From Virginia Ambler to Dorinda Oakley: A Comparative Study of Femininity Models in Ellen Glasgow’s Novels

Vanesa Lado Pazos From Virginia Ambler to Dorinda Oakley: A Comparative Study of Femininity Models in Ellen Glasgow’s Novels Máster Interuniversitario en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Xullo 2019 Traballo de fin de máster presentado na Facultade de Filoloxía da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela para a obtención do Máster Interuniversitario en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións Traballo de fin de máster Folla de autorización Traballo de fin de máster presentado na Facultade de Filoloxía da Universidade de Santiago de Compostela por Vanesa Lado Pazos, como requisito para obter o título de Máster Oficial Interuniversitario en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións e que conta coa autorización e dirección de Constante González Groba para a súa presentación e defensa. The Call Woman called to woman at the daybreak! When the bosom of the deep was stirred, In the gold of dawn and in the silence, Woman called to woman and was heard! Steadfast as the dawning of the polestar, Secret as the fading of the breath; At the gate of Birth we stood together, Still together at the gate of Death. Queen or slave or bond or free, we battled, Bartered not our faith for love or gold; Man we served, but in the hour of anguish Woman called to woman as of old. Hidden at the heart of earth we waited, Watchful, patient, silent, secret, true; All the terrors of the chains that bound us Man has seen, but only woman knew! Woman knew! Yea, still, and woman knoweth!  Thick the shadows of our prison lay  Yet that knowledge in our hearts we treasure Till the dawning of the perfect day. Onward now as in the long, dim ages, Onward to the light where Freedom lies; Woman calls to woman to awaken! Woman calls to woman to arise!  Ellen Glasgow TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 1: “A revolt from the pretense of being”: Ellen Glasgow on Gender............................... 3 2: Portraying the Southern Lady: The Battle Ground and Virginia ............................... 13 The Battle Ground: Opposing Models of Femininity ................................................. 17 Virginia: The Tragic Fate of the Lady ........................................................................ 25 3: The New Woman and Barren Ground : Dorinda Oakley’s Self-Discovery .............. 36 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 56 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 59 1 INTRODUCTION In my degree’s final thesis I studied one of the later novels of Ellen Glasgow, The Sheltered Life (1932), which rendered masterfully the death of the mythic Old South. The character of Eva Birdsong left a lingering feeling of uneasiness, curiosity and many unanswered questions: were there others like her, or different; what had happened before, and after; through what steps did Glasgow come to her? This project is an attempt to answer some of these questions, to place Glasgow’s heroines within a broader context of history, time, place and her own career, but also within Glasgow’s concerns with gender which transcend the twentieth century, the South and her novels. The reading that I propose in this study examines the role of Glasgow as a feminist writer and tries to contribute to the process of re-reading this author initiated by critics in the last decade of the past century and to remark her contribution to this movement. This author grew up with a divided heritage between the tradition of the Old South and the contemporary changes of the New South which resulted in her ambivalent attitude regarding topics such as race or even gender. However, in this study I argue that Glasgow sketches in her early phase two opposing models of femininity that are developed in her later works according to a transition from the conservative model of the southern lady to a more progressive one embodied in the new woman. In this manner the author would complete her initial project of revolt at two different levels: against women’s oppression and against the tyranny of the sentimental novel in the South by providing a realistic portrait of women since the ante-bellum period to the beginning of the twentieth century. The corpus selected is formed by three novels that belong to different stages of Glasgow’s production, covering three decades. The Battle-Ground, one of the author’s early novels, was published in 1902 and here she introduces two opposing models of 2 femininity through the Ambler sisters. The exploration of their development as well as their outcome in the story will result in the outline of future models of womanhood. Virginia (1913), the second of the novels studied, has consolidated as one of the major studies of the southern lady. The last one, Barren Ground (1925), is Glasgow’s most acclaimed and studied work. The election of this third novel as part of the corpus intends to link the new type of woman depicted here with the previous antecedents both in terms of similarity and difference thus highlighting the evolution of the author. This study has as its main objectives, first the revision of the general historical setting that prompted the emergence and the construction of these models of femininity, comparing the general American context with the particular situation of the South. Second, proposing a gender-informed critical analysis of the female protagonists and other relevant female characters that fall within the aforementioned types. Third, connecting the construction of these different femininity models with Glasgow’s evolution in generic terms. This exploration is carried out in three chapters whose contents are distributed according to a principle of historical progression. The first one introduces the author and her contributions to feminism outside fiction. The second one explores the construction of the southern lady and provides the analysis of the first two novels. The final one deals with the emergence of the new woman in America and in the South as it develops the analysis of the last novel. In order to fulfil this purpose I have adopted a gender perspective and I will be examining some of its key concepts such as motherhood and mother-daughter relations, body and sexuality, marriage and the nuclear family or women’s bonding and how they interact with female’s self-development. So as to successfully carry out this project I will rely on two kinds of secondary sources: the extensive literature on Glasgow’s novels, and different treatises and articles concerned with gender and women’s studies. 3 1: “A REVOLT FROM THE PRETENSE OF BEING”: ELLEN GLASGOW ON GENDER Ellen Glasgow was born in 1873 and died in 1945 in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy. She belonged to a relatively affluent family that, after the hardships of war, managed to join the prosperities of the New South. Her mother was the traditional southern lady and the person to whom Glasgow was closest. On the contrary, the relation with her father, a strict Presbyterian, was never in favourable terms. In fact, she defined him as “more patriarchal than paternal” (Woman 87) and a kind provider of anything except love (Woman 15). This “conflict of types” (Jones, Tomorrow 226) will be translated as one of the major ambiguities traceable in Glasgow’s thought and writing. From the beginning of her career she opposed the sentimental view of the South that had been displayed in the romances of authors such as Thomas Nelson Page. She despised that world of illusion and pretense that was deeply rooted in the South and which she termed “evasive idealism” and attacked for its deplorable effects, since “it made people insensitive [...] blind to what happened” (Glasgow, Woman 104). Therefore, her writing will be aimed at reassessing the past and contesting a present dominated by the myth of the Lost Cause. She defended that what the South needed most was blood, “because Southern culture had strained too far away from its roots in the earth; it had grown thin and pale; it was satisfied to exist on borrowed ideas, to copy instead of create”, and irony which “is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay” (Glasgow, Measure 28). However, she only succeeded partially; like many other southern authors, she could not stray too far away from her home to look for inspiration as Virginia gave her “the essence of time and place” (Glasgow, Woman 195). Moreover, in the works to be discussed we find some remnants of the romantic 4 idealization of young age or the reverence for the past in the twilight of an age which is forever gone. Another of the ambiguities in which Glasgow was always caught was that dichotomy between the local and the universal.1 She claimed that she would write “as no Southerner had ever written of the universal human chords beneath the superficial variations of scene and character” (Woman 98). Criticism was for a long time polarized on her consideration as a local writer or a universal one. In this study I will show that some of the central concerns of her work, such as those of gender, make no use of such distinction, for the conditions of oppression of these women in the South, while retaining particular characteristics of their historical circumstances, have