prospectus

I finished my prospectus for my senior thesis--here's the slightly raw version, so please excuse grammar/language errors.

In mid-nineteenth century America, among the most popular works of fiction were novels like Maria Cummins’s The Lamplighter that depicted the of an ambiguously raced and classed orphaned girl into a properly Christian white middle class woman. Critics such as Nathanial Hawthorne, James Joyce, and A. W. Abbot wrote off these novels (particularly The Lamplighter) as utterly unimportant to literary history in part due to the sheer volume of tears present in the pages. But what do these tears really mean? The function of the motif of tears in Cummins’s The Lamplighter reveals the complicated nature of sexuality for women in 19th century America. Beneath the flood runs a deeper connotation of sexual desire between women, and the intense paroxysms of tears become moments of sexual release for Gertrude and Emily as they negotiate their life together. Sobbing marks their relationship from the first time they meet and allows the two of them to become physically close. Tears fall to Gerty’s cheeks at moments of intense desire, ultimate confession, and at separation and redefinition of relationships.

I believe that these tears indicate two somewhat opposing things: first, fissures in the performance of heterosexuality as well as true womanhood; second, a purification of Gerty herself, punctuating her path from orphan to the ideal woman. These converse meanings intertwine constantly, complicating a reading that goes one way or the other. While it is subversive to value relationships with women over those with men, a necessary prerequisite for this romantic friendship is stability of identity—only white middle class women get to play the romantic friendship game in the 19th century, and as other literature attests, interracial relationships between women or relationships between women who are on different class levels generally end in strict discipline. Only if Gerty is the ideal woman can she and Emily embark in their queer desire for one another.

Current scholarship on The Lamplighter tends to focus on the seditious ways that gender is undermined throughout the text. Critics like Nina Baym and Jane Tompkins often discuss how these novels were received in their time period and how they related to a female audience. Marianne Noble looks at The Lamplighter through a gothic lens and notes that sentimental fiction in general relies on the gothic to produce sexual tension. Her work centers on sadomasochism in sentimental literature, which will be very useful for my paper. The most recent work around my primary text moves away from discussing these novels as allegory for the oppression of women and moves toward a more complicated understanding of how these texts enforce and break down gender binaries. I hope that my paper will provide a fresh critical take on tears that does not just reduce them to a signpost for the exertion of gender norms.

I will first examine how as a child Gerty marked many adults as her parent, and how this reveals the mutability of her relationships within the text. Crying and sobbing play a key role in Gerty’s ability to manipulate adults into parent relationships with her, and the tears in this section of the book seem to come primarily from anger and rebellion rather than an attempt at empathy. Examining Gerty’s childhood also highlights the beginning of her relationship with Emily and reveal what Emily must change about Gerty for the two of them to begin a romantic friendship. The second section will focus on Emily and Gerty’s adult relationship and how crying spells bring them together, with particular focus on their intersectional identities and how they help and hinder their relationship. I wish to conclude with a rereading of the ending of The Lamplighter, one that challenges the notion that the “happy ending” is marriage, when Emily discusses her deep sense of loss of Gerty after her marriage of Willie. Gerty curiously denies the women in her life tears when she marries Willie. Gertrude reserves tears only for her relationships with women—Willie can never privy to the close relationship that Gertrude has with Emily, and thus cannot experience Gertrude’s tears in a way that brings them closer together.

Today's Library Acquisitions

1. Hawthorne by Henry James
2. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 by Jane Tompkins
3. Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels By and About Women in America, 1820-1870 by Nina Baym (whom I have the biggest crush on)
4. The Masochistic Pleasure of Sentimental Literature by Marianne Nobel
5. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America by John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Gallows. Necessary for decompression.

The Day after Theory Thursday Links and Opinions

Good morning, all--I just moved and was too tuckered out yesterday to really make any progress on anything writing or reading related. So here's what I was reading this morning...

