Journal of Undergraduate Research at The College of Saint Rose, Vol. V

The Journal of Undergraduate Research The College of Saint Rose

Volume V 路

Spring 2014

Journal of Undergraduate Research of The College of Saint Rose Volume V Spring 2014 Cover Design Janna Czepiel ’15 Editor’s Introduction Brian Sweeney………...………………………...2 Editorial Board……………………………………………………..…..3 Unspoken Voices: Male Victims of Female-Perpetrated Domestic Violence Brianna Grant ’14…….………………...…….…….………..5 Introduced by Alfred D. Chapleau Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Feminist Performance Art Stephanie Hewett ’14………………...……….………...…...14 Introduced by Robert R. Shane Immigrant and Native Motherhood: The Eugenic Battle for AngloSaxon America, 1900-1930 Amelia Jacobs ’14………………….…….…..………………...35 Introduced by Risa Faussette An Evolving Struggle: The Political Incorporation of Gays and Lesbians in Urban Politics Joel Kersting ’15...………………..……….………..……….58 Introduced by Ryane McAuliffe Straus Teachers’ Perceptions of the Common Core Learning Standards Amanda Prinz ’14………………………….………..………79 Introduced by Christina Pfister “I will come to my mother, by and by”: The Presence of Oedipal Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet Robert Stoddard ’14……………......…………………….....93 Introduced by David Morrow “The effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her”: Community in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse Christopher J. Surprenant ’14.……...……………………..106 Introduced by Catherine Cavanaugh Call for Papers: Journal of Undergraduate Research Volume VI.....126

Editor’s Introduction Brian Sweeney Assistant Professor of English As the new editor of the Journal of Undergraduate Research, I am delighted to introduce these seven essays which represent outstanding undergraduate research across six disciplines and across three of the college’s schools. The essays were selected for publication on the basis of blind review by faculty members with relevant expertise. While the essays were not chosen for their conformity to a particular theme, a concern with gender and sexuality characterizes nearly all of them. From Stephanie Hewett’s critique of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance, to Joel Kersting’s study of gay and lesbian political incorporation in four U.S. cities, to Christopher Surprenant’s reading of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in relation to middle-class women’s experience in early twentieth-century Britain, the majority of the essays here consider questions of gender and sexuality in connection with a variety of subjects: participatory democracy, Progressive Era biopolitics, domestic violence, 1970s performance art, Shakespearean adaptation, and the modernist novel. I find the dialogue that emerges to be a fascinating one. I hope you will as well.

In addition to showcasing research by seven undergraduates, this fifth volume of the Journal of Undergraduate Research is the first to feature an original cover designed by a Saint Rose undergraduate, graphic design student Janna Czepiel.

My thanks go out to all eight students whose work appears here, as well as to all of the students who submitted work for consideration. I am also deeply grateful to the 26 faculty members who gave of their time to evaluate one or more of our 25 submissions, as well as to the seven faculty members who wrote the introductions that precede the essays that appear here.

Special thanks go out to three individuals. Thanks to my resourceful editorial assistant, Kelly Weiss, who worked with me on this volume of the Journal as she completed her M.A. in English last fall. Thanks to our Provost, Dr. Hadi Salavitabar, for his support for this journal and his dedication to promoting undergraduate and graduate research at the college. Finally, thanks to my colleague, Dr. Ryane McAuliffe Strauss, who founded the Journal of Undergraduate Research in 2009-10, tirelessly edited the publication for four years, and has continued to be a critical source of advice and support throughout my first year in the editor’s chair.

Editorial Board Editor Brian Sweeney, Department of English Editorial Assistant Kelly Weiss, English M.A. ’13 School of Arts and Humanities Alfred Antico, Department of Communications Michael Brannigan, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Cailin Brown, Department of Communications Catherine Cavanaugh, Department of English May Caroline Chan, Department of English Eurie Dahn, Department of English Jenise DePinto, Department of History and Political Science Risa Faussette, Department of History and Political Science Theresa Flanigan, Center for Art and Design Megan Fulwiler, Department of English Dennis Johnston, Department of Music Lisa Kannenberg, Department of History and Political Science Jin Kim, Department of Communications Kate Laity, Department of English Mark Ledbetter, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Angela Ledford, Department of History and Political Science Jeffrey Marlett, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies Karen McGrath, Department of Communications Silvia Mejia, Department of World Languages and Cultures/American Studies Kim Middleton, Department of English Erin Mitchell, Department of Foreign Languages Mary Alice Molgard, Department of Communications David Morrow, Department of English Marda Mustapha, Department of History and Political Science Dan Nester, Department of English David Rice, Department of English Hollis Seamon, Department of English Robert P. Shane, Center for Art and Design Rone Shavers, Department of English Ryane McAuliffe Straus, Department of History and Political Science Barbara Ungar, Department of English Bridgett Williams-Searle, Department of History and Political Science

School of Math and Science Alfred D. Chapleau, Department of Criminal Justice Amina Eladdadi, Department of Mathematics Rob Flint, Department of Psychology David Goldschmidt, Department of Computer Science David Hopkins, Department of Biology Ian MacDonald, Department of Computer Science Richard Pulice, Department of Social Work Ann Zak, Department of Psychology Ann Zeeh, Department of Biology School of Education Deborah Kelsh, Department of Teacher Education Christina Pfister, Department of Teacher Education Elizabeth Yanoff, Department of Teacher Education School of Business Janet Spitz, Department of Business Administration

Unspoken Voices

Introduction to “Unspoken Voices: Male Victims of FemalePerpetrated Domestic Violence” Alfred D. Chapleau Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Behavior, and Law

Once upon a time—so the story goes—female victims of domestic violence were treated with disrespect, blamed for not being good wives or girlfriends, or worse still were accused of lying about the incident altogether in order to obtain advantage in legal proceedings involving divorce, separation, or child custody and visitation. Society and the institutions of criminal justice stubbornly refused to acknowledge the abuse or were inadequate in their response to it.

Women victims were left to deal with their physical and emotional injuries and their abusers without assistance or support. Thank heavens this doesn’t happen anymore! Right? Well maybe not. Brianna Grant turns the domestic abuse coin over to discover that male victims of heterosexual domestic violence can sometimes suffer the very slights and indignities female victims suffered before enlightened thinking and better criminal justice policies changed their reality.

Domestic violence in all its iterations is abhorrent. There must be no disagreement on this score. Whether the perpetrator is male or female or the victim is the opposite sex or the same, domestic violence must be met with the same level of moral and legal indignation. Those that suffer it must be helped, healed, and supported regardless of gender. Domestic violence’s corrosive effects regardless of the gender of the victim must be recognized and the perpetrator justly prosecuted and adequately punished.

Our author here urges us that, as we threw off prejudices regarding female victims of domestic violence (“she deserved it”) so must we throw off prejudices regarding male victims (“men can’t be victims”). We should not rest easy from our journey to improve our response to domestic violence until it becomes the unequivocal stated policy of our society and criminal justice establishment that domestic violence - regardless of who is the victim – is an inappropriate response to interpersonal conflict. Grant in this article continues us on this journey, reminding us that there is still a ways to be travelled.

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Unspoken Voices: Male Victims of Female-Perpetrated Domestic Violence Brianna Grant Criminal Justice Major; Class of 2014 Domestic violence is defined as threatening behavior and psychological, physical, or sexual abuse between adults who are, or have been in a romantic relationship (Bowen, & Nowinski, 2012, 36).

Domestic violence awareness has been on the rise since the subject first came into the spotlight of social science and the criminal justice system in the 1970s. A new focus emerged: how to help women victims of domestic violence and how to change the culture of male dominance that breeds domestic violence. Male victims were ignored as domestic violence came to be understood as a social problem whose victims were women. Even today, forty years after domestic violence awareness began, it can seem that male victims in heterosexual relationships are being dismissed and marginalized not only by the criminal justice system but also by domestic violence outreach systems designed to help victims of domestic abuse. The extent of the problem of male victimization has likewise been underreported because of outdated societal norms about a male’s role in a relationship and masculine identity.

The ideas and theories of domestic violence that are understood and accepted by most people follow the patriarchal paradigm. This paradigm states that the causes of domestic violence can be found in the patriarchal system of male dominance (Desmarais, Hamel, & Muller, 2009, 626). According to this paradigm, men have power over women and will use domestic violence to maintain this power (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 576). In this paradigm the idea of male victims of domestic violence is not even considered; it is assumed that women are the victims and males the perpetrators. This theory of domestic abuse generalizes males as violent and controlling. Before the 1970s, women victims of domestic violence were the ones rejected and dismissed by society. Ideas about domestic violence changed as research emerged on the subject, to shape the paradigm that women can be victims of domestic violence and it is not their fault. Now this paradigm needs to shift further to reflect the reality that domestic violence can occur to all people, regardless of gender.

In the current view of domestic violence, the idea of looking at individual characteristics of domestic violence offenders regardless of gender is not considered. Therefore this view ignores gender neutral factors of domestic violence like personality, child development, and 6

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family system of the offender that effect both males and females (Desmaris, Hamel, & Muller, 2009, 626). By accepting the prevailing model social scientists and psychologists who study domestic violence belittle male victims of abuse.

Despite the majority perspective that domestic violence is an act by a man against a woman, it is estimated that 12% of men a year are targets of domestic abuse from their female partners and that 4% of these victims receive serious bodily injury (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 572). It is predicted that the number of male victims could even be higher. A number of studies also show that males and females commit domestic violence at almost identical rates: a man abuses his female partner every 15 seconds in America while a female abuses her male partner every 14.6 seconds (Barber, 2008, 36). There are also gender similarities in the number of victims of domestic violence. In 20042005 it was found that 28% of women and 18% of men were victims of domestic violence (Barber, 2008, 36). 2005 crime statistics showed that 20% of all people arrested for domestic violence were women (Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009, 342). There are several reasons why these statistics may not accurately reflect the numbers of cases of male victimization. These reasons center around domestic violence cases against men not been reported rather than the notion that men are not victims to domestic violence.

Male victims of domestic violence often state that they do not report the abuse to authorities. A number of factors contribute to this lack of reporting. First, men are usually raised around violence and aggression. Men are taught to fight each other whether in sports or with their brothers; this constant exposure to violence diminishes a person’s perception of violence as a crime. Therefore when a man is abused by his partner he is less likely to see the incident as a crime. Women tend to see domestic violence as less acceptable and more severe than their male counterparts do (Seelau, & Seelau, 2005, 364). The National Crime Victim Survey found that females reported ten times as many incidents of violence than men did (Kimmel, 2002, 1).

Male victims may also fear feelings of emasculation within themselves or from society if they report domestic violence (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 574). Here large emphasis is placed on the male’s traditionally defined patriarchal roles as “bread winner” and “the man of the house.” When a male is abused by his partner it can be seen as a threat to his male dominance. The man is supposed to be the one in control not only of the house but of his partner as well and when he falls victim to domestic violence it can be seen as a failure to fill this social role. This can lead to feelings of humiliation and fear of being seen as weak by society (Bowen, & Nowinski, 2010). Men are also The College of Saint Rose

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conditioned by society not to ask for help and to solve problems themselves (Barber, 2008, 37). This can further the idea of reporting domestic violence as emasculating for men.

Male victims of domestic violence, like female victims, can also be concerned with preserving their family and fear that domestic violence will lead to their wife or partner getting custody of their children (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 579). Many female perpetrators of domestic abuse will threaten to take custody of the children and even accuse the male victim of abusing the children if he tries to report the domestic abuse (Belknap, & Melton, 2005, 2). The female therefore has more of a chance to be able to take control over the male, especially as she may be treated as more credible than the male when making such claims to the police. The male victim may believe that his female partner will be able to gain custody of their children, or that the police will not believe him and take the woman’s side, and so choose to stay in the abusive relationship. Like female victims, when the male finally reaches out for help he will have likely suffered prolonged abuse by staying in the relationship (Dodd, Hegarty, Hogan, & Ward, 2011, 45).

In studies conducted to observe the differences in people’s responses towards male and female victims of domestic violence it was seen that people felt female victims were less responsible for the abuse than male victims. People also said that they would be more likely to call the police on behalf of a female than a male victim of domestic violence (Seelau, &Seelau, 2005, 364). Female victims generally receive more sympathy than male victims of domestic violence (Bowen, & Nowinski, 2012). Differing responses to male and female victims reflects social gender norms. Men often get less sympathy because they are seen as better able to protect themselves against an attack or less likely to be physically injured than a woman. Although there may be some truth to these beliefs in many cases, male victims experience traumatic effects of domestic violence at the same rate as females (Belknap, & Melton, 2005, 2). These preexistent responses to male victims may cause them to feel as if they would not be treated the same as a female victim of domestic violence or would not be believed by police or society.

Male victims may also tend to worry about being mocked or not taken seriously by police or domestic violence agencies. Male victims have been reported as experiencing many difficulties when they report domestic violence, such as being treated with suspicion, or even being accused of being the perpetrator. Many times the males stated they feel re-victimized by a system made to protect females (Dodd, Hegarty, Hogan, & Ward, 2011, 45). In Massachusetts, incidents involving male victims of domestic violence as opposed to female 8

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victims were five times less likely to result in an arrest (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 578). In incidents of female perpetrated domestic violence against men the responding police officers were more likely to attempt to mediate the situation and have the partners “cool off� than to make an arrest (Kernsmith, & Kernsmith, 2009, 341). Judges are also three times more likely to issue temporary restraining orders against males than females in domestic violence cases (Desmarais, Hamel, & Muller, 2009, 625). The problem of the perception of domestic violence against men does not seem to be simply be a problem of social perception but one that has affected the criminal justice system as well, many times leaving male victims without protection, answers, or legal recourse.

Even when males turn to domestic violence shelters and hotlines for help they can be met with the same kinds of prejudices they often experience when attempting to report abuse to the police.

In the 1950s through the 1960s women who went to counselors for help after they experienced domestic violence were rejected and the abuse they suffered through was denied or minimized.

Since then, programs nationwide, such as hotlines for women to call and shelters for women, have mostly been built around the traditional paradigm of domestic violence: female abuse by male perpetrators.

Today the continued acceptance of this traditional paradigm places some male victims in the position women faced sixty years ago. A man who calls a domestic violence hotline may be told that the hotline only helps women or that he must be the instigator (Rooney, 2010), or may be turned away or laughed at (Brown, Dunning, & Hines, 2007, 69).

Even the Violence Against Women Act which was created to help victims of domestic violence denied funding for male victims until very recently (Desmarais, Hamel, & Muller, 2009, 626).1 An example of one program that originally operated under the traditional paradigm of domestic violence is WEAVE. Originally standing for Women Escaping a Violent Environment, it is the primary provider for domestic violence services in Sacramento County, California. When the program first began it followed the crisis intervention approach towards domestic violence. This approach followed the traditional paradigm that women were the victims and males were the perpetrators in domestic violence incidents, and that there was little hope for the perpetrator or chance of family reunification. However, as male victims increasingly tried to get help from the organization it switched its focus towards helping both male

1

WEAVE began providing funding for men in 2007 and the Violence Against Women Act included men in 2005.

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and female victims of domestic violence. The name of the organization was even changed to When Everyone Acts Violence Ends.

In 2008, 328 men received help from WEAVE, and 13 men were provided with shelter and participated in a 15 week curriculum aimed at helping male victims of domestic violence. One male client offered this opinion of the program: “Although I was the only man in the group at times it was valuable to hear the women’s stories because they reflected my own experience. I hope it was valuable for them to hear my perspective to know that not all men are violent and abusive.”

This program was truly successful not only by accommodating males but by integrating males and females together to show how domestic violence is not a gender problem but a societal one (Rooney, 2010).

The Domestic Abuse Hotline for Men is another program designed to help male victims in a female oriented field. The hotline conducted a study to examine characteristics of the male callers. 190 male callers were studied, all of whom experienced physical abuse from their wives (Brown, Dunning, & Hines, 2007, 63). When asked, the primary reason males stated for not admitting abuse was to maintain their masculine identity. They did not want to report the abuse and be stigmatized as weak (Dodd, Hegarty, Hogan, & Ward, 2011, 45).

The average age of the male caller was 41 years old and the average age of the female was 36 years old. 13.7% of these callers held “masculine” jobs like policemen, firemen, or military jobs (Brown, Dunning, & Hines, 2007, 66). These “masculine” men can be victims of violence against women because males are taught from a young age not to fight a girl. Even male victims who are capable of defending themselves from attacks often do not. One male caller stated, “[he] just took it because ‘that‘s what we’re supposed to do,’’ (Brown, Dunning, & Hines, 2007, 69).

Many of the males in this study stated they received minor injuries from the assault. 43.7% of the men were slapped or hit, 41.8% were pushed and 39.2% were kicked. Only 1.9% of males reported being stabbed, a much more serious form of assault (Brown, Dunning, & Hines, 2007, 66). This seems to be a reoccurring theme in most cases of female perpetrated domestic violence against men. Women usually cause less physical injury to men than men cause to women but are more likely to use a weapon to try and even out the usual physical differences (Dodd, Hegarty, Hogan, & Ward, 20012, 45). Women usually use tactics such as emotional abuse to make up for their differences in ability to cause physical pain. In the study of callers to the domestic violence hotline they found that 77.6% of the males experienced their partners using threats and coercion for control and 74.1% of the males experienced name calling (Brown, Dunning, & 10

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Hines, 2007, 67). In another study of male victims of domestic violence it found that as much as 50-90% of the males experienced emotional abuse such as threats, name calling, insults (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 575), threats to abuse children or pets, and withholding access to bank accounts (Belknap, & Melton, 2005, 2).

A misconception about male victims of domestic abuse is that since men suffer less physical injury they experience fewer negative effects from the abuse. Yet it has been suggested that males not only experience the same amount of negative effects as females but possibly to a greater degree. Male victims have higher rates of depression, stress, and psychological disorders after they experience domestic abuse. Many of these victims also struggle with substance abuse. The male victims felt anger, emotional pain, shame, and fear (Douglas, & Hines, 2009, 579). The National Association of State Mental Health Program explained the effects of domestic violence, “The experience of violence and trauma can cause neurological damage and can result in serious negative consequences for an individual in health, mental health, self-esteem, potential for misuse of substances, and involvement with the criminal justice system,” (Rooney, 2010). Male victims also face the risk of losing custody of their children and of being falsely accused by partners of abuse against their children (Douglas, & Hines, 2007, 578).

The past lack of support and understanding from domestic violence agencies and the criminal justice system would make it seem that there is no hope for these victims. However these agencies are experiencing slow shifts towards improvements for male victims of domestic violence. Recently, Illinois was the first state to develop standards to guide treatments of female perpetrators of domestic violence (Kernsmith, & Kernsmith, 2009, 342). The development of these standards shows an acknowledgement of the fact that women can be perpetrators of domestic violence. Programs such as WEAVE and the Domestic Abuse Hotline for Men are helping male victims of domestic violence get their voices heard and their stories told.

However, there are still problems with the domestic violence awareness system. Further research needs to be done into the pathology of female initiated domestic violence. Once the extent of the problem– the recognition that males and females commit acts of domestic violence at roughly similar rates—has been understood it will be easier to make improvements and advances.

Domestic violence is a complex social problem that is poorly understood not only by the general public but also by the criminal justice system and domestic violence awareness agencies. Due to this lack of understanding, male victims of female perpetrated domestic The College of Saint Rose

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violence have been unequally treated. Domestic violence is not a patriarchal problem but a gender neutral one. The causes of domestic violence lie within the perpetrators not males in general. Male victims have been often mocked, not taken seriously, and ignored because the still dominant paradigm often rejects or minimizes male victimization by females. These male victims, as their female counterparts in years past, are often revictimized by a criminal justice system designed to protect women. Male victims of domestic violence suffer greatly and their voices need to be heard. By raising awareness for all victims of domestic violence, men and women alike can get the justice they deserve.

References Barber, Christopher, F. (2008). Domestic violence against men. Art & Science, 27(22), 35-39.

Belknap, Joanne, & Melton, Heather (2005). Are heterosexual men also victims of intimate partner abuse? National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, 1-12.

Bowen, Erica, & Nowinski, N. (2012). Partner violence against heterosexual and gay men: prevalence and correlate.

Aggression and Violent Behavior, 17(1).

Brown, Jan, Dunning, Edward, & Hines, Denise A. (2007).

Characteristics of callers to the domestic abuse helpline for men. Journal of Family Violence, 22, 63-72.

Desmarais, Sarah L., Hamel, John M., & Muller, Henry J. Do judicial responses to restraining order requests discriminate against male victims of domestic violence? Journal of Family Violence, 24, 625-637.

Dodd, Lorna J., Hegarty, John R., Hogan, Kevin F., & Ward, Tony (2012). Counsellor’s experience of working with male victims of female perpetrated domestic abuse. British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 12(1), 44-52.

Douglas, Emily M. & Hines, Denise A. (2009). Women’s use of intimate partner violence against men: prevalence, implications, and consequences. Journal of Aggression, 18, 572-586.

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Kernsmith, Poco, & Kernsmith Poco. (2009). Treating female perpetrators: state standards for batterer intervention.

National Association of Social Workers, 341-349.

Kimmel, Michael S. (2002). Gender symmetry in domestic violence: a substantive and methodological research review. Violence Against Women, 8(11), 1-10.

Rooney, Margaux (2010). The evolution for services for male domestic violence victims at WEAVE. Partner Abuse, 1(1).

Seelau, Sheila M., Seelau, Eric P. (2005). Gender role stereotypes and perceptions of heterosexual, gay and lesbian domestic violence. Journal of Family Violence, 20(6), 363-369.

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Introduction to “Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Feminist Performance Art” Robert R. Shane Assistant Professor of Art History Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote, “One is not born a woman; one becomes one.” For de Beauvoir, one’s gender is not the same as one’s sex. Gender, in contrast to biological sex, is not simply defined by x or y chromosomes or the presence of particular gonads. Rather, gender emerges from a complex set of social relations into which we are born. Gender consists of the norms infants, children, and adults are expected to follow or, in the words of philosopher Judith Butler, “to perform”: from wearing pink or blue baby clothing, to prom tuxedos or gowns, to ties or skirts. Beyond clothing, our everyday performances of gender include speech, body language, the professions we choose, and the roles we assume in relationships and in society.

Stephanie Hewett re-investigates gender issues in “Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Feminist Performance Art.” Hewett is ultimately concerned with two questions: (1) While social rules are undoubtedly influential on the construction of gender, what role does the biological body play? (2) Are we condemned to the fixed gender identities prescribed by culture or can we redefine gender identity for ourselves?

Through her analysis of 1970s feminist performance art and the gender theories of Judith Butler, Hewett answers these two questions and arrives at a new theory of gender malleability. By intertwining the biological and social body, Hewett’s gender malleability offers hope for individual agency in the construction of new gender identities despite the powerful inertia of society’s existing gender roles.

Hewett’s analysis of 1970s feminist performance art forms the ground for her theory of gender malleability. Historically, this art grew out of opposition to the pure abstraction and formalism that dominated the mainstream art world of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

Formalism is a theory that privileges art’s visual appearance—e.g. its lines, shapes, colors, materials—and disregards its subject matter and cultural context. Many feminist artists in particular criticized pure abstract art and formalist theory because neither afforded a direct discussion of gender issues or other social concerns. The new 20 th century genre of performance art offered these artists a way to challenge art’s traditional orientation toward making objects (such as paintings) and instead oriented art toward producing new concepts, particularly ideas about the body as a site for politics and social activism. In this context, the artists Hewett discusses—Eleanor Antin, 14

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Carolee Schneemann, and Martha Rosler—used their own bodies in performances that challenged cultural standards for women’s behavior and appearance. Hewett shows how each artist used her biological body to defy the social norms that generally prescribe its conduct.

Methodologically, Hewett’s new approach to 1970s feminist performance art builds on her critical reading of the work of the aforementioned philosopher Judith Butler. Butler proves germane to Hewett’s discussion for two reasons. First, Butler has been a major figure in literary and cultural theories of gender and sexuality in recent decades, particularly since the publication of her book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity in 1990. In Butler’s analysis, society hands the subject (or individual) an engendered script that she or he performs unconsciously in everyday life. One “becomes a woman” (in de Beauvoir’s words) by performing this script, a script which regulates the subject’s gender and sexuality. Second, Butler’s theory of gender as a mundane, unconscious performance has been frequently employed in the art historical literature on 1970s feminist performance art. Hewett shows how this previous art historical scholarship has been limited by privileging Butler’s social theory of gender to the point of neglecting the biological body’s integral role in this artwork. Hewett acknowledges a great debt to Butler’s ideas, but she also supplements them through her own biosocial theory of malleability. In Hewett’s final analysis, 1970s feminist performance art provides an opportunity for not only rethinking gender but reperforming it and thus declaring the freedom for us as subjects to go off-script.

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Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Feminist Performance Art Stephanie Hewett Art History Major; Class of 2014 Abstract: The way gender is constructed and then performed is revealed through an analysis of theorist Judith Butler’s argument concerning the performativity of gender and the deliberate performances of Eleanor Antin, Carolee Schneemann, and Martha Rosler. Butler argues that gender is not a biological construct, but rather an unconscious performance of predetermined actions or norms.

Antin, Schneemann, and Rosler suggest that, in addition to the social constructs noted by Butler, the biological construction of the body is, in fact, an important part of understanding gender and its construction.

The works of these artists suggest that gender is malleable and that a shift in the understanding of how gender is constructed and performed in biological and cultural contexts can change our definition of gender identity.

Introduction What does having a gender mean for us, as humans? Is gender biologically or socially constructed? Is gender identity fixed or is it malleable? In the 1970s, first generation feminist performance artists in America used their bodies as a vehicle for exploring gender identity and social power structures that depend on ancient or classical notions.

By using their natural bodies in assessing social constructs, artists Eleanor Antin, Carolee Schneemann, and Martha Rosler imply that both biological and social construction are required for defining, or redefining, and performing gender. Judith Butler, philosopher and professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, argues that gender is not a biological construct but rather an unconscious performance of predetermined actions or norms. This is supported in these artists’ performances; however, these artists also reveal that Butler’s theory neglects the biological aspect of gender and the possibility for malleability.

The biological construction of gender has been overly reduced to the mere process by which sexual organs are developed; during the prenatal stage of an embryo’s development it will receive an X or Y chromosome from the father’s genetic data that, combined with the X chromosome it receives from its mother, will determine which sex organs will develop, thus determining the genetic gender of the 16

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individual. Social construction of gender is equally reductive; once a child is born she or he is immediately thrown into a world in which gender is defined by specific stereotypes, expectations, and dress. The family will treat the baby girl as a dainty, precious child and dress her in pink. Baby boys, on the other hand, are dressed in blue and expected to play more aggressively. Because of the way parents select toys and clothing that match the child’s gender at an early age, children are brought up to believe their gender is an important part of who they are and that they need to fit socially constructed stereotypes, or “norms” as Butler calls them, in order to preserve this identity. In each of the works considered here, specifically Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (Antin), Interior Scroll (Schneemann), and Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained (Rosler), the artist addresses the unrealistic ideals embedded in gendered expectations and stereotypes. The works of these artists show how gender reveals itself through performance, whether in the art world or the real world, and that it is this performance that allows us to perceive and evaluate one’s gender identity. Their works show that both the biological and social construction of gender play a role in our perception of gender and that gender roles can be malleable, whereas Butler’s theory relies solely on social construction of gender as its core idea and offers no alternative to existing gender roles.

Judith Butler argues that gender is something performed on a daily basis. Performance in this case is not a single act, but a reiteration of norms and the power or will of a subject to bring a phenomenon into being.1 The power of the performance, or its readability, comes from the repetition and force of “norms.” Butler’s interpretation of gender is useful for evaluating the gender roles performed in the work of Antin, Schneemann, and Rosler. While Butler provides a valid argument for the performativity of gender, the performances of Antin, Schneemann, and Rosler refute Butler’s claim that biology has no part in constructing gender.

Judith Butler’s theory concerning the performativity of gender has been applied in some of the more significant scholarship on women’s performance art; however, these authors have neglected the biological construction of gender in their assessments. In “The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Naked Body and Theories of Performance,” Sue-Ellen Case uses Butler’s theory of gender as performance to argue that digital action (acting upon the World Wide Web) is performative, whereas actions involving the naked body are not. She refers to the virtual construction of the transsexual body as the 1

Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, In The Artist’s Body, ed. Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones (London: Phaidon Press, 2000), 264.

