Caroline Gebhard
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines why Woolson abandoned poetry at the height of her popularity as a poet and how her most ambitious poem, Two Women: 1862. (1877), responds to the “romance of union” popular in ...
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This chapter examines why Woolson abandoned poetry at the height of her popularity as a poet and how her most ambitious poem, Two Women: 1862. (1877), responds to the “romance of union” popular in the aftermath of the Civil War. It suggests that Two Women represents Woolson’s attempt to craft a bold tragic heroine modeled not a little upon Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, who embodied the wartime experience of her own generation. Ultimately, Woolson’s Civil War romance unfolds as a drama of difference that exposes a gulf between North and South, and between old-fashioned ideals of femininity and new possibilities for women’s lives.Less
This chapter examines why Woolson abandoned poetry at the height of her popularity as a poet and how her most ambitious poem, Two Women: 1862. (1877), responds to the “romance of union” popular in the aftermath of the Civil War. It suggests that Two Women represents Woolson’s attempt to craft a bold tragic heroine modeled not a little upon Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, who embodied the wartime experience of her own generation. Ultimately, Woolson’s Civil War romance unfolds as a drama of difference that exposes a gulf between North and South, and between old-fashioned ideals of femininity and new possibilities for women’s lives.
Kathleen Diffley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Constance Fenimore Woolson offered an alternative and polyvocal account of Reconstruction gleaned from her extended sojourns and continuing Southern travels. During the 1870s and thereafter, she ...
More
Constance Fenimore Woolson offered an alternative and polyvocal account of Reconstruction gleaned from her extended sojourns and continuing Southern travels. During the 1870s and thereafter, she effectively opened a space for backwater listening, disintegrating social codes, and sustained literary endeavor, a quiet reckoning with sudden loss and even more sudden opportunity. This chapter sets out the book’s purpose—to examine the portrait Woolson painted of the South she saw. It also provides an overview of the subsequent chapters.Less
Constance Fenimore Woolson offered an alternative and polyvocal account of Reconstruction gleaned from her extended sojourns and continuing Southern travels. During the 1870s and thereafter, she effectively opened a space for backwater listening, disintegrating social codes, and sustained literary endeavor, a quiet reckoning with sudden loss and even more sudden opportunity. This chapter sets out the book’s purpose—to examine the portrait Woolson painted of the South she saw. It also provides an overview of the subsequent chapters.
Dorri Beam
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231156172
- eISBN:
- 9780231520775
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231156172.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter presents a reading of Henry James' “A Figure in the Carpet” and Constance Fenimore Woolson's “Miss Grief.” It is about intimacy; but the intimacy generated takes place less within the ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Henry James' “A Figure in the Carpet” and Constance Fenimore Woolson's “Miss Grief.” It is about intimacy; but the intimacy generated takes place less within the pages of each individual story and more across the texts, through characters, and in form. It establishes the centrality of gender performance in “Miss Grief” and the parodic confusions those performances entail, which “breed more capacious forms of social and sexual intercourse and more capacious forms of reading.” The aesthetic dimension permits Woolson the freedom to write and to parody the conventional sexual and textual relations expected of “the master” toward a potential disciple (the plot of Woolson's story). The two writers are able to forge an intertextual relation with each other that eventuates in an acknowledgment of Woolson's literary value, a recognition that “brings one into relation with the possibilities that unfold”.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Henry James' “A Figure in the Carpet” and Constance Fenimore Woolson's “Miss Grief.” It is about intimacy; but the intimacy generated takes place less within the pages of each individual story and more across the texts, through characters, and in form. It establishes the centrality of gender performance in “Miss Grief” and the parodic confusions those performances entail, which “breed more capacious forms of social and sexual intercourse and more capacious forms of reading.” The aesthetic dimension permits Woolson the freedom to write and to parody the conventional sexual and textual relations expected of “the master” toward a potential disciple (the plot of Woolson's story). The two writers are able to forge an intertextual relation with each other that eventuates in an acknowledgment of Woolson's literary value, a recognition that “brings one into relation with the possibilities that unfold”.
Sharon D. Kennedy-Nolle
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469621074
- eISBN:
- 9781469621098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469621074.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter examines the work of Constance Fenimore Woolson, who imagined freedpeople, particularly freedwomen, as successful citizens in an ethnically diverse America. Her writings contributed to ...