much in common with those of women in the rest of the US and Europe at the turn and for most of the 20th century. Glasgow’s commitment to southern art was constant throughout her life and, in fact, from her sprung the idea of what was to become the First Annual Southern Writers Conference that took place on the 23rd and 24th of October in 1931. Glasgow herself was in charge of the opening of this gathering, an occasion she did not miss to point out the lack of female writers present, herself being the only one. Furthermore, she played an essential role in the Southern Revival (Becker 303) and is considered a pioneer (MacDonald 264) and one of the early key figures of the Southern Renascence. Her prolific career (comprising twenty novels, a collection of short stories, another of essays and a posthumously published autobiography as well as some poems) was recognized nationwide when in 1932 she became one of the first women in the American Academy for Arts and Letters and in 1942 she received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 1 Among those who understand Glasgow’s work in a local sense we can mention E. Stanly Goldbold Jr., who highlights her role as a historian (15). This concern with the social history of Virginia is also emphasized by C. Hugh Holman (17) who delved more extensively into the fiction of Glasgow as a modern writer. (See also Rainwater (1996) for the modernist traces of her writing). 5 As Susan Goodman contends, in spite of the fact that some later authors have overlooked her influence, for the most part Glasgow’s works have always provided a rich discussion that developed from multiple angles (Biography 2). The theoretical frame adopted in this project is that of gender studies and for this reason it is an imperative to delve in more depth firstly into the reflections that Glasgow herself made on gender-related questions and, secondly, into the critical reception of her works in these terms up to the moment. As it has already been discussed, everything surrounding Ellen Glasgow seems to move in ambiguities and the issue of gender does not escape these tensions. Analysing both her fictional and non-fictional writings, we can easily identify a clear concern with the situation of women in the past and the present. However, when it comes to the close analysis of her reflections and the relationship between her words and actions there seem to be some slight dissonances. One of the central issues regarding Glasgow’s feminist activism has to do with her involvement in the suffragist movement. In an interview of 1909 she talked about her sympathy with the cause and her absolute faith in their final achievement based on the fact that the quest was righteous and a sign of the progress, “an obedience in the laws of growth” (Glasgow, “Suffrage” 15-18; “Reason” 24). She put special emphasis on the right of southern women to vote, who, according to her, were probably “more fitted to the ballot than any other American women” (Glasgow, “Reason” 22). The reason was that the division of spheres that affected the traditional Victorian society applied differently in the South, since the women of the ante-bellum period and the Reconstruction had to face other challenges. The former “had really an enormous responsibility in the management of their own household;” and the latter were absolutely “unprepared” to face the change of times that rendered their traditional feminine virtues useless for the new historical era (Glasgow, “Reason” 23). 12 (Woman 245). This comment is of great interest since it foregrounds the mental and intellectual independence as a source of knowledge and strength, one of the central concerns in Glasgow’s life: “Always I have had to learn from myself, from within. […] Only a hunger and thirst for knowledge can bring perseverance” (Woman 41). For Frazee, her final emancipation came with her novels: “She completed her intellectual liberation by writing exactly what she wanted to write, without sparing her people, her times, the South or the opinions of gentility” (180). Glasgow demanded the “right to be heard” (Woman 110) and she did it best through her writing. She sometimes referred to her literary work as “literature of revolt”, and, as pointed out before, it is here where we will be able to best witness this rebellion against the patriarchal standards of her period. In most of her works she chose southern women and their tragic fate as a subject matter. As her friend and fellow writer, James Branch Cabell, observed of the Glasgow’s novels, “what remains in memory is the depiction of one or another woman whose life was controlled and trammelled and distorted, if not actually wrecked, by the amenities and the higher ideals of Southern civilization” (qtd. in Gray 82). Beyond the powerful rendering of the lives of women and the strong criticism hidden in her acute irony, there are other aspects of Glasgow’s works that have been pointed out from a feminist perspective such as the issue of women’s interdependence, especially in what concerns the mother-daughter relations and the topic of motherhood. All of these and many other related issues would be dealt with in greater depth in the following chapters in relation to the three novels proposed. 13 2: PORTRAYING THE SOUTHERN LADY: THE BATTLE GROUND AND VIRGINIA The South of the United States preserves, even to the present day, a distinctiveness within the nation. This has been forged since the original settlings and acquired its peak during the ante-bellum period. The institution of slavery was an essential defining factor of this difference. As it influenced the social body, it also shared a central role in the construction of gender and the definition of gender relations that affected both slaveholding and slave women. Although the southern women of the nineteenth century shared with their Northern and European counterparts their disadvantaged position in a patriarchal society, their situation presented an unavoidable difference. Contrary to the division of spheres present in the North, the plantation structure posed the household as the centre of production and reproduction. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese argues that this reinforces gender constraints by enlarging the dominant position of men in the domain which was increasingly becoming the women’s: the home (39). Aside from the traditional marital and maternal demands of its women, it is, therefore, necessary to add the care for the slaves and, if not the direct production, at least the supervision of necessary goods for a self-sufficient consumption (Fox-Genovese 109). The complex and unequal social relationships displayed in this society settled around a number of fixed mythical images concerning the community’s past and its members. The southern lady is one of these perennial images that became a basic pillar on which the sentimentalised South was settled. This figure has extensively been studied but it continues to provide a fruitful discussion since it connects gender concerns with those of race and class. Inspired by the Victorian ideals and the codes of medieval chivalry (Scott 15), the myth of the southern lady depicted “not a human being” but “a marble statue, beautiful and silent, eternally inspiring and eternally still” (Jones, Tomorrow 4). 14 Before becoming a lady, the white upper-class woman made her entrance in society as a belle. At this stage she presented a number of characteristics (flirtatious, impulsive or mischievous) that should disappear as she became engaged, in favour of acquiring others such as self-sacrifice and calm self-possession (Manning 95). As a lady she embodied the ideals of perfection and submission (Scott 7) and among her most important duties ranked “satisfying her husband, raising his children, meeting the demands of the family’s social position, and sustaining the ideals of the South” (Jones, “Belles” 42). The lady also represented “the moral centre of the household: pious, selfeffacing and kind” (Scura, “Lady” 413). The southern lady became a symbol of the South itself, and thus her moral duty was elevated to the safeguard of her society (Clinton 95). Catherine Clinton points out that, in their position as definers, the males crafted these images “as an unconscious counterpoint to their own option of rowdy debauchery” (87). Thus, these women were totally deprived of any earthly affection, so far up in the pedestal that they could never step down. Jones argues that one of the most plausible reasons behind the creation of this myth is the consolidation of the Western patriarchal tradition that had been using wives as symbols denoting the husband’s social position and wealth (Tomorrow 12). However, taking into consideration the particulars of the southern social body, another argument acquires relevance: since the southern lady represents the idea of religious, moral, sexual, racial and social perfection and is only inferior to men, she becomes a symbol of white male supremacy and it is used to “justify the perpetuation of the hegemony of the male sex, the upper and middle classes, and the white race” (Jones, Tomorow 9-10). Thus, these women were placed at a crossroads where gender, race and identity become central: they belonged to a society where they were superior by virtue of their race but inferior in terms