virginia, "When I begin to delve into it, the matter of blood
seems nothing compared with individuality, character, living"
(354). But Angela realizes that racism can keep her from
discovering her own talents and abilities when she and
another black woman are denied the passage money they were to
have received in order to travel to France and study art.
Virginia does succeed at finding "friends, occupation and
security," but she does so only by remaining inside the
insular world of Harlem. These women simply don't have the
options to live "authentically" that are available to
Carlotta Parks, Martha Burden, Paulette Lister, and the other
white women in the novel. And those opportunities that
Angela does manage to grasp, such as her job and her
scholarship to France, are denied to her when she discloses

her racial identity.

320

Another even more damaging aspect of the world revealed
by the subtext is the fact that the men Angela and Virginia
eventually do marry are inherently incapable of enacting the
role of "prince" in their society. They cannot protect the
women from the most dangerous thing they must face:
prejudice. Early in the novel Matthew takes Angela to the
movies at a theater where they had formerly been admitted
‘without encountering the "difficulty in the matter of
admission" that they frequently experienced as black patrons
in Philadelphia theaters (74). The usher, while willing to
admit Angela because she appears to be white, tells Matthew
that he cannot go in the theater. He is completely powerless
in the face of this attack and the couple attempts a
dignified retreat. Angela is fully aware of the humiliation
he has endured: "She was very kind to him in the car; she
was so sorry for him, suddenly conscious of the pain which
must be his at being stripped before the girl he loved of his
masculine right to protect, to appear the hero" (76). Later
in the novel Fauset reveals that Anthony has experienced a
similar, although more violent, version of this revelation of
helplessness. When he was a small boy his mother, who
appeared white although she was married to a black man and
was of Brazilian ancestry, offended a white man by refusing
his sexual advances. The man returned with a lynch mob,
burned Anthony's father's house, and murdered his father in

an attempt "to teach this man their opinion of a nigger who

321

hadn't taught his wife her duty toward white men" (289). The
little boy learns quickly that "there's nothing too dastardly
for [white Americans] to attempt where colour is involved"
(286). And he learns also how incapable he is of protecting
the women he loves when his mother marries a white man
because, as she tells him, women "must take protection where
they [can] get it" (290). So, although Angela and Virginia
continue to have faith that marriage will be a refuge for
them, the subtext demonstrates that (if they marry within
their race) their handsome princes will be unable to perform
the fairy tale's sacred duty of protecting the princesses.
And, at least unconsciously, the women realize that they
will not find what they are looking for in marriage. This is
the most devastating, and the most subtle, aspect of Fauset's
critique of the ending. In spite of the fact that Virginia,
and especially Angela, have discovered that they will
probably never be able to achieve their career ambitions, the
:mere fact that they retain them preserves for them a small
sense of dignity and self-worth. .At least they have the
pOtential for happiness. But they both recognize too well
the rules of romance. At one point, referring to Anthony,
Angela proclaims that "At the cost of every ambition which
Shea had she would make him happy . . . He should be her task,
her: 'job,' the fulfillment of her ambition" (293). Angela
wortries that "Life" will be cheating Anthony if Virginia

marries him without loving him, but does not seem to

322

recognize what Fauset so clearly points out: she and her
sister are cheating themselves out of "Life" through their
complete willingness to erase themselves for others. Angela
seems to take one final step towards independence when she
goes to France to study art, but her step is foreshortened by
the arrival of Anthony. His appearance on her doorstep as a
"Christmas gift" from Virginia and Matthew concludes the
novel, but my personal response to his appearance is a
disheartened sense that Fauset is showing us that Angela's
life is over now rather than just beginning. The old
fashioned "THE END" has an ominous connotation.

This connotation is compounded when we consider briefly
the connection text of Pium.§un. A minor character in the
novel, Hetty Daniels, again gives us the perspective we need
in order to examine the connection between Angela and
‘Virginia's headlong quest for husbands and the equally dismal
alternatives that await them if they choose not to marry.
Through Hetty, Fauset demonstrates that, given the conditions
of their lives, no matter which direction Angela and Virginia
choose, the conclusion is "THE END." Hetty began her
association with the Murray household as a maid; she cleaned
upron.Saturdays and scrubbed the front steps. After Angela
and Virginia are orphaned, she begins to live with them "in
the triple capacity, as she saw it, of housekeeper,
companion, and chaperone" (65). Although Hetty reports to

have had more beaux than Virginia and Angela put together,

323

she refused to become attached to any of them: "I never
listened to none of the' talk, jist held out again 'em and
kept my pearl of great price untarnished" (66). Hetty
aggressively endorses middle-class expectations for women's
behavior, but the only reward she receives for her virtue is
an "unslaked yearning" (66). Angela loves to draw her, but
realizes that all her portraits reflect Hetty's deep and
abiding unhappiness. Her empty life and frail consolations
serve as objective correlatives for Angela and Virginia.
This example of what life without the fairy tale is like for
:middle-class black women is not appealing to them, despite
their innate realization that the fairy tale is not an ideal
‘which they will ever achieve. It is this lack of acceptable
options that Fauset once again decries in her subversive,
metafictional romance. Speaking of Angela early in the
novel, Fauset observes, "But she was young, and life would
somehow twist and shape itself to her subconscious yearnings,
just as it had done for her mother" (57). This novel truly
illustrates how strong are the subconscious yearnings

instilled in young girls as they read and hear fairy tales.

324

"Give Me Peace and Security, A Home Life Like Other women":

Towards a Resisting Reading of The Chihaberry Tree

In her third novel, The thnaberry Tree (1931), Fauset
reveals another powerful subconscious force which served to
constrict the lives of middle-class black women in early
twentieth-century America. Centuries of slavery and
oppression had succeeded in solidifying the image of the
lascivious, immoral black woman in the imaginations of most
white Americans. According to Minrose C. Gwin, "The ideals
of sensibility and virtue were incompatible with the slave
woman's experience" (42). Perversely, as Hazel Carby and
others have noted, the sexual stereotypes originating in
slavery continue to dictate the representations and
perceptions of black women even up to the present day (22).
Black women are constantly excluded from what Carby terms the
"dominant codes of morality" (39). In 1902 a piece appeared
in The Indepengeht in which the author asserted, "I sometimes
hear of a virtuous Negro woman, but the idea is absolutely
inconceivable to me . . . I cannot imagine such a creature as
a virtuous Negro woman" (qtd. in Giddings 82). Defending
themselves against allegations such as these became one of
the first priorities of the early black women leaders.
According to Paula Giddings, "The lesson that the Black women
were trying to impart was that color, class, or the

experience of slavery did not nullify the moral strength of

325

true womanhood" (88). It is crucial that we consider this
social and historical context in any analysis of Fauset's
fiction, but we also need to realize that she was more than
an apologist and defender of black womanhood. Her
metafictional critique of the ending also indicts the society
which perpetuated those degrading stereotypes while refusing
to allow black women to escape them.