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closest link between the physical body and technology, but Case does not consider the biological construction of gender.2 Markus Hallensleben expands Butler’s theory to include the human body as a whole in his article “Importing Valie Export: Corporeal Topographies in Contemporary Austrian Body Art.” He argues that the material body is a performative space and it both creates and is space. He compares Butler’s concept, which cites language as the basis for understanding a Gestalt, with Ulrike Müller’s performance art, which insists that the materiality of flesh is its own Gestalt. 3 Another art historian, Şakir üdo ru, applies Butler’s theory to an art project called “Queer Identity and Blind Cat Principle (QIBCP)” to analyze how the project explored the construction of identity and stereotypes. 4 While the biological body naturally falls into discussion in these articles, these authors disregard the biological factors that contribute to gender in their arguments.

Like Butler, art historian Linda Nochlin asserts that gender identity is formed by environment in her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” This was written in 1971, around the same time that these first generation feminist performance artists were emerging. Nochlin states there is no such thing as a “female style” or art specific to one gender. Her reasoning for the lack of “great women artists” is this: The fault lies…in our institutions and our education— education understood to include everything that happens to us from the moment we enter this world of meaningful symbols, signs, and signals.5 Art making occurs in a social situation where traditional expectations reign, leaving female and ethnic artists out of the picture.6 First generation feminist performance artists focused on this issue as well.

2

Sue-Ellen Case, “The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Naked Body and Theories of Performance,” SubStance #98/99 31 (2002), 186-200.

3 Markus Hallensleben, “Importing Valie Export: Corporeal Topographies in Contemporary Austrian Body Art,” Modern Austrian Literature 42, no. 3 (2009), 29-49.

4 Sakir Özüdo ru, “Queer Identity and Blind Cat Principle: Identity (Im)Possibilities of Performance Art in Turkey,” The International Journal of the Arts in Society 5, no. 5 (2011), 105-115.

5 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

6 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” in Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. Anne C. Herman and Abigail J. Stewart (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994), 100.

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Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Performance Art

Antin, Schneemann, and Rosler each expose how the feminine body is meant to be looked at as an image, but not meant to make images.

Physical limitations that would hinder a woman’s ability to make art do not exist; however, they are perceived to exist because of social constructs. The strictly social focus of Butler and Nochlin must be supplemented with a theory of the biosocial construction of gender.

Schneemann offers a type of change in the “lifetime” education Nochlin refers to that would upset traditional biases and offer new gender expectations, while Antin and Rosler seek to bring attention to the traditional biases and how their physical bodies are perceived in order to bring change and malleability to their gender roles.

Art historians have generally read the work of Eleanor Antin, Carolee Schneemann, and Martha Rosler as essentialist. The essentialist position argues that females possess an essential nature that creates a universally shared female experience despite race, class, and religion. Irving Sandler’s chapter on first-generation feminism in Art of the Postmodern Era outlines this general position. Sandler writes that feminist art in the 1970s was used as a political tool to raise consciousness about the shared female experience. 7 He labels first generation feminists as “essentialists” and points to the debate concerning the inherent female nature: “What was the source of this nature? Was it the issue of social and cultural conditioning or was it biologically and psychologically determined?”8 Embedded in an essentialist position is the idea that gender is fixed, as it is reduced down to a few fundamental parts. However, I argue that the performances of Antin, Schneemann, and Rosler (specifically Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, Interior Scroll, and Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained respectively) reveal the performativity and, most importantly, the malleability of gender and how gender is constructed or understood. Their performances suggest that both biological and social contexts are required for an understanding of gender identity, the former of which is not addressed in Butler’s argument.

Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1972) Eleanor Antin confronts the relationship between the biological and social construction of gender identity by using her material body to perform cultural expectations in order to expose their 7

Irving Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s (New York: Icon Editions, 1996), 114.

8 Sandler, Art of the Postmodern Era, 115.

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absurdities. Her piece Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, done in 1972, shows how her gender is constructed and then continually performed.

In Carving Antin chronicled a 45-day period of strict dieting during which she claimed to be sculpting her body in the traditional Greek style. Each day she photographed her body from four views: front, back, left profile, and right profile. Antin quotes Carl Bluemel, author of Greek Sculptors at Work, in order to draw an analogy between her process of working layer by layer, with the whole in view, and the procedure of the ancient Greeks: “the Greek sculptor worked at his block from all four sides and carved away one thin layer after another…. right around the statue.”9 The completion of Antin’s “carving” depended on two variables: (1) the ideal image envisioned by the artist, and (2) the limitations of the material. 10 These two variables and her reference to Greek sculpture critique contemporary body image and gender stereotypes.

The first of the two variables, idealism, is an idea that is environmentally constructed. As a child is growing up, his or her “ideals” are closely associated with what they know and have experienced; for example, young girls usually want to be like their mothers and take care of their dolls because that is what they have seen in their lives. As they grow older and encounter new types of ideals through different experiences, their aspirations change. The same young girl who wanted to be like her mother may see a television program where the character she identifies with (or is expected to identify with) rebels against her mother and deliberately gets a piercing without permission and so she will imitate the character she has seen because her experiences have broadened and her ideal has shifted. Our culture shapes our ideals and, according to Butler, if we do not conform to the accepted norms on our own, bullying and institutionalized normali ation take place to pressure us to subconsciously ‘perform’ those norms or ideals.11 Western ideals are closely linked with ancient Greek ideals.

Antin’s ideal image of the body not only bears this weight of history, but also the contemporary ideals most often coded by men. 12 Her 9

Henry M. Sayre, The Object of Performance: The American AvantGarde since 1970 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 77.

10 Ibid.

11 Elizabeth Rodd, and Jonathan Fowler, “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender,” BigThink.com, 13 Jan. 2011. http://bigthink.com/videos/your-behavior-creates-your-gender.

12 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 84.

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method of “carving,” which is dieting, is most closely associated with the fitness and fashion industries that provide “a mystique of thinness that, if nothing else, would require Antin to be at least a foot taller than she is.”13 Because her culture portrays the tall and thin models as desirable characters, Antin’s ideal is socially constructed.

The second of the two variables controlling Antin’s Carving is tied to her biological construction. The limits of the material, her body, are determined by genetics. Sculpting a physical body requires a different process from sculpting marble; Antin sculpts her body from the inside out, a process that she has less control over than if she were sculpting it from the surface. Art historian Henry Sayre, author of The Object of Performance, writes that this piece actually underscores Antin’s difference from the ideal, despite her strict adherence to its codes.14 Antin’s process of transforming her body to fit culturally imposed ideals hints at Butler’s argument concerning ‘the law of sex.’

Relying on the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan for theoretical background, Butler compares performing a coded gender model to citing a symbolic law (this law would come from culture). She writes, “What Lacan calls the ‘assumption’ or ‘accession’ to the symbolic law can be read as a kind of citing of the law, and so offers an opportunity to link the question of the materiali ation of ‘sex’ with the reworking of performativity as citationality.”15 Therefore, performing the norms, or the “law of sex,” will reinforce them and create the impression that this is the only law. There is no choice in what will be performed because, as Butler writes, the assumption of gender is “compelled by a regulatory apparatus of heterosexuality … [so] the assumption of sex is constrained from the start.”16 Seemingly conforming to the law of sex, Antin carefully observes the ideal female image and tries to re-create herself in order to fit what society determines as acceptably “beautiful” and “female.”

Even after trying so hard to be what she thinks she is supposed to be, she doesn’t live up to the ideal because she is physically unable. Again, as Sayre noted, she would need to be at least a foot taller, an attribute that she cannot manufacture.17 According to Butler, this inability to cite the law of sex forms an insecurity that intensifies the desire to perform

13

Sayre, The Object of Performance, 78.

Ibid.

15 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

16 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 263.

17 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 78.

14

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Stephanie Hewett the idealized role. It is this insecurity that compels repetition.18 Antin repeatedly performs her femininity by trying to reach the ideal because she is anxious about not being female enough. In her performance she consciously performs her expected role, including these insecurities, in order to expose the usually unconscious “female” performance.

Antin critiques the way society pressures people, especially women, to look and act a certain way and she exposes how gender is continually and unconsciously performed because of the body’s inability to live up to and perform culture’s ideals. In addition, her piece explores how biological and social gender attributes are intertwined; her biologically constructed body limits her execution of the law of sex, suggesting that both biological and social development play an important role in the formation of gender identity. If the physical, biologically constructed body is important for understanding one’s gender, Butler’s contention that only social forces are at work does not give a full view of gender construction.

Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll (1975) Carolee Schneemann has a different approach to understanding her gender identity. She perceives her sex organs as the defining feature of her gender that is then modified and understood through cultural constructs. Antin’s artwork is about changing her body to fit cultural ideals, but in defense of her primal body, Schneemann offers a new social construct in which female biology and sexuality would be honored and men and women would not need to perform current “types.” In Interior Scroll (1975) Schneemann explores issues of sexuality, gender, and “vulvic space.”19 In the exhibition “Women Here and Now,” held in 1975 in East Hampton, Long Island, Schneemann entered the performance hall, and set up a long table with one sheet on the table and one on her body. She then dropped her sheet and revealed that she was wearing an apron, painted the contours of her face and nude body with mud, and read her piece Cézanne, She Was a Great Painter while standing on the table posing in “life model ‘action

18

Paul Fry, “Queer Theory and Gender Performativity,” Episode 23, Open Yale Courses-Literary Theory, iTunes, Podcast audio, 6 October 2009, https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/literary-theory-audio/id341652579 19 Carolee Schneemann, “Interior Scroll,” in The Artist’s Body, ed.

Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones (London: Phaidon Press, 2000), 250.

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Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Performance Art poses.’”20 Finally, she dropped the book on the table, removed the apron, stood upright, and read from a scroll as she slowly extracted it from her vagina.21 In her text titled Interior Scroll (1975), she explains that this act was an external signification of interior thought, a way to pull out her primary knowledge.22 Schneemann also wrote that the vagina and the womb are the source of primary knowledge and cosmic energy and that this was represented in ancient cultures in the symbol of a snake because of its association with that same cosmic energy.23 By painting her body’s contours with mud, Schneemann references her biological, natural origins and how they have shaped her (both her literal body shape and her experience of the world). Lucy Lippard quotes her as having said, “… The life of the body is more variously expressive than a sex-negative society can admit. I … [stood]… naked in front of 300 people… because my sex and work were harmoniously experienced.”24 This was said in 1968, long before Interior Scroll was performed. Schneemann was concerned with how culture obscures our understanding of the body, and consequently gender. Though the primal body gives us form and meaning, culture changes the way we understand that form, altering its meaning. In this case, culture is a “sex-negative society” that views openness about sexuality and nudity as obscene.25 By connecting to her primal state of being in Interior Scroll, Schneemann makes her gender open and clear; there is nothing to support her femaleness but her biological construction. This reliance on biological construction of gender is in conflict with Butler’s contention that humans are born without gender. 26 Butler neglects the unique genetic differences between genders. While “characteristic” attributes or expectations for certain genders, such as weakness for women or aggression for men, may be performed, the experiences generated from having either one sex organ or the other are, at least initially authentic and not controlled by our role-playing. Schneemann’s work deals with how our culture regulates and complicates these natural experiences.

20

Ibid., 251.

Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Lucy R. Lippard, “The Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth: Women’s Body Art,” in The Artist’s Body, ed. Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones (London: Phaidon Press, 2000), 253.

25 Ibid.

26 Rodd and Fowler, “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender.”

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She ties her primal desires to ancient Goddess worship as an alternative source of gender characteristics.

Schneemann’s reevaluation of ancient mythology suggests a new source for social construction. She reinterpreted cave drawings, markings, and carvings as having been related to Goddess worship and the unique experience of women: I related womb and vagina…with strokes and cuts on bone and rock by which I believe my ancestor measured her menstrual cycles, pregnancies, lunar observations, agricultural notations—the origins of time factoring, or mathematical equivalencies, of abstract relations. I assumed the carved figurines and incised female shapes of Paleolithic, Mesolithic artifacts were carved by women—the visual-mythic transmutation of self-knowledge to its integral connection with a Cosmic Mother—that the experience and complexity of her personal body was the source of conceptualizing, of interacting with materials, of imagining the world and composing its images.27 By emphasizing the life-giving quality of the womb and assuming women were important figures in the development of society, Schneemann is empowering women. According to Nochlin, women empowerment is the key to reshaping everyone’s lifetime educations and, consequently, the understanding of gender roles. 28 Butler herself poses the same question Schneemann seems to: “What would it mean to ‘cite’ the law to produce it differently, to ‘cite’ the law in order to reiterate and co-opt its power, to expose the heterosexual matrix and to displace the effect of its necessity?”29 In Bodies That Matter, Butler offers no alternative to performing gender roles, but if society as a whole were to accept Schneemann’s reasoning (or any new type of understanding or law of sex), gender roles could change. Drawing from both poststructuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, Butler asserts that the power to perform comes from a coded utterance that follows a scripted pattern understood by the majority of people; if performing gender is considered citation of “the law of sex,” or the script that defines how specific genders should behave, then the power of both the performance and the law comes from reiteration.30 Therefore, this power is derivative because it comes from a previously defined and repeated 27

Schneemann, “Interior Scroll,” 257.

Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” 97.

29 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

30 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

28

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behavior. The law is created through its citation—it cannot exist if it is not agreed upon and performed by the masses and it will only act as law for those who agree that it is law. 31 Using this logic, Butler writes, “Gender performativity cannot be theorized apart from the forcible and reiterative practice of regulatory sexual regimes.”32 Therefore, if those “regulatory sexual regimes” were to alter or shift, as Schneemann proposes they can, gender identity would change.

Schneemann’s openness about sexuality was not well received by art critics and artists of the time because it was not appropriate for women to address such issues in their artwork. 33 Being fully aware of this, Schneemann used her artwork, including Interior Scroll, to discover and expose exactly what our society allows to be viewed. In an interview with Aviva Rahmani in 1989 Schneemann said she didn’t want to pull and read a scroll from her vagina, but the “abstraction of eroticism” found in our society required that she should. 34 This again references the “sex-negative society” that Schneemann believes has abstracted her sexuality and biology. Schneemann’s idea of a “sexnegative society” is a way of characteri ing Butler’s idea of the “regulatory sexual regime” which dictates how different genders should behave. For Schneemann, the lies and obfuscations of culture limit the way men and women use their bodies and shape the way biological processes are experienced and viewed.35 She hopes to negate this sexnegativity and form a new mindset.

The way critics approached Schneemann’s work reveals our culture’s contradictory understanding of gender. In an autobiographical history of her performances Schneemann wrote about how her work was seen as masculine if it was aggressive and bold: “As if I were inhabited by a stray male principle, which would be an interesting possibility—except in the early sixties this notion was used to blot out, denigrate, deflect the coherence, necessity, and personal integrity of what I had made and how it was made.”36 These critics interpreted her performance as masculine, which, as Butler predicts, led to bullying because the role she performed was not “normal” for her. In “From Tape No. 2,” the text read from the scroll in Interior Scroll, 31

Ibid.

Ibid.

33 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 74.

34 Aviva Rahmani, “A Conversation on Censorship with Carolee Schneemann,” in Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 1968-2000, ed.

Hilary Robinson (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2001), 151.

35 Rahmani, “Censorship,” 151.

36 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 74.

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Schneemann describes a conversation with a male minimalist filmmaker who does not respect her films. He dismisses them as “personal clutter” full of “feelings,” “the hand-touch sensibility,” “diaristic indulgence,” “primitive techniques,” and “metaphors and meanings,” whereas his work is purely “the logic of… systems,” which she cannot understand or appreciate.37 His critique reinforces the idea that women are more emotional, primitive, and empathetic than men.

Schneemann ends her poem saying, “I said we cannot be friends equally/ and we cannot be artists equally/ he told me he had lived with a ‘sculptress’/ I asked does that make me a ‘filmmakeress’? / Oh no he said we think of you as a dancer.”38 She recognizes the fact that women will not be equal with men, not because of ability, but because of society’s regulations. Sayre notes that dance has “always been one of the ‘acceptable’ media for women,”39 thus the filmmaker was placing the would-be “filmmakeress” into a socially acceptable category of art making rather than the one she belonged to.

Between the text of Interior Scroll and Schneemann’s actual experience, critics either attributed to her work a masculine quality not her own or dismissed it as too feminine for art that truly mattered.

Schneemann’s work was considered either too masculine or too feminine, but not both or neither. These contradictory readings expose the way we try to make certain attributes fit into their “natural” roles.

When Schneemann is seen as aggressive, she is performing the masculine role, which is not “right” for her, and when she is perceived as sensitive, she is performing the feminine role. In both cases, her role is not respected. The attempt to place Schneemann in her “natural” role is the type of normalization to which Butler refers in her theory. She states that norms are needed to understand gender; when those norms are defied, the body becomes delegitimized and is no longer considered a body. To become a body that matters, that body must conform to the “regime of heterosexuality” that says Schneemann must be empathetic and submissive.40 Schneemann’s performance first relies on her biological gender construction, but is then understood in a cultural context. In the social situation, she does not perform her expected gender role, yet her biological gender is completely evident and is the subject of the 37

Carolee Schneemann, “From Tape No. 2 for ‘Kitch’s Last Meal’,” in Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 1968-2000, ed. Hilary Robinson (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2001), 33-34.

38 Schneemann, “From Tape No. 2,” 34.

39 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 103-104.

40 Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

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performance. Butler’s argument lines up with Schneemann’s belief that gender roles are malleable and should change, but it does not account for the biological construction and primal performance of gender identity that Schneemann emphasi es. Antin’s performance is about changing her body to meet the social laws Butler identifies, but Schneemann’s performance is about changing those laws so the body can be free of them.

Martha Rosler, Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained (1977) Martha Rosler’s approach to gender deconstructs the body in order to discover what constructs it. She performs her expected gender roles in a forty-minute video titled Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained (1977). Her body’s parts are systematically measured by male “researchers” and compared to a set of “normal” measurements.41 These socially encoded expectations deal with her biological body and correspond to its limits. Both before the video begins and again halfway through, Rosler interjects a statement that describes her understanding of the piece. This makes the viewer aware that, because she is the director of the piece, she is consciously performing within it and these are two separate roles that should be read in conjunction with one another.42 In this statement Rosler discusses how during the performance her body becomes accustomed to the poses and gestures demanded of her, and she understands that her body is reduced to parts that must be judged by criteria she is well aware of. 43 She notes that we look at our outer self “as if it were a thing divorced from the inner self,” allowing us to manufacture ourselves as an idealized version of nature.44 Are we manufactured by culture, as Rosler suggests?

Rosler’s piece plays with the dichotomy between nature and culture. Her biologically produced body is necessary for the measurements that are then judged under social circumstances. Society provides the criteria for judgment, but the criteria are still tied to biology as the base. Being aware of these criteria, we manufacture ourselves to fit an idealized form of nature; in this sense, we are manufactured by culture because culture is the source of our ideal. In the process, we adopt certain characteristic behaviors and poses associated with cultural expectations, just as Rosler became accustomed to the poses the “researchers” required of her. Sayre 41

Sayre, The Object of Performance, 81-82 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

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regards this form of acting as “what makes it obvious that the female body is culturally encoded.”45 Rosler’s piece brings up essential questions about our physical bodies. Do our measurements have meaning, are they truly “vital,” and can they define us? By comparing her body’s measurements to “normal” measurements, Rosler implies that our bodies are understood relationally. We need other bodies to define our own. This is the type of phenomenon Butler addresses in Bodies that Matter. She argues that bodies that don’t produce the norm provide the “outside” for the bodies that “matter.”46 This means a girl who is a tomboy or an outcast provides the definition for what normal is not. If wearing baggy clothing and playing aggressively is not normal, then, by this logic, wearing form-fitting clothing and playing calmly (the opposite) must be normal for girls.

The focused analysis of binary oppositions in Butler’s work is derived from structuralism and poststructuralism, two language theories. Binary oppositions are concept-pairs like raw/cooked, nature/culture, and male/female that cannot exist without each other.

The structuralist argument developed by Claude Levi-Strauss provides the example that there would be no need to describe something as raw if one had never known something as cooked. 47 Jacques Derrida, in his deconstruction, expands on this idea by introducing the element of time to eliminate hierarchy, reasoning that the opposing terms must arise simultaneously. He also asserts that the purity of their opposition is unstable because one cannot exist without the other. The terms are contaminated because they are so interdependent. Butler uses this logic to suggest bodies and gender definitions work in the same way. The line between bodies is blurred so that both are needed and each is contaminated by the other. We need opposites to define ourselves, but without them we have no meaning. So we may look down on a certain measurement or body, but that very measurement defines our own as either normal or not; therefore, those external measurements that should not be “vital” because we are composed of both inner and outer selves become culturally important for defining ourselves as normal or not normal. In her statement Rosler reads, “one learns to see oneself as a being in a state of culture as opposed to a being in a state of nature.”48 Because Rosler makes it apparent that she is acting in her piece, she

45

Sayre, The Object of Performance, 83.

Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

47 Fry, “Queer Theory and Gender Performativity.”

48 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 82.

46

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suggests that the measurements are actually not “vital” because our natural state of being is not defined in this manner.

Rosler’s piece also suggests that men set the cultural expectations that define women. The “normal” measurements in her video relate to Leonardo’s “Study of the Human Body,”49 critiquing cultural history by saying that men have been dictating the ideal for centuries. Rosler shows that men not only set the expectations, but also reinforce them to make sure no one tries to alter them. Nochlin proposes that this is because those who have power, no matter how much, are reluctant to relinquish it. 50 The men in this piece maintain power as cultural encoders of the female body (this is not to say that men do not impose similar ideals on their own sex). In the performance, Rosler consciously submits to the men to bring attention to the fact that society expects her to. Her body becomes the property of culture and less her own; though by consciously exposing this unconscious law, she weakens it and thereby reclaims her body in some respects.

The body is central to performance, whether in an art situation or in daily life, as it is the vessel by which we define the self. Rosler performs the expected role of a woman in the video, but also reveals her off-screen role as director. She knows what she “should” perform, but also critiques traditional gender roles. Rosler states, “This is a work about how to think about yourself.”51 Throughout the video, she seems to suggest that our thoughts are usually focused on external qualities that are evaluated in a cultural context. Without the biological body to provide us with an outer self, this social evaluation could not take place. By draining “vital” of its meaning (in Vital Statistics of a Citizen Simply Obtained), it seems that Rosler hopes for change—for people to value the inner and outer selves as a whole instead of breaking the body down to parts as she has in this piece.

Malleability, Culture, and Inner/Outer The performativity and construction of gender is revealed in the performances of Eleanor Antin, Carolee Schneemann, and Martha Rosler. These artists expose the instabilities of traditional gender roles either by consciously conforming to them or by rebelling against them.

Antin and Rosler attempt to fit their ideal gender roles, but are limited 49

Sayre, The Object of Performance, 81.

Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” 100.

51 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 82.

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by the genetics that define their bodies. This causes Antin to continually perform her femaleness in a futile attempt to be “normal.”

Rosler mindlessly performs the gestures demanded of her while performing, but as director she recognizes the way she is manufacturing herself to fit culturally encoded expectations. Butler would read Rosler’s compliance with culturally defined demands as evidence of her theory regarding gender performativity. She writes that the agency of an individual in assuming a sex is not voluntary; there is no choice because what pure choice there might have been has been hindered by the existing regulations.52 Therefore, according to Butler, these artists would not be consciously performing their gender. I would argue that they were consciously performing gender in an effort to expose what is not usually performed consciously.

Rather than trying to fit traditional gender roles, Schneemann’s presentation of gender identity dealt with redefining gender. While Antin and Rosler attempted to conform to society but were stopped by their bodies, Schneemann tried to perform her material gender but was stopped by society’s regulations. Though she conformed to the “regime of heterosexuality” referenced by Butler53 by revealing her female body, she was still opposed by society who read her act as “masculine” because it was considered aggressively sexual and inappropriate for a woman. The contradictions in the rules surrounding society’s understanding of gender, which are revealed when the biosocial construction of gender is considered, prove that gender identity is unstable. Though critics and viewers do not traditionally address gender malleability in these performances, Antin, Schneemann, and Rosler each dealt with the malleability of gender identity and its reliance on a male-dominated culture. The relationship between the internal and external body is essential for malleability, as these two bodies must be seen as one in order to allow for flexible gender roles.

Antin tried to change her outward identity by “carving” away layers of her body. She was trying to assume the “mystique of thinness”54 that her culture values, proving that parts of her identity can be shaped and changed by cultural constructs. Though Antin approached this performance as a conscious participant, her aim was to reveal how many women are not conscious of their motives and performance when they try to change their bodies to fit cultural ideals rather than altering the cultural ideals themselves. Antin relied on both 52

Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

54 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 78.

53

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the inner and outer body to perform her gender. External pressures affected her internal body but her external body was controlled by her internal workings. This tension in her work demonstrates that the inner and outer selves must combine in order to change an identity. As an artist, Antin reacted against the male-dominated fields of sculpture and painting by choosing performance as her medium. 55 By doing so, Antin reacted against culture itself, which demanded a different occupation of women and generally cast female artists into “folk art” categories.

Performance art could not be considered folk art and, contrary to what has been seen in other disciplines, men had little jurisdiction over the content and structure of her performance work because it was such a new discipline.

Schneemann’s approach to shifting gender roles differs drastically. She approaches the idea of malleability not by reshaping her own identity, but by restructuring our understanding of gender identity as a whole, suggesting an alternative history. The purpose of her work was to change how society views gender so that men and women could freely express their sexuality and be treated without the negativity of “types.” Reassessing ancient mythology and culture allows her to remove thousands of years of male coding of what it means to be “female.” Schneemann’s act of removing the scroll from inside her body was a way to draw internal knowledge outward to make it more accessible. She saw her internal body, not the external world, as the source of knowledge. She gives females the power as their own coders, thus giving them back their own bodies.56 Rosler encourages viewers to think about how they think about themselves, implying that gender identity is malleable. She hopes to re-shape it by exposing misconceptions about the outer and inner self. In her video she explicitly says we “look at the self from the outside as if it were a thing divorced from the inner self.”57 Looking at the self this way, people manufacture the body to fit the ideal as best it can as if its sole identity was based on external qualities. Through this process the body becomes cultural property because society controls our perception of the body and self. Not only is the body then cultural property, but also men control it. (Rosler draws on Renaissance history to support this, suggesting that men have been dictating the ideal for centuries and will continually reinforce this ideal.)

55

Sayre, The Object of Performance, 85.

Lippard, “Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth,” 253.

57 Sayre, The Object of Performance, 82.

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Conclusion Antin’s, Schneemann’s, and Rosler’s performances can be used to assess the performativity and malleability of gender identity and how gender is constructed. Butler argues that it is constructed in obedience to the regulatory sexual regime, or ‘the law of sex.’ 58 In contrast, these performances support the idea that biological and social forces work together to construct one’s gender identity. In Antin’s Carving, the body is influenced by a socially constructed ideal of what gender should be, but her biology keeps her from successfully reaching the ideal. Because she is aiming for an ideal, Antin, Butler’s argument suggests, continually performs her gender for fear of failure. For Schneemann and Rosler gender begins with the natural, material quality of the body but this body is understood in and shaped by a social context. Without the social element, there would be no need for Schneemann to redefine history or for Rosler to expose misconceptions about gender, but without the body there would be no starting point for social expectations. In Interior Scroll Schneemann deviates from the law of sex outlined in Butler’s Bodies That Matter and performs a nonnormal role that emphasizes biological gender with the hope that gender could be understood differently. Butler would argue that Schneemann has no biological sex to perform and that her performance merely reinforced the norms of the “heterosexual regime.” Rosler’s Vital Statistics reduces the body to parts to show how we manufacture our bodies based on socially constructed ideals so that we might become an acceptable product, or in Butler’s terms, a “body that matters.”59 She performs what is demanded of her and finds herself being molded into a particular character defined by the male-coded law of sex. What is found in each performance is a balance between the influence of biology and culture and a call for change. If gender identity truly is malleable, as is suggested by these artists, society’s perception of what is acceptably “male” or “female” can change and Butler’s “law of sex” can be redefined to include openness to flexible gender roles.