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This chapter examines the work of Constance Fenimore Woolson, who imagined freedpeople, particularly freedwomen, as successful citizens in an ethnically diverse America. Her writings contributed to the ongoing debates over the definition of citizenship, the meaning of freedom, and the fate of the free-labor ideology. Additionally, her magazine articles helped foster the rise of a consumer culture, transforming the military district of Eastern Florida into a tourist paradise for her fellow northerners. The chapter analyzes three key strategies which Woolson used in her writing. First, her travel sketches relocated national origin myths from New England to the ancient cities of Florida, taking advantage of the state’s varied colonial history. Secondly, she mainly wrote about the freedpeople and recognized their rightful place in Florida’s cultural, political, and economic life. Lastly, Woolson substituted a work ethic suitable to Florida’s challenging climate and landscape for the northern, gendered work ethic.Less
This chapter examines the work of Constance Fenimore Woolson, who imagined freedpeople, particularly freedwomen, as successful citizens in an ethnically diverse America. Her writings contributed to the ongoing debates over the definition of citizenship, the meaning of freedom, and the fate of the free-labor ideology. Additionally, her magazine articles helped foster the rise of a consumer culture, transforming the military district of Eastern Florida into a tourist paradise for her fellow northerners. The chapter analyzes three key strategies which Woolson used in her writing. First, her travel sketches relocated national origin myths from New England to the ancient cities of Florida, taking advantage of the state’s varied colonial history. Secondly, she mainly wrote about the freedpeople and recognized their rightful place in Florida’s cultural, political, and economic life. Lastly, Woolson substituted a work ethic suitable to Florida’s challenging climate and landscape for the northern, gendered work ethic.
Geraldine Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s East Angels, which traces the encounters between a group of transplanted northerners and the local Floridians: the impoverished gentry, the African ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s East Angels, which traces the encounters between a group of transplanted northerners and the local Floridians: the impoverished gentry, the African American house servants and field hands, and the poor whites of the region. It examines the “lapidary comedy of North/South manners” in the novel. It then considers the novel’s ultimate tragedy and, through it, Woolson’s unsparing commentary on James.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s East Angels, which traces the encounters between a group of transplanted northerners and the local Floridians: the impoverished gentry, the African American house servants and field hands, and the poor whites of the region. It examines the “lapidary comedy of North/South manners” in the novel. It then considers the novel’s ultimate tragedy and, through it, Woolson’s unsparing commentary on James.
Kathleen Diffley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s “The South Devil” (1880), a story of a Florida swamp by that name. It suggests that “The South Devil” investigates differing paradigms for national reform ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s “The South Devil” (1880), a story of a Florida swamp by that name. It suggests that “The South Devil” investigates differing paradigms for national reform and multiple postwar ways of seeing what is literally beneath the surface.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s “The South Devil” (1880), a story of a Florida swamp by that name. It suggests that “The South Devil” investigates differing paradigms for national reform and multiple postwar ways of seeing what is literally beneath the surface.
Kathleen Diffley (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
In the wake of the Civil War, Constance Fenimore Woolson became one of the first northern observers to linger in the defeated states from Virginia to Florida. Born in New Hampshire in 1840 and raised ...