Many critics who consider The Chinaberry Tree focus, as
does Mary Jane Lupton, on ways the novel depicts "womanly
concerns" such as "motherhood, children, family, dress,
security, the home, social acceptance, and so forth" (388).
Others concentrate on its depiction of ideologies of black
female morality. Barbara Christian views the novel as the
story of Laurentine Strange's struggle to be admitted to the
middle-class society from which she is excluded by virtue of
her illegitimate parentage: "The novel is, to a large extent,
the measure of [Laurentine's] ability to step softly and
straight, so she might be admitted into [society's] shelter"
(44). Vashti Crutcher Lewis also locates the center of the
text in Laurentine's struggle to be accepted by the middle
and upper-class residents of her small New Jersey town on the
grounds that she possesses "attributes of chastity,
refinement, and beauty, all of which are a result of correct
breeding" (382). Seizing on this concern, Cheryl A. wall
argues that The Chinaberry Tree is Fauset's weakest fiction

because she is "intent on proving . . . that most Black girls

326

are good, most Black people are moral" (1982, 84). But
neither Lupton, Christian, Lewis, or wall consider
sufficiently how the special concerns of being a black,
middle-class woman who is considered "always already" immoral
permeate the text.

Mary Helen washington suggests that black women were too
concerned with "uplifting the race" to recognize that
traditional notions of "true womanhood" were merely tools to
further the suppression of women (74). Thus, women writers
at the turn of the century wrote with the explicit purpose of
proving that black women were not sexually immoral and could
certainly meet the requirements of "true womanhood"
(washington 73). By the 19208, when Fauset began publishing
her fiction, the parameters for acceptable "womanly" behavior
had begun to loosen. The "new woman"--a woman who worked and
supported herself--was no longer considered to be such an
anomaly. And many women, including I believe Jessie Fauset,
had begun to recognize the danger posed by the ideology of
"true womanhood." Fauset also realized, however, that there
were other dangers awaiting black women who chose to become
"new" women instead of "true" women. A white woman, assumed
to be virtuous, could choose the route towards independence
and authentic living without necessarily relinquishing her
claims to morality. A black woman, assumed to be base, could
still only assert her claim to morality by centering her life

in the traditional, patriarchal home. If she chooses to live

327

a life independent of domestic concerns, she also chooses to
live a life without objective evidence of her virtue and
morality. This double bind is illustrated most clearly in
Fauset's third novel The Chihaberry Tree (1931).

The surface text of The Chineherry Tree depicts one
woman's struggle to achieve both her own independent sense of
identity and a position of comfort and respectability among
her community. The subtext of the novel reveals that in
order to achieve respectability she must sacrifice identity.
But the connection text reveals the most damning truth of
all: in spite of relinquishing her identity, a black woman,
because of her race, will never be able to attain what
Carolyn wedin Sylvander has called "the compensation of
idealized femininity" (5). A close examination of these
three texts within this single novel reveals how astute
Fauset was in her critique of a society which imposed the
romantic plot upon black women while simultaneously
prohibiting them from fully participating in it.

At the beginning of the novel Laurentine Strange has
only one desire. She prays, "Give me peace and security, a
home life like other women, a name, protection."9 Her
request is especially poignant because she is asking for
things that were denied her mother, a wealthy white man's
mistress. Her mother claims to have loved Colonel Halloway
with all her heart because, as she says, "He was God to me"

(13). These words, echoing those of Angela's mother in Plum

328

ggh, seem to be a formula for the kind of relationship the
young women in Fauset's novels have rejected. They are not
looking for men to be their gods, but rather searching for
men who can be princes and provide for their material and
social needs. The surface text of the novel depicts
Laurentine's search for such assurances. Laurentine is
attracted to a successful man in her community, Phil Hackett,
because she believes that he will give her respectability and
security. Again she prays, "Oh God, you know all I want is a
chance to show them.how decent I am" (36). Laurentine's
prayers are clearly expressions of her desire to refute the
unstated but apparent accusations of her neighbors that she
is not a "decent" woman because her parents were not married.
White and black characters in the novel accept the
notion that the only way for a woman to be truly respectable
is for her to be married. When she was a child, one of
Laurentine's friends would no longer play with her because
her mother would not allow it. The little girl tells
Laurentine, "My mumma say I dasn't [play with you]. She say
you got bad blood in your veins" (8). As an adult,
Laurentine discovers that Phil Hackett will not marry her
because a powerful white man asserts, "there's bad, there's
vicious blood in that bunch" (49). After this
disappointment, Laurentine turns from her plan of finding
happiness and security through marriage to a quest to try and

discover her own personal resources and identity. She still

329

wants to be "serene, gracious, amiable and to be all these
things because of the assurance of her place in her world"
(85), but she begins to build that place alone. Laurentine
makes some friends, and "suddenly her life was full of little
incidents of interest" (99). Laurentine is a successful
dress designer and has two assistants working in her shop.
She is well-liked by her group of friends, and she is happy.
Laurentine eventually concludes that her life is "just as one
would want it" (100). In many respects she has become
exactly what Amy in The Sleeper wakes dreams of becoming: a
"citizen of the world."

In spite of all this, however, Laurentine is not
accepted by the larger community, which is unable to
relinquish its notion of what makes a woman admissible into
society: conformity to the patriarchal narrative of marriage
and domesticity. It is only after a new'man, Dr. Denleigh,
begins to court Laurentine that the Strange family gains a
measure of respectability: "Since Denleigh's quiet
championship of Laurentine . . . Red Brook had been inclined
slowly, regretfully to let the Stranges alone" (241). Like
Maggie in There is Confusion, Laurentine needs to be
"bulwarked" by the respectability of a man's name in order to
be fully accepted. For Laurentine that man is Stephen
Denleigh. She tells him, "You restored me; you made me
respect myself. You made me alive to my own inner resources"