Works Cited Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. In The Artist’s Body, edited by Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones, 263-265. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2000.

58 59

Butler, Bodies That Matter, 264.

Ibid.

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Gender Identity and Malleability in 1970s Performance Art

Case, Sue-Ellen. “The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Naked Body and Theories of Performance.” SubStance #98/99 31 (2002): 186200.

Fry, Paul. “Queer Theory and Gender Performativity.” Episode 23.

Open Yale Courses-Literary Theory. iTunes. Podcast audio, October 6, 2009. https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/literarytheory-audio/id341652579 Hallensleben, Markus. “Importing Valie Export: Corporeal Topographies in Contemporary Austrian Body Art.” Modern Austrian Literature v 42, n 3 (2009): 29-49.

Lippard, Lucy R. “The Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth: Women’s Body Art.” In The Artist’s Body, edited by Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones, 252-256. London, England: Phaidon Press Limited, 2000.

Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” In Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, edited by Anne C. Herman and Abigail J. Stewart, 93-115. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, Inc., 1994. Özüdo ru, Şakir. “Queer Identity and Blind Cat Principle: Identity (Im)Possibilities of Performance Art in Turkey.” The International Journal of the Arts in Society 5.5 (2011): 105115.

Rahmani, Aviva. “A Conversation on Censorship with Carolee Schneemann.” In Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 19682000, edited by Hilary Robinson, 147-152. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2001.

Rodd, Elizabeth, and Jonathan Fowler. “Your Behavior Creates Your Gender.” BigThink.com, January 13, 2011. Web, http://bigthink.com/videos/your-behavior-creates-your-gender.

Sandler, Irving. Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s. New York: Icon Editions, 1996.

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Sayre, Henry M. The Object of Performance: The American AvantGarde since 1970. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Schneemann, Carolee. “ From Tape No. 2 for ‘Kitch’s Last Meal’.” In Feminism-Art-Theory:An Anthology 1968-2000, edited by Hilary Robinson, 33-34. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2001.

------. “Interior Scroll.” In The Artist’s Body, edited by Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones, 250-251. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2000.

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Immigrant and Native Motherhood

Introduction to “Immigrant and Native Motherhood: The Eugenic Battle for Anglo-Saxon America, 1900-1930” Risa L. Faussette Associate Professor of History At the turn of the twentieth century, a period characterized by intense industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, politicians, religious leaders, social reformers, and a variety of nativist zealots became alarmed over the rise of urban disorder and social dysfunction.

This concern exploded in a variety of interventionist measures that ranged from the establishment of urban settlement houses to alleviate the suffering of impoverished European immigrants, to the passage of building codes and public health initiatives designed to prevent recurring epidemics of infectious diseases, and the advent of Americanization programs in schools and unions to promote assimilation. While the achievements of progressive era reformers have long been documented by many scholars, the efforts of the other progressive era interventionists has recently been subject to sustained academic inquiry. The eugenicists, as Amelia Jacobs demonstrates, similarly used investigation, education and legislation to preserve the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the United States from erosion by the waves of the “racially inferior” southeastern European immigrants who were arriving and reproducing at alarming rates.

The decision of the American Breeders Association to create the Committee on Eugenics in 1909 in order to safeguard the human stock of America by protecting it from genetic decline occurred during a massive shift in gender relations that threatened the patriarchal norms which defined the institution of the American family. As Amelia Jacobs notes, the eugenicists were troubled by the fact that 25% of native women in their prime reproductive years were not bearing children.

This shift in reproduction patterns was linked to the increased opportunities that women had to sustain themselves out of the home. In the late nineteenth century women’s colleges proliferated in the northeast as Vassar, Smith, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr were founded in 1865, 1872, 1875 and 1886, respectively. As Duncan Crow and Arthur Mann revealed, when Cornell, the University of Michigan, and other institutions began admitting women, this quickly resulted in forty thousand women being enrolled in over 153 colleges by 1880. Not only did women comprise one-third of the college population, working class women, according to historian Kathy Peiss, were moving into a wide array of pink collar jobs being created in the progressive era. The eugenicists stridently attacked the independence of native women.

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Articles such as “Education and Race Suicide: Women’s Colleges Have Heavy Responsibility for Disappearance of Old American Stock in the United States” and “Wellesley’s Birth Rate” were published in the Journal of Heredity. This alarm blossomed into a full scale program to instruct native women on their duty to safeguard the nation.

Amelia Jacobs’s examination of the eugenic guidebooks on Anglo-Saxon motherhood is a welcome contribution to academic publications that have documented the impact of eugenic movement on national legislation, medical practices, religious culture, legal interpretation, and the science of race and heredity. Her work stands at the intersection of growing scholarship on maternal politics, the history of white racial identity, and racial science. While numerous studies have focused on nativist disdain for newly arriving immigrants, Jacobs unpacks the discursive strategies used by the eugenicists to reify Anglo-Saxon motherhood, thus placing her research in a historiographical tradition established by notable scholars such as Linda Kerber, David Roediger, and Matthew Frye Jacobson. Amelia closes by insightfully noting that the concerns of the eugenicists still echo in current debates over immigration and, by doing so, she reminds us that the ghosts of the past who battled over female reproduction still haunt the American landscape today.

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Immigrant and Native Motherhood: The Eugenic Battle for AngloSaxon America, 1900-1930 Amelia Jacobs History Major; Class of 2014 The scientific research that bloomed at the beginning of the twentieth century broke from the previous religious-bound way of thinking and gave birth to the eugenics movement. For example, Gregor Mendel’s work on the genetic engineering of pea plants and Herbert Spencer’s revolutionary “survival of the fittest” theory directly impacted the Progressive reform movement happening in the United States. Reform that had aimed to protect the poor switched to targeting them as genetically inferior and subject to medical and legislative retributions as scientists toyed with the idea of genetically manipulating the human race. As the majority of the poor concentrated in urban areas, and especially New York City, the flood of immigrants from Europe and Asia became the focus of the scientific studies that eventually developed into a quest to purify the “Anglo-Saxon race,” which was considered to be superior to all others. As a result, mothers—the carriers of genes and, by extension, the race—got caught in the crosshairs of the eugenic reformers who were trying to advance their race by eliminating genetic threats. Led by Charles B. Davenport and organizations like the Immigration Restriction League and the Eugenic Records Office, eugenicists succeeded in marrying nativist legislation (for example, the Johnson-Reed Act) with eugenic reform that included forced sterilization, racial and class segregation, and harsh restrictions on marriage. The eugenics movement was unequivocally tied to nativist beliefs that immigrants were “inferior,” invading aliens that would only harm their beloved country.

Why did so many Americans readily accept eugenics? Wendy Kline argues that it was because eugenics addressed two of the country’s most pressing concerns: gender and race. 1 Gender had become a public object of debate and the “new woman” emerging at this time further enflamed concerns. Eugenics offered a solution: make women the epitome of morality through fit motherhood. As for race, the influx of immigrants caused Americans to question the future of their own. By pushing for strict immigration laws, eugenicists became champions of saving the Anglo-Saxon American race. Not only did 1

Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (California: University of California Press, 2005), 1-161.

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eugenics appeal to the average American citizen, it was a logical pursuit for different scientists and professionals. In her article “Breed out the Unfit and Breed in the Fit,” Annie L. Cot discusses the work of Irving Fisher, a prominent US economist who was heavily involved in the eugenic movement. Fisher was attracted to the field because it was so similar to his own. As a science, eugenics had many parallels.

Fisher, head of several eugenic committees, prescribed that eugenics should become like a religion: accessible and followed by all.2 Thomas C. Leonard who describes eugenics of the Progressive Era as “popular, respectable, and widespread” shares this view.3 He lists four reasons why eugenics rose to popularity: science was already being used as a solution to social issues; the “holistic conception of society” prioritizing the group over individual rights, including the right to reproduce; the use of public administrations; and the fact that those public administrators handling social control were experts in their fields. The American people were primed and ready to accept a eugenic solution to their social ailments. Kline also mentions the contradicting “double-edged womanhood” that emerged during this time. On one hand, eugenicists argued that women could save the race; on the other, eugenicists argued women could destroy it.

Harry Bruinius’ “Better for All the World” examines the forced sterilization that occurred countrywide as a result of the eugenic efforts. Beginning with the operation on Carrie Buck, Bruinius shows how sterilization won support from the government and scientists familiar with Galton, Mendel, and Darwin. The cases presented, however, are mostly poor women being sterilized. 4 Men, just as capable of producing offspring, were given much less attention by the movement. Peter Schrag’s “Not Fit for Our Society” looks into how nativism and World War I shaped the immigration legislation of the 1920’s and what it meant for the eugenic movement. The nativist rhetoric that pervaded eugenic thought was the same that defined the isolationist legislation that was passed regarding immigration restriction. The legislation itself is telling of how high up the influence 2

Annie L. Cot, “Breed out the Unfit and Breed in the Fit: Irving Fisher, Economics, and the Science of Heredity,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 64, no. 3 (July 2003), 793-826.

3 Thomas C. Leonard, “Retrospectives on Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 4 (Autumn 2005), 207-224.

4 Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity (New York: Random House, 2006).

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Immigrant and Native Motherhood of eugenics and nativist fear reached in the US government. 5 Finally, Katrina Irving’s “Immigrant Mothers” offers insight into the eugenic focus on female sterilization, as she explains why the debate on racial purity centered on females. Because women were seen as the transmitters of genes, Irving argues that they were seen as the root of the problem. Irving uses contemporary literature to highlight the general perception of immigrant women, but what about the native mother?6 This raises a series of questions. Was there any propaganda promoting Anglo-Saxon motherhood at a time when eugenicists feared the reproductive rate of the inferior race? How did this propaganda fit into the Progressive Era? My work hopes to show that the native mother became just as much of a target of the eugenic campaign as her immigrant counterpart. She was idolized as the savior of the AngloSaxon race and portrayed as the only one equipped to fight off Irving’s villainous immigrant on the reproductive front. This addresses a gap in the recent literature suggested by Frank Dikotter who pointed out that the current scholarship has placed a spotlight on leading figures in the eugenics movement, a rather “one-sided representation, which ignore[s] the multifarious dimensions and extraordinary appeal of eugenics to individuals of very different social backgrounds, political convictions, and national affiliations.”7 Dikotter has called for a better look at how eugenics was perceived on basic, popular levels. By looking at the propaganda aimed at the typical Anglo-Saxon mother as well as the eugenic educational campaign, we see more clearly what eugenics was like outside of the scientific community.

Eugenics flourished during the Progressive Era because of America’s obsession with once private and domestic issues and the rise of maternalist policies. According to Dorothy and Carl Schneider’s “American Women in the Progressive Era,” the progressive reform work done by middle-class native women was a “public housekeeping” mission to clean up the mess men had made of society.

It was the mothers’ duty to improve their children and the environment their children lived in. This was expanded to include cleaning up the Anglo-Saxon race with the rise of scientific motherhood, paralleling the eugenic movement. Even with all this pressure, “American Woman in the Progressive Era” puts a positive spin on the reformers and their 5

Peter Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

6 Katrina Irving, Immigrant Mothers: Narratives of Race and Maternity, 1890-1925 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

7 Frank Dikotter, “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives in the History of Eugenics,” American Historical Review 103, no. 2 (April 1998), 467.

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work, arguing that the unique power of women at the time generally raised the quality of life. 8 The eugenicists used this climate of reform to their advantage by adopting clean-up rhetoric and applying it to their own goal of “cleaning up” the Anglo-Saxon race. Through published eugenic guidebooks, eugenicists educated the native mother on her duty. Similarly, Seth Koven and Sonya Michel’s Mothers of a New World describes the rise of maternalism during the Progressive Era and how this impacted welfare policies. The rise of global concern about infant health coupled with a rich American history of republican motherhood made this Era ripe for eugenic concern. It also forced private issues, such as child rearing and mate selection, into the public sphere.9 However, eugenicists differed from their progressive counterparts. In addition to pushing for changes in the law, eugenicists launched an ideological campaign that aimed to change the very mindset of Anglo-Saxon Americans. By harnessing maternalist language, eugenicists could publicly critique what had once been private matters. The movement takes this contradiction further and shows that the two ends of the spectrum, the native woman and the immigrant woman, were used as weapons against each other in the fight to save the race.

It was immigrant mothers, then, that came under fire. As the natural producer of the inferior race, foreign mothers were seen as the enemy to the Anglo-Saxons. They themselves were unfit for motherhood, and their children were unfit and draining on American society. The eugenicists cast the immigrant mother as a threat to racial purity. Conversely, the Anglo-Saxon mother was called to fulfill her duty not only to produce a genetically superior race but also play hero and reform the immigrant mother or support nativist tactics in the battle to secure the United States as the ultimate Anglo-Saxon society. This was especially prevalent in New York City, as the maternal opponents were closely juxtaposed in class-based categories that contrasted the pomp of Fifth Avenue with the tenements of Five Points. Ideas came to fruition in New York eugenic organizations and publications, and the city public was exposed to the struggle to keep America racially pure.

To prove this, I plan to examine mainly guidebooks for mothers published in New York City in 1914 which describe normal pregnancy and child rearing facts coupled with the Anglo-Saxon 8

Dorothy and Carl Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era: 1900-1920, (New York: Facts on File, 1993).

9 Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., “Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of the Welfare State” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 1-30.

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mother’s eugenic mission. Compliance and producing a sound environment for the future generation and the advancement of their race were main themes throughout these texts. The four volumes, titled The Eugenic Marriage: A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies, include the basic ideas of eugenics and what the movement hopes to accomplish as well as instructions for the mother on how to pass this knowledge on to her children. In itself, the volumes prove that eugenicists were targeting native mothers in an educational campaign in addition to publishing about the dangers of immigrant reproduction. Another source is the writings of eugenicists themselves, such as Charles B. Davenport and Luther Burbank.

Additionally, Paul Popenoe’s “Applied Eugenics” was meant to be a college textbook, demonstrating that eugenicists were trying to educate young Americans at the prime childbearing years of the value of eugenics. Finally, I will analyze the published research of the time from eugenic journals as well as popular periodicals such as The New York Times and Century Magazine to see how eugenicists broadcast their ideas to the public. Together, with these primary and secondary sources I will show how eugenicists were fighting a battle on two fronts: they rallied against the massive waves of immigration that they perceived as threatening the Anglo-Saxon race while also promoting the native mother as the reproductive soldiers who could save America from certain race suicide.

The public had been primed for eugenics by the twentieth century by their exposure to the revolutionary scientific discoveries happening around the world. Traditional beliefs about human nature had been shattered by great minds such as Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, who broke from the religious-based creation theory that proposed that man had been dropped onto Earth as perfectly functioning organisms. Darwin’s writings rocked this theory by likening the evolution of man to that of animals; starting small and gradually adapting to nature and evolving to survive. Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest” to describe why some adaptations succeeded and others did not.10 Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, was familiar with the new revelations. His cousin’s theories inspired him to think about human evolution and how it differed from animalistic evolution. His thinking was also influenced by the work of Gregor Mendel. Mendel is known for his work with crossing pea plants to obtain certain traits and eliminate others.11 In Europe, Galton began metaphorically applying Mendel’s methods to human evolution—what 10 11

Bruinius, Better for All the World, 11-13.

Ibid, 11.

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if people could be crossed based on specific traits deemed desirable or unworthy? Thus the eugenic movement was born.

The movement captured the attention of biologist Charles B. Davenport. Fascinated by heredity, believed at the time to be the culmination of all the environments of all past generations on an individual life, Davenport expanded the eugenics movement and established the Eugenic Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, New York in 1910.12 Previously, Davenport had been a professor at Harvard and the University of Chicago, and had been one of the first to introduce Mendel’s work into the classroom. This created a unique American form of eugenics that emphasized scientific method and studying genes and how they function. Traits were of certain interest to Davenport and the other scientists at the ERO. The goal of the eugenicists was to eliminate what Davenport called a “fearful drag on our civilization” through a series of genetically engineered generations that weeded out undesirable traits. 13 In this way, they could manipulate the evolution of the human species and control it. Scientists at the time believed the Anglo-Saxon white American to be the most advanced level of the human species, but not perfect. Soon, though, scientific intervention would be a key determinant in who would be deemed fit enough to survive and join the master race.14 The eugenicists had a specific plan for how to promote this racial purification. The American Breeders Association created the Committee on Eugenics in 1909 staffed by Davenport himself, noted inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and eugenic writer and plant breeder Luther Burbank. They and others believed three steps would lead to success: investigation, education, and legislation. 15 The investigation portion required the eugenicists to delve into the family histories of both unfit and seemingly fit persons. They were looking for things like a history of insanity, feeble-mindedness (low intellectual level), tendency towards crime, alcoholism, poverty, and inherent diseases. If a seemingly fit person’s family history brought up undesirable traits, they were likely a carrier and labeled as such. 16 The committee would be armed with information and ready to tackle the next phase: 12

Luther Burbank, The Training of the Human Plant (New York: Century Company, 1907), 68.

13 Charles B. Davenport, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1910), 31.

14 Burbank, The Training of the Human Plant, 73.

15 Davenport, Better Breeding, 26.

16 Ibid, 30.

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education. This was a hot topic in eugenics. It was not so much that eugenicists had to win over the American people for the need to better the race. As Bruinius argues, the American people’s drive for perfection was so embedded in nationalistic culture by the twentieth century that the basic argument of eugenics was perceived as entirely rational.17 The progressive movement also primed the American people to accept radical change. The eugenic education had to focus on the genetic process of racial purification and how to get Progressive Era reformers to stop looking at the poor and foreign as victims but rather as nuisances that needed to be eliminated. In fact, many eugenicists, Davenport included, harbored a great deal of resentment toward charitable reform. They saw it as extending the problem. For instance, Davenport believed that “vastly more effective than ten million dollars to ‘charity’ would be ten million to Eugenics.”18 The hostility and disdain for reform came from the fact that eugenicists believed that it was not the economy that was to blame for the pauper’s situation; it was his genes. And no amount of money or free food could fix those.

The preferred method to stop the unfit from reproducing, at least for Davenport, was segregation of both sexes at the reproductive ages or forced sterilization of both sexes.19 It would take a lot of propaganda to sway the public to such a drastic measure. To ‘arouse the public spirit’ Davenport initiated an educational campaign that launched magazine articles, public lectures, speeches to workers, and letters to doctors, teachers, and legislators underlining the rudimentary aspirations of eugenics and how it would benefit the Anglo-Saxon race.20 He also tapped into the competitive American spirit by promoting Better Baby and Fitter Family Contests where contestants were judged based on the level of their morals and hygiene. This was meant to glorify Anglo-Saxon hereditary perfection while subliminally underlining the otherness of the immigrants and poverty-stricken who could not hope to win. Yet another educational approach was through religion. As generally most of the Anglo-Saxon Americans were Protestant in twentieth century America, it was shrewd of Davenport to make this link between a scientific undertaking and religion. He held contests for best eugenic sermons as a way to reward preachers for enticing the public.21 Eugenicists were often concerned with the state of public schooling, especially for young girls, which I will discuss later.

17

Bruinius, Better for All the World, 361.

Davenport, Better Breeding, 35.

19 Davenport, Better Breeding, 16.

20 Ibid, 33.

21 Bruinius, Better for All the World, 16.

18

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In order to achieve the security of a superior race, the third step in the eugenic plan, legislation, was critical. The fear that the genetically weak would deplete the country of Nordic stock was not unique to eugenicists; contemporary nativist thinkers were preoccupied with the same issue. According to the Department of Commerce and Labor, in 1904 alone over 752,000 immigrants from over fifty different countries entered and settled in the United States. 22 To nativists, these immigrants embodied everything the eugenicists had warned about unfit genes. The migrants, a large number of them from Southeastern Europe, were seen as medieval in custom and it was feared they would “coarsen the native born” upon their arrival in the States. 23 To eugenicists, the immigrants possessed many of the qualities that the plan was trying to eliminate. The influx of such inferior people would only serve to destabilize the “biological quality” of an already fading race.24 Therefore, legislation restricting the reproduction and even the immigration of the unfit was necessary to both nativists and eugenicists.

The eugenics paradigm had been used to justify immigration restriction even before the establishment of the ERO. After the Civil War, the government took steps to make sure only skilled workers and absolutely no Chinese migrants were being brought into America with the Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885, which was updated in 1907 to include a long list of what President Theodore Roosevelt felt were “undesirable characteristics.” Targeted groups included the insane, the feeble-minded (imbeciles, idiots, and morons were all varying degrees of feeble minds), paupers, beggars, people with a “loathsome” disease, convicted criminals, anarchists, polygamists, and political dissidents. 25 Roosevelt’s update basically targeted anyone who would fall under public charge or cause problems for the state of New York and country should they migrate. By creating such a broad definition of “undesirable,” Roosevelt left the restriction open for interpretation.

However, the eugenicists and nativists did not stop there. The Immigration Restriction League, which met at 147 East 125fth Street in 22

Burbank, Training of the Human Plant, 5.

Edward Ross, “American and Immigrant Blood: A Study of the Social Effects of Immigration,” Century Magazine, Dec. 1913. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1913dec-00225?View=PDFPages.

24 Edwin Black, War against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 188.

25 Peter Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 109.

23

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New York, sympathized with the eugenic movement in that it specifically believed that the “new” immigrants were inherently unable to assimilate and consequently only contributed to the problems of urban life. After 1907, they focused on tightening controls on immigration even further. One of the IRL’s recommendations, demonstrated in a circular letter, was to place a literacy requirement in the upcoming immigration law. 26 The League claimed that it was really the public who urged this amendment, and the government listened. In 1917 the immigration law included a requirement for any migrant to be able to read at least forty words in any language. 27 By 1921, it was clear that the problem had not been addressed. World War I had caused an increase in immigration right at the time that a sense of isolationism hit Americans. This, combined with a massive outbreak of typhus among New York City immigrants, sent legislators scrambling.28 More radical measures were needed.

The nativists were not the only ones to take advantage of the fearful public climate. Congressman Albert Johnson, who would lend his name to the Johnson-Reed Act, was a close friend of eugenicist Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race. Grant, as head of the IRL, made sure Johnson regularly received social worker reports on the defects of recent New York immigrants. 29 Equipped with scientific data supporting nativist public opinion, Johnson and Congress moved forward to pass the Immigration Act of 1921, the precursor to the Johnson-Reed Act. By looking at immigration records and the 74,000 souls still waiting to be inspected at Ellis Island, Johnson estimated that millions more were waiting to migrate in Europe.30 To curb this, Johnson proposed setting the maximum quota to 350,000 immigrants annually, drawn from five percent of any particular country’s rate of immigration in 1910. Even though this was not as strict as the subsequent Act, the 1921 law marked the end of America’s open door policy, and made the declaration of refuge on the Statue of Liberty null and void. As Century Magazine noted, the motivation to immigrate in search of American asylum was no longer good enough. 31

26

Thomas Burke, Immigration Restriction League, http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/5398860?n=10 27 Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society, 110.

28 Ibid, 114.

29 Black, War against the Weak, 188.

30 Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society, 115.

31 Glenn Frank, “A Sensible Immigration Policy,” Century Magazine, May 1924, 136. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1924may-00135.

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There was just no reason to allow the poor to flood in when New York City was already teeming with tenements and destitution.

The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 cemented eugenic rhetoric into law. By reducing the percentage of immigrants America was willing to take in from each country from five to two percent, immigration in general was stemmed. But it was the discriminatory targeting of certain “inferior races” that concerned eugenicists and nativists alike. With what one Century Magazine author describes as an “obvious” intent, the Act switched from using the 1910 census to the statistics of 1890, where there were more Northern and Western European migrants within the country.32 Noticeable even to the public, Congress had directly labeled countries of Southern and Eastern Europe, namelyItaly, Greece, Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Jews from all countries, as unworthy of American citizenship. To take the pressure off of Ellis Island and to make sure no one slipped through, Congress devised a system of visas obtained for immigrants in their home countries to enforce the new law.33 It was this strain of thought—that Americans must choose whom to let in and whom to exclude—that fueled immigration legislation reform. Glenn Frank, in his magazine article examining the immigration acts, proposed a “guarded door policy” that broke down immigration into a scientific process where immigrants were selected based on their motive to emigrate and if they would “help rather than hinder” the country.34 This injection of science into immigration was telling of the context. Frank even called for the use of mental tests, a new innovation of the time embraced by eugenicists as another way to tease out the fit from the rest, as a way to select immigrants.35 All of these new measures were meant to tourniquet the flow of backwards, dangerous immigrants bleeding from Southern and Eastern Europe into Anglo-Saxon America.

In addition to immigration restriction, eugenicists were also interested in pursuing legislation for legalized sterilization. Even though keeping those deemed unfit out of the country was a more effective measure, eugenicists incorporated sterilization operations as a short term solution.36 The procedures usually consisted of a vasectomy for men and tubal ligation for women. The eugenicists saw it as a humane way to control the increase of the so-called inferior race. To sell it to the public and, more importantly, to the legislators, eugenicists 32

Ibid.

Schrag, Not Fit for Our Society, 121.

34 Glenn Frank, “A Sensible Immigration Policy,” 137.

35 Ibid, 138.

36 Black, War against the Weak, 188.

33

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pushed the financial burden that the feeble-minded and criminals created on the state. Edward Alsworth Ross, writer for Century Magazine, noted that immigrants in particular were more vulnerable to mental illness (urged by the excitement of American life) and had a 2.48% greater insanity frequency than native white New Yorkers. He says that for each group of 15,000 immigrants in mental institutions New York paid $3,500,000 to care for them. 37 And that did not even broach the money spent on immigrants in prisons or the charity work done in tenement districts. Appealing to the legislators’ wallets made the immigrant reproduction an immediate threat and allowed eugenicists to capture their audience in order to pitch their actual concern of race suicide.

Margaret Sanger, mother of the birth control movement in New York and contributor to the idea that women had a right over their own bodies, also endorsed mass sterilization. As a nurse working with the poor of the city, Sanger saw firsthand what large families living on very little money meant. She agreed that feeble-minded parents only produced feeble-minded children and became an avid eugenicist. 38 Her organization, the American Birth Control League, included a eugenic agenda that promoted sterilization for defectives. Moreover, as a Malthusian Sanger took the harshest view of negative eugenics and proposed to stop all charity work and let the weak die off as, according to Spencer, nature intended.39 The jump from contraceptive birth control straight to sterilization for defectives and immigrants for Sanger must have come from the eugenic belief in the moral inferiority of the immigrant women in general. According to Popenoe’s Applied Eugenics, unfit women were not to be trusted to have the foresight or the self-control to handle taking contraceptives, and as a result sterilization was the only safe option left. 40 Thus, eugenicists felt the need to push for the legalization of sterilization. Before the controversial Carrie Buck case went to the Supreme Court in 1927, there had been more than 8,500 known illegal sterilizations in the US. The procedures were mostly conducted on young feeble-minded women who were officially diagnosed with “pelvic disorders” that just

37

Edward Ross, “American and Immigrant Blood: A Study of the Social Effects of Immigration,” Century Magazine, Dec. 1913, 231. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1913dec-00225.

38 Black, War Against the Weak, 132.

39 Ibid, 128.

40 Paul Popenoe, Applied Eugenics, (New York: The Macmillan Company), 1918, 272.

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Amelia Jacobs so happened to result in their sterilization. 41 The Supreme Court case centered on the sterilization of Carrie Buck, a “feeble-minded” poor woman from Virginia who grew up with a single mother who relied on charity and prostitution to feed her several children. Dr. Bell, the surgeon who operated on Carrie, brought the case against himself as a way to get the issue of sterilization into court. Sure enough, at the end of the trial, the judge ruled sterilization a constitutional method to fight poverty, and granted the individual states the power to create their own laws based on that.42 Thereafter, New York became one of the states to employ sterilization laws based solely on eugenic motives. 43 With federal backing, eugenicists could legally move forward with their plot for racial superiority. The next step was to target the root of the problem: unfit mothers. “…the unfit and unworthy must be rejected, not necessarily as individuals, but as parents”: thus began a 1914 New York publication of a guide to native mothers. 44 The introduction alone is packed with eugenic rhetoric and outlines the threat of the white Anglo-Saxon woman’s closest enemy—the unfit alien mother. Katrina Irving describes the immigrant mother as the eugenic villain, even more dangerous than the immigrant man because she, as the primary participator in the reproductive process, was the transmitter of genes and undesirable traits. These women “threatened the Republic’s very existence” and consequently became the focus of the heated eugenic battle.45 The Republic, which counted on motherhood to bolster the “fit” population so it could durably function, believed that the perpetuity of the average, unskilled mother would be its downfall. 46 The main concern of the eugenicists was the seemingly hyper-fecundity of the immigrant women. In New York, Slavic women came under special scrutiny. In his article “The Slavs in America,” Edward Ross cites Slav women as bearing on average eight children in their lives, at about the rate of one child per year. This was two times

41

Bruinius, Better for All the World, 9-11.

