Mark Twain--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

The first American novel to be published in the vernacular, it is an exemplar of local color and regionalism.  Narrated by Huck, it begins where Tom Sawyer left off, and follows Huck as he fakes his own death in order to escape his physically abusive, drunken father, as he and the escaped slave Jim (at times known as N----- Jim) travel down the Mississippi, escaping the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. Over the course of the novel, Huck adopts many different personas at the spur of the moment, at one point even trying to pass as a girl.  This scene in particular is a good example of the kind of social insight the novel excels at, as Huck’s real gender is found out through a series of “tests”—threading a needle, throwing, and catching.  Huck’s conditioned reflexes give him away.  Huck and Jim travel part of the way with two conmen who refer to themselves as the Duke and the King; though Huck is willing to go along with their shams to a certain extent, his realization of their effect on other people coupled with the realization that they have no sense of loyalty to him or Jim makes Huck eager to get loose of them.  Finally, in the end section of the book, Tom Sawyer reappears, and joins Huck’s campaign to free the captured Jim.  Tom makes the escape needlessly difficult, informed by his own adventure-story-fed-overactive-imagination.  Huck’s surprise at Tom’s eagerness to help a slave escape is finally explained by Tom’s delayed explanation that the Widow Douglas has died, leaving directions in her will that Jim should be freed.  Huck and Tom, then, go to great lengths to try to free a technically free slave.

It satirizes antebellum society,  from the feuding Grangerfords and Shepherdsons to the more subtle subplot of Huck’s overcoming his own racism.  While there have been debates about Twain’s use of the word n------ in the novel, his use of the words is not only historically accurate, but also helps illuminate the transformation in Huck’s thinking.  After realizing the extent of Jim’s loyalty and recognizing Jim’s humanity, Huck rejects the advice of his "conscience", which continues to tell him that in helping Jim escape to freedom, he is stealing Miss Watson's property. Accepting that "All right, then, I'll go to hell!", Huck resolves to free Jim.  By the end of the novel, Tom’s Aunt Polly appears to set everyone straight about Tom’s and Huck’s real identities (they had fooled his Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas that they were Sid and Tom Sawyer), and sets everyone to rights.  Jim’s freedom is announced, and he is commended for his care of Tom and Huck. 

George Chauncey--Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1994)

Contrary to popular beliefs that the mid-twentieth century gay liberation movements were working against entrenched anti-gay laws and mores.  In contrast, Chauncey shows that from the turn of the century until after Prohibition, there was actually an active gay community in New York City.  Chauncey looks particularly at working class culture in New York, where performances of gender “inversion” was, to a certain extent and in certain locations, an accepted gender identity.  In part, this is because “homosexual identity” was not understood as it was in the more closely pre-Stonewall (and certainly post-Stonewall) era: “One reason many men at this time found it easier to ‘pass’ in the straight world than their post-Stonewall successors would was that they found it easier to manage multiple identities, to be ‘gay’ in certain social milieus and not others” (274).  He discusses how, rather having a sexual identity based on sexual acts performed, such identity was instead based on inverted gender performance, where men identified as “fairies” and expressed this gender identity through traditionally feminine behavior, and were expected to take the bottom role in same-sex encounters.  At this time, men could engage in sexual behavior with other men and not necessarily identify as less masculine, as long as they maintained traditionally masculine behavior and took an insertive role in sexual acts.

Chauncey follows gay life in New York through Prohibition, which ironically allowed for more overtly homosexual behavior from these working class enclaves into more middle class enclaves, as the acceptance of other kinds of deviant behavior during Prohibition allowed for acceptance of gender deviance as well.  Bohemian enclaves such as Greenwich Village and Harlem also allowed for acceptance of more varieties of gender behavior, as such deviance in gender performance could be considered under the rubric of artistic behavior rather than sexual deviance.  Ironically, the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 led to both harsher regulation of public acknowledgement of homosexuality (as the serving of “known homosexuals” became a form of disorderly conduct) as well as more exclusively gay areas.  By the 1950s, such safe places were very much underground and known through codes.  However, Chauncey does a thorough job of showing how, during the time period he investigates, gay life in New York enjoyed a certain amount of publicness.

Adrienne Rich--Compulsory Heterosexuality (1976)

“Compulsory Heterosexuality” was named as a “crime against women” by the Brussels Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in 1976.  Compulsory heterosexuality ignores the question whether, other things being equal, women would choose heterosexual coupling.  Heterosexuality is presumed as a sexual preference of most women, either implicitly or explicitly.  In this essay, Rich first addresses the idea of lesbian existence, which she defines as both the fact of the historical presence of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that existence. 