(204). Actually, Laurentine was well on her way to self

330

respect and authentic living without Denleigh, but without
him she would never be able to show anybody within either the
black or the white community how "decent" she is. The novel
ends with Dr. Denleigh and Laurentine's approaching marriage.
The subtext of this novel, although not as fully
developed as that of some of Fauset's other works,
illustrates how impossible it is for Laurentine to retain an
independent sense of her identity while conforming to the
expectations and demands of her society. She eventually
cedes all credit to her lover for her own happiness. She is
unable to even take the credit for discovering her own "inner
resources." If she is to be perceived as "decent," she must
relinquish all claims to self. But there is an even more
sinister message hidden in this subtext. It is apparent that
the black community in this novel has completely adopted and
endorsed the notion that a "virtuous Negro woman" is a very
rare thing. Malory Forten, a suitor of Laurentine's cousin
Melissa, tells her, "Every fellow does want his wife to be on
a pedestal; he'd like to think of her as a little inviolate
shrine that isn't ever touched by the things in the world
that are ugly and sordid" (265). Although, as Melissa
realizes, "life doesn't permit you to keep things like that
in your head" (265), the women in the novel are constantly
expected by their own community to conform to such
patriarchal notions. Even Laurentine's friend Mrs. Brown

recognizes that Laurentine's mother's relationship with the

331

colonel "meant the death of her own . . . good standing in
the community" (316). And another one of Melissa's suitors
reminds her to be "very, very good" (334). This warning,
which is repeated numerous times throughout the novel,
clearly indicates that the assumption is that Melissa is
incapable of being "good" and hence retaining her virtue.
Like the women Mary Helen washington describes who accepted
the notions of "true womanhood" in order to try and create a
place for black women in the already existing social
structures, the community of Red Brook is unable to recognize
the destructive nature of the standards they have accepted.
The connection text of There is Confusion is perhaps
Fauset's harshest critique of the romantic ending. It shows
that black women are eventually destroyed and defeated by
their hopeless attempts to conform to a narrative paradigm
‘which ultimately excludes them. The last paragraph of the
novel shows that both women, Laurentine and her young cousin
Melissa, have indeed found men to marry them.and provide for
their financial needs while also "bulwarking" their
reputations. However, the process has left them "rather like
spent swimmers, who had given up the hope of rescue" (340).
.Although they have found rescue in the form of their future
husbands, they are incapable of thinking at all: "they were
unable to focus their minds on home, children, their men"

(340). The victory is hollow for them.and, like Helga the

332

hero of Nella Larsen's novel Quichsand (1928), they are
virtual zombies at the conclusion of the text.

The "bad blood" that plagues Laurentine and Melissa,
clearly the blood of their black womanhood, will continue to
"taint" them as well as the other female heros in Fauset's
fiction. Fauset's critique is bitter and harsh, and she
excuses no one from the blame of accepting the fairy tale as
a model around which black women are expected to construct
their lives. In her use of formulaic narrative techniques,
Fauset actually does "transcend the form of the romance" by
showing how the romantic ending is ultimately the only, if
unsatisfactory, alternative provided for black women. This
"truth" is vividly portrayed in all her fiction. The
exclusions of the "happily ever after" ending mirror the
exclusions Fauset and other black women of the early
twentieth century constantly faced and struggled with
throughout their lives. Because of these exclusions, Fauset
‘was not able to "write beyond the ending" in the way many
‘white women novelists were doing at that time. Thus, one
distinctive way race and class inflects gender is clearly
illustrated through an examination of Fauset's metafictional
critique of the ending. Mary Jane Lupton has argued that
"Jessie Fauset does create, in each of her four novels,
authentic female lives, lives which reflect woman's struggle
against racial, economic, and sexual barriers. She also

gives us lives which are fulfilled, even, in the end, happy"

333

(392). The women depicted in these novels do seem to
represent Fauset's attempt, in Maria Minich Brewer's words,
to "trace the channels through which narrative exclusions are
continuous with historical, political, and social
[exclusions]" (1146). In this sense they are "authentic."

As I hope I have also demonstrated, however, the most
"authentic" thing about them is how hhhappy the women
characters are as a result of the constraints of the romantic

ending necessitated by the conditions of their lives as well

as the plot.

334

NOTES

1This general pattern of approval in the black press and
criticism--stemming from the supposed unreality of Fauset's
portrait of blacks--in the white, mainstream.press holds true
for all of Fauset's novels. I chose Plum Bun for this
analysis simply because it seems to have been her most
extensively reviewed novel. See also for example Fred De
Armond, "Social Thought in Negro Novels, " rev. of There Is
Confusion, by Jessie Fauset, Oppertunity Dec. 1925: 369-71;
Rev. of There Is Confusion, by Jessie Fauset, New York Times
Book Sectign 13 April 1924: 9, 16; Edwin Berry Burgmm, "Our
Bookshelf," rev. of The Chinaberry Tree, by Jessie Fauset,
Qppgrtunity March 1932: 88-89; "Book Reviews," rev. of The
Chinaber Tree, by Jessie Fauset, Hound and Horn April/June
1932: 507. An exception to this rule is Mary Ross' favorable
review of Comed American St le, "The Tragedy of Mixed

Blood," The New York Herald Tribune 10 Dec. 1933.

2It is important to note that the two other women
novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen and Zora
Neale Hurston, were similarly dismissed.

3Mary Jane Lupton notes the connection between Fauset
and Dowling in "Clothes and Closure in Three Nevels by Black
WOmen," Black American Literature Forum 20 (1986): 409-421.

‘Patricia waugh identifies such deconstructive fictional
activity in her book Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of
Self-Conscious Fiction (London: Routledge, 1988). waugh
qefines meatfiction as "the construction of a fictional
illusion . . . and the laying bare of that illusion" (6).

She focuses on metafiction by male authors in which the
fictional illusion is violently disrupted. The disruptive
Strategies waugh describes usually involve something like The
Erench Lieutenant's WOman's multiple endings or an author's
intrusive comments concerning the creation of the text. This
dlsruPtion forces the reader to acknowledge the fictionality
Of the text and identify the illusion with which she had

1, Ome comfortable. However, metafiction is not a tactic
aITlted to male authors. Katherine Fishburn suggests that

W' Fexts by women writers are metafictional ("wer(l)ds

ithin werds: Doris Lessing as Meta-Fictionist and Meta-

335

Physician," Studies in the Novel 20 [1988]: 186-205).

Certainly, if this is true, theirs is the subtly subversive
metafictional activity of Fauset not the more obviously
disruptive tactics of the male authors Waugh cites.

51m d't Wharton's t With 'ca (Athens: The U

of Georgia P, 1980) Elizabeth Ammons argues that Wharton's
endings represent a similar sense of dissatisfaction with the
options available for women (48-9).

“Jessie Redmon Fauset, The Slee r wakes, The Crisis 20
(Aug. 1920): 168-173; 20 (Sept. 1920): 226-229; 20 (Oct.
1920): 267-274. Future references to the novelette follow
this edition and are made parenthetically within the text.