Bruinius, Better for All the World, 16.

43 http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=979 44 William Grant Hague, The Eugenic Marriage: A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies (New York.

Review of Reviews Company, 1914), I, 16.

45 Irving, Immigrant Mothers, 40.

46 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, III, 438.

42

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faster than the typical Anglo-Saxon woman, who could be expected to have on average three to four children.47 The steadily high birthrate among the immigrants turned them into sexual threats that endangered the natives with being overrun and eventually wiped out. The reform and charities that eugenicists despised were blamed for helping immigrant mothers continue their unhealthy habits and keep reproducing at incredible speeds. 48 Indeed, it was this type of work that turned Sanger away from charity and towards eugenics. The reliance on charity also fueled the disdain the natives felt towards the immigrants: native mothers had to raise their families themselves. The prospect of a freely reproducing population of immigrants, aided by charity, was horrifying to the nativist and eugenicist, who in turn cultivated fear among the public through published writings. Ross summarized the situation in Century Magazine: “Farm by farm, township by township, the displacement of the American goes on, a quiet conquest, without spear or trumpet, a conquest made by child-bearing women.”49 Eugenicists actively blamed women as the invasive species who would bring the downfall of the Anglo-Saxon race. Their husbands, to whom the women traditionally had to succumb, were not mentioned. The eugenicists had named their target; now it was time to start the battle.

The main eugenic argument against immigrant mothers was that they were inferior, ignorant parents who produced inferior, ignorant offspring. Most immigrants fell into the “unfit” category as a result of their economic opportunity, or lack thereof, within the city.

Drunks, criminals, prostitutes, and paupers (all of which could be found in the Five Points district) were classified as delinquents who needed to be sent to institutions, not reproducing.50 Eugenicists did not acknowledge that alcoholism, for example, was a means for the poor to escape from their difficult situations, and the scientifically-inclined denounced it as a hereditary problem. However, it was the ignorance of the mothers that the eugenicists chose to focus on in public. The high fertility mixed with great sexual appetites harmed both mother and child. Multiple, frequent childbirths could be detrimental to a woman’s health. According to The Eugenic Marriage, “a mother rendered incapable through sickness is, therefore a menace to the home.”51 47

Edward Ross, “The Slavs in America,” Century Magazine, Aug. 1914, 593.

48 Irving, Immigrant Mothers, 38.

49 Ross, “The Slavs in America,” 594.

50 Popenoe, Applied Eugenics, 180.

51 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, III, 438.

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This targeted the poor on two fronts: the over-worked mothers sick from physical exhaustion and the disease riddled tenement dwellers that were often exposed to epidemics due to poor living conditions, bad sanitation, and cramped quarters. Further, the immigrants’ backwardness hindered them in pregnancy as well. The “primitive” midwifery led to female and infant deaths. 52 In 1918 alone, there were over 250,000 infant deaths. 53 Deaths affected the poor the most because of their living conditions. According to eugenics, the babies suffered from having an ignorant mother. At a time when Galton was preaching the importance of nurture, the environment in which a child was brought up in was seen to have huge impacts on the child’s fitness. As such, it was seen as a failure of the mother if the environment was inadequate. A woman’s home-making skills were directly linked to her biological fitness as a mother. Industrialization had made housekeeping easier for women who could afford it what with the access to vacuum cleaners, improved washing machines, and commercially made clothing, but it also raised the standards of cleanliness and appearance for middle class women. 54 Immigrant women on the other hand, most working all day either inside or outside their homes could not devote as much time as native house makers.

Living in squalid tenement rooms, most immigrant mothers could not provide a safe, clean environment. In effect, their homes were used as proof of their inferiority as mothers. 55 Perhaps worse in eugenic eyes was motherly indifference: “There is something radically wrong in the make-up of a woman who is a wife and mother and who is indifferent.”56 As people who valued motherhood as a sacred duty, eugenicists considered it blasphemous to produce so many children and not care what happened to them. This was demonstrated in the ways immigrant mothers were portrayed to the public. For example, Katrina Irving uses Jacob Riis’s photograph “In the Home of an Italian Ragpicker, Jersey Street,” to show how the typical immigrant mother was perceived.57 She does not look at her baby and holds it mechanically; the distance between them is palpable.

The child is tightly swaddled in the Old World style. Mother and child sit on barrels in a dark, grimy room filled with buckets and old bundles of clothing.

52

Ross, “American and Immigrant Blood,” 225.

Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 8.

54 Ibid, 29.

55 Irving, Immigrant Mothers, 47.

56 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, III, 403.

57 Irving, Immigrant Mothers, 77.

53

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To the eugenicist, the greatest fear was that America was going to be conquered by these types of mothers. Away from home often, the immigrant mother could not stand up to the standard set by eugenics. The wage slavery that drew the immigrant mother out of the home and into the factory caused her to desert her children and her domestic duty. Young children could be found wandering the streets, begging for money, or working as street sweeps or peddlers around the city to add to the family income. According to eugenic journal publications, the lack of parentage manifested itself in the statistics of immigrant children in state institutions. In New York City, 12,000 children with foreign born parents ended up in juvenile court and 18,000 were listed as receiving welfare. Moreover, the majority of the 10,000 declared morons and over 600 mental defects confined at Randall’s Island asylum were the children of immigrants.58 The inability to provide a stable environment also led immigrant parents to leave their children with charity organizations, such as the New York Juvenile Asylum, which clothed and fed their charges. 59 The immigrant mother, unable to adequately raise her children to be fit and functioning citizens in an Anglo-Saxon world, was condemned as a hazard to herself, her children, the urban economy, and to the superior race. By casting immigrant women as poor mothers, it would be easier for eugenicists to press sterilization laws against them and restrict immigration in the future.

It was time for the eugenicists to launch their counterattack against the rising immigrant tide. To combat the high immigrant birth rate, a form of constructive eugenics was developed, in which native women were encouraged by eugenic propaganda to have more babies.

In fact, it was her failure to comply with constructive eugenics that prevented Margaret Sanger from merging the birth control movement and the eugenics movement publically. She believed that even native women were eligible for birth control and should be able to choose how many children she had. Davenport and the other eugenicists found this compromising to their own goals of increasing the superior stock, and declined the formal merger.60 They even went as far as labeling contraceptives, such as condoms, a health risk to further dissuade mothers from active family planning. 61 By admitting that “We need most, the awakening impulse of the mothers of the race,” the

58

“Immigration and Deviants,” Eugenical News, no. 2, 30.

Ross, “American and Immigrant Blood,” 229.

60 Black, War Against the Weak, 135.

61 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VIII, 440.

59

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eugenicists like Davenport and Hague placed the duty of saving AngloSaxon America directly on the native woman’s shoulders.62 What brought the eugenicists to such conclusions? Most troubling to them was the stark contrast between the birthrates of native and immigrant mothers. According to The Eugenic Marriage, in 1914, 25% of native women were unwilling to bear children during the prime reproductive years (ages 23-26).63 They preferred the “life of luxury” over the constant demands of motherhood. At a time when it was thought that women must have at least four children each to keep the race going, this intentional barrenness was deplorable. Even worse, no one else was too concerned.64 This was bolstered by the rise of the “New Woman.” Starting in 1890, the educated, independent, and physically active young woman began challenging the male ideal of the delicate and moral dependent mother.65 With new independence came a new demand for rights over reproduction, sparking the rise of voluntary motherhood, according to which a woman’s refusing sex with her husband on the grounds of not wanting more children was morally acceptable.66 Men, threatened by the New Woman and alarmed by the falling birthrate rallied even more behind the domestic ideal of past days. This alarmed the eugenicists as well, and they initiated a propaganda campaign to change it.

According to Hague, “every mother must become an enthusiastic eugenist.”67 By exalting the native mother, outlining and glorifying her duties, the eugenics movement created its own maternal hero to battle the defective baby-factory that is the immigrant mother.

First, they idolized motherhood. Since most of the nation was Protestant, the eugenic movement, like Davenport before, gave the movement a religious foundation. By likening the native mother to the Virgin Mary, the eugenicists introduced mother and child worship into their propaganda.68 By doing so, they turned motherhood into a sacred duty that fulfilled not only the wishes of the eugenicists but also the will of God. Backed by religion, the eugenicists began pushing the duty of the mother to her race. Due to their importance to the race, women were discouraged by the eugenic movement from seeking work outside 62

Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VI, xxx.

Ibid., xxv.

64 Popenoe, Applied Eugenics, 256.

65 Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 16-18.

66 Ibid., 143-144.

67 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VI, 48.

68 Caleb Saleeby, The Progress of Eugenics (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1914), 65.

63

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the home. A mother with a job, and worse still a single mother who was the breadwinner for her family, was said to be shirking her “supreme work” in the domestic sphere. Yet again, this was a reaction against the rising independence and employment of single and married women during the Progressive Era. Even though the myth persisted that elite white women only took jobs to occupy them before marriage, in 1900 seventeen percent of native middle-class married women were working, and that number increased to twenty-three percent in 1920.69 It was the goal of eugenicists to put women back in their place: at home with the children. It was also unwise for povertystricken women to procreate, as this would defeat the eugenic purpose.70 Again, this was a direct comparison to immigrant women who were forced to take on homework or factory jobs for extremely low wages. The eugenic movement also called upon the state to take a more active role in the protection of fit motherhood: “She is not only a worker, but the foremost of all workers,” and as such the state should intervene for her welfare.71 The Progressive Era was a time of expanding government involvement, and eugenicists applied it for their own means. They argued that expecting and nursing native mothers should not be left to take on jobs that would interfere with the real work they were conducting at home. To be sure, the eugenicists believed that government money should be spent just as much on the saviors of the Anglo-Saxon race as on the breeders of quality crops and animals. 72 Motherhood was an investment to the eugenicist that needed to be nurtured and guided in order to save the race from certain suicide.

Second, the eugenicists needed to educate young wives and mothers not only on the basics of eugenics, but also on the practices of being a good, eugenically fit mother. This was because it was no longer believed that merely giving birth made one a mother. Motherhood, like many other jobs during the Progressive Era, became professionalized. 73 To this end, eugenicists targeted the public school system. Most eugenicists agreed that the current system was failing young girls beginning in the elementary grades and continuing through college.

Even before the girl entered school, it was her mother’s job to instill in her the importance of fit motherhood. The Eugenic Marriage even gave examples of stories the mother could use. The stories, all about the genetic crossings of plants and animals to make them prettier, stronger, 69

Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 51.

Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VI, 18.

71 Saleeby, The Progress of Eugenics, 65.

72 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VI, xxv.

73 Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 37.

70

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and better (emphasi ing the prevalence of Mendel’s work at this time), were aimed at daughters, not sons. The stories also included metaphors about the poor, which likened them to sickly weeds needing to be pruned.74 Again, the fate of the race was in the mother’s hands. When that responsibility was also placed on schools, the eugenicists were disappointed. They thought that a girl’s education, while not inferior, should definitely differ from a boy’s. They wanted to see home-making classes and topics that would prepare a girl for motherhood being taught, not science or math. In 1914, it was found that only 4 percent of girls in schools were studying this sort of material, and eugenicists concluded that this was a contributing factor to the degeneration of the race.75 Girls simply were not adequately prepared for the huge task that awaited them after graduation.

Furthermore, eugenicists thought that education was actually pushing girls into the 25% that were actively avoiding motherhood by giving them skills necessary for jobs outside the home. Some even thought negative eugenics should be introduced in schools to teach the unfit the scientific reasons why they had a duty not to reproduce.76 Higher education came under more intense scrutiny. Women would enter college at the beginning of their prime child bearing years, already a concern to the movement. But then the lack of proper topics—pregnancy, child care, etc.—were actually diminishing the value of the women’s attending.77 For women, the college curriculum was just a waste of time. Eugenicists were avid education reformers because they hoped to bring their ideals into the school system.

During the Progressive Era, wife and mother were synonymous. Marriage was seen as a legal license to procreate, and the eugenic movement harnessed that. The native woman was once again responsible for her race in the realm of marriage. It was her duty to choose a satisfactory mate, one fit enough to provide a stable environment as well as desirable genes. The ideal marriage occurred at 23 years of age, at the peak of reproduction and at a time when any hereditary deficiencies would have already manifested. 78 It was also proposed to introduce this—how to choose a fit mate—into a girl’s education.79 Procreation was the point of marriage. Thus, any wife who entered marriage with no intention of having children were branded as 74

Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VII, 175-177.

Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VI, 30.

76 Saleeby, The Progress of Eugenics, 99-101.

77 Popenoe, Applied Eugenics, 256-278.

78 Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VIII, 332-337.

79 Saleeby, The Progress of Eugenics, 101.

75

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Immigrant and Native Motherhood immature and misguided wives in need of eugenic intervention. 80 By carrying their educational propaganda into the home, the eugenic movement directly confronted mothers. Seen as the last hope against the fertility of the unfit, the native mother was venerated, bombarded with responsibility and education, and displayed to the public as the picture of cleanliness and devotion. She, unlike the immigrant mother, was the embodiment of what it was to be an American. She was the hope of the future—the eugenic hero.

The intention to create a master Aryan race is best known in history as the work of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. However, the same movement began in the United States years earlier. Charles Davenport, President Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and many other prominent New Yorkers were adamant eugenicists dedicated to genetically engineering the future of America. The influx of immigrants with alien customs became the target of discriminatory rhetoric and legislation, and thousands paid the price under the scalpel.

During the early twentieth century a backlash developed against the great melting pot that New York City represented—hundreds of nationalities coexisting in the same space, which horrified eugenic proponents. Today, we tend to think that this backlash, this distinct hatred has died and that we have embraced the different threads that make up the fabric of the country. Upon closer examination, however, I find that this is not true. The arguments used for immigration restriction then and today are nearly identical.81 The eugenic campaign against the rising birthrate of the immigrants still fuels fear today. Surely, the targets have changed. Today, Latina women illegally coming from Mexico and other South American countries are the victims of American fear and accusations. Again, we see a comparison between the “white” birthrate and the average immigrant family size. The science behind the eugenic movement of 1900-1930 has faded, but the nativist central argument—that the nation is under cultural attack— remains strong in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography Primary Sources: Address by President Roosevelt before the National Congress of Mothers, March 2, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, MS Am 1541 (315), Houghton Library, Harvard University.

80 81

Hague, The Eugenic Marriage, VIII, 339.

Schrag, Not Fit For Our Society.

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Burbank, Luther. The Training of the Human Plant. New York: Century Company, 1907.

Davenport, Charles B. Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement

by Better Breeding. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1910.

Frank, Glenn. “A Sensible Immigration Policy.” The Century Magazine, May, 1924. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century1924may-00135 Hague, William Grant. The Eugenic Marriage: A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies. New York.

Review of Reviews Company, 1914. Volumes I-IV. Immigration Restriction League (U.S.) Records (MS Am 2245).

Houghton Library, Harvard University. http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/restrictionleague.html Popenoe, Paul. Applied Eugenics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918.

Ross, Edward. “American and Immigrant Blood: A Study of the Social Effects of Immigration.” The Century Magazine, December, 1913. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1913dec-00225 Ross, Edward. “The Slavs in America.” The Century Magazine, August 1914. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Century-1914aug-00590 Saleeby, Caleb. The Progress of Eugenics. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1914.

“Teaching Eugenics.” Eugenical News Volume XIX, Issue 1 (1934).77. #951. The Harry H Laughlin Papers. Truman State University, Legislative Status of Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, 1935. The Eugenics Archive. JPEG file, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_imagepl?id=9 79.

Secondary Sources: Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.

Bruinis, Harry. Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity. New York: Random House, Inc., 2006.

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Cot, Annie L. “Breed Out the Unfit and Breed In the Fit: Irving Fisher, Economics, and the Science of Heredity.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Vol. 64, No. 3. July 2003. 793826.

Dikotter, Frank. Race Culture: Recent Perspectives in the History of Eugenics, American Historical Review. 103:2 April 1998, 467-478.

Irving, Katrina. Immigrant Mothers: Narratives of Race and Maternity, 1890-1925. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

Kline, Wendy. Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom.

California: University of California Press. November 21, 2005. 1-161.

Koven, Seth and Michels, Sonya. Mothers of New World: Maternalist Policies and the Origins of the Welfare State. New York: 1993. 1-30.

Leonard, Thomas C. “Retrospectives: Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. 19 No. 4. Autumn, 2005. 207-224.

Schneider, Dorothy and Carl. American Women in the Progressive Era: 1900-1920. New York: Facts in File, 1993.

Schrag, Peter. Not Fit for Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

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Joel Kersting

Introduction to “An Evolving Struggle: The Political Incorporation of Gays and Lesbians in Urban Politics” Ryane McAuliffe Straus Associate Professor of Political Science One of the most important questions that the field of political science examines is about whether, and how, members of individual communities are incorporated into a democratic society. Those studying the subfield of urban politics have long asked similar questions about our cities. One of the most important resources in this field is Browning, Marshall, and Tabb’s work on the San Francisco Bay Area, Protest is Not Enough.1 In this work, the authors argue that protest alone will not lead to political inclusion of minority groups.

Rather, policy change is more likely to occur when individual members of minority communities are elected to office.

That study, and many like it, focused on racial and ethnic minorities. In his piece, “An Evolving Struggle: The Political Incorporation of Gays and Lesbians in Urban Politics,” Joel Kersting asks a similar question about the incorporation of gays and lesbians.

Joel’s work uses the framework provided by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, and applies it to a different population. He conducts a multi-case study of four American cities, and studies the variables suggested by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb as they apply to the gay and lesbian population.

Kersting’s study finds that, based on the measurement tools used by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, gays and lesbians are well on their way to full incorporation in American cities. Like Browning, Marshall, and Tabb’s use of inclusive policy to measure black and Hispanic incorporation, Kersting defines “incorporation” as the passage of a non-discrimination ordinance. In another move that mirrors the classic study, Kersting further argues that gays and lesbians relied on the structural framework provided by previous civil rights movements, just as Browning, Marshall, and Tabb argue that Hispanics followed in the footsteps of black protestors and elected officials who came shortly before them. Overall, Kersting models a classic work in urban politics to argue that gays and lesbians have, indeed, moved closer to political inclusion in our urban areas.

1

Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb. 1986.

Protest is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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An Evolving Struggle: The Political Incorporation of Gays and Lesbians in Urban Politics Joel Kersting History and Political Science Major; Class of 2015 Abstract: This paper attempts to explain the political incorporation of gays and lesbians into American urban politics in the last half-century using the theory of minority political incorporation proposed by Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall and David H. Tabb in Protest Is Not Enough. To test this theory on gay and lesbian political incorporation, a case study of four cities—San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia and New York City—was performed. A qualitative and quantitative study was used to test each city’s process and progress of gay and lesbian political incorporation, using the passage of a nondiscrimination ordinance as a benchmark. The results were that for the most part, gay and lesbian political incorporation did follow the path of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory in terms of the factors of minority population, previous minority incorporation, demand-protest and electoral mobilization. Gays and lesbians differed in their approach to incorporation as they often elected a pro-gay official rather than gay official that was part of their group. Nonetheless, gays and lesbians were able to achieve some level of political incorporation and pass their own non-discrimination ordinance in all four cities, albeit through different routes.

The struggle of minorities to become incorporated into American politics is one that has been long fought and is still ongoing.

This is especially true in urban politics where minorities have often found that their local government is either somewhat or completely resistant to their incorporation.2 This view is supported by political scientists Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall and David H. Tabb who state, “Local polities were sometimes open, sometimes closed.”3 Whatever the case, minorities struggled to become politically incorporated into urban areas and often traced a similar path in order to become so. This path is outlined by Browning, Marshall and Tabb in their academic work, Protest Is Not Enough. In this book, they describe 2

Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall and David H. Tabb, Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 7-8.

3 Ibid., 8.

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how blacks and Hispanics were incorporated into urban politics in Northern California. This journey towards political incorporation was successful for many blacks and Hispanics in Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s study and it can be posited that this theory can be extended to the political incorporation of other minorities in urban politics, such as gays and lesbians. The gay and lesbian struggle for political incorporation developed in the wake of the struggle for black and Hispanic incorporation and in many ways, gays and lesbians modeled their fight upon these earlier struggles. In this paper, it is argued that the path of gays and lesbians to become politically incorporated into urban politics and to then effect policies that were responsive to their community’s needs modeled the path of political incorporation for other minority groups proposed by Browning, Marshall and Tabb and is shown in studies of gay rights movements in the latter half of the twentieth century in the cities of San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

The major claim of this paper is that the political incorporation of gays and lesbians fits into a broader model of political incorporation for blacks and Hispanics as provided by Browning, Marshall and Tabb in Protest Is Not Enough using specific components of their theory.

The rationale behind attempting to link gay and lesbian incorporation with other minority groups’ incorporation has two components: first, to provide evidence that Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory can explain the political incorporation of more minority groups than previously believed; second, to explain that while sexual minorities are not the same as racial minorities in many ways, the way these minority groups operate in urban politics is not all that dissimilar. The latter reason is especially resonant because it can create a bond between these various minority groups that can be used to harness greater political power together than they might have if they were separated. In order to provide these important linkages, this paper will explain Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory of minority political incorporation focusing on specific components that are relative to gays and lesbians and then examine four American metropolitan areas and their respective gay rights movements in terms of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s model.

This examination focuses on the last fifty years as this time period is the period of the broader gay rights movement in the United States and this paper attempts to explain the success of this movement in urban areas.

Gays and lesbians have come a long way in their fight to raise awareness of their community’s problems and to gain political power in order to respond to those problems. Fifty years ago, to see an openly gay individual, let alone the thought of an openly gay public official, 60

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was unthinkable for many. Through the efforts of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, that idea is no longer incredible. 120 openly gay officials had been elected in the United States by the 1990s. 4 Most of these officials were elected at the local level to positions such as city council and mayor.5 The involvement of gays and lesbians in politics and the election of gays and lesbians to office has led to pro-gay policies being enacted in many cities. These results are most notable in the fact that more than 100 cities have enacted anti-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation since the 1970s.6 Anti-discrimination laws are extremely important to the gay and lesbian community and a major policy goal.7 How were gays and lesbians able to achieve electoral and policy success? How was a group that was so isolated a few decades before able to become incorporated into the political structures of local governments around the country? A possible answer for this is the theory developed by Browning, Marshall and Tabb on the political incorporation of blacks and Hispanics. Their theory can be adapted to see if it fits the political incorporation of gays and lesbians. This paper will examine that hypothesis based on six variables: (1) the size of the gay and lesbian population and (2) the presence of previous minority incorporation as factors necessary for gay and lesbian political incorporation; (3) the levels of demand-protest and (4) electoral mobilization that preceded their political incorporation; (5) the success of gay and lesbian political incorporation; and (6) the extent to which this incorporation led to policies responsive to the gay and lesbian community.

Before examining whether Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory on minority political incorporation applies to gays and lesbians, one must first examine the theory itself. The theory is comprised of many components that are necessary for a minority group to achieve political incorporation in urban politics and to then effect policies that benefit that minority. The first major component of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory is the necessity of a relatively large minority population. Browning, Marshall and Tabb characterize minority population size as “the most obvious group political resource 4

James W. Button, Kenneth D. Wald and Barbara A. Rienzo, “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities,” Urban Affairs Review 35, no. 2 (1999): 189.

5 Ibid.

6 Steven H. Haeberle, “Gay Men and Lesbians at City Hall,” Social Science Quarterly 77, no. 1 (1996): 190.

7 Button, Wald and Rienzo, “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities,” 188.

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Joel Kersting influencing expectations of success,”8 meaning it is one of the most important basic, structural factors that can lead to minority incorporation. A large minority population alone does not necessarily lead to political incorporation in urban politics, but Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s study of black and Hispanic incorporation showed that in the studied cities where there was an extremely small minority population of five to six percent, little to no incorporation occurred. 9 Thus, there is an impact that minority population size makes on incorporation and this impact is seen in the levels of demand-protest and electoral mobilization that minorities engage in. These two ideas will be discussed in further detail later on, but Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s study found them both to be dependent on minority population size.10 For demand-protest, the absolute size of the minority population, or the actual number of minorities led to greater displays of the practice.11 On the other hand, the magnitude of electoral mobilization was related to the relative size of the minority population to the population as a whole.12 As will be shown, demand-protest and electoral mobilization are the two main practices that lead to political incorporation and since they both rely on a sizable minority population, population size is a key factor in incorporation as well.

A smaller component of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory is that the presence of a previous incorporation of a minority can help future minority groups also become politically incorporated. A previous minority movement or incorporation of that minority can often provide a model or method that other minorities can use to stage their own movement. In addition, the mere fact that another minority was able to permeate the city’s political structure makes it easier for another minority to do the same. This component was seen in Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s study where Hispanic political incorporation was significantly impacted by the incorporation of blacks that came before it.13 This is most evident in the fact that Hispanic demand-protest activity typically began two to three years after that of blacks, leading to the conclusion that blacks engaging in demand-protest allowed Hispanics to do the same.14 In addition, the extent to which blacks became incorporated in each city strengthened the later incorporation of 8

Browning, Marshall and Tabb, Protest Is Not Enough, 81.

Ibid., 129.

10 Ibid., 245.

11 Ibid., 84.

12 Ibid., 96.

13 Ibid., 126.

14 Ibid., 90-91.

9

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An Evolving Struggle Hispanics in the same governing coalition. 15 It is clear that the incorporation and actions of blacks aided the same movements in the Hispanic community and it is reasonable to assume that the same effect would be occur in other minority groups striving for political incorporation.

A more significant component of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory that leads to political incorporation is demand-protest.

By demand-protest, the authors mean a variety of violent and nonviolent actions, such as sit-ins and boycotts, in addition to traditional actions like attending city and neighborhood meetings in mass numbers and lobbying city officials.16 The goal of demand-protest is to put pressure on the city government and to raise awareness of the minority’s needs and desires in the hope that it will lead to some of those needs and desires being met. In the cities studied by Browning, Marshall and Tabb, demand-protest was a key precursor to political incorporation, along with electoral mobilization.17 By itself, demandprotest did not produce a large effect on political incorporation, but rather, it acted in concert with the other components of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory.18 Demand-protest was also shown to be more effective for some minority groups than others and was more effective if whites supported the movement in some cases. 19 Regardless of the size of its effect on minority political incorporation, demandprotest is essential to seeing minorities gain power in urban politics.

Electoral mobilization is another large component in Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory of minority political incorporation. The three authors define electoral mobilization as “efforts to elect minority candidates to city council and mayoral positions, and in some cities, slates that included minority candidates.”20 These efforts can include candidate forums to select candidates to support and voting drives to increase minority turnout.

Browning, Marshall and Tabb put emphasis on initial voting turnout followed by the minority group running and controlling candidates as the key to strong political incorporation.21 Like demand-protest, electoral mobilization was also somewhat reliant on white support for

15

Ibid., 124.

Ibid., 78.

17 Ibid., 245-246.

18 Ibid., 245.

19 Ibid., 245.

20 Ibid., 78.

21 Ibid.

16

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Joel Kersting some minorities.22 If minorities were able to successfully mobilize, that meant they had members of their own minority group in city elected office and that is one of the most significant steps toward achieving political incorporation. As stated before, electoral mobilization was most successful when used in combination with demand-protest.23 In Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s study, demand-protest and electoral mobilization directly led to the political incorporation of minorities in cities.