• The British Government released new tips for pregnant women to avoid H1N1 flu. Considering that I've been watching The Tudors on Netflix the past few days, H1N1 flu seems to be the new sweating sickness.
• Questioning Transphobia reports about the Leticia King pre-trial hearings.
• NPR has an interesting article up about the underground movement for women pastors in the Southern Baptist church. A bit from it:

  "Burleson says Jesus treated women as equals, and if Southern Baptists ignore his example, the denomination will shrivel. Burleson believes there's a quiet underground movement within the convention to rethink women's roles."

  Like the Church of Christ that I grew up in, Southern Baptist churches are very critical of women being pastors. In the Church of Christ, women are not allowed to serve the Lord's Supper, pray in front of adult men without their permission or during any large assembly, or even lead singing. Not that you can conflate the two denominations, but they have very similar principles.
• Here's a round up of posts about Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest. I want to add that Henry Louis Gates has been doing tireless work to bring American Black women writers into a very white scene. My thesis is on American women writers in the 19th century, Maria Susanna Cummins in particular, and without Henry Louis Gates we wouldn't have The Bondwoman's Narrative or Harriet Wilson's work--and she wrote the first African-American novel. To me he is an extremely important man without whom the field that I might enter would be even more blank--read "white" and "male." Obama comments on Gates's Arrest. BoingBoing's reporting on the ordeal. Jack and Jill Politics Link Round-Up. There is of course a ton more interesting reading out there than this.
  
• And now for another round-up--this time on Harry Potter! I haven't seen the movie yet, but soon I will contribute my 8.00 to the millions they have already made. There is some great stuff out there about the movies and a few about the books, including: Less about Harry Potter and more about YA Lit--Racialicious had a great post awhile ago about "Writing what you know" and what that means in the extremely white world of YA literature. RaceWire Goes to the Movies: Harry Potter Edition. And the amazing Anusuya Sivaram's Racial Justice Guide to Viewing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Read the whole thing, but here are her bulleted points:

  "Themes of Racial Justice that appear in the 6th book specifically (and will hopefully come up in the movie):
  -The portrayal of terrorists/criminals. In the magical world of J.K. Rowling, Death Eaters, who are predominantly “purebloods” use terror tactics, as opposed to the pluralistic “Order of the Phoenix”, who don’t. In contrast, our mainstream media gives more airtime to terrorists and criminals who are people of color, rather than white domestic terrorists/criminals. It’s an interesting reversal that perhaps needs to be contextualized more, given the allegory. It’s also an interesting historical shift as well.

  -Structural racism. The Ministry of Magic’s regulations on magical species (Centaurs, House-Elves, etc) that prevent them from using magic is analogous to structural racism in our Muggle World. Though this only plays a small role in Book Six, it’s interesting to see the reversal that takes place—from campaigning against the societal position of House Elves and other magical creatures, Harry and his friends start rely on these creatures (Dobby, Kreacher, Firenze), and seem to espouse their subordination as long as they are treated benevolently.

  -Merit based achievement vs. Favoritism. This is especially important with the arrival of Professor Slughorn (the formation of the “Slug Club”, which rewards the privileged). Also the fact that Muggle-borns often have to work harder for everything than purebloods (Hermione Granger, though brilliant, simply doesn’t command universal respect like I think she should.), should be of some interest to us. This is also relevant under structural racism, as minorities (Muggle-born wizards) don’t have well-established avenues to recourse in the magical world (there’s limited infrastructure for Muggle-borns being introduced to the Magical world for the first time), and must rely on the benevolence of wizards. Harry’s status is also questioned—he’s just lucky, not talented, but reaps the benefits of his position, intentionally or not.