More
In the wake of the Civil War, Constance Fenimore Woolson became one of the first northern observers to linger in the defeated states from Virginia to Florida. Born in New Hampshire in 1840 and raised in Ohio, she was the grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper and was gaining success as a writer when she departed in 1873 for St. Augustine. During the next six years, she made her way across the South and reported what she saw, first in illustrated travel accounts and then in the poetry, stories, and serialized novels that brought unsettled social relations to the pages of Harper’s Monthly, the Atlantic, Scribner’s Monthly, Appletons’ Journal, and the Galaxy. In the midst of Reconstruction and in print for years to come, Woolson revealed the sharp edges of loss, the sharper summons of opportunity, and the entanglements of northern misperceptions a decade before the waves of well-heeled tourists arrived during the 1880s. This book’s sixteen chapters are intent on illuminating, through her example, the neglected world of Reconstruction’s backwaters in literary developments that were politically charged and genuinely unpredictable. Drawing upon the postcolonial and transnational perspectives of New Southern Studies, as well as the cultural history, intellectual genealogy, and feminist priorities that lend urgency to the portraits of the global South, this book investigates the mysterious, ravaged territory of a defeated nation as curious northern readers first saw it.Less
In the wake of the Civil War, Constance Fenimore Woolson became one of the first northern observers to linger in the defeated states from Virginia to Florida. Born in New Hampshire in 1840 and raised in Ohio, she was the grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper and was gaining success as a writer when she departed in 1873 for St. Augustine. During the next six years, she made her way across the South and reported what she saw, first in illustrated travel accounts and then in the poetry, stories, and serialized novels that brought unsettled social relations to the pages of Harper’s Monthly, the Atlantic, Scribner’s Monthly, Appletons’ Journal, and the Galaxy. In the midst of Reconstruction and in print for years to come, Woolson revealed the sharp edges of loss, the sharper summons of opportunity, and the entanglements of northern misperceptions a decade before the waves of well-heeled tourists arrived during the 1880s. This book’s sixteen chapters are intent on illuminating, through her example, the neglected world of Reconstruction’s backwaters in literary developments that were politically charged and genuinely unpredictable. Drawing upon the postcolonial and transnational perspectives of New Southern Studies, as well as the cultural history, intellectual genealogy, and feminist priorities that lend urgency to the portraits of the global South, this book investigates the mysterious, ravaged territory of a defeated nation as curious northern readers first saw it.
Janet Gabler-Hover
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolsen’s For the Major, which explores one of the South’s most potent myths—that of the Southern lady. The novel depicts the Southern Belle archetype in the ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolsen’s For the Major, which explores one of the South’s most potent myths—that of the Southern lady. The novel depicts the Southern Belle archetype in the character Madam Carroll, only to dispel it. Woolson does this not to condemn the Southern lady, but to expose her Northern characters’ narcissistic investment in fantasizing Southern womanhood. Woolson plays with stereotypical aspects of the Southern archetype to suggest that a complex and paradoxical sexual dynamics underwrites the myth of the antebellum Southern woman.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolsen’s For the Major, which explores one of the South’s most potent myths—that of the Southern lady. The novel depicts the Southern Belle archetype in the character Madam Carroll, only to dispel it. Woolson does this not to condemn the Southern lady, but to expose her Northern characters’ narcissistic investment in fantasizing Southern womanhood. Woolson plays with stereotypical aspects of the Southern archetype to suggest that a complex and paradoxical sexual dynamics underwrites the myth of the antebellum Southern woman.
Anne E. Boyd
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter analyzes Woolson’s Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches (1880). It attempts not only to excavate binaries in Woolson’s Southern fiction, but also examine what happens to the tensions ...
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This chapter analyzes Woolson’s Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches (1880). It attempts not only to excavate binaries in Woolson’s Southern fiction, but also examine what happens to the tensions between them. Ultimately, these tensions are not neatly resolved, as they often were in popular postwar reunion romances. As many postcolonial theorists have noted, sooner or later the encounter between cultures and peoples results not only in clashes but also in a mingling that creates forms of doubleness or hybridity, a term often used today to connote the mixture of cultures, but which has its origins in nineteenth-century conceptions of racial difference. A reading of Woolson’s fiction in this context suggests her discomfort with the effects of imperialism, particularly a form of hybridity predicated on an inequality that blurs cultural and racial distinctions. In the process of registering this discomfort, Woolson also manages to decenter her texts in ways that challenge her Northern readers’ presumed cultural superiority in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction.Less
This chapter analyzes Woolson’s Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches (1880). It attempts not only to excavate binaries in Woolson’s Southern fiction, but also examine what happens to the tensions between them. Ultimately, these tensions are not neatly resolved, as they often were in popular postwar reunion romances. As many postcolonial theorists have noted, sooner or later the encounter between cultures and peoples results not only in clashes but also in a mingling that creates forms of doubleness or hybridity, a term often used today to connote the mixture of cultures, but which has its origins in nineteenth-century conceptions of racial difference. A reading of Woolson’s fiction in this context suggests her discomfort with the effects of imperialism, particularly a form of hybridity predicated on an inequality that blurs cultural and racial distinctions. In the process of registering this discomfort, Woolson also manages to decenter her texts in ways that challenge her Northern readers’ presumed cultural superiority in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Kevin E. O’Donnell
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s last novel Horace Chase, where she links the industrial and commercial exploitation of the South with her contributions to illustrated magazines. By ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s last novel Horace Chase, where she links the industrial and commercial exploitation of the South with her contributions to illustrated magazines. By connecting periodical writing with Gilded-Age commercial development, the novel thus provides an oblique commentary on Woolson’s own avocation and livelihood, even as her pages offer an elegy for the lost landscapes of the South.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s last novel Horace Chase, where she links the industrial and commercial exploitation of the South with her contributions to illustrated magazines. By connecting periodical writing with Gilded-Age commercial development, the novel thus provides an oblique commentary on Woolson’s own avocation and livelihood, even as her pages offer an elegy for the lost landscapes of the South.
Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s Jupiter Lights (1889). The novel fosters a retrospective engagement in order to question the nation’s increasingly conservative drift toward segregation ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s Jupiter Lights (1889). The novel fosters a retrospective engagement in order to question the nation’s increasingly conservative drift toward segregation as national policy, culminating in the 1896 landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The novel argues against keeping anyone in confined places and constricting roles by celebrating the freedom available in movement.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s Jupiter Lights (1889). The novel fosters a retrospective engagement in order to question the nation’s increasingly conservative drift toward segregation as national policy, culminating in the 1896 landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The novel argues against keeping anyone in confined places and constricting roles by celebrating the freedom available in movement.
Michael Germana
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s novella “Castle Nowhere” (1875). It examines the role of monetary metaphors in Woolson’s fiction, how she maps these metaphors onto social fissures, and ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s novella “Castle Nowhere” (1875). It examines the role of monetary metaphors in Woolson’s fiction, how she maps these metaphors onto social fissures, and how her story is a participant in, not merely a chronicler of, the monetary debates of the period. It suggests that even if Woolson did not consciously write the monetary politics of the era into the morality play that is “Castle Nowhere,” her contemporaries would have had no difficulty making this connection on their own. The reason is because it was a common practice among public figures of the era to articulate their preferences for one monetary standard over another by joining this discourse to the language and imagery of the Bible. The Book of Amos facilitates such grafting by taking as one of its principal subjects the standards of money and measure and the collusion of the powerful that leads to their abuse.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s novella “Castle Nowhere” (1875). It examines the role of monetary metaphors in Woolson’s fiction, how she maps these metaphors onto social fissures, and how her story is a participant in, not merely a chronicler of, the monetary debates of the period. It suggests that even if Woolson did not consciously write the monetary politics of the era into the morality play that is “Castle Nowhere,” her contemporaries would have had no difficulty making this connection on their own. The reason is because it was a common practice among public figures of the era to articulate their preferences for one monetary standard over another by joining this discourse to the language and imagery of the Bible. The Book of Amos facilitates such grafting by taking as one of its principal subjects the standards of money and measure and the collusion of the powerful that leads to their abuse.
Timothy Sweet
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines the compositional dynamics of Woolson’ approach to travel accounts. It suggests that Northern nostalgia and Northern investment were intimately related when it came to ...
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This chapter examines the compositional dynamics of Woolson’ approach to travel accounts. It suggests that Northern nostalgia and Northern investment were intimately related when it came to appropriating the postwar South in print.Less
This chapter examines the compositional dynamics of Woolson’ approach to travel accounts. It suggests that Northern nostalgia and Northern investment were intimately related when it came to appropriating the postwar South in print.
Carolyn Hall
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines Woolson’s “King David,” where David King contemplates what he will do in the South as a teacher in a new freedom school. His words reveal this white man’s enduring prejudice as ...
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This chapter examines Woolson’s “King David,” where David King contemplates what he will do in the South as a teacher in a new freedom school. His words reveal this white man’s enduring prejudice as well as his abolitionism. Enlisting Eric Cheyfitz’s sense of “translation,” the chapter reads a teacher of freedmen as the projected figure of Northern deliverance, and sees Reconstruction’s miscarriage as a savior’s comeuppance.Less
This chapter examines Woolson’s “King David,” where David King contemplates what he will do in the South as a teacher in a new freedom school. His words reveal this white man’s enduring prejudice as well as his abolitionism. Enlisting Eric Cheyfitz’s sense of “translation,” the chapter reads a teacher of freedmen as the projected figure of Northern deliverance, and sees Reconstruction’s miscarriage as a savior’s comeuppance.