Political incorporation is the major component of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s overall theory. The authors state that political incorporation is not only the mere presence of representatives from the minority group on the urban governing bodies, but it is their integration into the dominant, governing coalition.24 Browning, Marshall and Tabb make that distinction by stating, “Minority roles in dominant coalitions determined coalition commitment to minority interests.”25 The more representation and power the minority group had in the coalition, the greater the focus by that coalition on the issues that were important to those minorities. To be a part of a coalition, minorities must ally with other parties, usually liberals, who tend to be more inclusive of minorities and responsive to their demands.26 This liberal ally had to be of sufficient size and power to be able to work with the minority or else the coalition would not be able to sustain dominance in the governing bodies.27 If minorities were able to find such allies, then they were likely able to form a dominant coalition and, according to Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory, become politically incorporated. To be incorporated was crucial to the authors since they saw it is as the key to improving minorities’ station in society, as reflected when they write, “A group that has achieved substantial political incorporation has taken a major step toward political equality.”28 That greater political equality was typically seen in the policies that the minority-inclusive dominant coalition would enact.

This is what Browning, Marshall and Tabb claim is policy responsiveness and it is the final component of their theory of political incorporation. Policy responsiveness is defined as “changes in

22

Ibid., 245.

Ibid., 246.

24 Ibid., 25.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 27.

27 Ibid., 127.

28 Ibid., 27.

23

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An Evolving Struggle government policies that respond to minority interests.”29 These policies can range from a change in the distribution of benefits to aid minorities to passing laws that end discrimination against a minority group.30 These policies usually only arise through the political incorporation of minorities into city governments and dominant coalitions, because if minorities have no power or voice, the other officials would not necessarily put an emphasis on minority issues since they have little to nothing to do with them. That is why political incorporation is important to achieving a high level of policy responsiveness and Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s study showed that in the cities where minority incorporation was high, so was the degree of policy responsiveness.31 This policy responsiveness to minority issues is the end goal of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory. All of the previous components build on each other to get the minority group politically incorporated so they are then able to effect policy to benefit the minority. This path has worked for blacks and Hispanics in most of the Northern Californian cities studied by Browning, Marshall and Tabb,32 but it must be ascertained whether the theory can be applied to the gay and lesbian community which is both similar to and different from other minority groups.

In the last half-century, gays and lesbians have flocked to America’s cities. The city provided gays and lesbians with new opportunities in the urban economy, that many other groups also took advantage of.33 More than that, gays and lesbians also were looking for a place to form communities that welcomed their identity. 34 This movement has led to a heavy concentration of gays and lesbians in large cities, as seen in the number of people residing in the top twelve American cities who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual being much higher than the national average.35 Due to their greater population in urban areas, gays and lesbians have become significantly more important in urban local politics, with their vote being courted by city

29

Ibid, 24.

Ibid., 250.

31 Ibid., 24-25.

32 Ibid., 245-250.

33 Robert W. Bailey, Gay Politics, Urban Politics: Identity and Economics in an Urban Setting (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 3.

34 Ibid., 4.

35 Ibid., 55.

30

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Joel Kersting politicians.36 As their population grows larger and larger, gays and lesbians are able to wield more and more political power, but how did they initially attain that power? Upon arriving in cities, gays and lesbians were discriminated against and disenfranchised in urban politics as they were in all other forms of American government and society. Gay and lesbians responded to that discrimination with an active movement for equality and political influence that began in the early 1970s.37 The main aims of this movement, according to Button, Wald and Rienzo were to “establish political organizations, lobby for legislation, elect sympathetic candidates to public office, and protest vigorously against discriminatory practices.”38 One of their greatest efforts has been to elect openly gay and lesbian candidates to positions in urban politics, as well as straight candidates who supported gay rights and causes.39 This effort to elect gay and lesbian candidates and sympathetic candidates is their effort to become incorporated into urban politics.

To assess the political incorporation of gays and lesbians in urban politics, the six components of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory will be examined with information and data from the cities of San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia and Atlanta as well as general information about gays and lesbians in urban politics. The presence of a model of previous minority incorporation, demandprotest and electoral mobilization will be examined qualitatively, meaning these three components will be examined in terms of whether they were present and whether they impacted political incorporation.

Political incorporation and policy-responsiveness in gay and lesbian urban politics will be measured quantitatively. Political incorporation will be measured by whether openly gay and lesbian individuals were elected to public office in these cities and whether they became part of the dominant coalition. Policy responsiveness will be measured by the passing of a nondiscrimination ordinance that included sexual orientation and by when it was passed compared to other cities. The other component of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory of the si e of the minority population is the most difficult to assess in gay and lesbian politics. This is because gay and lesbian population is very 36

Mark Hertzog, The Lavender Vote: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals in American Electoral Politics (New York, NYU Press, 1996), 1.

37 Button, Wald and Rienzo, “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities,” 188.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

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difficult to measure in general. Unlike race or ethnicity, which is very easy to measure in census data or other sources, gay and lesbian population can only be quantified through self-identification or indirect measures. Self-identification is data or polling in which people state that they identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. 40 Obviously, some respondents to these polls may actually identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, but may be unwilling to state that they are for personal reasons.41 Indirect measures of gay and lesbian population are through census data on the number of people in “nonfamily” households.42 This is by no means a reliable measure of gay and lesbian population since many people who live together are not necessarily homosexual. Despite that, a high number of nonfamily households in a city correlates with a large gay and lesbian population in that city. 43 The significance of the difficulty in measuring gay and lesbian population is that it will be difficult to assess just how large of a population is influencing political incorporation. Nevertheless, population along with the other five components of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory will be looked for in the political incorporation of gays and lesbians in urban areas.

Population size is consistently considered an important factor in the political incorporation of minorities. An environment of political activity and opportunity for minorities is usually created when they have a significant concentration in a particular region or city. 44 Gays and lesbians seem to be no different. Large gay populations concentrated in urban enclaves have led to gays and lesbians developing a sense of public consciousness and awareness of issues relating to their community.45 This public consciousness and awareness has often led to political action that resulted in policy success. In a study of gay electoral mobilization in urban areas by James W. Button, Kenneth D. Wald and Barbara A. Rienzo, it was shown that the higher the amount of same-sex partner households in the city, the greater gay and lesbian political activity.46 Also, in a study by Steven H. Haeberle of American cities with populations greater than or equal to 250,000 people, a large gay population in a city has been positively correlated with anti-discrimination laws including sexual orientation being passed 40

Hertzog, The Lavender Vote, 10.

Ibid.

42 Haeberle, “Gay Men and Lesbians at City Hall,” 192.

43 Ibid.

44 Button, Wald and Rienzo, “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities,” 191.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid., 201.

41

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Joel Kersting in that urban area.47 Along with other factors, including urbanization, education and environmental change, population successfully predicted an anti-discrimination law being passed in more than half the cities that would pass such a law.48 This is evidence that a large gay and lesbian population was necessary for electoral mobilization and later political incorporation and policy responsiveness.

The effect of population size on political incorporation and policy responsiveness was also seen in two of the cities studied in this paper. In Atlanta, a study of the city’s gay rights movement showed the importance of population. Gays and lesbians began to develop their own spaces and communities within the city, primarily Midtown. 49 By having a concentrated population in these select areas of the city, Atlanta gays and lesbians were able to gain political power.50 Gaining their votes became important and candidates competed for endorsements at candidate forums sponsored by gay organizations. Gay and lesbian candidates also became more common, with the first being elected in 1997.51 Their concentration in specific districts in Atlanta allowed gays and lesbians to be able to elect a candidate who either supported their cause or was one of their own. The effect of gay and lesbian population on elections was also seen in New York City mayoral elections. In 1989, a large gay and lesbian population was able to affect the outcomes of the Democratic primary between David Dinkins and Ed Koch and the general election between Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.52 The incorporation of gays and lesbians into the rainbow coalition of multiple minority groups gave them power in deciding these races and electing Dinkins. 53 Though their vote was not strong by itself, gays and lesbians found electoral success in a broader coalition.54 If the population of gays and lesbians in New York City was small, then their political power would have been small, but due to their large population, they were seen as significant and able to become politically incorporated into Dinkins’ rainbow coalition. This example from New York City, as well as the discussion of Atlanta’s gay 47

Haeberle, “Gay Men and Lesbians at City Hall,” 195.

Ibid., 194.

49 Arnold Fleischmann and Jason Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt: The Development of the Gay Rights Movement in Atlanta,” Journal of Urban Affairs 26, no. 4 (2004): 418-419.

50 Ibid., 420.

51 Ibid.

52 Bailey, Gay Politics, Urban Politics, 161-163.

53 Ibid., 162.

54 Ibid., 164-165.

48

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population shows that having a significant population in a city gave gays and lesbians greater political power and a greater chance to become politically incorporated.

The previous incorporation of a minority group often provides support for the incorporation of another minority. The political incorporation of gays and lesbians has consistently been modeled on and relied upon the previous incorporation of blacks and Hispanics. 55 Studies of gay and lesbian political incorporation in urban areas have shown that their mobilization has been patterned on that of blacks and Hispanics, in addition to other oppressed minorities. 56 This similar pattern is due to the fact that the condition of gays and lesbians and the problems that they face are similar to the condition and problems associated with racial minorities.57 Both racial and sexual minorities face problems of discrimination, unequal opportunities and exclusion from governing structures. It is not surprising since the gay rights movement occurred after the height of the civil rights movement that gays and lesbians would look to blacks and Hispanics as a model on how to become politically incorporated in urban politics.

In the studied cities of Philadelphia, San Francisco and Atlanta, both the black and Hispanic civil rights movements impacted gay and lesbian mobilization and incorporation. In Philadelphia in the 1960s, gay rights activists began to use what was called “multiple models of African American resistance” in their own movement.58 Organizations tried to link the gay rights struggle with the struggle of blacks and other minorities in order to achieve broader appeal and support.59 Despite some hostility among black radicals towards gays and lesbians, gay activists in Philadelphia reached out to the black power movement and adopted and revised civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael’s slogan “black is beautiful” into “gay is good” to also raise awareness and support.60 These efforts were meant to link the black civil rights movement with the gay rights movement. In San Francisco, gay Latinos used the infrastructure from the Hispanic civil rights movement to advance their cause. Hispanics had concentrated 55

Button, Wald and Rienzo, “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities,” 202.

56 Ibid.

57 Kevin J. Mumford, “The Trouble with Gay Rights: Race and the Politics of Sexual Orientation in Philadelphia, 1969-1982,” Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (2011): 51.

58 Ibid., 52.

59 Ibid., 52-53.

60 Ibid., 54.

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themselves in San Francisco’s Mission District where they built up a neighborhood and culture based on their Hispanic roots. 61 They also built up social and political organizations and gay Latinos and Latina lesbians would use those organizations and the neighborhood as resources to gather and build their own culture and organizations, culminating in the Gay Latino Alliance. 62 Without the already present Hispanic organizational structure, it would have been much harder to build up this alliance, also known as GALA. 63 Later on in their movement, Atlanta gays and lesbians took advantage of the black civil rights movement by tapping into its legacy. Gays and lesbians in Atlanta involved themselves in this legacy by participating in Atlanta’s annual King Week celebrations when Martin Luther King, Jr. and the black civil rights movement are celebrated.64 This involvement paid off with support received from black civil rights activists like Coretta Scott King who was vocal in her support of gay issues. 65 This example from Atlanta, along with the cases in Philadelphia and San Francisco show that the gay rights movement depended on previous movements of blacks and Hispanics to further their aims, whether that be in using their models of demand-protest or electoral mobilization or simply linking themselves with the movements to try to bring themselves closer to political incorporation.

Demand-protest was achieved through a variety of methods in the struggle for gay and lesbian political incorporation. Browning, Marshall and Tabb outline a multitude of possible actions that can be characterized as demand-protest66 and gays and lesbians employed many of them. In many cities, small organizations were set up to advocate for gay and lesbian issues. These organizations included the Atlanta Gay Liberation Front (AGLF) founded in 197167 (the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) also had branches in New York City and Philadelphia68) and the previously discussed Gay Latino Alliance in San Francisco.69 All of these organizations, along with many more 61

Horacio N. Roque Ramirez, “‘That’s My Place!’: Negotiating Racial, Sexual and Gender Politics in San Francisco’s Gay Latino Alliance, 1975-1983,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 2 (2003): 235.

62 Ibid., 235-236.

63 Ibid., 225.

64 Fleischmann and Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt,” 421.

65 Ibid.

66 Browning, Marshall and Tabb, Protest Is Not Enough, 78.

67 Fleischmann and Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt,” 414.

68 Mumford, “The Trouble with Gay Rights,” 54.

69 Ramirez, “‘That’s My Place!,’” 225.

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worked to promote awareness of the gay and lesbian community and protest and lobby for equal rights of gays and lesbians. These actions included staging gay pride parades to promote awareness as was done in Atlanta with the first official Gay Pride march taking place in June of 1971.70 Lobbying was seen in Philadelphia where gay and lesbian activists attempted to add sexual orientation to laws concerning fair practices and treatment of minorities in the early 1970s. 71 Collectively, these actions showed a willingness of gays and lesbians to engage in demand-protest throughout the gay rights movement and were a step towards political incorporation.

Demand-protest was greatly seen in the clash between gays and lesbians and the police. These clashes are shown through examples in San Francisco and Philadelphia. In San Francisco, this clash was highlighted in the “gayola scandal” of 1960.72 Traditionally, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) had been tasked with patrolling and raiding gay bars in the city, as most police departments did.73 In the SFPD, individual officers were given a lot of freedom and they used this freedom to extort owners of gay bars. If the owners paid off the officers, their bars would be left alone. 74 Taking advantage of a clean government movement in San Francisco at the time, bar owners went public with the extortion and this led to a change in the policing of gay bars in the city in which the police chief and the mayor’s office were much more involved.75 Initially, this led to a severe crackdown on gay bars in San Francisco, but through protests and organizational efforts, culminating with gays and lesbians braving police opposition to attend a gay New Year’s Day Ball in 1965, police opposition was relaxed. 76 In Philadelphia, gays and lesbians mobilized around the cruelty of the city police towards gays and lesbians. The Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force (PLGTF), founded in 1979, began to document this cruelty which ranged from hate crimes directly inflicted by police on gays and lesbians to Philadelphia police neglecting to keep records on homophobic motivated crimes in the city. 77 The PLGTF collected data 70

Fleischmann and Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt,” 414.

Mumford, “The Trouble with Gay Rights,” 56.

72 Christopher Agee, “Gayola: Police Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco’s Gay Bars, 1950-1968,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 3 (2006): 465.

73 Ibid., 464-465.

74 Ibid., 465.

75 Ibid., 478-479.

76 Ibid., 485-488.

77 Bailey, Gay Politics, Urban Politics, 268.

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on these crimes themselves and attempted to use it to pressure politicians and police officials to change police practices. 78 Though not initially successful, the PLGTF, along with other groups was successful in lobbying the Philadelphia City Council to establish a civilian review board of the Philadelphia police in 1993 to monitor police practices. 79 The examples of gay and lesbian demand-protest of police practices in these two cities, along with other actions previously discussed, brought awareness and action to the gay and lesbian community and would lead them to continue to be politically active in the future.

This continued political action was seen in the electoral mobilization of gays and lesbians. Like demand-protest, the shape of electoral mobilization for gays and lesbians took many forms. The main forms of electoral mobilization used were to increase voting and to find candidates who supported gay issues or were gay or lesbian themselves.

Voting drives in the gay and lesbian community became very public and frank by the 1970s and 1980s. This is seen in a billboard in Philadelphia’s city center that told gays and lesbians to “vote like your life depended on it.”80 The concentration of voters in certain districts in cities meant that if gay and lesbian voter turnout was high, then it was possible to affect election outcomes. 81 Gays and lesbians were vetting candidates at the same time and conducted candidate forums, sponsored by gay organizations to help select candidates that the organizations would then endorse.82 All of these actions were making gays and lesbians a powerful political force and showed that they were heavily mobilizing their community to try to make a difference in elections.

An extensive example of such electoral mobilization by gays and lesbians is found in San Francisco. In 1964, the Society of Individual Rights (SIR) was founded as an organizational group for gays and lesbians.83 SIR had a political committee that was tasked with being the liaison between the San Franciscan government and the organization. The goal of this committee was to lobby for greater acceptance of homosexuality in the law. 84 To achieve this goal, SIR engaged in activities like sending a questionnaire to candidates for state 78

Ibid., 268-269.

Ibid., 274-277.

80 Mumford, “The Trouble with Gay Rights,” 68.

81 Fleischmann and Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt,” 420.

82 Ibid.

83 Jonathan Bell, “‘To Strive for Economic and Social Justice’: Welfare, Sexuality, and Liberal Politics in San Francisco in the 1960s,” Journal of Policy History 22, no. 2 (2010): 207.

84 Ibid., 208.

79

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and federal offices that asked their views on sexual privacy and police harassment of gay bars and businesses in 1964. SIR began running candidate nights and promoting favored candidates in their newsletters.85 Members of SIR wanted to establish a voting bloc of at least 50,000 gays and lesbians so that they would be able to elect the candidates into office that would be effective in realizing their policy demands.86 These actions taken by SIR and the actions taken in other cities showed as Jonathan Bell said that “it was clear that gay rights activists were developing into an increasingly organized interest group that could…push for political recognition in city politics.”87 That push for political recognition was electoral mobilization in order to achieve gay and lesbian political incorporation and, eventually, policy responsiveness.

All of this work in demand-protest and electoral mobilization, along with the reliance on population and previous minority incorporation, began to pay off in terms of the political incorporation of gays and lesbians into urban politics and the implementation of pro-gay and lesbian policies. In San Francisco, gays and lesbians were able to achieve political incorporation through a variety of methods. San Franciscan gays and lesbians allied themselves with white liberals and also other minority groups to gain political power. Gays and lesbians found a commonality in their struggle with discrimination and disadvantages in society with the struggle of the poor who were disadvantaged and reliant on welfare policies to survive. 88 This common disenfranchisement led gays and lesbians to ally with white liberals to advance their own political aims. 89 The Gay Latino Alliance (GALA) also helped to bridge the gay and lesbian community with the Hispanic community. GALA was founded by gay Latinos to promote both their dual gay and Hispanic identity. 90 This linked the gay and lesbian community with other minority movements in their common identity as groups that faced systemic discrimination. 91 These alliances with white liberals and minorities paid off in the election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978 of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California.92 Milk’s inclusion in city 85

Ibid., 210-211.

Ibid., 211.

87 Ibid., 210.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ramirez, “‘That’s My Place!,’” 225.

91 Ibid.

92 Bell, “‘To Strive for Economic and Social Justice,’” 207.

86

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politics was cut short by his assassination but it signified gay and lesbian prominence in city politics which was solidified by policies enacted by the city government. In 1978, San Francisco passed a nondiscrimination ordinance based on sexual orientation. 93 As shown

by Milk’s election, the inclusion of gays and lesbians in city politics and the antidiscrimination law, San Franciscan gays and lesbians had been successfully incorporated into city politics by the late 1970s and were able to change city policy in their favor.

In New York City, it would take gays and lesbians longer to enact pro-gay and lesbian policies. A nondiscrimination ordinance was passed in New York City in 1993, which is considerably later than the other studied three cities.94 The law was passed shortly after gays and lesbians were incorporated into the rainbow coalition that elected David Dinkins as mayor in 1989.95 This rainbow coalition included AfricanAmericans, Latinos, Asians, white liberals, public employee unions and gays and lesbians.96 New York City gays and lesbians saw advantages in linking themselves with these other minorities and it paid off by electing a candidate that while not gay himself, was supportive of gay and lesbian issues.97 Dinkins’ election got gay and lesbian policies on the agenda in city politics and within a few years, the nondiscrimination ordinance was passed showing policy responsiveness to the gay and lesbian community and a sense that gays and lesbians were incorporated into city government.

Like gays and lesbians in San Francisco and New York City, Philadelphian gays and lesbians sought political incorporation through other minority groups. Gays and lesbians in Philadelphia had consistently tried to link their struggle for incorporation with the problems in the black community and tried to build cross-racial coalitions to further their movement.98 As Kevin J. Mumford put it, to include both black and white gays in a common movement, gay rights organizations in Philadelphia “concerned [themselves] with the reconciliation of the struggle for rights and recognition of the plurality of voices engaged in that struggle.”99 By this he means that gays and lesbians saw the advantage of linking their struggle with the struggle of blacks and moved to form one united front. This united movement 93

Fleischmann and Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt,” 409-410.

Ibid., 410.

95 Bailey, Gay Politics, Urban Politics, 161-163.

96 Ibid., 161.

97 Ibid., 161-163.

98 Mumford, “The Trouble with Gay Rights,” 66.

99 Ibid., 68-69.

94

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successfully lobbied the Philadelphia City Council to pass Bill 1358, the nondiscrimination ordinance in 1982.100 This is the policy responsiveness that was seen in Philadelphia and despite no gays being elected in Philadelphia before this policy was enacted, it shows that gay and lesbian issues were incorporated into city politics.

Another city that passed a nondiscrimination ordinance before the formal election of gays and lesbians to public office was Atlanta.

Atlanta’s nondiscrimination ordinance was enacted in 1986 through a combination of previously mentioned demand-protest and mobilization by many gay and lesbian organizations in the city. 101 In the 1990s, gays and lesbians would use that mobilization structure and their concentrated population in certain voting districts to elect openly gay officials.102 In 1997, Cathy Woolard became the first openly gay candidate elected in Georgia when she won a seat on the city council.

Woolard would go on to be elected as city council president in 2001 and another lesbian replaced her in her district. 103 The election of Woolard and her successor and the passing of the nondiscrimination ordinance are proof that Atlanta had both politically incorporated gays and lesbians and enacted policies that benefited their community.

The speed in which gays and lesbians have been able to become politically incorporated into some cities and pass pro-gay and lesbian laws is remarkable. A movement that only had begun in earnest in the 1950s with the foundation of the Mattachine Society, the first gay organization in the postwar period,104 had been able to rapidly advance itself by the end of the century. It did this mainly in accordance with Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory of minority political incorporation. In terms of Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s first four tenets of their theory—population size, the presence of previous minority incorporation, demand-protest and electoral mobilization—the actions of gays and lesbians fit in well. Gays and lesbians consistently relied on its population to stage protests and elect candidates that supported their issues. They also used the previous minority incorporation of blacks and Hispanics to advance their own cause. This was seen in how gays and lesbians adopted black and Hispanic strategies and tried to link themselves with these other groups as seen in the formation of the Gay Latino Alliance in San Francisco. Gays and lesbians heavily engaged in demand-protest whether that was in the 100

Ibid., 71.

Fleischmann and Hardman, “Hitting Below the Bible Belt,” 410.

102 Ibid., 418-420.

103 Ibid., 420.

104 Hertzog, The Lavender Vote, 20.

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form of gay pride parades or protests against police practices. Even stronger was their mobilization in electoral politics. Gays and lesbians turned out their community’s vote to try to elect candidates they had reviewed and supported based on their stance on gay issues and to advance their political incorporation.

Where gay and lesbian political incorporation differed was in the actual incorporation itself. Browning, Marshall and Tabb outlined a process in which minorities were elected or appointed to public office and then allied with a dominant coalition to gain power and enact policy. In San Francisco, a gay candidate was elected, became part of the governing coalition and enacted antidiscrimination policy, in accordance with Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory. In the other cities, this was not the case. In these cases, gays and lesbians became absorbed into the governing coalition without electing a candidate from their own community. Through their role as voters in this coalition, they were able to steer some policy decisions and lawmakers passed nondiscrimination ordinances. This would be followed later by the election of gay officials, as in the case of Atlanta. Looking at gay and lesbian political incorporation in this way, it is true that the foundations for political incorporation (population size, other minority incorporation, demand-protest and electoral mobilization) followed Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory, but their theory of political incorporation, while similar to the process seen in the gay rights movement, does not exactly correspond to what occurred. Nevertheless, policy responsiveness was achieved either way and it can be concluded that gay and lesbian political incorporation does largely fit in with Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory of minority incorporation in urban politics.

Finding that gay and lesbian political incorporation does model that of black and Hispanic incorporation in Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s Protest Is Not Enough does not address their continuing political inequality. It may be true that by the 1990s, 120 openly gay officials had been elected in America 105 and that over 100 cities have passed antidiscrimination laws,106 but gays and lesbians are still largely cut off from American politics at the federal, state and local levels. This is no different than many other minorities who also face being shut out of governmental bodies. While Browning, Marshall and Tabb’s theory on minority political incorporation does explain how minorities became incorporated into urban politics, it does not do much to explain why 105

Button, Wald and Rienzo, “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities,” 189.

106 Haeberle, “Gay Men and Lesbians at City Hall,” 190.

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minorities continue to find difficulty in becoming part of governing structures. This is a problem that continues to be perpetuated in American government and one that needs an adequate solution.

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Bibliography Agee, Christopher. “Gayola: Police Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco's Gay Bars, 1950-1968.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 3 (2006): 462-489.

Bailey, Robert W. Gay Politics, Urban Politics: Identity and Economics in an Urban Setting. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Bell, Jonathan. “‘To Strive for Economic and Social Justice’: Welfare, Sexuality, and Liberal Politics in San Francisco in the 1960s.”

Journal of Policy History 22, no. 2 (2010): 193-225.

Browning, Rufus P., Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb. Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Button, James W., Kenneth D. Wald, and Barbara A. Rienzo. “The Election of Openly Gay Public Officials in American Communities.” Urban Affairs Review 35, no. 2 (1999): 188209.

Fleischmann, Arnold, and Jason Hardman. “Hitting Below the Bible Belt: The Development of the Gay Rights Movement in Atlanta.” Journal of Urban Affairs 26, no. 4 (2004): 407-426.

Haeberle, Steven H. “Gay Men and Lesbians at City Hall.” Social Science Quarterly 77, no. 1 (1996): 190-197.

Hertzog, Mark. The Lavender Vote: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals in American Electoral Politics. New York: NYU Press, 1996.

Mumford, Kevin J. “The Trouble with Gay Rights: Race and the Politics of Sexual Orientation in Philadelphia, 1969-1982.”

Journal of American History 98, no. 1 (2011): 49-72.

Ramirez, Horacio N. Roque. “‘That’s My Place!’: Negotiating Racial, Sexual, and Gender Politics in San Francisco’s Gay Latino Alliance, 1975-1983.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 2 (2003): 224-258.

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Teachers’ Perceptions of the Common Core

Introduction to “Teachers’ Perceptions of the Common Core Learning Standards” Christina Pfister Associate Professor and Chair of Teacher Education Until a few years ago, each state had its own set of standards for kindergarten through twelfth-grade children. On one hand, this made sense because education is left up to the individual states and there was no set of national standards whose use was mandated by the federal government. Unfortunately, these different standards also left wide disparities in what children at a given grade level would be required to know and do, with children in some states being held to higher standards than those in other states. Thus, children who moved from one state to another found that they were learning vastly different material and were being held to much higher or lower standards than in their previous schools.

Business people and other professionals were beginning to talk amongst themselves about the knowledge and skills of recent high school graduates. In today’s ultra-competitive job market, there was discussion about whether current educational standards allowed students to be well prepared for the labor force or college level coursework. Spurred by these discussions, a group began drafting what came to be known as the Common Core Standards.

To date, 45 states and the District of Columbia have adopted the new Common Core standards for education. As the name implies, the Common Core standards are intended to provide children an equal education regardless of the state where they grow up.

While research has been conducted to determine how the Common Core Standards are impacting children and how the standards should be implemented, little has been done to determine teachers’ opinions about them. In her paper, Amanda Prinz reports on a research study she conducted to shed light on how teachers perceived the shift to the Common Core. In addition, her paper looks at how teachers at different grade levels and with different amounts of teaching experience view the Common Core. Understanding teachers’ perceptions is important in two major ways. First, it is a vital part of helping college students who are prospective teachers understand the profession they have chosen. Second, it is important in helping the public make sense of the many news stories discussing the Common Core.

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Teachers’ Perceptions of the Common Core Learning Standards Amanda Prinz Childhood/Special Education Major; Class of 2014

Abstract: This study investigated how elementary, middle, and high school teachers felt about the shift towards the Common Core Learning Standards; how comfortable they felt with the shift based on the grade level they taught and the years of experience they had; and how much professional development their district offered them regarding the Common Core Learning Standards. The participants of the study were graduates from a medium-sized college in upstate New York offering undergraduate and graduate programs in the liberal arts and some professional fields. Results showed that many teachers had concerns with the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards. Additionally, the results showed that the degree of comfort teachers felt with the shift seemed to vary depending on the grade level they reported teaching, along with how many years of experience they had.

