Ashcroft et al. note as characteristic of the postcolonial author (26): keeping one eye
on the hegemonic authority and the other on the native subject, translating, in effect,
from the latter to the former.
Modernity, therefore, refers to the way of life and thinking that accompanied the
emergence of capitalist industrialism as the dominant economic system in seven-
teenth - century Western Europe and modern science as the dominant epistemology.
Articulated in the philosophical systems of the Enlightenment, modernity found
political expression in the formation of the modern nation - states during the seven-
teenth to nineteenth centuries. These states were organized around major metropoli-
tan centers (London, Paris, Boston/New York/Washington) where the bureaucratic
apparatuses were located that enforced the governing standards, rules, tastes, and
norms of modernity upon regional locales, which often had variant norms that were
94
Josephine Donovan
rooted in local tradition and lore. Metropolitan control was facilitated by the imposi-
tion of a standard national language, thus reducing provincial dialects to the status
of deviant and inferior.
The process of standardization and normalization imposed by the advocates of
modernity was rooted in the philosophical premises of Cartesian rationalism, them-
selves refl ective of the adoption of the Newtonian scientifi c paradigm in the seven-
teenth century, which effected what Edmund Husserl labeled the “ mathematization
of the world ” (Horkheimer and Adorno 25). The reduction of reality – including
biotic life - forms and the social life - world – to its quantitative properties rendered it
machine - like; elided in the process were qualitative, subjective properties, such as
color, taste, and emotion. Transforming nature “ into mere objectivity, ” Newtonian -
Cartesian epistemology occasioned “ the disenchantment of the world ” (Max Weber ’ s
term) and the “ extirpation of animism, ” according to Frankfurt School critics Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (5), who viewed the Enlightenment paradigm as a
dominative model imposed upon the manifold forms of social and biotic life, requiring
the “ subdual of difference, particularities ” (22). Necessarily, all that did not fi t into
the quantitative normalizing grid of the scientifi c model was marginalized, that is,
rendered anomalous or invisible, which meant, in the case of deviant humans, voice-
less. In the impartiality of scientifi c knowledge “ that which is powerless has wholly
lost any means of expression ” (23). Thus were certain standards of human behavior
established as norms and others characterized as deviant by emerging social sciences,
such as sexology.
In its negotiation with the ideological colonizations of modernity, local - color lit-
erature nearly always mediates the colonizer – colonized dialectic through class posi-
tions: the colonized equates to the peasant, folk, native society whereas the colonizer
is upper
-
class, urban, and located outside the region. Often the writer enjoys an
intermediate location between the colonizing metropole and the native region; by
virtue of class, education, or travel, having some familiarity and often acceptance of
modern norms and ideas but also having intimate knowledge and often emotional
roots and attachments to premodern ways of being.
An example of a story where the author approaches the rural premodern world
satirically, from a metropolitan perspective, is Rose Terry Cooke ’ s “ Miss Lucinda ”
(1861). In so doing, however, she provides enough sympathetic information about
her protagonist that the contemporary reader may disengage from the story the ethos
of Lucinda, seeing it in counterposition to the metropolitan disciplinary knowledge
endorsed by the author that would colonize Lucinda and her world in a process of
normalization.
Like many of the protagonists in nineteenth - century women ’ s local - color literature,
Lucinda is an eccentric middle - aged spinster who lives happily in a separate, marginal
rural world. Her main companions are her animals, and her main occupation is
tending them, her house, and her garden. The story is set during the Civil War, in
what the narrator calls the “ Disuniting States, ” evincing the federal versus regional
dialectic central to American local - color literature.
New England Local-Color Literature
95
In “ Miss Lucinda ” the disciplinary process is effected by a French dancing master,
Monsieur Jean Leclerc, whose name, “ the clerk, ” suggests the bureaucratic functionary
whose chief historical mission has been to impose rationalizing disciplines upon the
populace. His French origin unintentionally highlights that the normalizing disci-
plines that were encroaching upon rural eccentricity by mid - century were rooted, as
noted, in Cartesian Enlightenment rationalism.
Leclerc enters Lucinda ’ s world when he helps her recapture a pig who had gotten
loose. Lucinda ’ s relationship with her animals, he feels, is too undisciplined, a view
the author shares. Indeed, the animals lived in Lucinda ’ s house on equal terms with
their owner: “ her cat had its own chair … her dog, a rug and basket ” and her blind
crow, a “ special nest of fl annel and cotton. ” (Cooke 156). 1 Lucinda does not believe
in imposing a hierarchical disciplinary grid upon her creatures. She felt “ that animals
have feelings … and are of ‘ like passions ’ ” with people and that they have souls
(162
–
3). The author feels that Lucinda
’
s undisciplinary practice is out of line
(162 – 4).
Once Leclerc is installed in Lucinda ’ s house (he had injured himself during the pig
chase and was being nursed back to health by her), he begins disciplining her animals.
