by Ellen Dawson
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✩ The Eternal Mother
It should come as no surprise that Gish came to national
attention through her role as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in 1915. The film was undoubtedly the most talked-about film of the
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decade, both for its spectacular, epic-style grandeur—the four-hour film was celebrated as the first to be shown in the White House—and for its virulent racism, which inspired censorship and protests in several major cities.
Today, the racist logic that supports the film’s celebration of the Ku Klux Klan is often attributed either to Griffith’s southern upbringing or to the rabid bigotry of the film’s source novel, Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman. In fact, the film relies on an ideology that was widely embraced by northern-ers and southerners alike, one that was prominent in each of the major Griffith films in which Gish appeared during this decade.
The most definitive account of this political and popular ideology appears in Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization. Bederman argues that nineteenth-century discourse was dominated by an ideology of “millennial Darwinism,” which adapted Darwin’s theory of evolution to the Protestant belief that the eradication of sin would usher in a millennium of Christ’s rule on earth, and the concomitant belief that European Americans were evolving toward an ideal civilization. Asians and Africans were considered to be primitive and barbaric peoples, evolutionary throwbacks, whereas European American civilization represented the most advanced stage of man-kind. Moreover, sexual differentiation was taken to be a sign of advanced civilization. Civilized manliness—defined according to European and American gender norms—was characterized by self-control, firmness of character, and a willingness to protect the weak; womanliness was defined in terms of delicacy, spirituality, and domesticity. Within this logic, these gender norms signaled the racial superiority of European American nations, and manliness—defined as the white man’s ability to control his passions by the strength of his character and will—authorized white male authority over women and nonwhite men.
However, Bederman argues, this ideal of manliness conflicted with a new valorization of masculinity in the early twentieth century. Changes in the economy meant that manly self-denial was no longer met with economic reward. Rather, labor in the new corporate economy threatened to lead to neurasthenia, which in men suggested a loss of vitality. Further, white male dominance appeared to be under threat, both from immigrant groups whose working-class existence appeared more virile than that of a predominantly Anglo-Saxon middle class and from women’s increasing refusal to remain within the confines of the home. In response to these changes, white men began to embrace masculinity rather than valorizing manliness. The distinction between the two terms deserves emphasis. Whereas manliness was understood to be the province of white men alone, masculinity was intrinsic to all men by virtue of their sex, and it was associated with the primitive:
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aggression, virility, and dominance. Thus white male gender identity came increasingly to be defined in opposition to white femininity, though it remained an explicitly racial concept.3
This ideology governs The Birth of a Nation. The film suggests that the Civil War was tragic because it pitted white men against white men, leading to the destruction of civilization rather than its advancement. The film also unfolds a historical lesson in which the era of Reconstruction was doomed to failure insofar as it extended civil rights, such as voting, to the primitive African American male who had not evolved sufficiently to appreciate and respect these rights. The film signposts black men’s primitive nature in a variety of ways. Among them is his submission to black women; the film is spiced with comic interludes in which a black woman, a faithful servant of the Cameron family, physically dominates black men. Another sign of black men’s racial inferiority within the film is his incapacity for self-control, which was understood to be the foundation of democracy. Hence, midway through the film, when the franchise is extended to black men, they stuff the ballot boxes so that the South Carolina House of Representatives is overrun by black politi-cians. Once in power, rather than fighting to impose order after the chaos of the war and ensure that the streets of Piedmont are safe for women and children, the black legislators instead pass a bill to permit interracial marriage; as they vote on the bill, the men lustfully eye the white women standing in the gallery. Moreover, when Silas Lynch, a mixed-race man, is elected lieutenant governor of the state, he plans on imposing a despotic rule and forcing a white woman (Lillian Gish) into the role of his queen.
According to the film’s logic, black political empowerment poses a threat not only to American society but also to the very survival of the white race. And in response to this threat, the civilized white man must draw upon the primitive masculinity that he normally keeps in check through self-control. The white men of both North and South demonstrate their civilized manliness by caring for those understood as weaker. They treat women with delicacy and respect, and even in the battlefield they maintain a sense of fair play. In one sequence, for instance, southern colonel Ben Cameron interrupts the fighting so that he may minister to a northern man who lies dying in the field, and the men of North and South alike applaud his action. Throughout the initial sequences of the film, slavery is represented as a form of benevolent rule; the white men look on with amusement as black men dance and frolic during their dinner break. However, in the immediate postwar era, when law and order are threatened by black male rule, these white men—of North and South alike—discover that they must draw upon their primitive masculinity in order to salvage civi-
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lized society. Recalling the practices of their Scottish ancestors, they rally around the ancient symbol of the burning cross and form the Ku Klux Klan.
As Klansmen, they adopt an alternate, masculine identity, merciless in their brutality against black men. Yet when their white robes are removed, their manliness is once again restored. In this sense, The Birth of a Nation directly addressed anxieties about white masculinity and the politicization of African Americans in the early twentieth century.