7Jessie Redmon Fauset, There ie Confusien (New York:
Boni and Liveright, 1924) 17. Future references to the novel
follow this edition and are made parenthetically within the
text.

°Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun: A.Novel‘Without a
Moral, 1928 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990) 12. Future
references to the novel follow this edition and are made
parenthetically within the text.

 

9Jessie Redmon Fauset, The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of
American Life, 1931 (College Park, Maryland: McGrath
Publishing Company, 1969) 21. Future references to the novel
follow this edition and are made parenthetically within the
text.

PART THREE

THEORIZING A NEW FENINIST INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER SIX

RESISTING THE READINGS

My analysis of Jessie Fauset leads me back to the
observations I made in Chapter Three concerning the vital
role previous feminist interpretations play in any attempt to
offer resisting readings of women writers. For it is only
possible to conduct fully resisting readings in the context
of existing analyses. Previous feminist readings of women
writers establish the foundation for both the necessity of a
resisting reading of women writers and the pessibility of
such a reading. That this is the case is most evident in
reading Jessie Fauset, a writer who has been almost
completely ignored by the feminist interpretive community as
well as by the mainstream critical establishment. More than
my reading of Wharton or Cather, my reading of Fauset
represents an attempt to bring her "into the sisterhood." In
reading Fauset's novels I resist far more strongly the
previous feminist readings of her than I resist the novels

themselves. This is because most feminist readers have

336

337

resisted the romantic plot of her novels so completely that
they have consequently rejected Fauset. In response to these
earlier readings, I demonstrate how Fauset's romantic endings
represent a protest against the restrictions placed upon her
by a white, patriarchal society. In rethinking my readings,
I am forced to acknowledge, however, that I have refused to
interrogate Fauset with the same kind of rigor I applied to
Cather and Wharton. I have been satisfied merely to
demonstrate her articulation of the age-old story of women's
oppression and resistance to that oppression. Why have I
suppressed the other stories her novels tell, such as her
articulation of the necessity for compromise and cooperation
with a corrupt society or her apparent inability to imagine a
world outside of that system? Why, in my consideration of
Fauset, have I followed in the footsteps of so many Cather
and Wharton scholars who excuse those women writers on the
grounds of "the limits of their time and type"? The answer
to these questions lies, I believe, in the fact that unlike
Cather and Wharton, who have been securely established in the
"sisterhood," Fauset still inhabits the feminist margins.
Because of the nature of feminist criticism, it is
difficult if not impossible to hegih by challenging the
position within the feminist canon of a woman writer or a
female-authored text. As my analysis has demonstrated, no
individual woman, woman writer, or woman's text escapes the

the male world in which all lives and textual productions are

338

located. Nevertheless, a feminist critique of those
"structural roots" can only take place from within the
feminist interpretive community. women writers and their
texts must, it seems, he brought "into the sisterhood" before
their status there can be interrogated. This first necessary
step is the one represented by so many of the feminist
literary critics examined in this study. If this step were
to be omitted, then one half of the crucial task of feminist
literary criticism would be eliminated. For it is crucial
that the feminist interpretive community continue to identify
the protest against the patriarchy in women's writing before
it turns to an examination of how women's writing also
reifies patriarchal society. Otherwise, our literary
criticism.may cease to be "criticism with a Cause."

As feminist literary critics we still cannot afford
politically to interrogate a woman writers' reification of
the patriarchy hefore we have established her protest against
it. As Diana Fuss has observed, we do still need to
"theorize essentialist spaces from which to speak" (118).

But we also can no longer afford to ignore the many ways
women writers hold multiple subject positions as they are
participants in the society they protest. As resisting
readers, we must stand on the shoulders of the feminist
literary critics who came before us. Our readings do not
negate theirs. They merely complicate them, allowing us to

see the many stories women writers tell rather than the

339

unified story we so often identify. Becoming resisting
readers allows us to see both the conservativism and the
radicalism of the women writers we critique, and it
ultimately allows us to recognize those aspects in ourselves.
In "Archimedes and the Paradox of Feminist Criticism"
(1981), Myra Jehlen describes the difficult task facing
feminists who find themselves critiquing the male ground of
western thought from a position which, like Archimedes'
fulcrum, is ironically located upon the very rerre_rirme it
purports to contest (575-576). In the decade since Jehlen's
essay first appeared this issue has been, if not resolved, at
least addressed thoroughly by the American feminist
interpretive community. The general consensus seems he that
while creating alternative, separate worlds is not an
acceptable option for feminist criticism, care must be taken
to ensure that feminist criticism do more than simply earn
for women "the right to be men" (586). The feminist
interpretive community, however, has sidestepped Jehlen's
most radical suggestion: that "women's assumptions" be sought
at their "structural roots" which are often located in men's
writing (586). The feminist interpretive community has
devoted insufficient attention to the fact that women writing
imaginative as well as critical texts are, like Archimedes,
never able to leave the male world in which their textual
productions are located. Even the most radical feminist

critique is located within the society it attacks. The

340

consequences of a refusal to recognize this fact are far-
reaching, and many have been demonstrated in this study.
Clearly, the feminist interpretive community cannot continue
to maintain its false sense of isolation and uniqueness if it
is to move forward with the vital and important work of
creating feminist literary criticism. we must fully theorize
our interpretive strategies, and we must learn to alter those
strategies which, when carefully examined, prove to be
detrimental to the goals of feminist literary criticism.

This is not an easy task. Just as a feminist critique of the
male world is made more difficult because women have nowhere
else to stand, my critique of feminist critiques of that
world is equally complicated because my fulcrum remains
located upon a feminist ground. But this critique is
necessary because, as Jehlen so eloquently puts it, "it is
only right that feminism, as rethinking, rethink thinking
itself" (601).

The first, and most important, step in the process of
becoming resisting readers consists of identifying precisely
what it is we think we are doing and what we hope to
accomplish when we practice feminist literary criticism.
Critics seldom feel that it is necessary to define feminist
literary criticism. One reason for this omission may be that
since the project of feminist literary criticism is now
entering its third decade, it seems unnecessary to define it.

