Date Awarded
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Department
American Studies
Advisor
Francesca Sawaya
Committee Member
M. Lynn Weiss
Committee Member
Grey Gundaker
Committee Member
Jamel K. Donnor
Committee Member
Elizabeth Barnes
Abstract
This dissertation studies the function of whiteness in early twentieth-century American orphan narratives. Building upon previous scholarship on literary orphans, postcolonial studies, and Critical Race Theory, this dissertation links the study of literature, whiteness, and imperialism to the forces behind the renegotiation of race in the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines close readings of primary texts from different literary genres with theoretical frameworks ranging from scholars such as Karl Marx to bell hooks in order to examine how race relates to and is informed by place. Divided into four chapters that each focuses on a different American orphan narrative, this dissertation examines the complex dynamics that shape ideas and perceptions about race, citizenship, and imperialism. Chapter One argues that The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett interrogates the fraught relationship between domestic seats of empire and Othered colonies, which is manifested when a white orphan raised in India is sent to live in an ancient manor in the Yorkshire countryside. There, whiteness is located in the eponymous secret garden and the novel’s orphans must shed their Other-coded traits in order to gain entrance. Chapter Two looks at how whiteness is informed by consumerism, eugenics, and changing ideas of citizenship in Dear Enemy (1915) by Jean Webster. For the orphans to become useful Americans, they must shed their familial connections, perform chores, and are taught the importance of money and self-reliance. Whiteness resides in an orphan asylum in upstate New York. Disabled children are considered beyond salvation are refused tenure. Chapter Three looks at American Indian Stories (1921) by Zitkala-Ša and argues that Indian Boarding Schools function as institutions of whiteness that forced Indigenous children into cultural orphanhood. Using the Marxist theory of alienation as well as scholarship on different types of timekeeping, the chapter argues that forced changes to the perception of time, labor, families, and learning brought about by settler colonial practices intentionally estranged Native children from their families and nations, thereby rendering them cultural orphans that are more easily–albeit conditionally–brought into the white supremacist settler colonial fold. Chapter Four analyzes the novel Quicksand (1928) by Nella Larsen and proposes the term “traveling orphan narrative” to explore the long history of literary orphans on the road. Here, whiteness follows the orphan wherever she travels, and her orphanhood status is complicated due to having a dead, white immigrant mother and an unknown Black father. Throughout the novel, motherhood is a fraught position, and mothers and maternal figures continuously fail the protagonist. In the end, she herself becomes a mother, but her choices mean that her children will become orphans, too. By uncovering the portentous relationship between whiteness, orphanhood, and space in early twentieth century American literature, this study provides new layers of possible interpretation that enrichen the fields of literary studies, whiteness studies, gender studies, and research on American imperialism.
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.21220/s2-bt1b-6b75
Rights
© The Author
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Erna, "Children Of Empire: Whiteness And Place In American Orphan Narratives, 1911–1928" (2024). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1717521642.
https://dx.doi.org/10.21220/s2-bt1b-6b75