She then discusses what she calls the idea of a “lesbian continuum,” which she defines as a range of woman-identified experience.  In her terminology, the lesbian continuum acknowledges not only a woman who has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman.  Rather, lesbian identity in Rich’s use also refers to forms of primary intensity between and among women, which Rich sees as constituting bonding against male tyranny.  Rich claims that patriarchal definition has separated female friendship and comradeship from the erotic.  Importantly, Rich points out that, contra Freud, our primary relationships are with our mothers; our first primary bonds are with our mothers.  Why, then, does Freud’s family romance put the father at the center of the equation?  It makes more sense to imagine both males and females as having a primary attachment to women.

Rich then explores the ways in which women have resisted male tyranny expressed through compulsory heterosexuality, including refusing to have children, helping other women not have children, refusing to produce a higher standard of living for men, and female antiphallic sexuality.  This is also revealed through what Rich refers to as a female double life, in which women make life endurable for each other.  In contrast to the ways in which lesbianism has been portrayed in pulp fiction, Rich points to literature such as Toni Morrison’s Sula, which portrays a much more sensitive, nuanced female homosocial relationship. 

She then explains the ways in which compulsory heterosexuality leads to a loss of power.  Under this ideology, it is assumed that women are inevitably drawn to men; that women need men as social and economic protectors; that the heterosexual family unit is the basic social unit.  Lesbianism is assumed to be synonymous with man-hatred, despite the unacknowledged fact of the basic misogyny embedded in the culture.

Rich ends the essay by noting that “Should we condemn heterosexuality?” is the wrong question to ask.  Rather, it’s the absence of choice which has remained the unacknowledged reality.  This has led to women not having the power to determine the meaning and place of sexuality in their lives.

Twelve Southerners--I'll Take My Stand (1930)

            The Agrarians were a collection of writers primarily from Vanderbilt University, an offshoot of a poetic movement who called themselves the Fugitive Poets.  The Fugitives sowed the seeds which would become New Criticism, which valued organizational unity and paradox at the center of poetry and eschewed focusing on authorial intention or emotional response.  In their focus on close reading, the New Critics made philosophical assumptions about the purpose of reading: for them, form was key.  In their attempt to distinguish the study of literature from that of literary history, they emphasized preserving the authenticity of literary discourse—and in fact, were quite defensive about this.  They came from a point of view which saw the existence of literature as being threatened—this point of view was easily transferred to their disdain for technology and industry as similarly threatening allegedly traditional ways of life.

Introduction

The introduction discusses the evils of industry.  It posits that there exists a southern way of life which is different from and better than the rest of the country, primarily because it’s based on an agrarian foundation.  It claims that people are happiest when their work is meaningful, which an agrarian society allows, and an industrial one does not.

John Crowe Ransom—Reconstructed by Unregenerate

Thesis: The South is unique on this continent for having a culture founded on European principles of culture.  It champions the “English” model of farming.  To Ransom, man and nature must work in a relationship of mutual respect.  Ransom also includes a quite sexist discussion of male versus female ambition. 

Donald Davidson—A Mirror for Artists

Davidson argues that industry can’t play Maecenas—the arts require a slow civilization, one that’s agrarian based and still connected with nature, to flourish.  Industry is a devil’s bargain with art—the only art which is profitable is bad art.  Art for Davidson should be in the romantic tradition, and he sees modernism as directly linked to the Romantics, only more fully fulfilling their mission.  To Davidson, art must be beautiful.  Davidson champions lyric poetry, specifically that of the 18^th century which had a larger public role than that of the 20^th century.  In the 19^th century, poets were marginalized and became personal and subjective.  He claims that to succeed in the 20^th century, the poet must be alienated or else he becomes commodified.  Here, his work echoes that of Walter Benjamin, who saw that art was no longer part of a whole; mechanical reproduction deprived modern art of any “aura.”  

Frank Lawrence Owsley—The Irrepressible Conflict

            Owsley discusses the Civil War with strongly romantic tones, describing the subsequent peace as one “unique in history,” because it was a peace with “no generosity” (62).  The racism in this essay is quite appalling (especially considering that he was a history professor at Vanderbilt), as it describes the freed slaves as “some of whom could still remember the taste of human flesh, and the bulk of them hardly three generations  removed from cannibalism” (62).  He condemns northern abolitionists and industrialists as hypocrites and Pharisees who campaigned to impose their corrupt culture upon an agrarian South.  Interestingly, Owsley does address slavery, though he claims that “Slavery had been practically forced upon the country by England—over the protest of colonial assemblies” (77).