Another reason why definitions of feminist literary criticism

341

seldom appear in recent critical studies may be that, as
scholars like Alison Jaggar have demonstrated, there are
different kinds of feminism, and critics have become aware
that any attempt at definition might prove unrepresentative.
A third explanation may be that critics look back to the time
in which the feminist interpretive community was more
interested in defining itself and find the evangelistic,
naive tone of those definitions embarrassing. The pull
towards what Jehlen calls "serious literature" and "value-
free scholarship" is still attractive, and we want to sound
less like the so-called "wild-eyed feminists" of the 19708
and more like sophisticated scholars of the 19908. None of
these explanations justifies the omission on the part of a
feminist critic of a clear articulation of the
presuppositions, prejudices, and goals behind the
interpretive strategies she adopts. As Elizabeth A. Meese
has suggested, there are "perilous risks" associated with a
refusal to define the project of feminist literary criticism,
including "persistent fragmentation and alienation, which
undermine feminismfs ability to form the political coalitions
needed to bring about change" (4). By not defining and
acknowledging the project of feminist literary criticism, we
risk constructing a criticism which is no longer "feminist."
It is absolutely necessary for us as individual critics
who define ourselves as members of an interpretive community

to capitalize upon a self-conscious awareness of our own

342

assumptions before attempting to revise our approach to
reading women writers. On the other hand, it is important
that an articulation of what constitutes feminist literary
criticism.for an individual critic or for the entire feminist
interpretive community not attempt to impose a monolithic,
dogmatic design on every feminist literary critic. There are
really very few "requirements" of feminist literary
criticism. As I have already stated, the central project of
feminism is that of attaining and defending equal rights for
all women.1 Feminist literary criticism.must attempt to
contribute to this project. It seems to me that the one and
only thing we can require all feminist literary criticism to
do is contribute to what Meese has called the "discourse of
liberation" (28). I believe it is crucial that as
practitioners of feminist literary criticism we not lose
sight of this goal. Because the basic aim of attaining and
defending equal rights for all women is what makes feminist
literary criticism.nnique as well as significant, we must not
allow it to be buried by our sophisticated interpretive
strategies. In many respects an insistence upon this aspect
of feminist literary criticism reflects a return to the
positions advocated in the 19708 by critics like Donovan and
Cornillon. And I believe that returning to the roots of
feminist literary criticism is a necessary first step if we
are to move forward. The years since the 19708 have taught

‘18 that there are many different ways of accomplishing these

343

important aims, however. In fact, we have learned that these
aims do not mean the same thing for all women. we must be
careful not to make the mistake of insisting that all
feminist literary criticism seek to contribute to women's
liberation in the same way.

While I don't believe my assertion that feminist
literary criticism.must contribute to the "discourse of
liberation" is one most feminists would consider radical, I
am not as confident that my next claim will be considered so
uncontroversial. .A second assumption behind feminist
literary criticism that must be acknowledged is the power it
attributes to literary texts and to literary criticism- And
that power, very simply, is the power to change the material
reality of women's lives. Again, what I am.advocating is a
conscious return to some of the arguments that were central
in the early days of feminist literary criticism. It seems
only reasonable to me that if we agree to accept the notion
that feminist literary criticism should effect political
change, then we must also recognize that the agents for that
change are the texts we read and write. It is crucial that
‘we acknowledge our role as "ethical critics." For one thing,
a refusal to do so leaves the American feminist interpretive
community open to charges of being naively unaware of its own
foundations. More important, I think, is the fact that a
Conscious willingness to embrace the political project of

feminism in our literary criticism--to admit that texts can

344

change the world--will inevitably strengthen that project.
Returning to Robinson's injunction that feminist criticism.be
"criticism with a Cause," the feminist interpretive community
can once again strive openly for change, and as a result
accomplish that change more effectively. Postmodernism,
however, has made us more aware that these necessary changes
are not the same for all women. we have lost the confidence
that solutions will be easy to discover, and we have rightly
begun to recognize that one woman's freedom may constitute
another woman's oppression. Nevertheless, it is crucial
that, even as our increasingly sophisticated interpretive
strategies alert us to the difficulty of our project, we not
abandon it in despair. If it is to retain the title
"feminist," feminist literary criticism.oannot abandon the
political projects of feminism. And it cannot afford to
allow those projects to remain disguised, if it is to have
any chance of success.

As I have tried to show, the second important step the
feminist interpretive community must take if it is to move
towards a more effectively political literary criticism is to
foreground, rather than suppress, the many and varied ways
other interpretive communities shape its interpretive
strategies. Steven Rendell and Gerald Graff suggest that
there is a considerable amount of overlap between one
interpretive community and the next (54; 1985, 114). In its

struggle to differentiate itself from other schools of

345

literary criticism, however, the feminist interpretive
community has zealously suppressed any systematic exploration
of the ways it reflects those communities out of which it
emerged. The unfortunate results of this restrictive
approach are twofold. First, many feminist literary critics
have been hesitant to self-consciously appropriate
interpretive strategies from other communities. For example,
the productive possibilities of recognizing the multiple
subject positions occupied by women writers and their texts
cannot be achieved if the feminist interpretive community
refuses to adopt postmodern interpretive strategies.
Apparently, some feminist critics fear that such
appropriations will pollute the "pure seas" of feminist
literary criticism. The most obvious example of this is Nina
Baym's complaint that feminist literary critics who are brave
(or foolish) enough to appropriate interpretive strategies
from deconstruction or Marxism."excoriate their deviating
sisters" by building on "misogynist foundations" (45). Only
the false assumption that there is no overlap between
feminist and other interpretive communities would lead Baym.
and others like her to believe that it is even possible to
contaminate feminist literary criticism with misogynistic
interpretive strategies. Feminist literary criticism is--to
use the famous phrase of "misogynistic" deconstruction--

"always already" imbued with misogyny. Like Archimedes,

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feminist literary critics must acknowledge the position
occupied by their fulcrum.

The second consequence of the feminist interpretive
community's refusal to acknowledge its overlap with other
communities is, ironically, related to this fact. Because if
we do not acknowledge the overlap of other interpretive
communities with the feminist interpretive community, we
cannot explore the misogyny that may accompany that overlap.
we become unable to recognize that when we read Willa Cather
strictly as a novelist of the "myth of America" or Edith
Wharton as a novelist of manners we are adopting the (often
restrictive) interpretive strategies of previous, non-
feminist interpretive communities. In other words, clinging
militantly to a sense of group identity founded in
isolationism results in a dual loss for feminist literary
critics. As an interpretive community we lose not only the
authority to appropriate potentially life-giving interpretive
strategies, but we also lose the ability to critique some of
the interpretive strategies that may already be strangling
our literary criticism.

As members of the feminist interpretive community we
must make ourselves more aware of how our treatment of women
writers is shaped by a grid we have not developed. When we
turn to Cather, Wharton, or other "canonical" women writers
we must resist the tendency to assume that the literary

criticism that has come before us in no way shapes our

347

feminist literary critical practice. And when we read less
well-known women writers, we must realize that while most of
the available literary criticism.concerning them may reflect
a feminist perspective, that perspective is nevertheless
influenced by many other interpretive communities. As this
study has demonstrated, the choices feminist literary critics
make are profoundly influenced by decisions made generations
before the emergence of feminist literary criticism. we do
not turn to authors like Cather, Wharton, or Fauset with a
"blank slate." Furthermore, we cannot turn to these writers
in our literary criticism without being influenced by the
critics who have shaped their reception. The point is not to
cleanse ourselves of "all unrighteousness"; such a task is
not only impossible, but also unnecessary. Rather, we can
and should foreground as much as possible the specific ways
in which our critical decisions have been shaped by forces
beyond our control. And then we will be in a better position
to resist those forces when necessary.