of gender. Any sympathy they could have felt for the slaves 15 disappeared as they became their oppressors; they were the victims of the white men but they thought to share more with them than with the women of the North who were battling against other conflicts in a different type of society (Jones, Tomorrow 25). The predestination of these women to domesticity prevented them from acquiring a superior education. Their options were reduced to the extreme, especially taking into consideration that any deviation from the established norm would erase the love and respect with which seemingly “good ladies” were rewarded (Scott 20-1). The state and the church, as the most relevant social agents, subscribed the prevalent male dominance (Fox-Genovese 44). Likewise, instruction in academies, the church sermons and the literature of the period contributed to the dissemination of gender conventions at the same time that they provided slaveholders with a sense of identity and a mission (Fox- Genovese 196). The image of the southern lady, therefore, constituted first and foremost an illusion, the central one on which the Old South was based. Upper-class women were reared with this myth sustained by their families and acquaintances so this made their clash with the reality of married and plantation life most dramatic. Anne Firor Scott in her seminal work on the southern lady explains that, although women stood by this model in public, the conflict between the life they had lived as belles and their new “matronly responsibilities” appeared in their private writings over and over (27). Clinton echoes how this artificial image did not reflect the true life that women were forced to lead: The Southern lady was a symbol of gentility and refinement for plantation culture, designed to fill the requirements of chauvinist stereotype by embracing those qualities slaveowners wished to promote, even though the practical needs of plantation life cast her in quite a different role. The clash of myth and reality was monumental. (17) 16 According to the gender division that operated in the plantation household, women were in charge of three essential tasks: family life, children and household duties. The first became the central aspect in a woman’s life (Scott 26). The third one encompassed from the most material needs such as food and clothes to those related with health and spirit, both within the white family and also within the slave community (Clinton 18). Women were virtually confined to the domestic circle and their only solace was religion (Scott 42-43). Their protests were found to be mainly in connection to their relationship with slaves (concerns related to marriage, family life and sexual mores) and their deprivation of education (Scott 46). This last aspect acquires especial relevance if we take into consideration their total dependence on their husbands also in material terms. The skills they had were reserved for the home, and the lack of any further professional training left them without any money of their own. Although this was one of the central preoccupations in first wave feminism, many of these women did not openly advocate for economic independence (Scott 77). In the configuration of the model of femininity of the lady the issues of class and race are central. As Fox-Genovese explains, “[w]omen, like men, assumed the place dictated by their gender, as defined by their society and modified by their race and class” (109). As it has already been indicated, the ideal applied to the women of the upper-classes whose lives differed greatly from those of lower class. While the former were supposed to supervise all the domestic chores, they were exempted from work on the field, unlike the wives of farmers (Scott 30). Although the poor white woman could be in disadvantage with regards to the mistress, the worst part was undertaken by the black female slaves. For the latter gender roles did not apply, they did not act as wives and mothers of their own children, the house chores they carried out they did as servants, and they developed the same heavy work that their male counterparts (Fox- 17 Genovese 192). To this it must be added that they often suffered the sexual advances of their masters who saw them as the animalistic and instinctive opposite to their morally strict wives (González Groba, “Introducción” 20). Therefore, the rigid codes of gender conventions could be violated in the case of black women as long as it was for the benefit and satisfaction of their white masters (Fox-Genovese 193). The endurance of hard work and physical violation as well as the deprivation of conventional female roles and gender relations had an impact on the black women’s relations with their male counterparts and on their identity as women since “violations of the norm painfully reminded slaves that they did not enjoy the full status of their gender” (Fox- Genovese 193-94). In spite of the artificiality, the dissonances between the theory and the reality and of being a minority, the myth of the southern lady was deeply rooted in the society even after the Civil War. As Fox-Genovese explains, all these factors “challeng[e] any easy assumptions about the relation between the ideal and reality but do not undermine the power of the ideal” (47). As we will see in the second chapter, the movement towards a new model of femininity would be slow and arduous. THE BATTLE GROUND: OPPOSING MODELS OF FEMININITY The Battle-Ground, published in 1902, was the fourth novel of Ellen Glasgow and her first commercial success. In this work she starts displaying some of her favourite themes such as the evolving status of women (Goodman, “Introduction” vii-viii). In fact, as she explains in the preface, the novel is a good example of what could be termed impressionistic realism, since her deeply informed text emerges from “impressions, rather than facts” (Measure 21). This novel is the only one that features the Civil War and Glasgow presents this event in opposition to dominant models of the Lost Cause tradition that “had added fuel to a slowly kindling fire of revolt” in the author (Glasgow, 18 Measure 11). She opts for providing a faithful rendering of this historical event that does not compromise fidelity to fact (Scura, “Richmond” 22) but where the elegiac and sentimental tone disappears (McDonald 267). Instead, she provides a comprehensive view of the social involvement in the conflict as well as the “small decencies” that bring the people together independently of their class or geographical background (Goodman, “Introduction” xix).5 In this sense, although the author detected in this work some of the traces of the romantic idealism of her youth (Glasgow, Measure 5) she also regards it as the first step in her crusade against evasive idealism (Glasgow, Measure 11). The plot of the novel covers from 1850 to 1865 and focuses on the lives of two accommodated families, the Amblers and the Lightfoots, from Virginia and how their lives are affected by the secession. The Civil War (1861-1865) was a turning point in the history of the United States especially for the South. In the whole conflict gender played an essential role since while the North defended that they were fighting for slaves, the South claimed that they were fighting for their women. LeAnn Whites explains that “gender roles and gender relations played a critical role in the initial outbreak of the war, as well as in its course, its conduct, and its eventual outcome in the ‘reconstruction’ of the South” (3). From their perspective, the argument was not wrong, for we have seen that their women were turned into a paragon of the community’s mores and beliefs. For the flesh-and-blood women the war prompted a crisis in their lives (Whites 3). Scott explains that the response of women varied: there were some who evaded the situation leaving or trying to continue their happy lives as long as it was possible, and others who faced the events with different degrees of success depending on their personal circumstances (88). 5 The issues related to social class and distribution in the South are better seen through the character of Pinetop, a fellow illiterate and non-slaveholding soldier with whom Dan becomes friends during the time in the front (see Wright 31-2 and Gardner 148). 