The Warp of Whiteness: Domesticity and Empire in Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona

González, John Morán

doi:10.1093/alh/ajh023

Cited by 27 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Hebard, instead, celebrated the arrival of "the homeseeker [with his] family" (Hebard, 1922a) as a symbol of progress. Because women were believed to possess a superior morality, a mission to domesticate, and a unique civilizing influence, their presence in the West signified that colonizers had achieved progress and brought about civilization (Eves, 2008, p. 18;Gonzalez, 2004;Medlicott & Heffernan, 2004, pp. 244-245).…”

Section: Commemorating Wyoming's "Conditions Of Domesticity"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Marking America’s Progress in the West

Lewis

2012

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

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This article examines the everyday memory practices Westerners employed to shape the meaning of Wyoming in the early twentieth century. Resisting the “Wild West” image of the cowboy that was popularized by Western mythmakers from the East, like Owen Wister and Frederic Remington, Grace Raymond Hebard led an effort to mark Wyoming as settled, “civilized,” and equal to the East. Hebard worked with the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the Wyoming Oregon Trail Commission (WOTC) to mark the path of the Oregon Trail across the state of Wyoming. Hebard’s commemorative discourse domesticated Wyoming’s image as she celebrated signifiers of Wyoming’s domesticity and drew on the agrarian myth to elevate the settler—who tamed the Wyoming land and built a permanent home—as the Western hero. By commemorating and marking local sites throughout Wyoming, Hebard constructed each marker as a material manifestation of Wyoming’s progress, civilization, and mythic significance.

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Section: Commemorating Wyoming's "Conditions Of Domesticity"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Marking America’s Progress in the West

Lewis

2012

Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

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“…Fiction, as many critics have argued, becomes a powerful mode of critiquing domestic scenes and actions (see Birnbaum 16; Gonzalez 443; Peterson “ Doers of the Word ” 147; Somerville 232; Tompkins xi). Literary depictions of domestic labor, including textile work such as sewing or laundering, reveal women interacting with metonymic textile objects and their sometimes contradictory meanings—challenging and reworking domesticity and its racial premise.…”

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confidence: 99%

“Don’t Be Too Careful of Your Silks and Rags”: Domesticity and Race in 19th‐Century American Literature

Smith

2012

Literature Compass

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An ideal domesticity of the mid‐19th century advocated a role for white women in civilizing and defending the American family home from cultural incursions. Black (and other non‐White, non‐Anglo‐Saxon Protestant) women, omitted from dominant representations of domesticity, provided their own literary interventions to appropriate and adapt the ideology. Short scenes of mundane domestic labor show authors reworking the relationship of domesticity to race and class. Textile work such as sewing (depicted in the works of Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Fanny Fern, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) becomes the focal point for social change, enabling an appropriation of domesticity by individuals usually excluded. Current material culture studies investigate the interaction of human subjects and material objects in specific contexts that enact cultural meaning. Applying these studies to fictional and non‐fictional narratives reveals how authors used their lived experiences with objects to query the racial and ethnic foundations of domestic womanhood in varied narrative contexts.

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Revolutionary Spirits: The Persistence of the Occult

Bennett¹

2007

Transatlantic Spiritualism and Nineteenth-Century American Literature

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The Warp of Whiteness: Domesticity and Empire in Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona

Cited by 27 publications

References 37 publications

Marking America’s Progress in the West

Marking America’s Progress in the West

“Don’t Be Too Careful of Your Silks and Rags”: Domesticity and Race in 19th‐Century American Literature

Revolutionary Spirits: The Persistence of the Occult

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