Lillian Gish’s Elsie Stoneman plays a key role in this drama. She represents white womanhood, jeopardized by black male enfranchisement. More than her personal well-being is threatened when Lynch attempts to force her into marriage. Within the logic of millennial Darwinism, the future of the white race and, presumably, of civilization rests on her ability to bear the children of her chosen mate. As a civilized woman, she is naturally repulsed by the barbarism of Lynch and attracted to the manliness of Ben Cameron, for, according to the eugenicist logic of the time, a child of mixed race would be an aberration. Indeed, as a number of contemporary scholars have noted, the most villainous characters in the film are “mulatto.”
Elsie is driven not by sexual desire but by maternal instinct, an instinct that is essential to racial progress. Her nurturing of white animals repeatedly signals the purity of her desire. Elsie first appears in the film holding a white cat, which she coos over like a mother. Later, Ben Cameron gives her a gift of a white dove. Elsie kisses the dove’s beak, and when Ben moves to kiss Elsie, she coyly scolds him, insisting that he kiss the dove instead.
The emotional highlight of the film comes with a dramatic race to the rescue, when Ben leads an army of Klansmen to rescue Elsie from the clutches of Silas Lynch. Afterward, Elsie and Ben help lead a triumphant parade through the town of Piedmont, where order has once again been restored. Their marriage promises the birth of a nation not just through the reconciliation of North and South, but also because the nation will remain white despite abolition; the threat of barbaric black rule has been overcome, and the promise of white civilization is assured. The film ends with a dis-tilled image of the aspirations of millennial Darwinism. Elsie and Ben sit toget
her on a bluff, imagining a future civilization inhabited only by white men and women, presumably the descendants of Ben and Elsie and the other white couples who have overcome the divisions of war and the threat of black enfranchisement. In their vision, we see Christ descend to earth, his coming ushered in by the evolution of an ideal, white civilization.
Gish consistently played a similar role in her films with Griffith, although their later collaborations would not argue for white supremacy in such an explicit manner. Indeed, offscreen as well as on, Gish’s racial status
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was a key element of her stardom, signifying not only her beauty but also her breeding and purity, both sexual and racial. Beginning in 1914, publicity for Gish repeatedly described her as “the most beautiful blonde in the world,” emphasizing in particular her blue eyes, pale skin, delicate features, and “profusion of long, shining hair, like golden silk” (“The Most Beautiful Blonde,” Montgomery Journal, 9 January 1916). The emphasis on Gish’s whiteness produced a proliferating set of terms, each a variation on what Richard Dyer pinpoints as the “aesthetic-moral equation of light, virtue, and femininity” (“The Colour” 4). Some commentators linked Gish’s coloring to a genteel class identity: “Her skin is unusually white; her hair a soft, natural blonde, and her eyes a lovely blue-grey. She uses no rouge. She is all that is refined. A patrician from her head to her heels” (Martha Groves McKelvie, “The Lily of Hearts of the World,” Motion Picture, August 1918, 120). For others, her appearance suggested an almost angelic delicacy: “Lillian Gish is so delicate and so pink and golden in her coloring that the word ethereal seems to fit her more nearly than any other term I have heard applied to her” (Louella O. Parsons, unidentified clipping, Chicago Herald, 10
July 1915). And over and over again, her coloring suggested purity: “Neat, blonde curls lined a pure little face, and big eyes, both blue and gray, looked at me. . . . The word that came to my mind as she faced me was just ‘Purity.’
. . . She reminds you of the lilies she so often carries. She is as clean and white and pure as the lily” (McKelvie 120). Indeed, Gish’s name and appearance prompted writers and fans alike to associate her with a lily: “To us, all lilies symbolize purity, and while their white fragility is reminiscent of Lillian Gish, their true-in-heart meaning is even more so” (Apeda, “The Lily-Maid of the Cinema,” Motion Picture, October 1919, 56).
Gish was the embodiment of the white feminine ideal—defined by delicacy, spirituality, and domesticity—upon which the future of the race pur-portedly depended. Not surprisingly, her films with Griffith invariably centered on her ability to reproduce, to give birth to a new generation of white children and fulfill her domestic role. Hence in Intolerance she plays the Eternal Mother, endlessly rocking the cradle of humanity. In The Mothering Heart (1913), the first film to showcase her acting talents, Gish plays a woman who desires only marriage and motherhood (Affron 67). She is introduced in the company of two puppies, one of which has its head stuck in a tin can. She gently removes the can and hugs the puppies to her chest, a gesture that signals her maternal, nurturing instinct. A number of scholars have pointed to the consistency with which Gish was filmed interacting with domestic animals: a duck in Hearts of the World (1918), for instance, or a cow in True Heart Susie (1919). She dotes on these animals as she would on a child,
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and this is the purpose of these scenes; they demonstrate a maternal drive that is absent of sexual desire. Indeed, in his homage to Lillian Gish, Edward Wagenknecht marvels that no other actress “could so beautifully have suggested the age-old miracle of the girl become mother” ( Lillian Gish 18), as though her characters bypassed sexual desire and activities altogether.
