Debra Ann MacComb - Tales of liberation, strategies of containment : divorce of the representation of womanhood in American fiction, 1880-1920

edited by

JEROME NADELHAFT

U NIVERSITY OF M AINE

Jerome Nadelhaft, series editor

Colleen J. Sheehy

Roger N. Casey

Toni A. Perrine

Daneel Buring

Gary Daynes

Cindy J. Kistenberg

Sandra Hollin Flowers

Thomas J. Johnson

Christine List

Randall Clark

Ruth Wood

Susan M. Doll

Barbara Mortimer

Christopher Harris

Kenneth G. Bielen

Debra Ann MacComb

Ann Travers

First published 2000 by Garland Publishing, Inc.

This edition published 2015 by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Copyright 2000 by Debra Ann MacComb

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or here-after invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

MacComb, Debra Ann.

Tales of liberation, strategies of containment: divorce and the representa
tion of womanhood in American fiction, 18801920 / Debra Ann MacComb.

p. cm. (Garland studies in American popular history and culture)

Revision of the authors thesis.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8153-3804-X (alk. paper)

1. American fiction20th centuryHistory and criticism. 2. Divorce in literature. 3. American fiction19th centuryHistory and criticism. 4. Married women in literature. 5. Marriage in literature. 6. Women in literature. I. Title. II. Series.

PS374.D55 M33 2000

813.409355dc21 00-026133

ISBN 13: 978-0-8153-3804-8 (hbk)

Following Page 34

The Education of the American Girl

The End of the Season

Highly Cultivated Flower

The Power

Apropos of Passing Events

Knots

Following Page 82

Why Not Use Our Titles?

The Invasion of America by the British

Good Fishing

Shopping Europe

The Lion in Love

Another Nobleman Among Us

Following Page 134

Two Souls

In the Lobby of the Court

Divorce Frieze

Mapping Matrimony

Her Divorce Suit

Embarrassments Divorce

Following Page 182

In the Ranks

Two Sisters

Some Coming Fashions

The Feminization of Labor

Advice to Husbands of Feminists

The Husbandette

1950

Extinct

Divorce has been something of an American tradition ever since its introduction into Puritan New England, yet no substantial study of the role divorce plays in American fiction has been undertaken since the 1940s, nor has any connection been traced between divorce plots and novels of manners, domesticity or adultery. This project begins to address that absence and to respond to the common misperception that divorce as a thematic concern is a relatively recent phenomenon. As a legal remedy for failed marriages and a metaphor for cultural upheaval, divorce has in fact been a feature of American life and letters since the split between England and America provided a model for a surge in divorce petitions. Of particular interest is the way in which womenas inheritors of a national tradition sanctioning an individuals pursuit of happiness and as guardians of a domestic sphere upholding communal valueare represented negotiating feminine roles and values around faltering marriages. Such negotiations invariably test whether divorce functions in a text as a strategy for containment and preservation of old hegemonies, or as a legitimate mode of liberation and expansion of female roles. In pursuing these issues, a range of divorce narratives including novels by Fanny Fern, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Edna Ferber and Sinclair Lewiscome under scrutiny. In addition to canonical (or nearly so) works by these authors, this project incorporates an array of nineteenth and early twentieth-century textsfiction of the popular culture, conduct books and self-improvement manuals, womens mass-circulation journals, newspaper and magazine articles, society columns, advertising, Life cartoons, and contemporary theories of economic and social developmentin order to provide an historicized context in which to probe the range of emerging identities implicated in divorce: the New Woman, the social climber, and the extra-domestic worker. By thus raising questions about the influence that fictional representations of divorce might exert in defining, modifying or subverting womens social role and economic function, Tales of Liberation adds a necessary dimension to recent studies focused upon tales of courtship, marriage and motherhood.

I have been particularly fortunate in the support and encouragement I have received from institutions, colleagues and friends in completing this project. I am very grateful to the UCLA Center for the Study of Women whose travel grant allowed me to do research in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, during the summer of 1993. Its support has not been financial only, for the Centers programs and lecturesindeed, its very presence on campusprovides invaluable moral and intellectual support for women students and faculty alike, and for all of those whose research focuses upon women. The Lee F. Payne Research Fellowship (19931994) for the use of journalistic sources in research and writing provided a year long stipend in support of my dissertation studies. UCLAs Department of English also has been most generous, awarding me the Irving and Jean Stone Dissertation Year Fellowship (19941995) as well as discretionary funds to photographically reproduce some of the old and faded illustrations included in this project. The Department of English and Philosophy at the State University of West Georgia has also generously granted release time so that I could at last turn my dissertation into a book.