Home?

After our discussion last class, I was drawn to how the concept of home is defined, complicated, and where it truly exists for Dana, if at all. Although at first Dana feels sure that her home is in her time, her house in 1976 California, she begins to unconsciously internalize her life in the 1800s despite her attempts against it. Late in the novel, when she is talking to Kevin, she realizes “It’s real now, isn’t it, …somehow it was abstract then” (243). From the time she arrived and realized the racial, social, political, and historical context of the antebellum South, she “played the slave” (91). In spite of her repulsion to the time, to the violence, fear and brutality that marked it, and physically and psychologically marked her, she “recall[s] feeling relief at seeing the [Weylin] house, feeling that she had come home. And having to stop and correct myself, remind myself that I was in an alien, dangerous place. I could recall being surprised that I could come to think of such a place as home” (190). She doesn’t consciously think of the Weylin plantation as home, it goes against her better instincts, so what is it that that makes the plantation home for Dana? The definition we are given of home in Kindred obviously isn’t the traditional understanding many people have of the concept, of a place associated with safety, but that many would perhaps describe it as Dana does after awakening from being beaten from Tom Weylin, “I was still in hell” (213).

She is even haunted by the past in her California home from the very first time she returns from saving a drowning Rufus: “They stayed with me, shadowy and threatening. They made their own limbo and held me in it” (18). Dana is trapped between these two homes, these two eras, against her better judgement. She comes to realize that even her home in 1976 sin’t “homelike. …The house just wasn’t familiar enough. …Rufus’ time was a stronger, sharper reality (191). It seems that as Dana spends more time in the nineteenth century and internalizes her role as slave, its familiarity and the ties it gives her, an orphan, to family provide some sort of convoluted comfort.

Stuck in this “limbo,” Dana feels as if she is “caught between his [Rufus’] home and mine” (18, 115). Perhaps it is as Kevin points out in moment of frustration when he returns to the twentieth century after his five year absence: “If I’m not home yet, maybe I don’t have a home” (190). These two diverging realities, of the 1800s and 1976, of California and Maryland, don’t “mesh” (115). In the final scene, Dana becomes literally and physically trapped between these two realities: “I was back at home—in my own house, in my own time. But I was still caught somehow, joined to the wall as though my arm were growing out of it—growing into it” (261). Her arm literally becomes one with the house, “meshing with it as though somehow my arm were being absorbed into something” (261). Although Dana is ultimately able to return to 1976, she will never be able to recover her arm and part of her will always remain in that time that had, for a time, become her ‘home.’ Just as she is able to feel her arm (a sensation also known as phantom limb) after it is removed, still haunted by “a strange throbbing of my arm, of where my arm had been,” she will never be able to physically or psychologically escape the experiences and traumas as they are rooted deep within her body and her mind, that have marked her permanently. Is Dana, or even the reader, able to ultimately reconcile the concept of home in the novel?

Herland Historical Context Powerpoint

Here is the Powerpoint I attempted to present in class in case anyone wants to read up a bit on the historical context of Gilman's Herland...I apologize for the formatting, it didn't transfer well from a PP...

Reform Movements and Industrialization

— -19^th century concept regarded the nature of men and women as opposite, an idea further exaggerated by the industrial revolution

— -Mechanized labor was considered the province of men and the domestic responsibilities were perceived as the natural domain of women; women confined to private sphere in society

— -Women were legally and socially inferior to men

— - Industrialization had far-reaching effects on American society. Social reform movements sprung up around the country to address the needs of the new industrial society, and American authors used literature to comment on the changes they saw occurring.

— -Middle-class women in the industrial age became involved in a wider sphere beyond the home.

— -Reform movements of the 1830s, specifically abolition and temperance, gave women a chance to get involved in the public arena. Women reformers soon began to agitate not just for temperance and abolition, but also for women’s rights.

— - Joined the labor force in record numbers.

— -Other issues included prison reform, labor arbitration, and public health concerns.

— -As social activism among women increased, so did their desire for the right to vote.