John Gould Fletcher—Education, Past and Present

            Beginning with a view of education as bringing out an individual’s potential—which does not necessarily require formal education—Fletcher connects the growth of American education to the changes in American which began with the growth of industrialism.  Fletcher does not see this as a positive thing.  Instead, he wishes to “return” to education based on eighteenth century principles—education “on a sound, historical, and conservative basis” (95)—which had as its goal to “produce good men” (95).  He opposes the public school system, because he feels that education’s goal is to produce an educated elite—something which a democratic public school system cannot do. 

Lyle H. Lanier—A Critique of the Philosophy of Progress

Lanier critiques progress "as a slogan and a philosophy." (p.122) Even though critical of John Dewey's conclusions, Lanier uses Dewey's theories in an argument for balancing industrial and agrarian impulses. He argues that there are limits to industrial employment, an argument generating new force in contemporary social literature.

Allen Tate—Remarks on the Southern Religion

            Tate explains that he approaches the task of commenting about religion in "the spirit of irreligion." Tate laments the loss of the class of "professional men of religion." These men used to be highly respected by laymen and unbelievers alike, and when they spoke, no one questioned whether they had the authority to speak about the "Higher Things." He laments the loss of the kind of religion professed by those in the antebellum South, which he notes as “highly illuminating,” that the Southerners had a religion which they “never profoundly believed,” but they “acted as if they did” (174).  In fact, despite Tate’s own professed atheism (a religious atheism, however), he claims that the South would not have been defeated had they “possessed a sufficient faith in its own kind of God….had  it been able to bring out a body of doctrine setting forth its true conviction that the ends of man require more for their realization than politics” (174).  In other words, I think what Tate is saying is that the South must find a way to live paradox in order to survive—ironically, this theme of unattainable paradox seems to be a common undercurrent of many of these essays.

Herman Clarence Nixon—Whither Southern Economy?

Nixon covers the changes in the South's economy-with the proposal that one must balance the agrarian and industrial economic pressures. Employing positively a negative memory, he concludes "it is possible for the South, which has had experience with slavery, to subordinate industrial processes to the status of slaves, not masters.... From a dull industrialism Southern civilization should bepreserved with its supporting agrarian economy." (200) Onewonders, however, about the receptivity to these arguments in the socialsciences today because the agrarian option continues to be swallowed byeconomic shifts, even in the South.

Andrew Nelson Lytle—The Hind Tit

            Lytle uses military language mixed with an odd attempt at vernacular speech.  He idealizes the yeoman farmer and disregards the existence of slavery.  He gives a detailed description of a household which is sexist and condescending. 

Robert Penn Warren—The Briar Patch

            This is one of the few essays in the collection to make an attempt at addressing race issues, especially those after the War.  He supports Booker T. Washington’s vocational solution.

John Donald Wade—The Life and Death of Cousin Lucius

Taking the form of a biographical sketch, the essay is based on the life of Jacob Walter Frederick, Wade's maternal uncle and a man who embodied the "southern way of life" as defined by many of the book's other contributors. Frederick (fictionalized as "Cousin Lucius") is described as hard working, self-reliant, learned, and tradition bound. As he grows older and times change, Cousin Lucius sees the new generation of young people leaving for the city and recognizes that they desire and expect "without effort, things that have immemorially come as the result of effort only." Wade vividly but dispassionately dramatizes Frederick's life, avoiding the temptation to comment on its lessons until the final two sentences of the essay: "And all who wish to think that he lived insignificantly and that the sum of what he was is negligible, are welcome to think so. And may God have mercy on their souls."

Henry Blue Kline—William Remington: A Study in Individualism

This essay is about a young man named William Remington, who moved about the country trying different jobs and locations and groups of friends. Finding himself eventually back in New Orleans, he develops a group of friends who think of themselves as pioneering individualists. Apparently, their individualism consists in major part of a suspicious attitude toward Yankee materialism and a pleasing feeling of superiority to the average person, which they call "median man." He describes their grand historical perspective this way; don't zip by part in which Communism may be worse than "capitalism gone progressivist", i.e., their presumption is that the two are at least equally bad. It's not clear whether "race" here means white people or the human race.

Stark Young—Not in Memoriam, But In Defense

            Author of So Red the Rose, the novel of Confederate Mississippi, in this essay, Stark states, “If anything is clear, it is that we can never go back, and neither this essay nor any intelligent person that I know in the South desires a literal restoration of the old Southern life…. But out of any epoch in civilization there may arise things worthwhile.” Young endeavored to show in his fiction and in this essay the “worthwhile things” that should survive out of the Southern tradition. Among them were, in his words, “a certain fineness of feeling, an indefinable code for yourself and others, and a certain continuity of outlook.” He also insisted upon the individual’s self-control, fairness to others, obedience to law, and respect for the social order. The essay was both a summary of his philosophy and a premise paper for So Red the Rose.