Introduction The Common Core Learning Standards are a new set of standards that states can choose to adopt. In states that elect to adopt the Common Core Learning Standards all teachers and administrators must follow this new set of standards. As of now, the Common Core Learning Standards exist only for the subjects of English language arts and mathematics. Science, social studies, and other subjects continue to follow the individual state’s standards. According to the Common Core Learning Standards website, “The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them” (Mission Statement, 2012). As of today, 45 states, including the District of Columbia, and four territories of the United States have adopted the Common Core Learning Standards (In the States, 2012).

With an increased number of states adopting the Common Core Learning Standards, similar curricula are now being taught regardless of state borders. For example, if a child were to move from New Hampshire to New York, what the child was learning in New Hampshire would be the same thing he or she would be learning in New York, so the student would not fall behind or get ahead. With the new Common Core Learning Standards being adopted in the states, individual state standards are becoming less prominent.

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Little research has been conducted about teachers’ responses to the shift towards the Common Core Learning Standards. As to be expected with a shift of this magnitude, teachers’ reactions vary. Gratz (2000) comments, “too many educational reforms are driven by political ideology rather than what actually works in schools” (p. 681). Very little research has been done to find out what teachers think about this shift to the Common Core Learning Standards and whether teachers actually think the shifts will help children learn. The purpose of this paper is to discuss teachers’ comfort level with the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards as measured using a questionnaire. The research question for this study is, “What are teachers’ perceptions of the Common Core?” Teachers who had taught for a variety of years at the elementary, middle, and high school levels participated, so it was possible to break down the results and determine if perceptions vary by grade level taught.

Literature Review This idea of changing standards and making teachers more accountable for what occurs in their classrooms has been a topic of discussion since President George W. Bush enacted the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2001. The No Child Left Behind Act focused on “public education student outcomes” (Irons et al, 2007, p. 1). The idea of teachers being held accountable based on standards existed before the Bush Administration, however. The idea of “standards-based accountability emerged as a major school reform agenda during the 1990s” (Irons et al, 2007, p. 1). During 2007, NCLB was reauthorized to call for an increase in the “rigor of state standards and testing by linking the state standards to standards set at a national level” (Irons et al, 2007, p. 2). Increasing the rigor of state standards simultaneously increased the rigor of testing; therefore linking state standards to national standards and the idea of Common Core Learning Standards began to emerge in 2007. By bringing these ideas together, the United States Department of Education put more accountability on the teachers to teach to these higher standards. Irons (2000) noted that standards have two set purposes: First, there was the national concern that America was losing economic competitiveness because of higher international student achievement levels, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics. Second, there was national concern about the growing student achievement gap between white middle and upper class students and disadvantaged students (p. 2).

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Description of Surveying Methods The data were collected using survey methods with questions regarding practicing teachers’ views of the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards. Questions asked teachers some basic demographic information such as what grade level they taught and how many years of experience they had in the field. Based on how the teachers answered what grade level they taught the survey then generated a list of questions that was specific to their grade level. That is, if they stated they taught an elementary grade they were asked a certain set of questions; and if they answered middle or high school they were asked another set of questions. Both sets of questions were similar to one another, although in the middle and high school survey, teachers were asked to identify what specific subject they taught. The rest of the questions focused on teachers’ opinions on the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards and the extent to which they felt prepared to teach to the new standards. Teachers were asked how comfortable they felt using the new standards and if their school provided any professional development related to the Common Core Learning Standards. Additional questions concerned the topic of literacy: teachers were asked what type of literacy program was used in the participant’s classroom, how long the participant taught literacy during the day, and (for the middle and high school teachers) whether literacy a primary focus in the participant’s classroom. The survey instrument is included in Appendix A. Description of Participants A pool of people were identified who were graduates of a medium-sized college in upstate New York offering undergraduate and graduate programs in the liberal arts and some professional fields. All alumni who graduated between the years of 1965 and 2012 with an undergraduate or graduate degree in education were emailed a survey invitation. While this range of dates covered some participants who have likely retired, it was selected purposefully as some teachers choose to work beyond traditional retirement age. Those who identified themselves as currently teaching in an elementary, middle, or high school setting were invited to complete the survey. If the graduates taught pre-school, taught kindergarten, or were not currently working as a practicing teacher, they were disqualified from completing the survey but thanked for their willingness to participate.

The complete data set consisted of 192 survey responses from teachers. The data consisted of responses from elementary, middle, and 82

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high school teachers who reported teaching experiences ranging from one to ten years. Participants were allowed to skip questions, but a majority chose to respond to most questions. 40% of the respondents identified themselves as teaching early elementary school (grades 1-3), while nearly 22% of the respondents identified themselves as teaching upper elementary school (grades 4-6), with remaining respondents indicating they taught at the middle school (18%) or high school levels (almost 20%). Graph A shows these results. Teachers who taught at the high school level identified themselves as teaching one of the following seven subjects: (a) special education, (b) math, (c) science, (d) English, (e) history, (f) art, and (g) family and consumer science. The breakdown of percentages of teachers who taught each subject is included in Graph B. Not all participants chose to identify how many years they had been teaching, but of those who did, the majority (44%) had been teaching for more than 10 years. Just over a quarter of participants indicated they had been teaching between four and seven years. Close to 20% indicated they were novice teachers (teaching from one to three years) and the remaining participants (approximately 10%) had been teaching between eight and ten years. This indicates a diverse group of respondents with a range of experiences.

Graph A

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Graph B

Description of Results Results indicated that the number of years a teacher has taught and grade level a teacher taught impact how she or he feels about the Common Core Learning Standards. Overall, the years of experience a teacher has appeared to have some impact on the comfort level of working with the Common Core Learning Standards. Additionally, most teachers felt that the shift to implement the use of the Common Core Learning Standards in schools occurred too rapidly.

Grade Level Taught Results show that most elementary (grades 1, 2, 3) and high school teachers do not feel comfortable using the Common Core Learning Standards. Most later elementary (grades 4, 5, 6) and middle school (grades 6, 7,8) teachers fall in the middle of a scale which ranged from very comfortable to not at all comfortable. When elementary teachers were asked how they felt about the shift towards the Common Core Learning Standards, their responses varied. One teacher reported feeling “happy with the changes. I think we are headed in the right direction, this will bring a new level to learning and 84

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knowledge.” Teachers who made positive comments about the shift towards the Common Core Learning Standards discussed not only positive positive effects on the curriculum as a whole, but also positive changes to individual content areas. One teacher stated, “I think a deeper study of individual subjects in Math is necessary and a very good change.” However, there are many elementary teachers who expressed concerns about the Common Core Learning Standards. Some teachers admitted uncertainty as to what should be taught, while others described the Common Core Learning Standards as counterproductive and discouraging. One teacher stated, “I don’t know what exactly I should/shouldn’t be teaching.” Another elementary teacher stated, “I understand the need for a more ‘common’ curriculum, but I think how it is being ‘forced’ upon us is very counterproductive and discouraging to my profession.”

There were some elementary teachers whose opinions were not as strong. One teacher stated, “I think the shift to the common core is needed. Students and teachers need to explain their thinking, explore less content form intently to really grasp an understanding. It just needs time. NYSED [New York State Department of Education] needs to understand that this process is not going to occur over night and that once students have had this ‘new’ way of thinking for several years, things will get better.” Middle school and high school teachers have similar opinions to the elementary teachers when it comes to how they felt about the shift. One of the teachers said, “I feel it is good to focus on more specific areas than know a little about all of it.” Another teacher stated that they “feel overwhelmed, but that this is a good shift.”

Finally, some teachers in the elementary, middle, and high school levels thought that the Common Core Learning Standards were just another “passing fad.” One teacher stated, “I’m not sure what effect it will have on changing art in the future, so currently I have no strong opinion.”

Professional Development Based on Grade Level Another area examined is how professional development concerning Common Core Learning Standards is impacted at different grade levels. Overall, participants indicated they felt they had not received adequate professional development training surrounding the Common Core Learning Standards. Teachers who taught early elementary (grades 1, 2, 3) ranged in their answers as to whether they felt they have received adequate professional development. 57% of participants stated that they have received little to no training. Nearly The College of Saint Rose

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43% of participants stated that they have received extensive professional development regarding the Common Core Learning Standards. Later elementary teachers (grades 4, 5, 6) were evenly split down the middle between little to no training and extensive training: of the six participants who answered this part of the survey, three reported having received little to no training and three reported having received extensive training. According to the participants who completed the survey at the middle and high school level, the amount of professional development training that they felt like they received was broken down into what subject area was taught. Most math, science, and special educators felt they had received little to no training: 60% of math teachers, 100% of science teachers, and 75% of special educators felt unprepared. However, 100% of the English teachers felt that they were given extensive professional development training.

Number of Years of Teaching Experience Those participants who taught at the early elementary level (grades 1, 2, 3) and those who indicated they taught high school indicated less comfort with the new Common Core Learning Standards.

Similarly, this study also compared responses of teachers who have been teaching between one and three years to responses of teachers who have taught 10 or more years. The majority of elementary, middle, and high school teachers who answered the survey had been teaching for more than 10 years (about 50%). The majority of middle and high school teachers who answered the survey teach either English (about 35%), or special education (about 30%). In the elementary school grades, teachers who had been teaching between one and three years explained the shift as “sudden and difficult.” Teachers with 10 or more years of experience were more positive regarding the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards. Teachers with two or more years of experience stated that it was “sudden, however it was needed and a good move.” Another teacher stated that “I think in the long term, it will be worth the work.” Finally, another teacher with 10 or more years of experience stated, “I feel this shift does well with getting students ready for college and/or the workforce.” Teachers who taught middle and high school between one and three years stated the same as elementary teachers who said that it was “confusing and more rigorous.” Another middle/ high school teacher said that “CCLS [Common Core Learning Standards] is a good idea but teachers need help.” This idea of teachers needing help echoes the comment one teacher made of not knowing what he or she is supposed to be teaching.

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Common Core Learning Standards are “extra work” and they need help. Teachers at the middle and high school levels who have taught for 10 or more years stated that “it’s been bumpy, it’s more concentrated, and it has included a lot of extra work.” They also find the standards hard to work with because “there are not many resources to draw from.” Although the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards can be seen as extra work and concentrated to teachers at the middle and high school levels, overall, the shift to the Common Core Learning Standards is perceived positively.

Professional Development Based on Years of Teaching Experience Another area to look at is how professional development concerning the Common Core Learning Standards is impacted based upon how many years of teaching experience one has. According to the survey, teachers who have been teaching for one to three years felt like they did not receive adequate professional development training around the Common Core Learning Standards. Nearly 67% of teachers stated they felt like they have had little to no professional development training, whereas 33% felt as though they have had extensive professional development training. A majority of teachers teaching between four and seven years reported that they felt as though they have received extensive professional development training. Nearly 43% of teachers reported they have had little to no training; however 57% of teachers reported they have had extensive professional development training. But of teachers who had been teaching for eight to ten years, 100% felt as though they have not received enough professional development around the Common Core Learning Standards. Of those teachers that have been teaching for ten or more years, a majority believe that they have not had enough training.

Almost 54% of teachers felt they have had little to no training, and 46% felt they have had extensive training.

Conclusion/Discussion The Common Core Learning Standards are a topic of concern in the field of education. Although this study focused on the implications of the standards for teachers, the Common Core Learning Standards has implications for all. These new standards raise the bar for students, causing curricula that used to be introduced and taught in 6 th grade, for example, to now be introduced and taught in 4 th grade. These new standards aim to make the curriculum more rigorous. This is

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expected to lead to test scores that start out low and over time increase; however, while test scores are lower, districts rankings will be affected.

Also, by learning how teachers truly felt about the Common Core Learning Standards, it helps pre-service teachers come to their own conclusions. The study that was conducted not only looked at teachers teaching in New York State, but at teachers throughout the country. The survey responses suggest that teachers, no matter the state or district, have similar feelings and concerns. Some of those concerns by practicing teachers were that the Common Core Learning Standards occurred too quickly; that it is just another “passing fad�; and that there are insufficient resources to help middle and high school teachers implement the Common Core Learning Standards. At the same time, many participants perceive the Common Core Learning Standards as a positive shift in the field of education. By better understanding how teachers felt about the Common Core Learning Standards, districts can prepare and implement changes, in particular better professional development opportunities. Overall, regardless of years of experience, teachers do not feel as though their districts are offering enough professional development in the area of Common Core Learning Standards.

References Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012). Common core state standards initiative. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ Gratz, D.B. (2000, May). High standards for whom? Phi Delta Kappan, 81(9), 681-687.

Irons, J. E., Carlson, N. L., Lowery-Moore, H., & Farrow, V. R. (2007). Standards and accountability implementation, why, how, where: Teachers' perceptions. Journal of educational research and policy studies, 2, 1-19.

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Appendix A Survey Questions To be asked of all participants: Demographics: What grade level do you teach primarily? ___Early elementary (1, 2, 3) ___Later elementary (4, 5, 6) (if grade 6 is at the elementary level) ___Middle School (6, 7, 8) ___High School Level (9, 10, 11, 12) ___Other (Please explain) ___I am not the teacher of record for a class at this time Including this year, how many years have you been teaching? ___1-3 ___4-7 ___8-10 ___10 + years To be asked of those who identify themselves as teaching at the elementary level: Describe the type of reading practices used in your classroom.

How do you teach English Language Arts? _____ integrated with reading _____ integrated with other subjects _____ by itself How often do you teach English Language Arts during a typical five day week? _____ less than once a week _____once a week _____twice a week _____three times a week _____four or more times a week How long is a typical language arts lesson? _____ 20 or less minutes _____ 21-40 minutes _____ 41-60 minutes _____ over one hour The College of Saint Rose

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Does your district specify you of the amount of time allotted to teach English Language Arts? ____ Yes ____ No What types of literacy are used in your classroom? ____ School literacies (include all the processes of school: culture, social, political, cognitive, etc) ____ Personal literacies (individuals meaning making is influenced by the context as well as individuals personal beliefs and values) ____ Community literacies (literacies that exist outside of schools in various communities) ____ Critical literacies (ability to analyze and evaluate information/situations in order to question and critique them) ____ 21st century literacies (ability to integrate technology properly into the classroom) How would you describe the shift to using the Common Core?

How do you feel about this shift?

To what extent are you comfortable using the Common Core?

1 2 Not at all comfortable

3

4 5 Very comfortable

To what extent have you been involved in professional development using the Common Core?

1 Little to none

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3

4

5 Extensive

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To be asked of those who identify themselves as Middle & High School teachers: What subject area do you teach primarily? ___Math ___Science ___English ___History ___Foreign Languages ___Physical Education ___Music ___Art ___Family & Consumer sciences ___Technology ___Business ___Special education ___Other (Please specify) What types of literacy are used in your classroom? ____ School literacies (include all the processes of school: culture, social, political, cognitive, etc) ____ Personal literacies (individuals meaning making is influenced by the context as well as individuals personal beliefs and values) ____ Community literacies (literacies that exist outside of schools in various communities) ____ Critical literacies (ability to analyze and evaluate information/situations in order to question and critique them) ____ 21st century literacies (ability to integrate technology properly into the classroom) How would you describe the shift to using the Common Core?

How do you feel about this shift?

To what extent are you comfortable using the Common Core?

1 2 Not at all comfortable

3

4 5 Very comfortable

To what extent have you been involved in professional development using the Common Core?

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1 Little to none

2

3

4

5 Extensive

Is literacy development a primary focus of the content area you teach? ___Yes ___No If yes, please describe.

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The Presence of Oedipal Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet

Introduction to “‘I will come to my mother, by and by’: The Presence of Oedipal Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet” David Morrow Associate Professor of English In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Sigmund Freud briefly compares aspects of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex to illuminate the now-famous complex to which the Greek play lends its name. Freud’s thesis on Shakespeare’s play turns on an answer to a question that has long perplexed readers and audience members: why does Hamlet hesitate to revenge his father’s murder? Self-reproach is Freud’s answer. Given that in killing Hamlet’s father and marrying his mother Claudius has enacted Hamlet’s own (unconscious) desires, the prince senses that he is no better than the murderer—and he turns inward the loathing that ought to have driven his vengeance.

Freud’s disciple Ernest Jones expanded on this reading in articles published in 1910 and 1923, which served as drafts for his influential book Hamlet and Oedipus (1949). Despite the significant problems raised by Jones’ ahistorical, psychologizing interpretation, Hamlet and Oedipus have been entwined ever since. Rob Stoddard reminds us that directors who stage or film Hamlet must perforce take the Oedipus complex into account. As he puts it: every “Hamlet adaptation has, for better or worse, either followed the Oedipal theme, or strayed as far away from it as possible.” In his 1948 film, for example, Laurence Olivier compellingly portrays a Hamlet whose repressed feelings for his mother are a vital part of a complex interior life pulsing beneath a now fuming, now mooning, now psychotic exterior.

Oedipal desire is always close (too close, for many) to the surface in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 Hamlet, which stars Mel Gibson as Hamlet and Glenn Close as Gertrude. In the essay that follows, Stoddard argues that Zeffirelli aims for a mass audience by shaping his film around this illicit longing and by banking on the allure of his attractive stars. This is a smart thesis, but Stoddard’s more significant contribution is in how he makes his case. Noting that previous commentary on the movie has been conducted in primarily descriptive or theoretical modes, he emphasizes elements of film form—including acting, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. His analyses are often genuinely dialectical in revealing how Zeffirelli exploits the tools and language of his medium to create his narrowly conceived but sexually charged movie.

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Here Stoddard is drawing on knowledge and analytical skills he gained in several English classes. A Film and Media Studies minor, he came to my upper-level course in Shakespeare on Film with a solid background in film analysis. In the essay, he also exercises the theoretical chops he developed in Literary Theory, both to make sense of his secondary sources and to employ theoretical concepts himself— including an inspired use of the Freudian uncanny. The essay perhaps reaches its highpoints when Stoddard combines these two approaches, using painstaking formal analysis to reveal how useful a theoretical concept is to our understanding of the dynamics of a shot or scene.

Most scholars publishing on Shakespeare films were trained in literature and cultural theory, and they bring the strengths of that formation to their analyses. Stoddard’s essay gives us a sense of how such work can be enhanced by formal training in film analysis. And there will be more work to do. With two feature-length Macbeths and one Cymbeline planned for 2014, the enthusiasm for filmic appropriations of Shakespeare, which Franco Zeffirelli did so much to stimulate, shows no signs of fading.

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The Presence of Oedipal Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet

“I will come to my mother, by and by”: The Presence of Oedipal Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet Robert Stoddard English Major; Class of 2014 William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has many conflicting plot points. It is a complex play that involves issues including a corrupt court, familial calamity, romance, and state power struggles. Franco Zeffirelli, in his film Hamlet (1990), chooses to condense the play into one main issue—the Oedipal love between mother and son—in order to create a more unified narrative out of a complex, and sometimes overwhelming, play. Expanding upon Ernest Jones’s and Sir Laurence Olivier’s Oedipal interpretations, Zeffirelli creates a film that depicts a passionate struggle between a son’s duty to his family and a prince’s duty to his crown. It is generally assumed that most moviegoers are unfamiliar with Shakespeare, and therefore a narrative clouded with too many complex issues intertwining one another would be too difficult to properly adapt. Focusing on specific plot points has become traditional in the world of Shakespeare adaptations, and where other directors, such as Girgori Kozintsev, emphasized court corruption or a struggle for power, Zeffirelli took the approach he knew how to do best, not straying far from his Romeo and Juliet (1968).

The Oedipus complex has gained momentum in Hamlet adaptations over the past century, becoming a focal point for directors such as Olivier and Zeffirelli. According to Phillip Weller, Oedipus has become a mainstream, popularized way of understanding Shakespeare’s play: “Jones said that an Oedipus complex dwells at the heart of Hamlet's mystery. This idea labors under a heavy load of theoretical and practical difficulties, but in films of Hamlet it seems to have become gospel” (Weller 119). It’s been agreed upon that any Hamlet adaptation has, for better or worse, either followed the Oedipal theme, or strayed as far away from it as possible. It has almost become second nature to associate Hamlet with mother-son love, and it is arguably the easiest way to convey such a complex narrative. However, one might also observe that the play itself was actually used by Sigmund Freud to define and exemplify his Oedipus complex. The play’s very foundation can be interpreted as being set on Hamlet’s shoulders: his struggle to emulate his father is crushed by the intrusion of Claudius, who in turn steals away the mother who is the focus of Hamlet’s attention. Hamlet then spends the rest of the play inactive because he feels an uncanny resemblance to his uncle, and

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consequently his father, who now possesses what he had wished to obtain. This leads the son towards the resentment of his father. 1 Hamlet has been the focus of numerous theories surrounding the seemingly innate inaction of the narrative’s main character. While several theories exist concerning Hamlet’s inability to act, the Oedipus complex is a sensationalistic one for a director to focus on, arguably to lure his audience further into the Shakespearean drama. In Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, the director narrows a complex narrative into one coherent issue; the play is simplified and made understandable for an audience that might know little to nothing about Shakespearean drama.

While many critics argue that the complex itself is either not present due to inconsistencies between the film and its translation into the literary theory, imaginary because Gertrude seemingly provokes incest, or simply made traditional due Olivier’s populari ation of the complex in Hamlet adaptations, these arguments do not reflect the director’s choice of shots and sequences used. Cinematography is not even considered in most analyses. By analy ing Franco Zeffirelli’s film formally, one can conclude that the Oedipus complex is indeed active in, at the very least, the film, regardless of the play. Irrespective of theory, the film is shaped around the Oedipus complex because of the way it was shot and edited.

Zeffirelli’s Hamlet is the most commercially successful film adaptation of a Shakespeare play.2 But what does it do differently?

While several critics agree that the Oedipal desire is present within the film, each tends to say something different based on either a strict theory-based dissection of the film, which lacks any formal film analysis, or simplified observations based on key scenes. This is where I believe criticism falls short, chiefly because without analyzing more than just a few major sequences, or by basing an argument purely on theory, much detail is missed due to a narrow analysis ignoring the director’s choices in scenes, progressions, tempo, and shot sequences.

In criticism, the film itself is never formally analyzed and broken down into its cinematic pieces, but rather treated theoretically or descriptively. Only possible alternative theories behind the narrative itself are explored, and formal film analysis is noticeably ignored, or disregarded. While exploring these theories and discounting formal film critique is one approach that can be taken, it can lead to false conclusions based on theory that may or may not be present in the narrative, regardless of what the film portrays. Attention to the shots of

1 2

See Stuart Knott.

See Weller and Crowl.

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which the film is comprised the film itself that are arguably the most essential tool that can be used to analyze a film such as Hamlet.

The presence of an Oedipus complex can be analyzed in two significant ways, since there are numerous techniques that could be utilized to read the film. The first of which is to say that the Oedipus complex is not present in the film, and is only interpreted to be present because of critical tradition (Jackson 100). Phillip Weller, for instance, argues against viewing Hamlet as a drama focused around a particular disease or illness: “To assign a neurotic Oedipus complex to Hamlet is akin to offering a medical diagnosis of Ivan Ilych’s deadly bruise; the diagnosis can never be confirmed because a fictional character is unavailable for autopsy” (Weller 123). Weller goes further to say that because Zeffirelli simulated a mock sex scene between mother and son, the complex itself becomes shattered and inconsistent: the realization of the desire overrides the presence of the complex itself. Other critics have sided with Weller’s observation, and even argue for the greater relevance of other psychoanalytic models, such as Lacan’s concepts of the imaginary and the symbolic.3 While these issues are certainly contestable, they rely on a key argument that states that Zeffirelli’s film is trying to do nothing but follow a tradition set in place by Olivier. I believe that, while Zeffirelli may be relying heavily on past adaptations and research, he also put his own twist on the film by actually simulating sex between Hamlet and Gertrude. The film itself is certainly, in part, a response to tradition, but this choice – simulating the desire – goes beyond Olivier’s film. Olivier set the groundwork for Oedipal interpretations through his film, and Zeffirelli advanced it. By utili ing a theory audiences might already be aware of, Zeffirelli’s film attempts to bridge any gap that may exist between Oedipal critics and viewers, and delivers to viewers a Hamlet that unconsciously desires the intimate affection of his mother.

The second way to see the film is through the Oedipal lens. I observe and analyze the film based on its composition of shots, takes, and scenes that convey a romance that is present between Hamlet and Gertrude. One might also remark upon the choice of casting: Mel Gibson, who at the time was a sex symbol, based on his appearances in Lethal Weapon and Mad Max, and Glenn Close, an actress who looked to be similar in age to Gibson and was equally as sexualized. In fact, Olivier made a similar casting choice, picking an actress who was actually younger than he was to make a sexual attraction seem more plausible.4 The very fact that the Oedipus complex needs to be 3 4

See McCombe.

See Tibbett and Biggs.

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highlighted in order for it to be seen as believable should indicate that it is not a traditionally present attribute of Hamlet films or readings. The composition of cinematography, however, is what really emphasizes the Oedipus complex and justifies it. Zeffirelli’s attention to detail, his jumbling of acts in order to create a coherent narrative, and his technical skills help to convey the complex in a way Olivier, and previous filmmakers, could not. The tempo of the film, in particular, aides the argument that the complex is present within the film and within the text. By increasing the tempo of the film and deleting specific scenes of the play altogether, coupled with a narrow interpretation–like a strict Oedipal lens–the director narrows the scope of Hamlet to focus on the Oedipus complex.

Zeffirelli’s film takes advantage of its all-star cast to reinvigorate the text and emphasi e a taboo aspect of the film’s focus: the sexualized relationship between the two co-stars cast as mother and son. By casting these two popular, sexualized stars, and manipulating cinematography, mise-en-scene, and lighting the director creates a Hamlet that toys with the audience’s conceptions and predispositions towards the mother and son relationship. It is argued by James R. Simmons that, “In this respect, Zeffirelli's production suggested to yet another segment of the movie-going public that Hamlet was a film in which Hamlet's sexuality was a central issue in the movie, and, by association, the original play” (Simmons). Zeffirelli, arguably, uses this sexuali ed relationship to imply that Hamlet’s descent into madness is due to his unnatural, uncanny love for his mother.

The creation of this sexualized struggle can be explained by the theories of Sigmund Freud, most notably the Oedipus complex and the uncanny. In basic terms, Freud’s Oedipus complex argues that a son might, or should, naturally desire his mother intimately. The castration complex comes into play when the son becomes afraid to act on desires that he harbors towards his mother, and forces those feelings into the unconscious. The repression of these childhood impulses leads to the experience of the uncanny. Ann Horne argues that an understanding of the Oedipus complex “enables us to understand how it is that fetishism is so often only partially developed. It does not govern the choice of object exclusively but leaves room for a greater or lesser amount of normal sexual behavior” (Horne 40). Hamlet’s psyche enables him to fantasize and develop a fetish towards his mother. This, however, leads to the experiences of the uncanny. The son begins to see himself inside of his father, and sees himself as a double, or an emulation of his father which creates the son’s uncanny feelings and ultimately leads to a subconscious reinforcement of repression and a feeling of unfamiliarity towards his familiar. These theories are clearly evident within Franco 98

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Zeffirelli’s Hamlet and are deployed to expand upon, I believe, why Hamlet is, or is becoming, insane and acting on an unconscious desire for his mother. Although Zeffirelli is not working exclusively with the uncanny, it is an important asset that I’ve inserted to help explain some scenes and analyze Oedipal presence. While the two theories are not reliant on one another, I see them as being separate but important entities within the film.

The audience learns of Hamlet’s desire for his mother in the opening scene of the film. All of the characters are present in a crypt, encompassed in a deep focus shot, attending the burial of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. During the burial procession, the camera pans over to Gertrude, and a point of view shot is done between the queen and Claudius. Samuel Crowl observes that, “As Gertrude's sobs mix with the film score's violins, Hamlet turns and exits. This tableau establishes Zeffirelli's decision to focus on Hamlet as a family romance, to place Gertrude firmly at its center, to compete extravagantly with Olivier's Oedipal version of the play” (Crowl). The camera quickly cuts to Hamlet’s face; he seems shocked and sickened by the sight of the two lovers, as if he realizes he has missed his chance to woo his mother and now observes new competition in Claudius.