US Women’s Suffrage Movement Timeline

— 1792 British author Mary Wollstonecraft argues for the equality of the sexes in the Vindication of the Rights of Women.

— 1821 Emma Willard founds the Troy Female Seminary, the first school to offer girls classical and scientific studies on a collegiate level.

— 1845 Margaret Fuller publishes Woman in the Nineteenth Century, very influential in the development of American feminist theory.

— 1848 The first woman's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention. New York State Legislature passes a law that gives women the right to retain possession of property they owned prior to their marriage.

— 1851 Sojourner Truth delivers her "And Ain't I a Woman Speech" at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, OH.

— 1865 The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, officially abolishes slavery in the United States.

— 1866 The American Equal Rights Association is founded with the purpose to secure for all Americans their civil rights irrespective of race, color, or sex.

— 1868 The 14th amendment adopted, grants citizenship to former slaves, but still does not secure voting rights.

— 1870 The 15th amendment is adopted, grants suffrage to former male African-American slaves, but not to women.

— 1874 In Minor v. Happersett, the Supreme Court decides that citizenship does not give women the right to vote and that women's political rights are under the jurisdiction of each individual state.

— 1882 The House of Representatives and the Senate appoint Select Committees on Woman Suffrage.

— 1887 The first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, are published.

— 1890 After several years of negotiations, the NWSA and the AWSA merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

— 1895 Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes The Woman's Bible, a critical examination of the Bible's teaching about women.

— 1911 National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is founded.

Reform Movements and Industrialization

— -During the 19th century, as male suffrage was gradually extended in many countries, women became increasingly active in the quest for their own suffrage. Not until 1893, however, in New Zealand, did women achieve suffrage on the national level. Australia followed in 1902, but American, British, and Canadian women did not win the same rights until the end of World War I.

— -Voting was seen as symbolic of all the rights women were denied, and they believed voting would allow them to get into other areas of influence in society

— -Gilman emerged as a key figure in the late-nineteenth century women’s movement

-1892 The Yellow Wall-Paper published

— -1898 Women and Economics, Gilman’s landmark feminist treatise, published. Established Gilman as “the authority on the relationship between female sexual oppression and economic dependence on men” (Knight)

Utopian Movement

— - The most extreme reform movement in the United States was the utopian movement, founded in the first half of the 1800s on the belief that humans could live perfectly in small experimental societies.

— - Founding of utopian communities, most were designed and founded by intellectuals as alternatives to the competitive economy.

— -Aimed to perfect social relationships, reform the institutions of marriage and private property, and balance political, occupational, and religious influences. Most utopian communities did not last beyond the early 1850s.

— -1888 Looking Backward published

— Gilman influenced greatly by Bellamy’s socialist-utopian romance, converted to nationalism (based on principles of reform Darwinism, nationalism reflects a belief in environmental determinism and a belief that society would evolve peacefully and progressively).

— - Also influenced by promotions to end capitalism and class distinctions and promoted the idea of a democratic improvement of the human race.

— -Influenced by Bellamy’s ideas on social reforms, ie economic independence and restructuring of the home

— - Her works resembled Bellamy in that she focused on mental growth over physical struggle as a progressive principle

— - Gilman was interested in exploring the utopian possibilities of a specifically female evolution

Social Darwinism and Eugenics

— - Social Darwinism: the application of Darwinism to the study of human society, specifically a theory in sociology that individuals or groups achieve advantage over others as the result of genetic or biological superiority.

— -In its most extreme forms, Social Darwinism has been used to justify eugenics programs aimed at weeding ‘undesirable’ genes from the population

— -Sometimes accompanied by sterilization laws directed against said ‘unfit’ individuals.

— - Eugenics: the study of/belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population

— - Negative eugenics discourages reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumably inherited ‘undesirable traits’

— -Positive eugenics encourages reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits

— - American eugenics movement was relatively popular 1910-1930, during which 24 states passed sterilization laws and Congress passed a law restricting immigration from certain areas deemed to be unfit.