  -The origins of racism/discrimination. Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort) and his origins are a major plotline in the novel. Rowling's theory of discrimination mainly discusses individual racism, while structural racism is what ARC concentrates on eliminating. Also, Rowling emphasizes love as a way to combat intolerance (Dumbledore says this is the reason why Harry isn't like Voldemort)--you can interpret this to mean pluralism is better than purity. Still, it’s important to recognize that while Rowling’s magical world is amazing (who DIDN’T want to go to Hogwarts when they read the books?), it’s still stratified, and faces the same problems of equity and pluralism that our world does."

I want to add some things about Harry Potter (book version) that I found troubling/intriguing. I think that Hermione's dedication to helping House-Elves riddled with the same struggles that many anti-racists fall into. She assumes she knows what House-Elves need, thinks that only removing the obvious issues they face will change everything for the better, and generally botches things up with her activism every day. On the other hand, Harry and Ron, who both don't like House-Elves being treated poorly, make fun of Hermione for being an activist and while they wouldn't call themselves racist they are oblivious to the oppression that House-Elves face.

Of course, I am concerned that Rowling decided to couch her racial arguments in magical allegory rather than actually having more than just token characters of color.

And finally--Cake Wrecks on Harry Potter!

Thursday Theory Links and Pictures

LolFoucault, Panopticon division
via tn_jackrabbit at LOLTHEORISTS lj group



Signifer/Signified? And the importance of underpunctuation
over at Cake Wrecks!

In Austin they recently held the 32nd annual O. Henry pun-off.

In Canonball news, I'm starting History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 today for my senior thesis, so you'll get to go along with me on that trip. I'll keep you updated; I'll also be summarizing and critiquing some Foucault introduction books.

Oh, and thanks for everyone who stuck up for me at Feministing.

Butler and What It Means to Be Confusing

I’m reading Sara Salih’s Judith Butler, a condensed translation of Butler’s ideas that my queer theory professor recommended to me a long time ago. I’m getting ready to write a paper using some Butler to talk about Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. I’m pretty effing excited about it and I will be sure to explore my ideas here with you, but I have to get them first, and I also have to understand Judy B.

Once my friend Jill and I talked about how classist we find Butler, specifically because she makes no amends to her difficult prose. But Salih’s take on Butler’s language really made me think about what it means to call her classist, and how folks dismiss her on that regard (or on the count that she’s just difficult to understand and dear God, we only have so much time/energy in the world—which gets back to class, etc., I know). Salih defends her, and Butler defends herself too on this in an essay and other works that I have to dig up somewhere in response to her winning the Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Award in 1998. One of Judith’s responses is here, but she also wrote some more things about it that I really want to examine...some other time.

The three defenses they bring up that really got me to thinking follow:
1) Butler is willing to revise her thoughts, to contradict herself, and is willing to go around and under but not through her inquiries. This is pretty cool because it’s basically what her theories boil down to (and I guess post-structuralism in general).

2) What’s so good about being easy to understand? While I do think that there is class, etc. oppression going on here, I think this is honestly a good question. After all, as a writing center tutor, I firmly agree that neither style nor grammar are politically neutral, which Salih discusses about Butler (and through Butler, Hegel). I mean, my choice to use an ostensibly female pronoun with Salih is in itself a political choice.

3) Butler is hard to read. This leads to her text being misread. For instance, everyone gets performance and performativity mixed up, and Butler really hates that. (We’ll explore this more thoroughly later). However, being misread is pretty great, actually, because it means that the text itself is producing the theory that Butler creates. Misreading is a lot like performativity actually, because you think that the text means one clear thing when really it’s a whole combination of different things, and it means a lot of different things to many different people. Now, if that misreading is ultimately queer but comes at the expense of the reader, I’m not sure what to do with that. But the queerness/Butler-theory-ness of misreading Butler’s work is a pretty neat idea.

On the other hand, I understand criticizing her language. Being deliberately confusing—and shall I say it? deliberately academic—is rooted in a lot of power and privilege. But I agree with Salih and Butler that this is not a good enough reason to just write her off as a bad theorist—because Lord knows pretty much the whole world is confusing.

Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. New York: Routledge, (2005). Worldcat Link here.