Hamlet hastily leaves the funeral, as a child might storm off angrily when he or she does not get his or her own way. The audience also sees Gertrude weeping, presumably over the death of her former husband, but the director leaves that open to interpretation; perhaps the queen is upset that she cannot move on to her son, and must instead choose Claudius. The warm colors and the dim lighting of the scene suggest a warmer, darker tone. Zeffirelli, perhaps, wanted to give this scene an uncomfortably familiar feeling because that is what his Hamlet is feeling. Gibson, who is mourning the death of his father, is simultaneously rejoicing over the fact that his mother is now free for him to pursue. However, a familiar entity, his uncle, now holds the hand of his mother, and he is enraged. The warm lighting suggests a more loving tone while the darkness suggests the unconscious depths of Hamlet’s mind.

As the film progresses, the scene shifts to Hamlet’s room. He is being confronted by both Claudius and Gertrude, who ask that he not return to school but rather remain at Elsinore. This scene gives the audience the first real glimpse of the relationship Zeffirelli creates between the two co-stars. Gertrude is clingy; she is constantly hanging off of Hamlet, either touching his body or stroking his shoulder, and there are several shots that encompass the two actors and make it

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Robert Stoddard appear is if they want to kiss each other.5 In fact, Gertrude even asks Claudius to leave her and Hamlet alone in the room, and it is after this has happened that Hamlet grabs Gertrude’s waist and moves in to kiss her. The shots that cut in and out of this focus create tension for the audience. The director is deliberately creating an unsettling atmosphere to make the audience feel uncomfortable, in keeping with the taboo nature of the relationship. The warm, sensual lighting of the scene serves to stimulate the Oedipal relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet, and the high angle at which Hamlet is shot only helps to emphasize his emotional fealty towards his mother. As the scene continues, Hamlet peers out of his bedroom window at Gertrude and Claudius, and says, “Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” Hamlet is trying to convince himself that his love will eventually win his mother’s heart, and the high angle from which this scene is shot suggests that he is right. By placing Gertrude and Claudius at a lower angle the director is suggesting that, contradictorily, they are the ones who are in fact vulnerable to Hamlet’s emotions, not the other way around.

This brings the audience to the famous appearance of Hamlet’s father, the ghost scene, where Hamlet confronts his dead father and learns of Claudius’ wrong-doing. Sue Tweg notes that, in Zeffirelli’s film, “No ghost appears until Hamlet has been further emotionally destabilized… by noticing how Gertrude has been transformed into a radiantly sexual woman” (Tweg). The ghost of the late King Hamlet appears after Hamlet has been made emotionally infantile, and makes, or rather allows, Hamlet to see what he has already been convinced of: that his uncle is an adulterous beast.

However, Hamlet also realizes something else, something introspective. As Phillip Weller writes of Freud’s interpretation of the play, “Freud’s key assertion is that … the King [Claudius] is Hamlet's unconscious self. That is, Claudius has done the two things that the repressed child inside Hamlet desires: killed the Father and married the Mother. Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill Claudius because Hamlet's unconscious sees Claudius as Hamlet's own self” (Weller 120). I contend that Hamlet sees himself, as Freud would argue, as a double or a repetition of Claudius and this makes him feel himself as uncanny, as unfamiliar even to himself. Moreover, it is explained by Freud that “the uncanny is created when there is intellectual uncertainty whether an object is alive or not, and when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one” (Richter 521). The ghost scene arguably 5

See Ottenhoff’s essay, which references Oedipal kissing in relation to Zeffirelli’s film.

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challenges Hamlet’s notion of what is real and what is not. It awakens within him a feeling of uncertainty, which leads him to compare himself to his uncle instead of his father because his uncle is alive and animate. By making this comparison, Hamlet sees himself as a double of his uncle and is made to feel as though it is somehow unsafe, or unnatural, because his father—or uncle in this case—should be dead.

The fear that is created by this juxtaposition is what, in Zeffirelli’s adaptation, drives Hamlet insane.

Another interesting choice made by the director was to shoot the “To be or not to be” soliloquy inside of the crypt of Hamlet’s father.

The shot is done with a closed frame, to suggest, and indeed foreshadow, that Hamlet’s relationship with his father will serve as a barrier for Hamlet between himself and his mother. As Hamlet performs his soliloquy, the echoing of his voice inside of the crypt bounces from wall to wall, always returning to him. Hamlet appears distraught, and this shot might be interpreted as Zeffirelli’s comparison to the voices inside of Hamlet’s head—of his inner mental struggle . I feel the shots directly emphasize the struggle that Hamlet is undergoing, and are used to physically mimic what is presumed to be occurring inside of Hamlet’s mind.

Zeffirelli’s choice of how to shoot the mousetrap scene provides the audience with a reference point to the apparent presence of the castration complex within the film. In this scene Hamlet is depicted as relieving infantile fantasies and anxieties. He is letting his repressed childhood anxieties loose through the mock-play and through his actions. As the play begins, Hamlet cannot contain his anxiety. He is shot jumping and dancing around Gertrude and Claudius and pawing at Ophelia, and a medium close-up freezes them all together: Hamlet between the King and Queen, with Ophelia currently out of focus. John McCombe, in “Toward an Objective Correlative: The Problem of Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet,” argues that: During “The Mousetrap,” there is one very brief shot which reminds Zeffirelli's audience that the most important relationship in Hamlet is the one between Gertrude and Hamlet. When Hamlet suggests to his Mother that Polonius's daughter is “metal more attractive,” and that he chooses to sit next to Ophelia, Gertrude flashes him an expression of bitter jealousy; Gertrude, not Ophelia, is the wounded lover. Within the play, Shakespeare suggests that Hamlet sincerely loves his mother but Zeffirelli constantly reinforces an unmistakably physical bond between the two. This extends their relationship

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into the realm of an Oedipal struggle, beyond the strength of the relationship as suggested by Shakespeare. (127) This shot and its previous cut could be considered as an example of a closed frame shot, because Hamlet is quite literally the barrier that separates Gertrude from loving Claudius, and Ophelia is the barrier that prevents Hamlet from loving his mother. What all of this suggests is that Hamlet is confirming the castration complex because he is still too afraid to act towards his mother when Claudius is present, and that his infantile fantasies are being realized. Weller argues toward the end of his essay that, “If Hamlet ‘really’ did have a neurotic Oedipus complex; he might act it out in a variety of symbolic ways” (124). By acting out, Hamlet reinforces that he is struggling to repress his fear of castration

by Claudius, the perceived double. If Hamlet is castrated then he can no longer pursue Gertrude, and so he must eliminate his double indirectly, which is the function of the mousetrap play. As Hamlet’s anxieties are unconsciously enacted through the performance, Claudius is filled with guilt and flees. The double has, momentarily, been eliminated.

However, Gertrude follows her husband which leaves Hamlet to continuously struggle with his repression.

However, Zeffirelli does allow Gibson’s character to act out in symbolic ways, most of which include Gibson reverting back to his Mad Max role, fulfilling his repressed infantile desires. The director’s use of a 360 degree camera shot, in this case a tracking shot, emphasizes this feeling of infancy and lack of emotional control.

Revisiting a prior scene, the audience is shocked by Hamlet’s tantrum in an encounter with Ophelia. As the characters confront each other the camera spins around them, presumably on a dolly, and gives the audience a complete 360 degree view of the engagement. The shot is set up to look as if the characters are dancing together in their madness.

Zeffirelli may have made this decision for several reasons, but arguably the shot was done primarily to create the effect of continuous action. If the shot had been composed of several cut angles, for instance, it would not have been as continuous and may have hindered the audience’s relationship with Hamlet’s performance. By continuing the shot in the form of a long take the action is thorough and continuous—a perfect emulation of Hamlet’s infantile love for his mother and willingness to do anything for her.

Returning to the chronological plot, Hamlet confronts his mother after the “Mousetrap” play. As Hamlet leaves Guildenstern and Rosencrantz he says, “I will come to my mother, by and by.” While this literally means he will come at his mother’s summoning, this is also used by Zeffirelli as a pun on the sexual meaning of the verb “to 102

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come,” as reinforced by the following scene. As Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her bedroom he cannot kill her because he obviously wants her to love him as she loved his father. As Hamlet pins Gertrude to the bed, which is encompassed by a close-up shot of Gibson’s and Close’s face, he grabs his mother’s pendant and says, “What step from this to this?”. It’s as if Hamlet is asking his mother why she chose Claudius, not over his father, but over himself. As John McCombe states, it’s as if, “As evidence of a massively reduced complexity, the Hamlet of Zeffirelli’s film simply seeks to satisfy his mother’s desires” (McCombe). Zeffirelli is emphasizing the internal struggle that Hamlet is going through. Hamlet is trying to reason and come to terms with the fact that he now has more competition for his mother’s affections. The close up shot reinforces this theory, because it underscores the intimate desires the two characters have for each other by allowing the audience to see how they look at each other. As the scene progresses, and Hamlet kills Polonius, he pins Gertrude to the bed again and a simulated sex scene takes place. This is the pivotal scene of the adaptation because the following action confirms the Oedipus complex. It also sexually defines Hamlet as being the dominant male, affirming that “When confronting Gertrude in her bedroom, Hamlet enacts the deeper Oedipal issues of the text…by physically dominating his mother…”

(Knott 287). During this interaction, it is argued Hamlet, “all but rapes his mother… [inserting] the obligatory sex scene into the movie, satisfying the expectations of his audience” (Cartmell 218-9). This scene is broken up when Hamlet sees his father’s ghost. Hamlet flies off of his mother in a quick, edited jump shot, out of fear of his father, a secondary double, and what he might do. As Hamlet’s father’s ghost disappears again, Hamlet goes to his mother, leaving the closed frame.

As the uncanny double disappears, Hamlet is able to repress his fear of castration and engage with his mother. They speak of desire, and Zeffirelli uses another close up shot to show the connection between the would-be lovers. They lock eyes, but do not follow up with a kiss as their intentions suggest. Hamlet looks away, speaks of repentance, and leaves. This shot reinforces the theory that Zeffirelli is trying to use Hamlet’s desires as a source of conflict and a reason for his otherwise mystified madness. Lighting and mise-en-scène, in this scene in particular, are composed of very warm, motherly tones. They are deep and earthy and suggest an atmosphere of intimacy by the use of colors such as lighter shades of yellow and red. The mise-en-scène reinforces the intimate desires that the two share, and Zeffirelli takes advantage of color and lighting, as well as cinematography, in this scene to create a sexually-charged atmosphere. It is at this point in the film that Hamlet’s

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intensifying insanity leads Claudius to ship him to England, away from Gertrude, to be executed.

Franco Zeffirelli made artistic choices in terms of how and why he shot Hamlet. Every high angle shot is significant, and every close up reveals the intimate desire between Gertrude and Hamlet.

Zeffirelli certainly made a significant casting decision when he chose to put the sex appeal of Mel Gibson and Glenn Close into the service of his Oedipal interpretation of the famous play. It might be argued that the closing scene, after Hamlet returns from England to claim his mother, during the duel between Hamlet and Laertes, reinforces the point in time when Hamlet realizes he has failed in his princely duty to his country in pursuit of Oedipal love, similar to Oedipus’s plight in the Greek tragedy. Zeffirelli closes the film with an overhead crane shot of four dead characters—Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, and Gertrude—as if to suggest that unnatural desire can only amount to destruction, internal and external, underlining Freud’s theories. Psychoanalytic theory allows the film to have several outstanding implications. Primarily, the implication that Hamlet’s insanity manifests his Oedipal desire. The film builds upon Freud’s theories by displaying fantastic love scenes, horrible deaths, and erotic outbursts to suggest that unconscious, repressed love has the potential to drive even the seemingly most innocent relationships, such as one between mother and son, to ruin.

Works Cited Biggs, Murray. “‘He’s going to his mother’s closet’: Hamlet and Gertrude on Screen.” Shakespeare Survey 45 (1993): 53-63.

Print.

Cartmell, Deborah. “Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare.” The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Ed. Russell Jackson. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. 216-226.

Cook, Patrick J. Cinematic Hamlet: The Films of Olivier, Zeffirelli, Branagh, and Almereyda. Athens: Ohio UP, 2011. Print.

Crowl, Samuel. “Zeffirelli’s Hamlet: The Golden Girl and a Fistful of Dust.” Cineaste 24.1 (1998): 56-61. Print.

Hamlet. Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Perf. Mel Gibson, Glenn Close, Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, and Alan Bates. Warner Brothers, 1990. Film.

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Horne, Ann. “Oedipal aspirations and phallic fears: on fetishism in childhood and young adults.” Journal of Child Psychotherapy 29.1. (2003): 37-52. Print.

Jackson, Russell. “The Gaps in Gertrude: Interpretations of the Role in Five Feature Films.” Shakespeare on Screen (2011): n.p.

Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Knott, Stuart. “Aggressive Action, Oedipal Inaction, and Incessant Procrastination: The Genre Conventions of Hamlet.” Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance 5.1 (2012): n.p. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

McCombe, John P. “Toward an Objective Correlative: The Problem of Desire in Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet.” Literature Film Quarterly 25.2. (1997): n.p. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Ottenhoff, John. “Hamlet and the Kiss” Shakespeare Yearbook 8.

(1997): n.p. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Richter, David, ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. New York: Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2007. Print.

Simmons, James R., Jr. “‘In the Rank and Sweat of an Enseamed Bed’: Sexual Aberration and the Paradigmatic Screen Hamlets.”

Literature Film Quarterly 25.2 (1997): n.p. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Sloboda, Noel. “Visions and Revisions of Laurence Olivier in the Hamlet Films of Franco Zeffirelli and Kenneth Branagh.”

Studies in the Humanities 27 (2000): n.p. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Tweg, Sue. “‘Well, we have a Go, Don’t We?’” Screen Education 43 (2006): n.p. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Weller, Phillip. “Freud’s Footprints in Films of Hamlet.” Literature Film Quarterly 25.2 (1997): 119-124. Print.

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Christopher J. Surprenant

Introduction to “‘The effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her’: Community in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse” Catherine Cavanaugh Professor of English In this essay, Christopher Surprenant focuses on the place of woman in her domestic community and as an artist, as delineated in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, first published in 1927. His analysis is contextualized in the changing mores of society toward women in England in the 1920s and, equally significantly, in the strong experimentation in novel form that writers such as Woolf and Joyce were engaged in at the time. Interweaving historical, cultural, aesthetic, and individual contexts, Surprenant traces twin journeys that Woolf creates and experiences: Lily’s development as a female artist and the novel’s evolution from realism to less chronological form.

After reviewing a large body of current criticism on this novel and not finding a fully satisfying theoretical foundation for his analysis, Surprenant reached back to earlier feminist theorists, such as Carolyn Heilbrun, Adrienne Rich, and Sara Ruddick. Like most Woolf scholars, Surprenant researched other primary works by Woolf and he incorporates material from Woolf’s diaries, her essays on writing, and her short stories written immediately prior to 1927 into his discussion of To the Lighthouse. He relies on close analysis of the mature Mrs. Ramsay in Part I to set a basis for his discussion of how the young artist Lily Briscoe—depicted as an outsider in Part I—manages to find her own identity as a professional artist without rejecting all of the domestic traits that Mrs. Ramsay embodies.

Surprenant discusses the well-known autobiographical parallels between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay and Woolf’s own parents, but uses these details in a complex way that finds societal and artistic import in the Ramsays’ experience that Surprenant sees as informing Lily’s brushstroke on the canvas at the end of the novel. He also analyzes the strong transformation in form among the three parts of this novel which he sees as developing in consonance with the risks Lily takes in finding her identity as woman and artist, making a strong case that Woolf’s increasingly ambiguous form is equally risky for Woolf.

In all, Surprenant offers a well-reasoned, gracefully expressed interpretation that argues convincingly that Lily (and by extension Woolf) finds a unique way to incorporate some of Mrs. Ramsay’s communal—and somewhat patriarchal—values into her own tenuous identity as an independent female artist.

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“The effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her”: Community in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse Christopher J. Surprenant English Major; Class of 2014 What is the place of woman, and how does one come to express it?

This is one of the questions Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse poses. Through the matronly character of Mrs. Ramsay and her young apprentice in the art of Victorian femininity Lily Briscoe, Woolf’s work brings to light the struggle between patriarchal values that dominated society towards the end of the nineteenth century and the move towards female independence that began to burgeon in the 1920s. At the time Woolf began writing her novel, the term “novel” was undergoing changes that ran parallel to those English society was also experiencing. Gone were the days of a novel that overflowed with flowery, extended images. Instead, the novel made the journey inward, a journey that required both writer and reader to go deep within the minds of the characters. Referring to this change in their writings on novels of the twentieth century, Frederich Karl and Marvin Magalaner observed that “the former sense of community belief now became the chaos of the individual artist going his own way” (5). This focus on the self then became the subject of Woolf’s novel. To the Lighthouse explores personal choice through Lily as a female artist who struggles to break free of the old way of the life, one that her mentor, Mrs. Ramsay, strongly advocates. Mrs. Ramsay’s desire for community and bonding, while valiant on the surface, is detrimental to her relationship with others, and more importantly, herself. Marriage is Mrs. Ramsay’s ultimate communal experience for herself and for those around her. As a woman of the Victorian era, Mrs. Ramsay’s ultimate goal is to pass down her values to another generation, rendering her life a success.

This becomes problematic because Lily is ambivalent about accepting them because of their focus on marriage and domesticity. Lily then becomes an outsider because she cannot easily accept patriarchy as fact, as an outsider “is identified by the exclusion from the cultural patterns of bonding at the heart of society, at its centers of power” (Heilbrun, Reinventing 38). Lily’s inability to fully bond with Mrs. Ramsay or a male counterpart results in her outsider status. By remaining an outsider for the majority of the novel, Lily must come to terms with her role as a woman outside the expectations of the patriarchy and discover within herself a way of finding the same happiness that Mrs. Ramsay claims marriage and community will bring her, but on her own terms.

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When Woolf wrote To the Lighthouse in the early twentieth century, the novel’s form was changing along with British society. The era was marked by an explosion of consumerism that had never been seen before. Department stores, romance novels and women’s magazines were becoming part of a world that invited many, particularly women, to buy and consume on a large scale (Felski 196).

A woman “in commercial culture—actress, shopper, moviegoer—was at least publicly visible whether in the picture palaces, newspapers or on the streets…women sometimes used their new freedom to unsettle patriarchal dominance and claim a space of their own (outside male control)” (Hewett 352). In terms of literature, the book club was becoming a trend popular among British women who misguidedly believed that such discussions were a form of freedom (Hewett 355). In reality, novels that appealed to mass tastes were often aimed at women and their perceived fantasies, and were produced by men, thus further trapping women within the confines of patriarchy (Hewett 355).

Novelists in the early part of the twentieth century were primarily men.

Woolf saw their approach to writing as stifled and lacking something she saw essential to fiction: a sense of self in characters. While she found certain aspects of older novels admirable and useful, she believed that fiction was ever-evolving. She declared in “Modern Fiction” that writers such as Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy “write of unimportant things; that they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and the enduring” (159). Further, she adds, “Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide” (“Modern Fiction” 160). Within her own novels, Woolf explores the idea of writing life by breaking free from older conventions, notably tinkering with narrative form. In works such as To the Lighthouse, very little happens in terms of plot. Most action is psychological. Rather than external tension, Woolf presents the reader with the internal tensions of her characters, making the self the focus of the novel. This makes the struggle of characters realistic, allowing their stories to become more meaningful because they appear as true-to-life human beings rather than just words mimicking human life. By never immediately identifying which character is narrating at a given time and moving the plot inward, Woolf disrupted expectations of form, and thus superimposed such changes onto her own characters, particularly Lily. Like Woolf, Lily participates in a changing mode of artistic expression through her abstract painting. As Lily eventually discovers, such a shift in belief does not mean shunning older conventions

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entirely. Rather, it demands that they be expanded upon and used in a way that is personally beneficial going forward.

In order to make any progress, Woolf believed that restrictions of the past needed to be broken away from in order to create something new, meaningful, and honest. Woolf wrote in her 1931 essay “Professions for Women” of the “Angel in the House” as an entity she had to “kill” in order to write a sincere piece of work. She described this being as “intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming.

She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily” (150). This phantom, as Beth Rigel Daugherty points out, strongly resembled Woolf’s own mother, Julia Stephen (290), the woman whose presence seeps through every pore of Mrs. Ramsay. In order to understand Mrs. Ramsay’s motives, the Angel must be discussed because of her biographical connection to both Woolf and her novel. Julia Stephen was “a perfect wife and mother of her children according to her husband…a perfect embodiment of the Victorian woman whose life was centered upon her husband and children, filled with charity work and household duties” (Munca 278). Rather than ever stopping to think about herself, the Angel figure is one who “never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others” (“Professions” 150). Woolf’s biographer, Hermione Lee, describes Julia Stephen as “reticent and aloof, and her past was kept mysterious.

She was—all argued—very beautiful and very sad” (81). Given this description of Julia Stephen, Mrs. Ramsay embodies both the Angel, and, by extension, Woolf’s own mother. The relationship between these entities reveals Woolf’s own struggle to identify ideal womanhood; she sought a balance between the antiquated ways of her mother and the new freedoms offered to women in the early twentieth century. In order to do so, her characters needed to be portrayed both externally and internally to reveal this conflict.

This issue is not immediately apparent on the novel’s surface.

In the opening lines, Mrs. Ramsay is immediately portrayed as a soothing, maternal figure to her son James who hopes to visit the lighthouse. Mrs. Ramsay’s “words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, were bound to take place” (Lighthouse 3). Because she miraculously alleviates pain and discomfort, Mrs. Ramsay becomes an object of devotion, an almost religious relic. She is seen as flawless with nothing to improve. Mrs. Ramsay, Jane de Gay argues, is comparable to the Virgin Mary in that aspect, referring to the latter as “a symbol of unattainable perfection,” which causes the mother figure to be “inaccessible and distant” (10). Although Mrs. Ramsay, by virtue of her role as the Angel, strives to bring everyone together, she The College of Saint Rose

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ultimately alienates those same people because her kindness and selfsacrifice cannot be matched. It is this unattainability that compels Lily to question whether or not she can incorporate the values Mrs. Ramsay advocates into her own life. The perfection that Mrs. Ramsay has come to embody is what holds her prisoner to patriarchy.

Much as Mrs. Ramsay is bound by convention, so too was Woolf, who sought to break free of Edwardian literary conventions by getting into the minds of characters. She felt that the novelist should not simply apply a set of facts to a character, but rather the reader should enter into how the character experiences reality (“Mr. Bennett” 109).

Woolf’s novel then takes the theme of marriage, as is common in older novels of authors such as Jane Austen, and expands it by creating an explicitly patriarchal environment that depicts how and why marriage is so important to Mrs. Ramsay. The marriage of one’s daughter represents that a woman has successfully played her role as mother.

She has taught her daughter the value of being the consoler of men.

This transition from reporting facts to engaging the reader in the experiences of a character can be traced over the course of Woolf’s career. Early on, Woolf’s 1906 story “Phyllis and Rosamond,” written in a traditional external style, tackles a similar theme as To the Lighthouse. Woolf examines how women of the time period are trapped and trained to become only one thing in life: wives. Woolf expresses conflict about a woman’s place in an exchange between the titular sisters. Phyllis declares, “Father asked me yesterday what I could do if I didn’t marry. I had nothing to say to him.” Rosamond dimly responds, “No, we were educated for marriage” (22). Like Phyllis and Rosamond, Mrs. Ramsay sees marriage as something that young women must be educated in, lest they end up alone and worthless. It is an essential part of survival. Mrs. Ramsay is not acting out of a strange addiction to marrying off the young women in her life; rather she is doing it because of the maternal instinct to protect them from what she sees as misery.

Phyllis says at one point, “We are daughters, until we become married women” (27). As remnants of the Victorian patriarchy, women of this time period remained children only until they were put into the hands of men. In the same way that Julia Stephen advised her young female guests to make “polite and charming conversation with the men,” (Lee 94), Mrs. Ramsay during the dinner scene of “The Window” can think only of Bankes and Lily and how “[s]he must arrange for them to take a long walk together” (104) to jumpstart a courtship. It is in this fashion that she helps usher these young women into adulthood, although she does so with limited understanding.

Adulthood, for Mrs. Ramsay, is exemplified by her role as mother, facilitating relationships between men and women. The bonds, 110

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as Heilbrun explains, make “‘mothering’ as the function only of one female figure,” thus making “impossible the companionship of men and women” (Reinventing 189). In the Ramsay household, it is Mrs. Ramsay who provides emotional support to her children. She is the one who provides James with optimism when her husband dashes the boy’s hope of venturing to the lighthouse (Lighthouse 4). Mr. Ramsay, as a father, acts as a realist, one whose existence relies solely on the facts of the present moment. Mrs. Ramsay is the one who gives hope and makes life appear calm even in the midst of turmoil. This division of responsibilities in the Ramsay household does not allow for friendship within their marriage, at least on the surface. In the same scene, Mr. Ramsay’s protégé Charles Tansley cruelly reinforces the fact that James will not be having his trip to the lighthouse. Woolf writes of Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts, “Yes, he did say disagreeable things, Mrs. Ramsay admitted; it was odious of him to rub this in and make James still more disappointed; but at the same time, she would not let them laugh at him” (Lighthouse 5). Though it pains Mrs. Ramsay to have her son disappointed, she must play the role of the Angel, and cannot allow any guest in her home to be uncomfortable or irritated. Like Woolf’s Angel, Mrs. Ramsay “must charm…must conciliate…must—to put it bluntly—tell lies if [she is] to succeed” (“Professions” 151). Success then, for Mrs. Ramsay, is to have a home in which each family member and each guest is happy without complaint, and she does her best to facilitate this, mostly through inviting conversation, however trivial, in an attempt to make a whole unit from fractured parts.

Lily, though greatly influenced by her relationship with Mrs. Ramsay, sees the flaw in the safety net Mrs. Ramsay is attempting to cast. Lily does not seem to have any close family ties, aside from her father who is only briefly mentioned. While she may live with him, she remains on her own for the majority of the novel. She has relative independence and is free to make her own choices. While her closeness with Mrs. Ramsay allows her to act as a daughter, she is not Mrs. Ramsay’s child. Lily then can operate in both worlds. She is within the patriarchy as daughter figure in terms of Mrs. Ramsay’s affection, but also lies outside of it because of her status as a female artist, defying expectations of the day. However, because Lily is a young, unmarried woman, Mrs. Ramsay must do her duty as a Victorian mother and find her a suitable husband. Lily “liked to be alone; she liked to be herself; she was not made for that [marriage]; and so to meet a serious stare from eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs. Ramsay’s simple certainty (and she was childlike now) that her dear Lily, her little Brisk, was a fool” (Lighthouse 50). Lily will always be a child, as far as Mrs. Ramsay is concerned, because she has not embraced traditional gender The College of Saint Rose

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expectations, most notably marriage (Williams 142). In Chapter V, Mrs. Ramsay looks Lily over like an object to be sold at market, examining how her imperfections could benefit her in the marriage game. She thinks to herself, “Lily’s charm was her Chinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face, but it would take a clever man to see it” (26). Moments later, Mrs. Ramsay is “smiling for it was an admirable idea, that had flashed upon her this very second—William and Lily should marry” (26). The use of the word “admirable” suggests Mrs. Ramsay’s limited point of view in terms of independence. She would be doing Lily a favor, her duty, by arranging a marriage between her and Bankes. While Mrs. Ramsay believes she is the orchestrator of such potential bliss, she is, in reality, unintentionally operating within the bounds of the patriarchal structure because “men, in choosing women to marry, provide them with destiny. Women, even if they choose the men…choose only to be chosen” (Heilbrun, Reinventing 66). Mrs. Ramsay is choosing Lily to be chosen by Bankes, believing he will provide her with the only life that can bring happiness: family.