He commences by “ subduing ” her German spaniel, Fun; the narrator cites (apparently
non - ironically) a legitimizing proverb: “ ‘ Women and spaniels, ’ ” the world knows,
‘ like kicking ’ ” (168). Leclerc then takes on Lucinda ’ s other dog, Toby. “ [A] few well -
timed slaps, administered with vigor, cured Toby of his worst tricks: though every
blow made Miss Lucinda wince, and almost shook her good opinion of Monsieur
Leclerc ”
(169). Leclerc also has her pet pig slaughtered when he becomes too
unmanageable.
The taming process is not only applied to the animals but also to Lucinda herself.
A crucial episode in the story concerns Lucinda ’ s dancing lessons. Dancing here rep-
resents metonymically an alien discipline to which the rural woman tries awkwardly
to conform. The other students laugh at the odd outfi ts she wears to the lessons,
signifying her non - conformity; her “ peculiar ” practice of the steps is a further sign of
her deviance (176). During this period her animals are neglected, suggesting a
betrayal of her native life - world as she attempts to assimilate to new life patterns. The
denouement of the story is that she and Leclerc marry, and the fi nal authorial note is
one of ridicule against Lucinda for her “ sentimental ” views of anim
als. Lucinda ’ s
subdual may thus be interpreted as refl ecting the process by which homogenizing,
normalizing institutions were gaining hegemony over rural deviancy in the nine-
teenth - century Western world.
In the fi rst of his lectures in Power/Knowledge , Foucault advocates searching for
“ subjugated knowledges. ” “ [I]t is through the re - appearance of … these local popular
knowledges, these disqualifi ed knowledges, that criticism performs its work
”
(Foucault 82). The knowledge Foucault has in mind is “ a particular, local, regional
knowledge, a differential knowledge incapable of unanimity ” (82); it is a “ minor ”
knowledge (85). The critic ’ s job, he suggests, is to “ emancipate historical knowledges
from [their] subjection
”
within
“
the hierarchical order of power associated with
96
Josephine Donovan
science
”
and to render these silenced knowledges
“
capable of opposition and of
struggle against the coercion of a theoretical, unitary, formal and scientifi c discourse ”
(85). The “ local knowledge ” evinced in “ Miss Lucinda ” is a nonhierarchical, “ undis-
ciplined, ” “ disordered, ” premodern perspective governed by animism (animals are of
“ like passions ” with people).
In their discussion of the ideological ascendancy of the Cartesian/Newtonian para-
digm – the “ mathematization of the world ” – Horkheimer and Adorno point to the
confrontation between the witch Circe and Odysseus in Homer ’ s epic allegorically as
a representation of this process. Circe turns Odysseus ’ s men into pigs; the pig was a
sacred animal to Demeter, which connects Circe to this ancient cult (Horkheimer and
Adorno 7l). “ Miss Lucinda ” may be seen as a reversal of this ancient story; it is not
the Greek goddess who is triumphant in this story with her “ insurrectionary ” holistic
knowledges but rather the representative of modern mathematizing, unitary dis-
course, the French dancing master.
The literature of the nineteenth - century New England local - color school, which
was dominated by women, records in one of its principal subtexts the clash between
dominant, colonizing, mathematizing disciplines and the rural, eccentric culture
Foucault saw as having counterhegemonic potential. Scores of stories concern marginal
communities peopled by deviant, often witch - like women who live in predisciplinary
peace with their animals in a green - world environment. At times the authors were
sympathetic to the characters whose lives were being erased by the encroaching dis-
ciplines. At other times the authors seem to ally with the forces of “ progress, ” as
Cooke does in “ Miss Lucinda, ” joining in the colonization of their characters.
In Discipline and Punish Foucault identifi es the prison as the model disciplinary
grid to which other modern institutions such as hospitals, asylums, etc. conform. In
the fi rst volume of his History of Sexuality , Foucault focuses upon the emergence of
pseudo
-
scientifi c disciplines such as sexology, which
“
entomologized
”
sexual life
-
styles into species and subspecies of deviance, thus ideologically colonizing people ’ s
life - world.
Many of the works of Sarah Orne Jewett concern a resistance to this colonization.
By the mid - 1880s the views of sexologists, such as Richard von Krafft - Ebing in the
Psychopathia Sexualis , were well known. The latter work is a series of “ case studies ” of
people who were “ tainted with antipathic sexual instinct ” (Krafft - Ebing 205). Oliver
Wendell Holmes ’ s parody of the term antipathy in his 1885 novel A Mortal Antipathy
suggests the extent to which Krafft - Ebing ’ s theories had been popularized.