It is not difficult for the feminist interpretive
community to identify specific ways our critical judgments
have been shaped, both productively and destructively, by
other interpretive communities. As I have demonstrated, the
authors we choose to analyze, the specific texts by those
authors that we choose to read, and even the aspects of those
texts upon which we focus are deeply influenced by other

interpretive communities. Wharton and Cather are good

348

examples of the fact that the authors upon which the feminist
interpretive community focuses its attention often were first
read and found to be valuable by the New Critics. While
writers such as Jessie Fauset, Edith Summers Kelley, and
Agnes Smedley were writing in roughly the same time period as
Cather and Wharton, these lesser-known figures never found
favor with the academic establishment. Paul Lauter cites a
1948 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) survey of
ninety college syllabi which revealed that three women
writers were occasionally being taught in American literature
courses: Dickinson appeared in twenty-four courses, Wharton
appeared in five, and Cather appeared in four (439). In a
five year period surrounding that survey (1946-1950), The
Modern Language Association's American Bibliography cited
eighteen articles on Willa Cather and one on Edith Wharton.
During that time no articles appeared on Jessie Fauset.
Assuming the M.L.A. gibliegraphy is a fairly accurate
representation of the kind of work literary critics are
producing, we could expect to see a significant change in the
critical representation of these women writers in the 19908.
And so we do. In the 1990 edition of the M.L,A.
Bibiiegrephy, 101 articles appear on Cather and twenty-six on
Wharton. Feminist literary criticism.has obviously
influenced the amount of critical attention some women
writers receive; most of the articles cited on Wharton and

Cather reflect a feminist perspective, and there are

349

certainly many more total articles than there were forty
years ago. The feminist interpretive community has failed,
however, to influence the selection of specific women writers
in significant ways. It is revealing that only one article
on Jessie Fauset is cited in the 1990 M.L.A. Bibiiogrep y.
There are many factors that contribute to the selection
of articles for publication in academic journals. And Jessie
Fauset's status as a black woman writer no doubt still
mitigates against her being regarded as‘a subject worthy of
scholarly consideration. Perhaps there are dozens of
articles on Fauset circulating among journal editors who
simply "aren't interested in this kind of thing right now."
I believe, however, that there is another, equally powerful,
selection force in place which prevents these articles from
ever being written. The feminist interpretive community is
still heavily indebted to the selection criteria established
by white male critics in the first half of this century.
They decreed that Wharton and Cather were valuable when they
included them on their syllabi and in their academic
journals. we have accepted and validated their judgments by
selecting these writers as the subjects of our literary
criticism.and by continuing to neglect other women writers
who have not received such "official" approval. If we are to
move forward with literary criticism that speaks the
"discourse of liberation," feminist literary critics must

resist the aesthetic judgments of other interpretive

350

communities. Naturally, we do not want or need to abandon
writers like Wharton and Cather entirely. But we must make a
more concerted effort to choose more non-canonical women
writers for analysis in our literary criticism. Furthermore,
we must admit that "non-canonical writer" and "woman writer"
are not always synonymous terms.

Not only is the selection of the specific women writers
about whom we choose to write influenced by other
interpretive communities, but the specific texts by these
women writers which we choose to analyze areoften determined
by forces the feminist interpretive community does not
control. A cursory review of the Ameriean Book Pubiishing
Record and the Cumulative Book Index reveals some interesting
trends in the publication history of Willa Cather and Edith
Wharton. In general, the same select novels continue to be
republished year after year. Although Cather published
twelve novels during her lifetime, only three have remained
in print more or less consistently throughout the years: 9
Pioneers (1913), My Antonia (1918), and The Professor's House
(1925). works by Edith Wharton, who was more prolific than
Cather, have been equally under-represented. Only The House
of Mirth (1905), gthan Frome (1911), The Custem of the
Country (1913), and The Age of Innocence (1920) have
regularly stocked the shelves of bookstores over the years.
The availability of these texts has had a profound effect on

their treatment by various interpretive communities. Even

351

today, when inexpensive editions of many books by both
authors are easily available, these selected texts still
receive the lion's share of critical attention. In the 1990
M.L.h. Bihiiggraphy, although each of Cather's novels except
thy_§eyhee r was represented, almost 25% of all articles
cited under individual novels were articles on My Antohie or
The Professor's House. The case of Edith Wharton is even
more dramatic. While she wrote twenty-one novels during her
lifetime, articles are cited in the 1990 M.L.A. Bibliography
for only six novels. Half of all the articles cited are on
The hge of Thhocehee and The House of Mirth.

The issues surrounding the selection of authors for
canonization and novels for re-publication lie outside the
scope of this study. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that,
at least until recently, the interests of the feminist
interpretive community have shaped such decisions only
tangentially. It is crucial that we not continue to support
such practices by restricting our literary criticism to those
authors whom the New Critics "approved" and those texts which
the book-selling community preserved. The New Critics almost
certainly selected works that at least seemed to support the
.995; of their society. And that was not a society committed
to attaining and defending equal rights for all women. If we
merely accept their critical judgments by continuing to focus
on authors and works they selected, we lose the opportunity

to illuminate how this ethos was challenged by the literature

352

of the past and can be further unwritten by the literary
criticism of the present. we can easily resist this shaping
force by deliberately seeking out texts by well-known as well
as unknown women writers who have heretofore been ignored by
the critical establishment. As I have shown, reading
previously ignored novels like Sapphira and the Slave Girl
and The Mother's Recompense clarifies Cather and Wharton's
challenges to their society while simultaneously
demonstrating how fully they were a part of that world. And
opening the canon to Jessie Fauset further exemplifies the
many different ways American women experience being a woman.
Resisting the selection practices of other interpretive
communities will contribute to the "discourse of liberation"
by allowing us to draw attention to various aspects of the
female experience rather than restricting ourselves merely to
those aspects with which the dominant critical community is
comfortable.