However, the miraculous change Wagenknecht identified—from girl to mother—was under threat from changes associated with modern civilization. The nineteenth century had witnessed the gradual weakening of the ideology of separate spheres, whereby women’s influence was limited to the home. In the wake of rapid urbanization, the cities appeared overrun with “women adrift”—working-class wage earners who were not tethered to husbands or fathers—as well as with New Women, members of the middle class who pursued college and careers rather than motherhood. As historian Wendy Kline amply demonstrates, the answer to these threats, as to the threats posed by immigration and an increasingly politicized African American public, seemed to lie in the eugenics movement. “By regulating the sexuality of working-class and immigrant women,” she writes, eugenics would reform the sexual behavior of “women adrift” and limit the procreation of the less “civilized”—that is, nonwhite and working-class races.
And by encouraging middle-class white women to return to full-time motherhood, eugenics would both prevent the New Woman from succeeding in her “vain attempts to fill men’s places” and ensure that the white race once again would be healthy and prolific.
(Kline 14)
Thus eugenics promised to be a panacea for a variety of perceived threats to white, male hegemony and, by extension, the progress of civilization.4
The Birth of a Nation was not alone in positioning Gish as the imperiled ideal of white womanhood within the logic of millennial Darwinism. In film after film, changes associated with modernity threaten her ability to fulfill her role as the “eternal mother.” No less than the future of white civilization is taken to be at stake in the hero’s ability to make her his wife. While The Birth of a Nation overtly addresses white America’s anxieties concerning miscegenation, stories in which Gish’s characters are threatened by
“women adrift” are far more common. In The Mothering Heart, a glamorous woman lures Gish’s husband away from her, and the couple’s infant dies.
In The Lily and the Rose (1915), Gish plays a girl who has been raised by two spinster aunts and whose husband is seduced by an exotic dancer (Rozsika Dolly). In Souls Triumphant (1917), she is a curate’s daughter whose husband is seduced by another woman, and their child’s life is once again threatened. It is hard to miss the condemnation of the “vamp” figure in these films, of the ilk gloriously personified by Theda Bara in A Fool There
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Was (1914) (see Studlar in this volume). Insofar as these films structure an opposition between idealized “mothering hearts” and the vamp-like
“woman adrift,” they preach a moral lesson regarding the dangers of choosing sexual passion over domesticity. The former contributes to degeneracy; the latter ensures that the white race will thrive.
True Heart Susie (1919) exemplifies this narrative. Gish plays Susie, a country girl in love with the boy next door, William Jenkins (Robert Harron). William doesn’t have the money to attend college, but Susie is determined to marry an educated man, so she sells her beloved cow and scrimps and saves to pay his tuition anonymously. When William returns from college to assume the role of the town’s minister, Susie hopes they will soon be married, but a “jazzy little milliner” from Chicago catches William’s eye.
Despite his assurances that “men flirt with that kind, but they marry the plain and simple ones,” William is seduced by Bettina (Clarine Seymore) and marries her. William quickly recognizes his mistake. Unlike Susie, who is well adapted to domesticity, Bettina is a slovenly housewife and a poor cook. Rather than channeling her energies into nurturing those around her, she pursues the excitement of jazz music, fast cars, and flirtation. One night, she sneaks out of her home to attend a party and loses her key. She pleads with Susie to take her in for the night and to lie to William about where she has been. Susie reluctantly agrees, but Bettina becomes ill as a result of her night out and soon dies, leaving William free to marry Susie.
The threat of spinsterhood and barrenness haunt the narrative. The film is dedicated to unmarried women “and their pitiful hours of waiting for the love that never comes.” On the night that William and Bettina become engaged, Susie sits between two spinsters, watchin
g the happy young couple. In this way the film suggests that when men are “caught by the net of paint, powder, and suggestive clothes” of modern women, they leave barren the “true-hearted” women who seek not excitement but domesticity and are consequently more suited to raising future generations. Susie’s
“mothering heart” is signaled not only by her treatment of her farm animals, but also by her kindness toward Bettina; she nurses her rival through her illness, never betraying her anger to the girl.
Surprisingly, it is not the “jazzy” woman who represents the threat here, but the man who is seduced by her. In fact, the film exhibits a great deal of sympathy for Bettina, hinting that she merely seeks security through marriage, though she finds that she is unwilling to exchange the excitement of her former life for the dullness of her role as a minister’s wife.
In the words of one reviewer, she is an “unhappy butterfly, oppressed in her inappropriate, sunless home” (unidentified clipping, 1919). It is William