Mrs. Ramsay initially succeeds in promoting the happiness of family through her matchmaking of Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, believing “it were an escape for her too, to say that people must marry; people must have children” (Lighthouse 60). Because successfully pairing Paul and Minta helps shape Mrs. Ramsay’s personal happiness, she further abides by the rules of the patriarchy, creating a cycle from which she cannot break free. Her “escape” is the validation she feels by creating happiness in others by way of marriage; it is one of the few ways she can find happiness. For the men in the novel, they “define themselves by their separation from women; women define themselves by their lack of separation of selfhood” (Heilbrun, Reinventing 193).

Mrs. Ramsay then, without realizing it, defines herself by what patriarchal expectations demand of her, not a personal choice that is made without outside influence. She is acting on behalf of the patriarchy, firmly believing that, “an unmarried woman has missed the best of life” (Lighthouse 49). Mrs. Ramsay’s “powerful public personality, then, is the Angel’s, and it can operate only when she is doing the patriarchy’s real work; her real self exists in spare moments, does not function in any public way, and has little space in which to grow” (Daugherty 291). To marry off a younger generation confirms to Mrs. Ramsay that she has passed down her values and that they will live on through her daughters, or those like daughters, but this confirmation is only because she a woman bound by Victorian expectations. She has succeeded as a mother by cultivating her daughters as future wives who will eventually become mothers who will do the same thing. Mrs. Ramsay’s way of generating her own 112

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happiness then becomes problematic when considering Lily who does not fit the mold of the dutiful, young Victorian woman.

Unlike Mrs. Ramsay, Lily is allowed to be her own person in the public sphere, not just the private. Visiting the Ramsays as an artist, Lily is often found painting around the grounds of their home. Anyone can stop to speak with her as both a woman and as a painter. She is not required to build a wall of false femininity to please anyone. Bankes views Lily to be on his level as a man, perhaps because of her chosen profession, but not necessarily as an equal. He cares to hear whether or not she believes Mr. Ramsay to be “a bit of a hypocrite” (46). By asking her opinion of male figure, Bankes suggests that Lily’s response, whatever she says, is a valid one. She is initiated into the male sphere because she does not fit the expectations of femininity.

This is not necessarily an admission of equality between the sexes, but rather an instance of what Heilbrun terms “honorary males,” or women who have made some sort of substantial achievement that is recognized by men (Reinventing 43). While Lily has made the decision to lead the life of a painter, she has succeeded only in declaring independence.

Because of this, she becomes like the men around her, but not their equal. Though Lily and Bankes remain friends throughout the novel, his acceptance of their relationship rests on that she is, to use Heilbrun’s phrase, “an insider among men” (Reinventing 39). Unlike Mrs. Ramsay, who could only “be herself, by herself” (Lighthouse 62), Lily is able to be herself with both sexes, refusing to compromise her individuality. This ability to be herself in the company of others is what causes Lily to struggle with Mrs. Ramsay. As her “daughter,” Lily should be capable only of “[being] herself, by herself” (Lighthouse 62) because of Mrs. Ramsay’s example. From Mrs. Ramsay’s point of view, Lily should revere her and do as her mother figure does, but she does not. This is what causes Lily contention as she tries to come to terms with herself as the novel progresses. She cannot decide whether or not to adopt the marriage plot that Mrs. Ramsay is facilitating, unsure if such a choice will bring her a favorable outcome.

This calls into question then what Lily actually believes. Lily has a deep affection for Mrs. Ramsay, even though she embodies a limited lifestyle for women. In Chapter IX, Lily thinks to herself: Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee. (Lighthouse 51) The College of Saint Rose

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The respect and admiration Lily feels for Mrs. Ramsay is evident in such a close moment. She believes that there is something to be learned from Mrs. Ramsay, something that cannot come from the tablets that Mr. Ramsay reveres, but rather something more important that is drawn from the shared experience of life itself that will bring everyone together. For Mrs. Ramsay, it is this common bond that allows one to fully understand life.

As Lily begins to question how exactly she exists in relation to everyone else, Woolf struggles in relation to the novel itself needing to find its own place in literature with a new form. For Woolf, it is about still maintaining a connection with readers who were used to a more traditional form of writing (“Mr. Bennett” 112). Her own struggle as a writer becomes evident as her work progresses toward a form that not only desires a relationship with a reader, but is also something that revealed more than surface action. Such a form centered on interiority that would allow the reader a deeper connection with characters compared to novels written in an extrinsic style. It became a matter of maximizing the impact on readers with this new style so that they could experience a glimpse into the inner world of a character.

Woolf, through Lily and her fluctuating relationship with Mrs. Ramsay, suggests that relationships between people are important, but it is up to the individual to decide how such a relationship fits into one’s personal life. By attempting to strike this balance, “Lily confronts rather than masters, opens herself up to reality rather than controls it, and wants to communicate reality’s complexity rather than simplify it” (Daugherty 297). For as constrained as Mrs. Ramsay appears, Lily cannot deny that she seems to find happiness in the aspects of family life that have been imposed on her. Her journey becomes one focused on how to create her own sense of family without the restrictions Mrs. Ramsay has faced.

Family, for Mrs. Ramsay, includes several things: She is a wife to a tyrannical husband, a mother to eight children (not including those she metaphorically adopts such as Lily), and she is the orchestrator of peace among guests in her home. The Ramsay marriage is one that, on the surface, seems like it should be unhappy because of sheer stress. In “The Window,” Mr. Ramsay declares that there is no possibility of visiting the lighthouse due to the weather, in reply to which Mrs. Ramsay asks how he would know that for certain. Enraged, Mr. Ramsay thinks of “the folly of women’s minds” and that giving his children hope was akin to telling them lies (31). The brevity of this interaction concludes with Mr. Ramsay declaring “Damn you” to his wife, after which Mrs. Ramsay does not understand what she did to 114

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deserve the curse. This sets the tone for Mr. Ramsay’s short temper throughout the rest of the novel. It makes sense, in terms of autobiographical context, that Mr. Ramsay, acting as a stand-in for Leslie Stephen, should exhibit assumed superiority over his wife.

Woolf’s impression of her father, according to Lee, was that, “Stephen’s crucial weakness, she thought, was that he allowed himself to behave like a genius” (71). Woolf writes that her father “expected a certain standard of behavior, even of ceremony, in family life” (“Leslie Stephen” 74). For Mrs. Ramsay to challenge her husband is to challenge the values on which he bases his life, thus prompting his backlash. Their marriage, in this early context, seems one-sided, completely dominated by Mr. Ramsay. However, to make him solely a tyrant is to only give him one dimension, one that does not meet Woolf’s desire to inquire into the complex minds of her characters. She wrote in her diary, “we all fall out & bicker & backbite. Such is human nature—& I really dont like human nature at all unless candied over with art” (85). In order to portray a real marriage, the Ramsays must argue, they must disagree, things must be said that hurt because such things are what make up reality. To “candy over” life is to not show one aspect of it, but rather to show its many facets. Woolf is able to do this by offering multiple perspectives throughout the novel. This occurs when Mr. Ramsay appears sympathetic to the needs of others rather than his own interests. He is initially portrayed as stern and stoic, but Woolf shifts the reader’s perception of him by writing Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts during an encounter at the end of Chapter XI in “The Window.” Mrs. Ramsay has retreated into solitude that she rarely affords herself. Mr. Ramsay sees her and thinks, “Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt her” (65). It hurts him that she should be so far away in her own world, but he respects that she is not often permitted time to herself. Mrs. Ramsay, in turn, perceives this in her husband, “For he wished, she knew, to protect her” (65) and goes to him and considers his beauty. Depicted from both perspectives, Mr. Ramsay becomes more fully realized rather than just a tyrannical husband. While Mrs. Ramsay’s actions may partly originate from her status as the Angel in this scene, mutual respect is shared between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay; they have an appreciation for what the other is experiencing.

It is this mutual appreciation that allows their marriage to work, which is why Mrs. Ramsay believes it to be important to impress it upon Lily. The Ramsay marriage can be considered a good one because “everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players who seek no public trophies” (Heilbrun, Writing 95). Mrs. Ramsay is only The College of Saint Rose

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locked into the submissive role because of the expectations of the time period. When it comes to the personal sphere, she and Mr. Ramsay may disagree, but they remain infatuated with each other. When discussing scholarships for their son in Chapter XII of “The Window,” Mr. Ramsay wishes Andrew would work harder so that he might receive an award to a university to make his father proud. For Mrs. Ramsay, “She would be just as proud of him if he didn’t” (Lighthouse 67). Woolf continues, “They disagreed always about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did” (Lighthouse 67). This scene becomes important really only to the Ramsays. It is not the place of the reader to pass judgment on what is a private conversation concerning their child.

As Heilbrun asserts, the rules of the relationship are known only to Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. While on the surface the Ramsay marriage operates within the constructs of patriarchal expectations and Mr. Ramsay’s desires, it is really a union that mirrors what a successful marriage should be. It is a partnership, or a bargain, in which each party knows a certain degree of compromise is necessary. Rather than impose marriage as the final destination for Lily, Mrs. Ramsay sees the institution functioning on a level akin to friendship. Connection is what Mrs. Ramsay ultimately desires for Lily.

As the novel progresses, Lily must wrestle with Mrs. Ramsay’s inherent suggestion that marriage can be a compromise, as well as something that stifles and restrains a woman’s creativity. Mrs. Ramsay’s role of the Angel “demands self-sacrifice, and Mrs. Ramsay complies. In exchange, she is revered” (Daugherty 291). Because Mrs. Ramsay is a remnant of Victorian expectations, she inevitably must play the Angel, but she must also be compensated. For her, any form of recognition acts as adequate reimbursement. The way in which Mrs. Ramsay easily accepts reverence in exchange for giving herself up to everyone else is what Lily cannot comprehend. De Gay discusses Leslie Stephen’s comparison of his wife Julia to the Madonna and extends the comparison to Mrs. Ramsay, calling both women objects of reverence reduced to silent objects of art (3). While they may have the adoration of men, they are frozen into that role. Considering Mrs. Ramsay as an object of art rather than a living being, the men in the novel come to see her as only a two-dimensional picture rather than a fully developed woman. Charles Tansley characterizes her as “the most beautiful person he had even seen” (14), whereas Bankes describes her as “very clearly Greek, straight, blue-eyed” (29). Both men’s reactions to Mrs. Ramsay’s beauty suggest that they see nothing beyond her outer appearance and how she serves others, and are reminiscent of how a woman would be described in the Edwardian tradition. This lack 116

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of full development is what Woolf reacts against in “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” and seeks to change in terms of form. She does so by making the reader aware that there is more to Mrs. Ramsay than just her beauty in giving the reader access to her mind. Mrs. Ramsay possesses more than just good looks, much in the same way that Woolf’s fictional Mrs. Brown is more than just the ideas projected on her by authors concerned with the external world (“Mr. Bennett” 106).

However, it is this concern with only the idea of Mrs. Ramsay that makes her so distant. De Gay states “the Virgin Mary was not the intercessor figure of Catholic theology but a symbol of unattainable perfection” (10). If Mrs. Ramsay is viewed in terms of the Madonna/Virgin Mary, she is not only pushed away from those around her as an object of art, but also as a flawless figure of myth. In this sense, she is literally nonexistent. She exists only as long as she can serve.

Service is what Mrs. Ramsay really comes to value during the course of “The Window” in the sense that she attempts to foster feelings of community among the inhabitants of her home. If one is to consider Mrs. Ramsay’s fervent belief in marriage in terms of friendship, then it may be said that friendship is something she believes to be equally valuable. Her guests recognize that Mrs. Ramsay’s eal for connection is something to be honored, although they might not be able to entirely understand it. Mrs. Ramsay, upon learning Paul and Minta have returned for dinner, descends the stairs “like some queen who, finding her people gathered among them, and acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their prostration before her” (82). It is here that Mrs. Ramsay holds the power. She is in command of the room. It is this control, Diane McGee argues, that allows Woolf’s scenes involving food to permit her “to showcase the traditionally invisible work of the hostess in literature” (qtd. in Angelella 173). While Angelella suggests Mrs. Ramsay is “bored and servile,” it is possible instead to see her as dismayed because the gathering is not producing cohesiveness. The narrator reports that “they all sat separate. And the whole effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, for if she did not do it, nobody would do it” (83). Heilbrun suggests that women of the nineteenth century, the era which Mrs. Ramsay embodies, viewed bonding as an essential part of maintaining sanity (Reinventing 38).

Though Heilbrun speaks in terms of women bonding with other women as a way of keeping their own minds at rest, Mrs. Ramsay seems to feel that promoting bonding among everyone she comes into contact with is not only her duty, but essential to her own inner peace.

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To promote such bonding, Mrs. Ramsay engages her guests, particularly the men, in small talk solely to get people talking—to bond. She asks William Bankes and Charles Tansley about their thoughts on letters (84-85), discusses her old friend Carrie Manning with Bankes (89), and asks whether or not Tansely is a good sailor (89).

While the conversation is forced, it is Mrs. Ramsay’s desire that everyone, especially the men, should be put at ease and made comfortable. Lily considers joining Mrs. Ramsay’s endeavor of soothing male egos, thinking to herself that she too would want to be rescued from discomfort: “suppose the Tube were to suddenly burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out” (91). For a moment she says nothing, only to then ask Mr. Tansley to take her with him should he go to the lighthouse (92). Lily does so only out of respect for Mrs. Ramsay, intuiting that she was thinking “I’m drowning, my dear, in seas of fire…My nerves are as taught as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap” (92). As a moment of bonding, Sara Ruddick asserts that “The longing to merge with a mother is familiar, powerful, doomed. The knowledge it promises is illusory, the intimacy fantastic” (192). The bonding of her houseguests is essential to Mrs. Ramsay’s health, but also essential to solidify Lily’s bond with Mrs. Ramsay. However, the connection that is formed between Mrs. Ramsay and Lily ends up a failure to Mrs. Ramsay by the end of the novel because, as her daughter, Lily is not enamored with connection in the same way.

Despite the initial awkwardness of the dinner, Julia Briggs writes that “the second half of the dinner becomes something of a sacred rite, as the guests form a community; Mrs. Ramsay presiding like a priestess over this last supper” (173). The use of the term “priestess” suggests a degree of power has been relegated to Mrs. Ramsay. It is she who sparks conversation. She holds the power to make men like her husband and Charles Tansley feel accomplished or worthless. As the Angel figure, she is driven to succeed because of this power. This leads to the formation of community among the guests, but on male terms. Once they begin to speak to one another, the conversation is dominated by male names in literature, such as Shakespeare, Tolstoi, and Scott (107-108). The only input from a woman comes from Minta Doyle who “said bluffly, absurdly, that she did not believe that any one really enjoyed reading Shakespeare” causing Mr. Ramsay to consider laughing at her (107). Mrs. Ramsay too is mocked for her opinions on the inadequacies of the English dairy system (103). While this might have been a perfectly suitable subject of conversation for men, Mrs. Ramsay endures the laughter of her guests at her expense in an attempt to bring Lily into active conversation, an 118

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attempt to shake her from her private thoughts. While the interactions Mrs. Ramsay creates may be artificial, the fact that she has created connection between her guests, however fleeting, proves to be a success in her Angel-dominated mind. Everyone at that moment is united because of Mrs. Ramsay’s sacrifice of her own dignity. While it is certainly upsetting that Mrs. Ramsay cannot hold onto her selfrespect, Dorothy Brewster writes that Lily “reflects that Mrs. Ramsay’s gift had been to make of the moment something memorable; she had made life stand still for an instant and take shape. Lily in her way was trying to do the same thing” (241). Lily makes it her duty to make meaning out of the lives she observes around her in the only way she knows: through her art.

For Lily to come to terms with the world around her, she must conquer the influence of not only Mrs. Ramsay, but also the demands of Mr. Ramsay. He is not the enemy, but the only surviving embodiment of what Mrs. Ramsay believed in, the living proof of what killed her. In perhaps the most radical portion of the novel, Woolf once again undercuts literary tradition by reporting Mrs. Ramsay’s death in “Time Passes” by a single bracketed sentence (128). Her death is not overdrawn and expanded upon as it might have been in older novels.

Instead, the impact of Mrs. Ramsay’s absence is presented via the crumbling house, revealing the decay of tradition. Although the Ramsays have physically abandoned their family home, “its objects remain the same: the human identity, meaning, and value of which they are traces must be reconstructed by human voices and wits. It is the task of the female artist to do so” (Emery 222). The narrative structure in which time is compressed and plot is minimized suggests a time of radical revision and confusion for Lily as she moves towards becoming a woman independent of patriarchy. Lily cannot fully come into herself apart from Mrs. Ramsay’s patriarchal influence until time literally passes and she can accept herself as a woman outside the realm of gender expectations (Emery 222). This ongoing struggle to create an original self is complicated by Mr. Ramsay’s recurring presence that continually demands sympathy from Lily. For Woolf, this struggle physically manifests itself in the very writing of the novel. By breaking free from traditional expectations of form and characterization, Woolf wrote a novel for herself, by herself. The influence of patriarchy, in the form of the Angel or otherwise, is no longer present because she presented her characters in a way that offered readers more psychological depth, thus rounding them out into fully realized beings.

Becoming fully developed, for Lily, occurs with the death of Mrs. Ramsay. Lily thinks back with fury about what she has lost because of Mr. Ramsay, considering him to be a selfish man who never The College of Saint Rose

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gave as Mrs. Ramsay did (Lighthouse 149). Lily then must overcome the self-pity and doubt Mr. Ramsay once again expresses. He broods that he will never go beyond his present success, that he will never reach the letter “R” in the alphabet of life, for “Nothing would make Mr. Ramsay move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy” (Lighthouse 37). Mrs. Ramsay consistently attempted to alleviate such thoughts by pointing out that Charles Tansley finds him to be brilliant.

This was not enough for Mr. Ramsay. From his wife he wanted “to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him” (37).

In the same way that she consoled James, Mrs. Ramsay needed to also console her husband. This, in effect, makes Mr. Ramsay another child for Mrs. Ramsay to mother.

The role of mother then becomes the ultimate task, the ultimate goal for a woman under patriarchal control. She is not a wife in a larger scheme, rather a figure who gives life and can take it away, all based on the amount of love she decides to allot to those who desire it. It is here that Lily finds admiration beyond Mrs. Ramsay’s wish for community. Mrs. Ramsay exhibits two traits of womanhood, as “a woman is for a man both more and less than a person: she is something terribly necessary and necessarily terrible” (Rich 112). In this sense, Mr. Ramsay needs his wife to act as the Angel to administer sympathy, yet at the same time, she becomes monstrous in that she can withhold it, thus damaging his ego. What Lily then wishes to replicate from Mrs. Ramsay is not necessarily puppetry of men, but rather the power to impact those around her.

In the time she knew Mrs. Ramsay, Lily found something admirable in her self-sacrifice. She remembers in “The Lighthouse” that Mrs. Ramsay “relieved the weight that the world had put on her… (for this was Mrs. Ramsay in all her beauty)” (181). Mrs. Ramsay who, “cared not a fig for her painting” (49), was a woman who delivered sympathy because she felt compelled to do so as the Angel. For Mrs. Ramsay, sympathy acts as an instinctive reaction to another human being in distress; the reason never mattered. Sympathy, however, does not resonate with Lily on such a level. When standing with Mr. Ramsay in “The Lighthouse” Lily staunchly refuses to sympathize with him (153-154). However, he begins to exude his insatiable desire for consoling words, compelling Lily to remark on how wonderful his boots are (153). She hates herself for it, but she realizes that the compliment brought an old man with very little left in the world some sort of comfort. This becomes a moment in which Lily can let go of her hatred of Mr. Ramsay and move on (Munca 285). While Lily realizes that she was “tormented with sympathy” (154) for Mr. Ramsay, it 120

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appears she acts instead out of empathy, because “her heart warmed to him” (154). She enters into an understanding of his pain. Rather than the unconditional way in which Mrs. Ramsay doled out sympathy, Lily’s love and compassion for others becomes conditional.

Love, for Lily, comes in a form different from what Mrs. Ramsay had envisioned for her. In “The Window,” Lily is an outsider observing the way in which Mrs. Ramsay lived her life. She studies the Ramsays and their children without discovering any conclusive answers, rather only more questions about herself. With a myriad of things to consider, Lily becomes lost in them, a part of the abstraction of “Time Passes.” De Gay asserts that this is the section of the novel in which all of Mrs. Ramsay’s work as a Victorian mother is undone (14).

The abstraction of time in this section becomes the embodiment of Woolf’s own blurring and erasing of Victorian literary traditions. In “Time Passes,” the house is overrun by nature and is brought into decay and ruin, suggesting that whatever Mrs. Ramsay had tried to instill within Lily will be brought into question, as Lily at the section’s conclusion is “sitting bolt upright in bed. Awake” (143). Immediately afterward, she ushers in the final section, “The Lighthouse,” as a woman closer to discovering her own set of values, awakened to a new way of life. The reali ation that Lily experiences reflects Woolf’s own vision for novel form. Her fiction no longer needed to be external as in “Phyllis and Rosamond.” Rather, it could be whatever she wanted, as long as the work presented all aspects of a character, not just surface qualities.

Woolf’s connection to Lily and artistic form is furthered when Lily renews interest in her painting from ten years ago. The triangle on the canvas originally does not try “to reduce them [Mrs. Ramsay and James] to abstractions, but to preserve the emotions (including reverence) which they inspire in others” (de Gay 6). It is only after her absence in “Time Passes” that Lily begins to understand the complexities of relationships and the intricacies of connection. She is apprehensive to actually make a decision on the matter, thinking to herself, “But there was all the difference in the world between this planning airily away from the canvas and actually taking her brush and making the first mark” (157). This first mark that she makes on canvas in ten years comes to define a decision for Lily that has been a long time in the making. It is one that she will not be able to take back, “One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions” (Lighthouse 157). Throughout “The Lighthouse,” Lily’s feelings for Mrs. Ramsay fluctuate between love and disdain as she struggles to come to a full understanding of what she must do with her life. Lily begins to imagine: The College of Saint Rose

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Mrs. Ramsay saying, “Life stand still here”; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent)—this was the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. “Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!” she repeated. She owed it all to her.

(161) Lily, through her painting, seeks to replicate Mrs. Ramsay’s gift for creating significance in life as she did during the dinner of “The Window.” As an abstract piece of art, Lily’s painting becomes chaotic because its intention is not immediately clear. For Lily, she is not only an artist attempting to make sense out of the old and new to create something uniquely her own, but also a person attempting to preserve beautiful aspects of the past. As Lily makes her last stroke down the center of the canvas, she is finding her own place in the world by achieving balance between her personal beliefs and the values Mrs. Ramsay so strongly endorsed. Lily, at this point, is finally able to fully reali e Mrs. Ramsay’s virtues (Ruddick 195) rather than the flaws within her that were produced by patriarchal control. In order to have made any progress, Lily knows that without Mrs. Ramsay, she would not have been able to draw such an important conclusion.

Lily’s decision then encompasses the communal love Mrs. Ramsay preached, but it also takes into account her own desire to be an entity separate and significant apart from those around her. As the novel ends, Lily observes alongside Augustus Carmichael that the Ramsays have finally reached the lighthouse. She stands with him, sharing the moment, connecting. The Ramsays are finally together as a family unit. Observing them all, Lily’s painting is complete as “an attempt at something” (208-209). Lily thinks to herself, “It will be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did it matter?” (208). Lily, unlike Mrs. Ramsay, does not care for posterity.

She cares only to impact the present moment and preserve it; the desire is personal and comes from within. Mrs. Ramsay’s desire to pass down her values proceeded not from her own mind but rather from internalized patriarchy. The center line represents Lily’s newfound balance between the virtues preached by patriarchy and the value of female independence. What Mrs. Ramsay has taught Lily can apply to any place or time to achieve happiness (Munca 286). While younger women of the time would inevitably reject the Victorian role of Angel, 122

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Community in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

Lily believes that Mrs. Ramsay’s kindness and generosity are qualities that must be appreciated and preserved. Like Mrs. Ramsay who attempted to create shared experiences at her dinner party, Lily’s painting becomes her way of fostering connection. Art, for Lily, is what will connect her with others because it is meant to be appreciated and felt by others. Though she feels this particular painting will not be seen by anyone, it is the first step towards a life that will exemplify such values. While art is not the avenue Mrs. Ramsay would have chosen to foster community, it becomes a compromise that allows Lily to be both for and against what Mrs. Ramsay endorsed.

The ambiguity with which the novel ends not only reinforces Lily’s own indecision, but also a period of literary transition in which Woolf was actively engaged. Her own work underwent an evolution, allowing her to go beyond the surface of her characters deep into their minds. However, altering traditional literary form was not without its consequences. Woolf felt that “The writer must get into touch with his reader by putting before him something which he recognizes, which therefore stimulates his imagination and makes him willing to cooperate in the far more difficult business of intimacy” (“Mr. Bennett” 110-111). To the Lighthouse presents familiar themes and ideas, but allows the reader to get even closer to the characters because of Woolf’s narrative technique. The novel then is Woolf’s own struggle for full expression in a fictional form in the guise of Lily. Woolf pays homage to Julia Stephen, as her sister Vanessa viewed it as “an amazing portrait of mother” and “found the rising of the dead almost painful” (Diary 135) in the same way that Lily pays homage to Mrs. Ramsay in her painting. But she, like Woolf, must move on into her own sphere of independence, killing off her own Angel in Mrs. Ramsay. The novel, in terms of form, becomes a literary manifestation of this struggle for originality. Readers become a part of Woolf’s work, , and are free to make up their own minds about anything in the novel, as even she “cannot conceive what The Lighthouse is all about” (Diary 89). This admission invites those who partake in her work to draw their own conclusions, as Lily does through her painting. For both Lily and Woolf, community and personal satisfaction are achieved by taking chances without concentrating on the outcome. True connection between individuals, for Lily, comes from not necessarily agreeing and subjugating oneself to popular belief, but rather through mutual understanding and a willingness to apply the ideas of others, as one sees fit, to one’s own life and experiences.

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Works Cited Angelella, Lisa. “The Meat of the Movement: Food and Feminism in Woolf.” Woolf Studies Annual. 17.0 (2011). 173-193. Print.

Brewster, Dorothy and Angus Burrell. Modern Fiction. New York: Columbia UP, 1934. Print.

Briggs, Julia. Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2005. Print.

Daugherty, Beth Rigel. “‘There She Sat’: The Power of the Feminist Imagination in To the Lighthouse.” Twentieth Century Literature. 289-308. Print. de Gay, Jane. “Behind the Purple Triangle: Art and Iconography in To the Lighthouse.” Woolf Studies Annual. 5.0 (1999). 1-22.

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Emery, Mary Lou. “‘Robbed of Meaning’: The Work at the Center of To the Lighthouse.” Modern Fiction Studies. 38.1 (1992): 217234. Project Muse. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

Felski, Rita. “Modernism and Modernity: Engendering Literary History.” Rereading Modernism:New Directions in Feminist Criticsim. Ed. Lisa Rado. New York: Garland Publishing,1994. Print.

Heilbrun, Carolyn. Reinventing Womanhood. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979.Print.

—. Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. Print.

Hewett, Angela. “The ‘Great Company of Real Women’: Modernist Women Writers and Mass Commercial Culture.” New Directions in Feminist Criticism. Ed. Lisa Rado. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. Print.

Karl, Frederich and Marvin Magalaner. A Reader’s Guide to Great 20th Century English Novels. New York: The Noonday Press, 1959. Print.

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Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1996.

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Munca, Daniela. “Virginia Woolf’s Answer to ‘Women Can’t Paint, Women Can’t Write’ in To the Lighthouse.” Journal of International Women’s Studies. 10.4 (2009): 276-289. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 13 Mar. 2013.

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976. Print.

Ruddick, Sara. “Learning to Live with the Angel in the House.”

Women’s Studies. 4.0 (1977). 181-200. Print.

Williams, Lisa. The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Eds. Oliver Bell and Andrew McNeillie. Vol. 3.San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980. Print.

—. “Modern Fiction.” The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Andrew McNeillie. Vol. 4. London: The Hogarth Press, 1984. Print.

—. “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” The Captain’s Death Bed and Other Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1950. Print.

—. “Phyllis and Rosamond.” The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Susan Dick. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1989. Print.

—. “Professions for Women” The Death of the Moth. Ed. Leonard Woolf. 5th ed. London: The Hogarth Press, 1947. Print.

—. To the Lighthouse. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1927. Print.

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