19 Likewise, the women of this novel, and of Glasgow’s fiction at large, fall into two categories: active doers, like Betty and, to a lesser extent, her mother, or passive receivers, like Virginia and Molly Lightfoot (Scura, “Early Novels” 18; 22). In spite of the varying reactions, the women from this novel are directly affected by the war, because they have to face the Northern army and also because the patriarchal heads of their families are connected to politics. Major Lightfoot is an elder man who supports slavery and with his reactionary character favours the confrontation with the North as means to preserve their identity. By opposition, Governor Ambler is a firm defender of the Union but ultimately is forced to give up his ideas in order to save his home. As Frederick McDowell claims, he comes to represent “the soul of the South as often tragically torn between instinctive knowledge of moral truth and the immediate need to temporize with that truth in the interests of self-preservation” (63). Glasgow, however, centres her novel on the opposite characters of the two Ambler sisters: Virginia and Betty. The opening already signals the unconventionality of Betty with her red hair, vitality and lack of interest in boys. Glasgow intended her to “personify the spirit that fought with gallantry and gaiety, and that in defeat remained undefeated” (Measure 5). Indeed, at a very young age Betty possesses many of the qualities that will mature during the war and turn her into a woman with “character, intelligence and strength” (González Groba, “Ashes” 34). She seems to combine some traditional masculine characteristics and others from her mother, which make her superior to both, the men who surround her and her own mother (González Groba, “Ashes” 35). Julia Ambler is an interesting and deeply contradictory character. She is more aware of race and gender oppression than the rest of the characters; for instance, she wants her slaves free when she dies and she notices very soon those traits of Betty that are different and, in fact, she pities her saying “Poor little firebrand. [...] How the 20 world will hurt you!” (Glasgow, Battle 25). Nonetheless, she acts as the uncritical transmitter of the value of female inferiority to her daughters (MacKethan, “Design” 95). This take root in Virginia who is described as “the delicate creature,” “flower” of the South (Glasgow, Battle 4), the prototype who physically and in her character fulfils the requirements of the southern lady. As Constante González Groba says, “Virginia conforms to a classic, romantic model of beauty, and she unquestioningly accepts the myths of submissiveness and self-sacrifice which in fact prevent her from developing an independent selfhood.” (“Ashes” 31). Under the male gaze she becomes no more than a pretty ornament: “Virginia, in rose pink, flitted up the crooked stair and across the white panels of the parlor” (Glasgow, Battle 137). She is compared to Aunt Emmeline whose portrait becomes an essential symbol in the novel. The pitiful remarks that Dan makes about this woman function as an anticipation of Virginia’s fate as another “poor beauty” to the interminable collection. As the story progresses, the lives of these two sisters become increasingly different. Virginia, following the model of the upper-class white women, marries Jack Morson while Betty, who has fallen deeply in love with Dan Montjoy, remains faithful to him and to her character. Although she loves Dan truly and deeply there is not in her feelings an irrational subordination to the male desire but the loyalty of a friendship; in fact, she informs him “I can’t always kneel to you” (Glasgow, Battle 194). In this sense, Dan also constitutes an unusual character. He makes the most of the opportunity his grandparents grant him to gain an education however; unlike Oliver in Virginia, when he places his actions before his position he goes through with the consequences and joins the army as part of the lowest rank. In this sense, Dan is more advanced than Oliver for he chooses Betty over “the pretty simpleton” of Virginia much earlier (Glasgow, Battle 163). 21 When the situation is no longer sustainable and the war breaks out, the Governor and Dan become part of the Confederate army: the former as a colonel and the latter as an infantryman in the company of Big Abel, the faithful black slave.6 The most prominent figure for the remainder of the story is undoubtedly Betty who, according to Scura, steals the protagonism from the male hero (“Early Novels” 20). This is also shown through the narrative’s focalisation which progressively becomes more centred on Betty relapsing occasionally to Dan to provide a more direct perspective of the battle. She rebels against the “folded hands and the terrible patience which are the woman’s share of a war” (Glasgow, Battle 163). Throughout the four years of war Betty takes care of her family and the Lightfoot’s place relentlessly. She represents the successful attempt of those women who took care of their homes and even moved outside their limited spaces in order to nurse or take the jobs that were left vacant for the lack of men. In blatant opposition to Betty stands her sister Virginia. Pregnant, she follows her husband to the city where she is confronted with the disasters of war in hospitals. After hearing the news of Jack being injured she looks for him and that constitutes her last sacrifice: the same night both her and her child die. Virginia was part of the “expiring order” (Goodman, “Introduction” xxiv) so her death and miscarriage could only represent the death of the southern lady: “Her death is symbolic of the passage into oblivion of the values inherited from previous generations which cannot possibly survive the war” (González Groba, “Ashes” 32). This idea is reinforced by one of the many symbols that are present in the novel: the pervasive smell of the magnolia associated to the myth of the Old South but which in this case sickens and intoxicates 6 The treatment of black characters in the novel is generally believed to be ambivalent. Wright defends that Glasgow subtly criticizes the slaveholding society showing the great dependency of whites on blacks (28) but at the same time continues to give the merits of the efforts of blacks and whites exclusively to the latter (33). Goodman also points out such ambivalence explaining the character of Big Abel who could either be understood as perpetuating certain myths about blacks (comicalness or irrational loyalty) or as an example of personal development and the need of a new society to give expression to that (xxiii). 28 The topic of motherhood is one that is extensively treated in the story first, as it has been pointed out, with regards to the mothers as gatekeepers of traditional moral values, and secondly through the direct experience of motherhood. Virginia embodies the view of motherhood as biologically determined and something to which women are mystically drawn. For her motherhood is the ultimate satisfaction, and her self-sacrifice for the benefit of her children turns into her “philosophy of life” (Glasgow, Virginia 318). Even after an attempt to relapse into her true self and giving in to the passion of jealousy, she is abruptly brought back to her responsibilities as a mother (which do not apply to Oliver as a father) to take care of Harry. This moment instantiates what Susan Suleiman calls “the myth of maternal omnipotence” or “ultimate responsibility” through which anything that happens to the child is attributable to the mother (29-31), prompting the view that Harry’s life as a child and as an adult depends exclusively on Virginia. Adrienne Rich has argued that it is imperative to distinguish two senses in motherhood: one that covers the relationship between mother and children; and the other that understands it as an institution (13). It is the second one that Glasgow criticizes in the novel and to whose pernicious consequences we stand witness. Virginia is never allowed to choose since her education has only prepared her for this, “calcif[ying] human choices and potentialities” (Rich 13). It also reinforces the division between the public and the private sphere that was becoming an organizing principle in the South relegating women, as caregivers, to the private one on the basis of genderbased labour division, thus exonerating the fathers from real responsibility (Rich 11;13). Finally, Rich also argues that women are alienated from their bodies as they turn into prisoners of their capability for reproduction (13). Not only this, but the myth of the southern lady embedded motherhood with a sense of perfection that obscured the problems and fears these women had to face (high rates of childbirth deaths, illnesses 29 and abandonment): “One of the most persistent threads in the romanticization of woman was the glorification of motherhood, with its great possibilities for the beneficent influence on the coming generations. Nothing in the myth emphasized the darker side of maternity” (Scott 37). The female body becomes here also an important point of interest from a gender perspective. Jones claims that “only southern ladies embody further the definition of beauty as one’s physical self and of goodness as sexual purity” (Tomorrow 241). As it has already been hinted at, this model of femininity does not contemplate women’s sexuality detached from its role of reproduction and therefore it carries out a systematic repression of their sensuality (Jones, Tomorrow 245). In this sense, maternity was also a turning point and the perspective given in the novel renders the inability of bringing maternity and sexuality to a harmonic position: “the novel explores the conflict between the sexual drive and the maternal and reveals how they are, to some degree, mutually exclusive” (McDowell 112). This matter was explored at length by feminists theoreticians and critics of the second and third wave feminism, and Hélène Cixous, for example, reflected on how these ideas systematically separated women from their body turning it into a taboo (875). I found that in this novel, almost all the bodily references are attached to the process of aging and in them there is a curious imbalance between Virginia and Oliver. Virginia, in her thirties, sees that “She had laid her youth down on the altar of her love, while he had used love, as he had used