Once we have determined the subject of our literary
analysis by choosing a writer and by choosing a text--
decisions which, as I have demonstrated, are frequently
influenced by forces that, when unrecognized, lie outside of
the control of the feminist interpretive community--our
interpretive strategies continue to be influenced by the
overlap of other interpretive communities into our own.
'These influences may begin shaping our interpretive

strategies before we are even aware of ourselves as literary

353

critics. Many members of the feminist interpretive community
have their first encounter with women writers, especially the
"major" writers, in a classroom. I myself read both Cather
and Wharton for the first time in 1987 in a graduate course
on modern American writers at Tulane University. My
professor included Cather's novel My Antenia on the syllabus
and recommended Wharton's novel The House of Mirth for
outside reading. Discussion of My hhtonia centered on how
the novel conformed to the standard characteristics of
American literary modernism. My first encounter with Cather
foregrounded her use of complex narrative strategies and
sophisticated symbols. This is not necessarily a bad way to
be introduced to Cather, but neither is it one that
emphasizes the concerns feminist literary critics have had
with her work. In later years I myself taught Cather in a
course on American women writers. At first I was surprised
to find that I was willing to suppress ways Cather fit with
the female tradition we were attempting to define in the
course and focus instead on the "American" aspects of her
work, also a subject of concern. I am.certain that this
tendency was the direct result of my own first encounter with
Cather, and I am equally sure that it enters my literary
criticism in ways that are considerably less overt. As a
feminist literary critic committed to developing a method of
resisting reading of women's fiction, I believe one important

step consists of identifying how our early encounters with

354

women writers shape our literary criticism. I do not believe
it is always necessary to reject the interpretive strategies
we have been taught by members of other interpretive
communities. Rather, I advocate making ourselves aware of
how these interpretive strategies shape our own approaches to
the texts and then resisting the tendency to restrict
ourselves to such approaches in our literary criticism. we
can thus become more self-conscious about exploring
alternative aspects of the texts we study, teach, and
critique.

Most of the suggestions I have made thus far regarding
the development of strategies for resisting reading within
the feminist interpretive community do not require an
individual scholar to make any profound changes in the basic
critical assumptions that person brings to the task of
literary criticism. But such changes are also a necessary
component of resisting reading. As I have demonstrated in
this study, the feminist interpretive community has relied
heavily on notions of "expressive realism" and the "rule of
unity." Heavy reliance upon interpretive strategies founded
in New Critical notions of close reading and closure has
often restricted feminist literary criticism and prevented it
from contributing in any large way to the "discourse of
liberation." This is because the unified story critics
typically identify in texts by women writers is one of

women's oppression. Wharton's Lily Hart is the victim of a

355

vicious society that sees her only as a "beautiful object."
Cather's Antonia struggles throughout her life to ultimately
achieve happiness as she triumphs over the patriarchy that
has consistently oppressed her. Such stories unfairly limit
our understanding of women's writing and, implicitly, of
women. But recognizing the multiplicity inherent in women'
writing is not easy. It is extremely difficult to resist
employing interpretive strategies so prevalent they seem
"natural," an inherent function of reading. In speaking of
deconstruction, Jonathan Culler demonstrates that even those
critics most highly conscious of their attempt to "deny the
notion of organic unity its former role as the unquestioned
telos of critical interpretation" nevertheless base their
criticism on notions of organic unity because such notions
"are not easy to banish" (1982, 199-200). And while it may
ultimately prove impossible to completely "banish" such
notions, the feminist interpretive community must consciously
resist the attractive and comfortable position of relying on
the "rule of unity."

As I have attempted to demonstrate, because the unified
story the feminist interpretive community so often identifies
is that of the oppression of women, and because such a story
can easily hide other important narrative directions in a
text by a woman writer, it is important that we refuse to be
satisfied by merely uncovering that common refrain. Part of

the process of becoming resisting readers of women's fiction

356

involves aggressively searching for multiple texts within a
narrative. The notion of subtexts and surface texts plays an
important role in this process. This approach is limited,
however, because it is based on binary and hierarchical
oppositions. One way to use the idea of subtext without
succumbing to the limitations it implies is to look for
multiple stories in a text by a woman writer. we can self-
consciously search for, not just one or two voices, but three
or four or more. By "overreading" women's writing in this
way, the feminist interpretive community will be much less
likely to define it as simply an account of the story of
female oppression. As resisting readers we can push
ourselves to ask how the voices that emerge in women's
writing contradict and conflict with each other. If we
identify a text within a work that seems to take a definite
position on an issue, then we can immediately search for
another text that deconstructs that position. we do not have
to deny that Lily is a victim of her society, but we can also
see that she does accept individual responsibility for her
actions and that she and other women in the text often break
the bonds of their restrictive society. And we can recognize
that while Antonia may be a hero, the most successful
characters in Cather's novel have become "Americanized." we
can recognize Fauset's romantic endings while also
acknowledging the critique they imply. 'Aggressively and

self-consciously searching for multiple texts will reveal

357

many moments when the story, or better stories, told in
women's writing are more than just "cut and dried"
revelations of women's oppression.

In addition to allowing us to hear multiple voices,
resisting the "rule of unity" can facilitate the
identification of moments when, as with Fauset, the "gaps and
silences" prove more important than the voices in women's
writing. Jonathan Culler emphasizes the importance of
considering more than simply what can be read on the page.
Culler argues that by following traditional reading methods,
"we commit ourselves to naturalizing the text and to ignoring
or reducing the strangeness of its gaps and silences" (1975,
232). That which is not or cannot be said, Culler suggests,
can convey a powerful message. Relying on what Catherine
Belsey has called the New Critical "confrontation with the
[unmediated] words on the page" effectively prevents the
feminist literary critic from considering the "silences" in a
text by a woman writer. In addition, relying exclusively on
the "rule of unity" has led the feminist interpretive
community to seek only one story on those occasions when it
does turn its attention to "silences" in texts by women
writers.

The exploration of "gaps and silences" already figures
prominently in the work of some feminist literary critics.
Susan K. Harris studies nineteenth-century American women

writers and demonstrates that while on the surface their

358

novels conform to the demands of their culture, crucial gaps
and silences reveal an alternative world of female power and
autonomy which subverts the oppressive patriarchy. In her
study of twentieth-century women writers, Rachel Blau
DuPlessis claims that what connects all the writers she
studies is "their desire to scrutinize the ideological
character of the romance plot (and related conventions in
narrative), and to change fiction so that it makes
alternative statements about gender and its institutions"
(x). DuPlessis focuses on moments in which the narratives
are silent concerning the traditional stories of romance and
family; these moments reveal alternative worlds where such
stories do not structure female lives. What both of these
critics have in common is their exclusive concern with how
the silences in a text reveal issues of women's oppression
and women's rebellion against that oppression. By looking
only for silences that speak to that old story of female
oppression, feminist literary critics miss the opportunity to
identify instances when the silences speak to the racism,
classism, and even misogyny embedded in women's writing.
Looking at the silences in Sapphira and the Slave Girl, for
example, reveals that in important ways Cather was too close
to the patriarchal system.of caste and class to adequately
critique it; she was herself a participant in the very
society which she also protested. As resisting readers of

women's fiction we must recognize not only the importance of

359

"gaps and silences" in the texts by women writers, but also
the fact that these moments can reveal more than one story.

