Domesticity, Feminism, and New Historicism

Domesticity, Feminism, and New Historicism Dennis Moore Florida State University Douglas Anderson. A House Undivided: Domesticity and Community in American Literature. Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 236 p. Gillian Brown. Domestic Individualism: Imagining Selfin Nineteenth-Century America. The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetice 14. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 266 p. Paula Marantz Cohen. TAe Daughter's Dilemma· Family Process and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigem Preee, 1991. 226 p. In general ueage, triangulation cetnreferto the kindofjuxtaposition that Waichee Dimock stages in "Feminism, New Hietoriciem, emd the Reader," the lead piece in the December 1991 issue ofAmerican Literature. Her fine essay posee— and then effectively deconetructe—a dichotomy between feminism and New Historicism; she ie convincing in arguing that each has something to offer the other and that the reader has a crucial role in mediating between those two ways of interpretation. Readers interested in domesticity—emd in the insights that feminist critice and New Historicists can bring to such a broad eubject ofinquiry—will want to examine these three recent studies: Douglas Anderson's A House Undivided, Gillian Brown's Domestic Individualism, emd Paula Marantz Cohen'e TAe Daughter's Dilemma. One learns quickly that Anderson is using marriage as a controlling metaphor, that Brown is focusing on the feminization of individualism, emd that Cohen's focus is the pivotal role ofthe daughter. In looking more closely, it becomes easy tojuxtapose and to play with triangulation, finding ways that the three fit—or fail to fit—together. They all proceed chronologically, for example, but Anderson begins much eeirlier, working forwetrd from "A Modell of Chrietian Charity," John Winthrop'e 1630 shipboard sermon on the Arbella, and tracing its imagery through the writinge of eeveral canonical emd nearcanonical figures who wrote over the following three centuries. Both Brown emd Cohen begin with Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, emd both end with Henry James: Brown discusses TAe Bostonians, Cohen, TAe Awkward Age. (Along the way, Anderson devotes a chapter to TAe Portrait of a Lady, but instead of ending there he goes on to a chapter on Emily Dickinson and em epilogue focueing on Robert Frost.) In choosing primary texts, both Brown and Cohen analyze prose fiction; the former brings in a number of contemporaneous texts from euch diverse areas as "housekeeping and abolitionism, interior decorating and racism, 107 108Rocky Mountain Review architecture and romance," and so on (8). Anderson, on the other hand, concentrates much more on texts that fit a traditional understanding of "the literary," but he also examines nonfiction prose (such as Winthrop's sermon, Crèvecoeur's essays, Franklin's autobiography) and pays considerable attention to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet as well as that of Emily Dickinson. And subtitles make clear that two ofthese three books focus primarily on American texts and authors: Anderson's is "Domesticity and Community in American Literature" and Brown's is "Imagining Selfin Nineteenth-Century America," in contrast to Cohen's much broader "Family Process and the NineteenthCentury Domestic Novel." Once the reader sees that reference to family process, the time for such simple grouping games comes to an end and more demanding questions intrude: What is "family process"? What is the "family systems theory" that is so central to Cohen's book? And do Cohen's comments on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British novels and novelists help a reader who is primarily interested in American texts and authors? The answer to that third question is a definite yes; answering the first two involves more detail. Cohen does an excellent job of defining family systems theory, explaining it and its origins following the second world war, and then applying it to a series of British novels: Cforissa, Mansfield Park, Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, and TAe Awkward Age. Along the way, she offers helpful recapitulations of the central terms, gradually building on the complexity of her analysis. As Cohen's title strongly implies, she is focusing on the crucial role of the daughter in the family—and in the novel. She begins by positing that Clarissa Harlowe is the prototype for nineteenth- and twentieth-century anorectics...