Jewett ’ s novel A Country Doctor (1884), a local - color work, is one example of a
repudiation of the Krafft - Ebing notion of deviance, sexology being a signal instance
of the Foucauldian normalizing discipline. 2 The main character, Nan Prince, has the
earmarks of what Krafft - Ebing called a “ viragint, ” a species of woman who adopted
a “ mannish ” style and was attracted to other women. While Nan does have a crush
on a female class - mate (which Jewett sees as normal), she was not “ the sort of girl
who tried to be mannish ” (Jewett, Country Doctor 160). Nevertheless, like Krafft -
Ebing ’ s “ female urning ” (another species of female deviant), Nan is a tomboy: she
New England Local-Color Literature
97
“ may chiefl y be found in the haunt of boys. She is their rival in play … . Love for art
fi nds a substitute in the pursuits of the sciences ” (Krafft - Ebing 399). Similarly, Nan
(who becomes a physician) displays a “ lack of skill and liking for female occupations ”
(419) and has a “ bold and tomboyish style ” (420). In one of the central episodes of
the novel Nan quickly responds in a crisis and sets a man ’ s dislocated shoulder while
her suitor stands helplessly by, feeling “ weak and womanish, and somehow [wishing]
it had been he who could play the doctor ” ( Country Doctor 266). In this novel Jewett
was resisting the normalizing discipline of sexology, affi rming instead the right of
women to follow their own “ deviant ” bent.
An even more powerful rejection of normalization occurs in Jewett ’ s “ An Autumn
Holiday ” (1881). This story concerns Daniel Gunn, a retired militia captain, who “ got
sun - struck ” and comes to believe he is his dead sister Patience (Jewett, “ Autumn
Holiday ” 153). He begins wearing her clothes, adopting her feminine manners, and
participating in traditionally female activities, such as the sewing bees of the Female
Missionary Society. In short, he is a transvestite (though Jewett does not use this or
any other label to classify him). Rather than ship their old neighbor off to an asylum,
however, the villagers decide to accommodate him. One woman even decides to make
him a dress in his size because his sister ’ s clothes are a tight fi t. Rather than force
him, therefore, into a prefabricated form, the form is adjusted to him – unlike the
situation in “ Miss Lucinda, ” where she is forced to conform. The story was originally
entitled “ Miss Daniel Gunn ” but somewhere in the federalizing, normalizing editorial
process it got changed to the more respectable
“
Autumn Holiday.
”
Yet Jewett
’
s
central point in this story is to endorse acceptance of deviance. Despite their bemuse-
ment, the townspeople are compassionate toward Daniel and do not stigmatize him
as “ other. ” This story represents a signal example of local resistance to normalizing
disciplines of the type identifi ed by Foucault.
Much of Jewett ’ s work is indeed devoted to a defense of eccentricity and deviancy.
In The Country of the Pointed Firs , Mrs. Todd, the protagonist, repeatedly sticks up for
the community ’ s “ strayaways ” : “ I never want to hear Joanna lau
ghed about ” ( Pointed
Firs 103), she warns when the eccentric hermit Joanna ’ s story is broached. Signifi -
cantly, her comments follow upon a discussion lamenting the increasing conformity,
standardization, and homogenization in American life. Her interlocutor Mrs. Fosdick
observes: “ What a lot o ’ queer folks there used to be about here, anyway, when we
was young, Almiry. Everybody
’
s just like everybody else now
”
(101). Mrs. Todd
agrees:
Yes … there was certain a good many curiosities of human natur ’ in this neighborhood
years ago. There was more energy then, and in some the energy took a singular turn.
In these days the young folks is all copy - cats, ’ fraid to death they won ’ t be all just alike;
as for the old folks, they pray for the advantage o ’ bein ’ a little different. (102)
In “ The Courting of Sister Wisby ” (1887) a local herbalist, Mrs. Goodsoe, also blames
mass transportation and communication systems: “ ’ t was never my idee that we was
98
Josephine Donovan
meant to know what ’ s goin ’ on all over the world to once. … [I]n old times … they
stood in their lot an ’ place, and were n ’ t all just alike, either, same as pine - spills ”
( “ Sister Wisby ” 59).
Jewett also has various characters who repudiate the claims of modern medicine,
affi rming instead the virtues of the ancient feminine practice of herbology. Mrs. Todd,
the herbalist in Pointed Firs , is one example; although she has an amicable relationship
with the local doctor, it is likely that he is an “ irregular ” physician of the order of
Jewett ’ s own father, who respects herbal lore and is himself skeptical of the scientifi c
bent in modern medicine. Even more explicit in her rejection of modern disciplines
– especially modern medicine – is the herbalist noted above, Mrs. Goodsoe, who
claims that modern doctors may be “ bilin ’ over with book - larnin ’ [but they ’ re] …
truly ignorant of what to do for the sick. … Book - fools I call ’ em ” (57). Mrs. Goodsoe
espouses in effect a theory of bio - regionalism: illness should be treated with regionally
grown remedies: “ [F]olks was meant to be doctored with the stuff that grew right
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 22