life, merely to feed the flame of the unconquerable egoism which burned like genius within him” (Glasgow, Virginia 341). That youth that Virginia has sacrificed seems to nourish not only Oliver’s spirit but also his physical aspect, for his rejuvenation is reiterated over and over in the novel in appalling contrast to Virginia’s situation. The climatic point takes place when in New York she hears 30 comments on the “middle-aged woman” he married. Age is of vital importance for Virginia since the only thing she has learnt to value is her physical beauty which was the one that earned others’ admiration. Virginia is not able to cope with the changing times or with her changing self, and her insistent need to fix nature (Jones, Tomorrow 246) goes against the principle of evolution. Jones compares Virginia’s aging process with that of Susan, for the former is a “fall from grace” (Tomorrow 246). The loss of her beauty delivers the first blow to her feeble identity, as Wagner-Martin explains, “once her physical beauty begins to go […] whatever spirit she had also disappears” (xviii). The comparison of her decay with Susan’s late flourishing indicates to what extent Virginia is a character out of time in the rapidly industrializing South. The narrative time contributes to the settling of this idea: the internal time which covers from her youth to her forties accentuates the rapid decay of Virginia (Glasgow, Measure 92) and the external time stresses the extent to which she is neither physically nor mentally prepared to confront the modern times. During her years of marriage and motherhood Virginia fully complied with the model of the southern lady. Dorothy Scura points out the split in her identity between her desires and the rejection of these (“Early” 30) best epitomized through her silk dress. After years of wearing worn dresses, one day Virginia indulges in the cloth for a blue silk dress. However, this ends up being dyed in black after the death of her parents for her period of mourning. Virginia’s increasing confinement within the home parallels her mental isolation, as Wagner-Martin explains, “Glasgow’s having Virginia withdraw so completely from society that she is almost incarcerated in her house is psychologically accurate.” (xviii). This isolation and confinement affect the independent development of the character’s self. Matthews argues that female bonds provide an alternative to “patriarchal definitions of women” (Traditions 83-4). Through spatial 31 isolation Virginia gives up the little contact she had with other women, chiefly, her best friend Susan. Mentally speaking Virginia never fully matures for two main reasons. Firstly, because she has always chosen, and the ending seems to indicate that she will always choose evasive idealism to reality. Through her, Glasgow criticizes the moral attitudes of the South where introspection “[lay] under a moral ban in a society that assumed the existence of an unholy alliance between the secret and the evil” (Glasgow, Virginia 224). Secondly, because her narrow-mindedness does not allow her to regard herself as another of these women that surround her, and, consequently learn from their mistakes or revolt against her imposed fate. When she is a girl she holds no regard for the past; she thinks that the future will offer her something better than her mother or her teacher, but she fails to see the truth in front of her eyes: “What she did not think was that her mother, like herself, was but one of the endless procession of women who pass perpetually from the sphere of pleasure into the sphere of service” (Glasgow, Virginia 42). Like her mother, she fails to see that these women live in and are shaped by history, that they are prisoners of the evasive idealism that leads them to “avoid seeing the reality of their own lives as women” (Jones, Tomorrow 242-43). This imposes a tragic blindness that will never allow her to grow as a person or develop any kind of gender awareness. The turning point in the life of Virginia takes place when she is abandoned by her husband who has fallen in love with the actress of his plays, Margaret Oldcastle. The protagonist is hardly able to bear the news, and it requires all her lady training to avoid losing the dignity and begging her husband to go back to her. Losing Oliver implies the falling of all her ideals and leaves Virginia totally broken. As Wagner-Martin points out she “is robbed of even anger toward her betraying husband” (xxi) and she is unable to confront either him or his lover. Glasgow stated that what Virginia had lost was her 32 “instinct of self-preservation” (Measure 91) and, in fact, through her reaction the reader can see the alienation she suffers. Having outlived her usefulness, she only contemplates death because her society has not prepared her for this moment. As Paul Jones says: Tragically, she cannot conceive of searching for her own fulfillment or happiness outside of these traditional roles because she has never been taught that there is such a thing. True Womanhood has not made women strong or capable; it has only created women who cannot exist outside the roles of a wife and a mother. (37) Yet, Virginia seems to be saved to an extent by her son Harry, who informs her of his return home. This unexpected ending has been accounted for in the criticism in two different ways which pose Virginia in different positions. Jones argues that Harry, the best-loved son of Virginia, turns into the victim of her only power, a misplaced love (Tomorrow 248). In this sense Virginia is given something to live for but her son must pay by renouncing his personal growth (Shelton 505). From a gender perspective, however, Matthews sees the returning of the son home to take care of the mother as the final expression of the extent to which Virginia lies at the mercy of the patriarchal tradition, as she is the object of “transmission from father to husband to son that is her legacy” (Traditions 86). As it can be seen, the ending proves problematic. However, turning aside Glasgow’s ambivalences and attachment to this character, the consideration of the novel as a whole seems to tilt the scale in favour of the second reading. Harry is endowed with a privileged position in terms of gender in a society where men are allowed absolute freedom from familial responsibilities but also with an education that draws him away from his southern community and into the modern European and American world, and, most importantly, with a mother who in spite of 33 being defeated still believes in the ideals with which she was raised and that demand blind sacrifices to her offspring. Throughout the novel Glasgow uses a number of male and female characters that further develop and qualify the protagonist’s trajectory. Of these the most important are the vast array of female characters which can be better apprehended if classified according to the model of femininity each of them portrays. The older generation is represented by Belinda Treadwell, through whom Glasgow gives voice to one of the central concerns of the first feminists: the material inequality between men and women. Although Cyrus Treadwell is the richest man in the city, Belinda sells goods in order to make some money for herself. Likewise, she opposes her husband and moderately rebels to keep the company of the dressmaker, Miss Willy, her only friend. Bitter and an object of pity, Belinda represents the sad truth that lay beneath the myth of the southern lady. In this sense, the image of her in a rocking chair when Oliver finally accepts the post is paralleled later by Virginia. Likewise, her paralysis is also an indication of the death of the model of femininity she embodies (González Groba, “Mujer” 112). The novel also offers a deviant character that belongs to an older generation, Mrs. Payson. Virginia meets her after moving to her new residence in West Virginia and the reader soon learns that her ideals are as different as her outward appearance. Being a suffragist and having attended college in the North, she is not afraid of expressing her opinions in public and together with her husband they represent a marriage founded on respect and a more equal relation. Of Virginia’s contemporaries, the female that stands out is Susan Treadwell, the representative of the new woman. She is aware that she can never be the prototypical southern lady because she is “full of ideas” and has “a mind of my own” and she is 34 proud of it (Glasgow, Virginia 104; 83). Later in the novel Susan marries John Henry for love and she succeeds in leading a more balanced life. Although the novel does not offer too much information about these characters, it is easily inferred that Abby Goode and the actress Margaret Oldcastle are not conventional women either. Abby marries after spending her youth as she pleased and Margaret lives alone in New York earning her living without any external help. From the younger generation, both Lucy and Jenny considered their mother old fashioned. The first has married as she liked, and Jenny has opted for going to university. In several respects, the latter brings about the projects that Susan was not permitted to carry out, thus presenting a “brighter future” for women and showing, once more, that Susan was a woman ahead of her time (Wagner-Martin xix). All these proto new