Martin T. Buinicki
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines Constance Fenimore Woolson’s story “Rodman the Keeper” (1877). It considers Northern sentiment about national cemeteries for the Union dead, and investigates the ways in which ...
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This chapter examines Constance Fenimore Woolson’s story “Rodman the Keeper” (1877). It considers Northern sentiment about national cemeteries for the Union dead, and investigates the ways in which Pierre Nora’s “sites of memory” were fashioned once historical events began to fade.Less
This chapter examines Constance Fenimore Woolson’s story “Rodman the Keeper” (1877). It considers Northern sentiment about national cemeteries for the Union dead, and investigates the ways in which Pierre Nora’s “sites of memory” were fashioned once historical events began to fade.
Annamaria Formichella Elsden
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0017
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s short story “Pink Villa” (1888). It raises the following questions: what index to America does Woolson’s story provide? When Horace Bartholomew calls ...
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This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s short story “Pink Villa” (1888). It raises the following questions: what index to America does Woolson’s story provide? When Horace Bartholomew calls David Rod “a modern and a model pioneer,” casting him as the symbolic repository of his nation’s ideals, how confident should we be in the notion of American “progress”? The chapter explores how other concerns complicate the plot’s romantic resolution and undermines what might too easily seem a defense of American pragmatism and masculine enterprise. It suggests that the feminine values emphasized in the story’s title articulate Woolson’s ambivalence about Eva’s fate in Florida and the masculine project of America.Less
This chapter presents a reading of Woolson’s short story “Pink Villa” (1888). It raises the following questions: what index to America does Woolson’s story provide? When Horace Bartholomew calls David Rod “a modern and a model pioneer,” casting him as the symbolic repository of his nation’s ideals, how confident should we be in the notion of American “progress”? The chapter explores how other concerns complicate the plot’s romantic resolution and undermines what might too easily seem a defense of American pragmatism and masculine enterprise. It suggests that the feminine values emphasized in the story’s title articulate Woolson’s ambivalence about Eva’s fate in Florida and the masculine project of America.
Anthony Szczesiul
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617030253
- eISBN:
- 9781617030260
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
This chapter examines the familiar marriage of Northern enterprise and Southern bloodlines in “Old Gardiston” and thereby establishes Woolson’s place in “Lost Cause” pitches and the postbellum appeal ...
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This chapter examines the familiar marriage of Northern enterprise and Southern bloodlines in “Old Gardiston” and thereby establishes Woolson’s place in “Lost Cause” pitches and the postbellum appeal of resorts such as Virginia’s White Sulphur Springs, particularly in a leisured world dominated by Saratoga and Cape May. It assesses the white racial hegemony that was bolstered by the protocols of Southern hospitality, by class distinctions among whites (especially as hotel guests), and by the “foreignness” of a suddenly emancipated black population.Less
This chapter examines the familiar marriage of Northern enterprise and Southern bloodlines in “Old Gardiston” and thereby establishes Woolson’s place in “Lost Cause” pitches and the postbellum appeal of resorts such as Virginia’s White Sulphur Springs, particularly in a leisured world dominated by Saratoga and Cape May. It assesses the white racial hegemony that was bolstered by the protocols of Southern hospitality, by class distinctions among whites (especially as hotel guests), and by the “foreignness” of a suddenly emancipated black population.
Mark Storey
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199893188
- eISBN:
- 9780199332793
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199893188.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter considers one of the most provocative and controversial forms of popular justice in the postbellum period. Through numerous examples of how lynchings were depicted in the fiction of the ...