Recognizing that women's writing does not necessarily
relate the unified story of women's oppression and developing
interpretive strategies to help us identify other stories it
may tell go hand in hand with resisting the impulse to
overemphasize the importance of personal experience in our
literary criticism. Postmodernism.alerts us to the necessity
of constructing a feminist theory that is not so fully
reliant upon notions of "woman's experience." As I have
already suggested, a theory of reading that has as its
foundation the relationship between the way the author
experiences womanhood and the way the reader experiences
womanhood will strangle any but the most narrow and self-
serving readings of women's fiction. It is essential that we
stop making "women's experiences" the cornerstone of feminist
literary criticism- As resisting readers we must self-
consciously refuse to look strictly for images of ourselves
in the texts we read.

But just as it is difficult to "banish" notions of the
"rule of unity," it is a complicated task to resist the
impulse to identify ourselves in texts by women writers. In
her study of the role of the unconscious in women's reading
and writing, Jean wyatt argues that readers enter texts by
women writers "by way of an identification with the narrator

that corresponds to the mirroring process of the imaginary"

360

(94). Wyatt's arguments ring true and have long been
supported by feminist literary critics like Nancy Burr Evans,
who suggests that reading women's writing allows women to see
their own experiences "mirrored in articulated form" (309).
This kind of full identification is dangerous, however,
because it prevents us from recognizing our own flaws--our
racism, classism, sexism, and participation in the
patriarchal society we inhabit--in texts by women writers.

we do not have to refuse ourselves the undeniable pleasure of
seeing our personal experiences reflected in the texts we
read by women writers. But as feminist literary critics
committed to contributing to the "discourse of liberation,"
we must resist the impulse to allow this identification to be
the end point of our critique.

This is easier said than done, because as wyatt, Evans,
and even Freud suggest, there are powerful forces which
function in our unconscious and make it difficult to resist
identification as we read. In working to become resisting
readers of women's fiction the feminist interpretive
community needs to negotiate a space in which individual
members can preserve the "personal is political" agenda of
women's liberation without excluding all personalities unlike
themselves. As feminists, we consider ourselves more "apart
from" our society than "a part of" it. we are engaged in
illuminating its flaws and in correcting them. And we find

it very difficult to recognize those flaws in ourselves or in

361

texts by women writers. Feminist critics have often failed
in their attempt to understand women's writing because they
have approached it with all the answers instead of with the
questions. By assuming we know'what it means to be a
"woman," we discover nothing but our own assumptions
reflected in women's writing. Even when, as members of the
feminist interpretive community, we claim to accept
postmodern concepts of gender, we continue to posit unified
female subjects in our literary criticism. The "innocent"
woman, we imply, still lies somewhere behind the text.

One way to resist this tendency is to approach the works
of women writers as if we were encountering a text we
recognize as belonging to an "other" tradition. .As white
women reading white women writers, black women reading black
women writers, lesbian women reading lesbian women writers,
or any of the multiple possible combinations of those groups,
we confine our reading unnecessarily when we approach those
works assuming we know the woman in the text because she
shares common experience with us. Reading women writers,
even those from our own tradition, as if we were reading "the
other" involves consciously searching for those moments in a
text which are incompatible with our world view or with our
ideal world. Conversely,it may involve problematizing
moments within a narrative which we believe that we fully
understand based upon our personal experience.2 By resisting

and "overreading" such moments we may discover that narrative

362

prose by women writers does more than simply confirm.our own
personal experience. Women's writing also has the potential
to challenge us to revise our understanding of "woman"
altogether.

Some of the most radical consequences of becoming
resisting readers of women's writing have, I hope, been made
evident in this study. The feminist interpretive community
'will no longer be able to focus simply on how'women's writing
articulates a protest against the patriarchal society from
which it emerges. As resisting readers we will increasingly
need to identify those moments in which texts by women
writers reflect and indeed support their own cultural
position. we must acknowledge that part of our task as
members of the feminist interpretive community consists of
consciously refusing uncritically to embrace women writers,
the characters they create, the plots they construct, and the
texts they compose. It is patently unwise to canonize (in
the ecclesiastical sense) women writers or the stories they
tell, and we must resist the temptation of taking this
critical position. Furthermore, it is important that we
recognize that the willingness to be critical of women
writers and the texts they create does not conflict with the
feminist commitment to attaining and defending equal rights
for all women. If our literary criticism is to empower

women, it must provide tools to help us recognize our own

{if i
\I‘JJ \Ill

 

 

 

 

363

participation in a system that is ultimately detrimental to
the goals of feminism.

This brings us back to the question of how feminist
literary criticism will contribute to the "discourse of
liberation." Becoming resisting readers of women's writing
can help us, as women, to change the material reality of our
own lives as well as those of other women. If we resist the
impulse to see only our ideal selves in the texts we read,
then we will be able to recognize the manifestations of our
patriarchal society in women's writing. It will become
evident through the women's writing we analyze that women are
in many ways as racist, classist, and sexist as men. Once we
recognize this in women's writing, by far the easier task, we
‘will be in a much better position to accomplish the difficult
work of recognizing our own position as products of the
patriarchy rather than simply protesters against it.
Eventually, we may then be able to change our own behavior
and perhaps stop contributing so generously to our own
oppression. If that happens, feminist literary criticism
‘will have made an invaluable contribution to the "discourse
of liberation." The project of feminist literary criticism
involves reading texts differently from how they have been
read in the past. As a result, as members of the feminist

interpretive community, ye will be different because of our

reading.

364

NOTES

1Alison M. Jaggar classifies these goals as typical of
"liberal feminism" in her book Feminist Politics and Human
Nature (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1988).
Jaggar claims that "the fundamental problem.for the liberal
theorist is . . . to devise social institutions that will
protect each individual's right to a fair share of the
available resources while simultaneously allowing him or her
the maximum opportunity for autonomy and self-fulfillment"
(33). Consequently, according to Jaggar, liberal feminists
are engaged in an ongoing struggle to enforce "the
application of liberal principles to women as well as to men"

(35).

2Some of these ideas are explored at length in Katherine
Fishburn's unpublished manuscript, gross-Chitgrai

Conversations: Reading Buchi Emecheta.

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