women, therefore, share some common characteristics such as “a commitment to life, a refusal to be formed by a mould, a fighting spirit” (Jones, Tomorrow 245) that would be further explored in the last novel. Before concluding, it is worth noting another female character, Mandy, through whom the intersection between gender and race is introduced. Through her appearance the double oppression of black women becomes apparent. Animalised and oversexualized, black women were systematically used as objects of sexual gratification for the domineering whites even after slavery was over. The mulatto children born of these encounters became the unique responsibility of their mothers, as in this case where Cyrus never takes care of the boy he fathered. In terms of race we get a glimpse of the delicate situation of black people during the period of Reconstruction when they became victims of lynching. In spite of this, Matthews sees in Mandy a departure from the stereotyped rendering of the submissive blacks, even it is just briefly: “Knowing that 35 her only source of power over Cyrus lies in his past sexual vulnerability, she uses it to triumph momentarily over him” (Matthews, Traditions 81). This is a novel about a woman, a woman who represented not only a model of femininity but a whole culture. Glasgow provided a realistic and complex account of the destiny of the southern lady in 1913, in a literary panorama dominated by the lingering modes of the Lost Cause that in her novel become food for fire.7 This is what makes it still relevant today and, as Wagner-Martin explains, the novel “holds interest because it is so clearly a woman’s story told without subterfuge, given complexity and dimension because of the author’s own ambivalence and her ability to use irony and scene for such a complete effect” (xxiv). But her power extends beyond, for she did not only render the tragic life of this woman but criticized all those elements that contributed to her downfall, from the church to the family, and for this reason her critique extends to the South as a whole. This novel dramatizes the death of the southern lady, a symbol of “the declining prestige and the surviving pride of the post-war South” (McDowell 123). Virginia Pendleton holds strong resemblances with past (Virginia Ambler) and future (Eva Birdsong) characters. But she also constitutes a turning point in the evolution of her heroines. Women like her will slowly make room for others, like Dorinda Oakley, who embody a new model of femininity and a new way of understanding the female self in the world. 7 In his article “Burning Mrs. Southworth”, Paul Christian Jones explains how the death of the southern lady in the novel is reinforced by means of intertextuality, in the episode where the novels of the female author E.D.E.N. Southworth featuring sentimental accounts of women’s lives are burnt. 36 3: THE NEW WOMAN AND BARREN GROUND : DORINDA OAKLEY’S SELFDISCOVERY The 20th century brought multiple changes to the United States. Their participation in the Great War had a great impact on social terms, especially in what concerns the position of women. After the conflict was over many of the women who had taken the jobs of men refused to step back to the domestic sphere. Many of them organized to improve their working conditions and demand equal rights, and the Suffragist Movement acquired its zenith with the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920, through which women were enfranchised. These social changes prompted a consequent modification of the model of womanhood that prevailed until then. Transitional models of femininity such as that of the real woman displaced the previous one and the cult of true womanhood, introducing some of the future concerns. They were interested in female health issues and education was now encouraged as means to prepare women for her life duties, to maintain a better mental health and to provide training for the job market. Employment was more generally accepted especially in relation to material stability although a professional career was not expected from women. In this sense marriage came to be considered in more pragmatic terms as the election of the most able partner that could secure the future (Cruea 191-193). Together with that of the public woman (introducing the female in the public and cultural sphere), this woman paved the way for the emergence of the new woman. This model comprised the “educated, self-actualized woman who had gained economic independence from a masculine caretaker” (Weaks 551-2). These women were more “radical” and they were differentiated from the previous model due to their rejection of the domestic sphere. They constituted the first generations to attend college and the ones who renounced marriage and motherhood in favour of a professional career as the 37 source of personal fulfilment (Cruea 199-200). Likewise they demanded a full “economic and civic identity” that would allow them to gain material independence and achieve political power without being judged exclusively in terms of their personal and sexual lives (Cruea 200). This model was rejected by the majority of the society, even by their own families, which led to the creation of “single-sex houses” where women who shared these ideas conformed “a support network who fostered independence and nurtured intellectual growth” (Cruea 200-201). As anticipated, in the South things ran slightly different. The period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), characterized by the transition from an agricultural model whose main centre was the household to an industrial one, with the division of spheres, led to the New South. As Edward Ayers points out, society did not change so suddenly, something that provoked a “clash” between the old and the new (3). The loss of the war, during the first years, was not totally assumed but replaced by the Lost Cause myth. On the grounds of the superiority of the white South, defenders of the myth hoisted racial segregation and discrimination and carried out a process of regression towards past glories represented in associations like the Confederate Veterans, and the already mentioned United Daughters of the Confederacy. Their ideas were propagated through periodicals and literature of authors such as Thomas Nelson Page or Joel Chandler Harris among others (Coski 453-4). Likewise, there was a strict control over what was taught at schools and the pastors complied with the new version preaching that defeat had been a “form of discipline from God” and the Northern victory a sign of prosperity instead of moral rectitude (Wheeler 6). The relative independence that women had acquired during the War was expected to come to an end and the myth of the lady spread across classes stronger than ever (Wheeler 7-10). The differences between the sexes were maintained and reinforced, as 44 goes and pines come to stay – pines and life everlasting […] We had to make our living from barren ground” (Glasgow, Barren 238). The first part, entitled “Broomsedge” covers from Dorinda’s relation with Jason to her departure for New York. The broomsedge is pervasive in the narrative and it acquires a multi-layered symbolic meaning as the representation of the land, its barrenness and Dorinda herself (Cornes 154). McDowell defines it as “a symbol of fatality in the novel –a potentially hostile force to those who must live with it” (147), so, in this sense, the broomsedge is equated to fate. As such, the broomsedge places Dorinda and Jason in opposition; she is the one who stood undefeated making the barren ground fertile. Jason, however, as anticipated by the neighbours, succumbed, and “the broomsedge had grown over him” (Glasgow, Barren 400) thus becoming the live embodiment of what the land does to those who cannot adjust (McDowell 150). The clash between these two characters is best seen in their dialogue following Nathan and Dorinda’s acquisition of Five Oaks: “Yes, you have done well with the farm!” […] “That shows what you can do even with poor land when you put your heart into it,” he added. “Not the heart, but the head,” she retorted sharply. (Glasgow, Barren 467) The dichotomy between the two of them shows Dorinda’s progression and Jason’s recession. At the beginning of the novel she represents the fatal romantic view of life which Glasgow renders in her ironic use of another natural element, the moonlight. In the contemporary sentimental novels, this was part of the myth of the idyllic Old South; however, in this novel it is almost always threatening and associated to moments of great despair, like Dorinda’s attempt to murder Jason. By opposition, Jason is the one who embodied the scientific spirit, as can be seen from his will to teach the locals new ways of farming. At this point, however, he has renounced a realistic view of life and 45 yielded to alcoholic evasion. Unlike Dorinda he does not show any kind of growth, and her superior personal value is remarked through the mastery of the farming techniques he never put to use. The second section of the novel covers the stay of Dorinda in New York and her coming back home to the purchase of Five Oaks and it is entitled “Pine”. According to Inés Casas Maroto, this symbolizes “the hardiness and richness of Dorinda’s pioneer heritage” (“Identity” 109). It is relevant that this