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This chapter considers one of the most provocative and controversial forms of popular justice in the postbellum period. Through numerous examples of how lynchings were depicted in the fiction of the time—both as a racially-aggravated act and as a violent response to crime by groups of citizens—the chapter examines lynching through an explicitly geographical lens. The intricate relationship that expressions of violent justice have to an inchoate and emerging modernity frame the readings of rural lynchings in works by Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hamlin Garland, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Owen Wister. Rural space and its literary representations emerge as a prime arena for understanding the uneven development of legal modernisation in the late nineteenth century.Less
This chapter considers one of the most provocative and controversial forms of popular justice in the postbellum period. Through numerous examples of how lynchings were depicted in the fiction of the time—both as a racially-aggravated act and as a violent response to crime by groups of citizens—the chapter examines lynching through an explicitly geographical lens. The intricate relationship that expressions of violent justice have to an inchoate and emerging modernity frame the readings of rural lynchings in works by Charles Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Hamlin Garland, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and Owen Wister. Rural space and its literary representations emerge as a prime arena for understanding the uneven development of legal modernisation in the late nineteenth century.
Cindy Weinstein and Christopher Looby (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231156172
- eISBN:
- 9780231520775
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231156172.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Rethinking the category of aesthetics in light of recent developments in literary theory and social criticism, this book showcases the interpretive possibilities available to those who bring ...
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Rethinking the category of aesthetics in light of recent developments in literary theory and social criticism, this book showcases the interpretive possibilities available to those who bring politics, culture, ideology, and conceptions of identity into their critiques. Chapters combine close readings of individual works and authors with more theoretical discussions of aesthetic theory and its relation to American literature. The introduction argues that aesthetics never left American literary critique. Instead, it casts the current “return to aesthetics” as the natural consequence of shortcomings in deconstruction and new historicism, which led to a reconfiguration of aesthetics. Subsequent chapters demonstrate the value and versatility of aesthetic considerations in literature, from eighteenth-century poetry to twentieth-century popular music. Organized into four groups—politics, form, gender, and theory—the chapters revisit the canonical works of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stephen Crane, introduce the overlooked texts of Constance Fenimore Woolson and Earl Lind, and unpack the complexities of the music of The Carpenters. Deeply rooted in an American context, the book explores literature's aesthetic dimensions in connection to American liberty and the formation of political selfhood.Less
Rethinking the category of aesthetics in light of recent developments in literary theory and social criticism, this book showcases the interpretive possibilities available to those who bring politics, culture, ideology, and conceptions of identity into their critiques. Chapters combine close readings of individual works and authors with more theoretical discussions of aesthetic theory and its relation to American literature. The introduction argues that aesthetics never left American literary critique. Instead, it casts the current “return to aesthetics” as the natural consequence of shortcomings in deconstruction and new historicism, which led to a reconfiguration of aesthetics. Subsequent chapters demonstrate the value and versatility of aesthetic considerations in literature, from eighteenth-century poetry to twentieth-century popular music. Organized into four groups—politics, form, gender, and theory—the chapters revisit the canonical works of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stephen Crane, introduce the overlooked texts of Constance Fenimore Woolson and Earl Lind, and unpack the complexities of the music of The Carpenters. Deeply rooted in an American context, the book explores literature's aesthetic dimensions in connection to American liberty and the formation of political selfhood.
Thomas Graham
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049373
- eISBN:
- 9780813050157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049373.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
During the 1870s, tourist guide books gave descriptions of St. Augustine for travellers. Constance Fenimore Woolson and Abbie Brooks painted verbal pictures of the “Ancient City” as the most unusual ...
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During the 1870s, tourist guide books gave descriptions of St. Augustine for travellers. Constance Fenimore Woolson and Abbie Brooks painted verbal pictures of the “Ancient City” as the most unusual American town--more like old Spain than America. Its Minorcan population gave it an exotic tinge. John F. Whitney promoted St. Augustine as the land of Ponce de Leon. Winter visitors found ways to amuse themselves amid resort society. Local residents found ways to make money from the visitors. Some of the seasonal guests were quite wealthy: George Lorillard; architect James Renwick; William Aspinwall; and William Astor.Less
During the 1870s, tourist guide books gave descriptions of St. Augustine for travellers. Constance Fenimore Woolson and Abbie Brooks painted verbal pictures of the “Ancient City” as the most unusual American town--more like old Spain than America. Its Minorcan population gave it an exotic tinge. John F. Whitney promoted St. Augustine as the land of Ponce de Leon. Winter visitors found ways to amuse themselves amid resort society. Local residents found ways to make money from the visitors. Some of the seasonal guests were quite wealthy: George Lorillard; architect James Renwick; William Aspinwall; and William Astor.