pine seemed to be the thing to which his father was closest to, and Dorinda eventually uses it to commercialize her butter in the North over the name of Old Farm. Thus the tree traces a link between Dorinda and her roots, at the same time that it emphasizes her success and connection to the southern soil. The fact that it is placed in the familiar graveyard emphasizes the continuity of life among death (González Groba, “Mujer” 132). The last section of the novel, entitled “Life-everlasting”, narrates the last changes that affect Dorinda: the death of husband Nathan and, most importantly, of Jason, whom she saved from the poorhouse. It introduces delicacy and beauty as the new qualities of Dorinda and summarizes not only her material success, but most importantly, her emotional satisfaction: The flower, an emblem of Dorinda’s artistic victory over chaos and her spiritual victory over despair, delicately asserts artistic values of beauty and permanence that stand in vivid contrast to the flaming broomsedge imaging and the wild desolation of the land and the uncontrolled passion of Dorinda’s youth, and the harp-shaped pine representing her father’s power merely to endure” (Bond 574) This structure thus reinforces the process of self development which, due to the powerful natural imagery, can be read as one of coming closer to the nature. While in Virginia the self-development of the protagonist was conspicuous due to its absence, Dorinda is a different kind of woman. Multiple critics have argued that she succeeds but 46 only by paying a very high price, by suffering what Judy Cornes has called “paralysis of spirit” (168), and that this will only suffice her temporarily (Muth 101), Tonette Bond explains, in relation to the success of the farm, that she achieves it “by repressing all sexual passion and starving her natural sympathy and emotional warmth” (571). As we can see through this quotation, what lies beneath these arguments is often a reference not exclusively, if true, to her emotional detachment from people that, as we shall see, she eventually overcomes. Instead, many of those who consider Dorinda rather as a victim than a victor refer to her rejection of love, sexuality and the institutions of marriage and family as determined by the patriarchal standards. I will start by analyzing the role of sexuality in the novel and how it has been interpreted. Frederick McDowell (151) and Benita Muth (95) have highlighted Dorinda’s control over her sexuality paralleling her control of the land. In this sense, the relation that Dorinda establishes with the land will be full of negative connotations associated with repression, but, as it has been explained, that is not the case, and most probably, this fact is what allows her business to be successful. A more positive means to account for this connection between land and sexuality has been issued by Elizabeth Ammons who refers to the cathartic and highly erotic response of Dorinda to a concert as a means to re-direct her sexual impulse towards creativity. This creative drive is the one that the protagonist ultimately employs in the farm to make it successful (173-74). Ammons states that this allows Dorinda to “reach heterosexual ecstasy without a man” (174) and this might be at the core of her rejection of conventional heterosexuality since this has been seen at varying degrees as the “heart of male domination” and “patriarchal control” (Richardson 152). Although this view is arguably the dominant one, in Dorinda’s case it was her past sexual encounters that placed her at the mercy of men; a situation she would most certainly not wish to repeat. 47 The second aspect that enters the discussion in intimate connection with this is marriage. In New York Dorinda rejects Dr. Burch who, according to Muth “more closely resembles her imaginary lover than Jason ever did” (96). She cannot bear to think of love or intimacy as she did before, and she stands by her motto of “being finished with all that” as well as by her firm resolution that “one man had ruined her life but no other would interfere with it” (Glasgow, Barren 382). And then suddenly she accepts Nathan’s proposal. Their marriage is totally deprived of physical love or emotion, for Dorinda understands that “the only marriage she could tolerate […] was one which attempted no swift excursion into emotion” (Glasgow, Barren 366). Yet she only accedes after Nathan has promised not to interfere with her life or independence. The greatest persuader, however, is neither the material benefits that the marriage would entail for both of them (his proposal is propelled in the light of a contract) nor Nathan’s promises but rather the much more human fear of solitude and loneliness, since “as she grew older, the thing she feared most was not death, not poverty even, but the lonely fireside” (Glasgow, Barren 373). In the marriage, she assumes a dominant position for she soon realizes that “she was the stronger of the two” because “he cared while she was indifferent” (Glasgow, Barren 385). The relationship between the two of them, nonetheless, evolves and the turning point takes place after the purchase of Five Oaks. Ironically it is the despicable behaviour of Jason that prompts the emotional answer from Dorinda, and in this moment “She saw Nathan as clearly as Jason saw him, but she saw also something fine and magnanimous in his character which Jason could never see because he was blind to nobility” and this draws her to the appreciation of true personal value: “He is worth twenty of Jason” (Glasgow, Barren 401). As this feeling settles, Dorinda slowly opens to “the protective feeling, so closely akin to tenderness” (Glasgow, Barren 404) that breaks the distances 48 between the two of them. Their marriage is not a traditional one based on sexual or romantic love that for Dorinda had proved toxic; theirs is love not based on possession of the other and for this reason it allows room for self-development and self-confidence. Contrary to what Raper claims (Garden 98), there are reasons to believe that Dorinda will not marry Bob Ellgood after Nathan’s death. Reflecting on why she will not marry him, she wonders whether “is it simply because I am independent and don’t have to marry for support that I can pick and refuse?” (Glasgow, Barren 473). This enlightens the idea that her previous decision rather than an unforgivable contradiction of character can be regarded as a further stage in her development: she does no longer need the support of a man materially but neither does she need it psychologically. By the end of the story Dorinda has overcome her fears and settled into the dynamics of her new family: Fluvanna and John Abner. This aspect introduces two elements that further approximate Dorinda to the new woman by proposing a different model to the traditional family and a gynocentric network or relations. Out of all the women that appear in the novel, the two most important characters aside from Dorinda are Fluvanna (her black servant and later friend) and Geneva Greylock. The latter acquires more relevance as she turns into the embodiment of what would have been Dorinda’s future, and Tanya Kennedy argues that she could even be considered as the “bearer of Dorinda’s repressed feelings about her miscarriage” (57). After Jason takes to drink like his father and ruins his childless marriage, Geneva progressively deteriorates physically and mentally (Cornes 169), and she, periodically, wanders around town yelling how happy she is in her marriage and then confessing her macabre illusion that Jason killed their baby and buried it. In the end she kills herself on Dorinda’s wedding day. The resemblance between the blue scarf that is found floating in the water in the “Ophelialike” death and Dorinda’s blue dress tailored to the taste of Jason emphasizes the 49 connection between these two characters (Cornes 166). Likewise, being the Greylocks the representatives of the Old South (Ammons 172) and the Ellgoods one of the wealthiest families, Geneva is close to the representation of the southern lady and her fatal ending determined by the paternal figures of her family who forced Jason to marry her. Fluvanna Moody is the person closest to Dorinda throughout the novel. Similarly to Mandy in Virginia, her richness as a character stems for the intersection between gender and race. Fluvanna starts first as a helper of Dorinda, and critics such as Ammons have discussed that this frustrates Glasgow’s attempt at creating a viable model of sisterhood: “What Glasgow’s never questions is that this idyllic (from her point of view) sisterhood is the tremendous imbalance of power built into a completely unequal relationship” (175). Ammons summarizes the ever-present ambivalence of which Glasgow was accused in her treatment of black characters and of which we have seen examples throughout this work. Matthews adds that it is not clear if in fact Glasgow’s racist biases permeate the narrative,10 or if in this case she intends them as a sort of criticism of Dorinda’s racial attitudes (Traditions 161). Although these critics make a valid point, an attempt to transcend race barriers seems to be in the works in this novel. Dorinda shares with her contemporaries (and probably with Glasgow) a number of biased, stereotyped views and patronizing attitudes towards blacks that the author renders through the focalized omniscient narrator. However, the importance of Fluvanna in Dorinda’s life is not diminished by this fact, as can be seen by the description of their relationship: The best years of her youth, while her beauty resisted hard work and sun and wind, were shared only with the coloured woman with whom she lived. […]. The affection between the two women had outgrown the slender tie of mistress 10 In her poem “Education of a Novelist”, Adrienne Rich criticizes Ellen Glasgow for her “benevolent racism” (Ammons 175). 50 and maid, and had become as strong and elastic as the bond that holds relatives together. They knew each other’s daily lives; they shared the one absorbing interest in the farm; they trusted each other without discretion and without reserve. (Glasgow, Barren 349) The character of Fluvanna acquires a double significance by virtue of her race and gender as further means to extend the subversion of the southern patriarchal and whitesupremacist society: “Fluvanna’s race, her gender, and her close relationship with another woman make her centrality in Dorinda’s life a challenge to Pedlar’s Mill racism, misogyny and heterosexism” (Matthews, Traditions 159). Thus, if not in vindictive protest like the new women, Dorinda still seeks the companionship of another woman and relies on her. Together and dressed in overalls, they confront gender stereotypes which deem women more appropriate as labourers than overseers, as well as the public stance that during the 20th century saw female bonding as sexually threatening and deviant (Matthews, Traditions 153). Moreover, Dorinda employs a great number of Afro-American women who take care of the milking process and other chores of the farm. From this perspective Ammons has defended that this novel poses a sort of dream community found in other contemporary works characterized by a “matrifocal and sororal reconstitution of reality” (174). The second important element in Dorinda’s new family is John Abner, one of the three sons of Nathan and Rose Emily who was born with a clubfoot. She has always felt drawn towards him and she understands it as a logical extension of her compassion for the disadvantaged: “As a little girl, her mother had always said to her that she preferred lame ducks to well ones; and John Abner was the only lame duck that had ever come naturally into her life” (Glasgow, Barren 351). After Nathan’s children move to her farm the connection between the two of them becomes stronger and she adopts the 51 function of a surrogate mother: “If he had been her own son he could not have been closer to her” (Glasgow, Barren 350). Nathan dies and the rest of them leave, but John Abner stays, thus becoming the single male in the farm. John is surprisingly similar to his stepmother in his reading habit, his love for farming and his introspective character. As such, he strays from the patriarchal model of masculinity, a point emphasized through his vulnerability which does not allow him to enter the army (hence the inability to fulfil the masculine rite of passage in battle) and aligns him with the Other(s): the females, especially the women with whom he lives and the animals through which Dorinda understands him better. From this perspective, it is important to qualify Anderson’s view of marriage and family as “points of arrested development”. As she explains, this is what the traditional life with Jason would have meant (388), but, by opposition the new kind of marital and familial relations that Dorinda sets up together with nature, are productive and contribute to her growth. In this sense we can see a displacement of the nuclear family which is one of the major centres of inequality (Jackson 169) to other more balanced and less biological models. All the events that Dorinda has to face, as well as her own choices and their consequences, are essential for her maturation and personal development. Much more similar to Betty Ambler than to the two Virginias, Dorinda is a woman aware of her circumstances: the past that has brought her to where she is and the future that she has decided to lead. The possibility of choice, the development of self-esteem which she “values more than love or happiness or anything outside myself” (Glasgow, Barren 325) and the reclamation of a voice of her own to tell her story (Matthews, Traditions 166) are the best indicators of the agency she has conquered. She defies the androcentric negative definition of women with respect to men which denies women subjectivity and selfhood (Braidotti 235). And most importantly, she has conquered them without 52 sacrificing her gender identity. In a society governed by androcentric standards, maturation is equated to “growth towards maleness” (Anderson 384), thus, Dorinda is trapped in an identity labyrinth where she needs to escape from the archetypal images of women, which are actually male projections (Anderson 387), preserving her identity as a female. She finally succeeds and acquires “her own individuality apart from the patriarchal culture that defines women in terms of biology and still maintain her link to the ‘female principle of creation and regeneration’” (Anderson 387). As mentioned above, here nature plays an essential role: “By overcoming the static barrenness of the land, she overcomes the dominating principle of Fate; by identifying herself with the land and finding her salvation through it, she reclaims her own creative ‘feminine’ principle” (Anderson 387). The novel may be about the emotional, erotic, and procreative deep female loss and pain (Ammons 177), but I believe that it is above all about a process of female identity construction through inner self-development and acquisition of agency; as Wagner states, Barren Ground provides “an account of the way a woman learns to know herself” (“Vein” 556). The moment where we can best judge Dorinda’s growth is towards the end of the novel. The event that most marks her here is not Nathan’s heroic death, since she finds the hypocrisy of those who had mocked him off-putting, and a clear indicator of the pretense she cannot stand. On the contrary, it is the rescue of Jason from the poorhouse and his later death which at the beginning disturbs Dorinda but finally helps her achieve a sense of wholeness. The imprint that Jason has left in her is palpable throughout the story; after all his actions are the ones that set her in movement and put her former self to death. The extent to which he permeates her life is even expressed in her subconscious through dreams and visions. Her thirst for revenge is fulfilled through an oneiric form of castration in an early dream where she ploughs a thistle wearing 53 endlessly faces of Jason (Cornes 163). In actuality when revenge comes (she buys Five Oaks and finally he has to depend on her for sustenance and care) it is too late for her to enjoy. However, this allows her to dismantle the inherited Presbyterian views that would have led to “regard his downfall as a belated example of Divine vengeance” (Glasgow, Barren 484) and grant her a clear view that youth and love had concealed: “No, he had not ended in the poorhouse because he betrayed her. On the contrary, she saw that he had betrayed her because of that intrinsic weakness in his nature” (Glasgow, Barren 484). The vision of Jason comes to haunt her on his graveyard when she remembers all the men of her life, and during the night that follows the burial. As the night is over, however, Dorinda has left the few remnants of the past behind and she seems to have finally achieved unrestricted satisfaction. The novel closes emphasizing this idea: “Dorinda smiled, and her smile was pensive, ironic, and infinitely wise. ‘Oh, I’ve finished with all that,’ she rejoined. ‘I am thankful to have fished with all that’” (526). For Raper this ending breaks with an otherwise “strong and true” story (Garden 100), since he considers that a close reading based on two opposing levels: whom Dorinda thinks she is and what she has done (“Transition” 147), will show to what extent Dorinda remains a victim of her own human nature (“Transition” 153). This view negates any kind of development in Dorinda’s character and comes to interpret her story only as that of a woman who turned revenge into a successful economic activity. Both Raper (Garden 97-98) and McDowell (147) point out the merging of Dorinda’s life with the seasons, and the former claims that the overall structure of the novel favours a more pessimistic ending, since Dorinda’s decisions have contributed to this outcome: Nor does the novel itself lend its structural support to her faith in the eternal return of spring and summer; the discriminated occasions of the second half show that Dorinda’s time has become one without seasons –other than autumn 60 ---. “The Dynamic Past.” Ellen Glasgow’s Reasonable Doubts edited by Julius R. Raper. Louisiana State UP, 1988. 46-53. ---.“Feminism.” Ellen Glasgow’s Reasonable Doubts edited by Julius R. Raper. Louisiana State UP, 1988. 26-36. ---.“No Valid Reason Against Giving Votes to Women: An Interview”. Ellen Glasgow’s Reasonable Doubts edited by Julius R. Raper. Louisiana State UP, 1988. 19-26. ---.“Some Literary Woman Myths.” Ellen Glasgow’s Reasonable Doubts edited by Julius R. Raper. 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