| |
| author |
Julie Ann Salthouse
| | title |
A Walk Through the Quiet Streets at Midnight: Gender, Race and the New Woman in the Short Stories of Kate Chopin
| | abstract |
This dissertation explores the intersections of race, ethnicity and gender in the construction of Kate Chopin's 'New Woman' across her short stories. Spurred by Toni Morrison's call to examine that which exists in the shadows of America's literary canon, the project applies a feminist lens to understand the ways in which Chopin's protagonists navigate a transforming post-Civil War world in search for freedom and identity. Through the analysis of twenty-nine short stories, the dissertation identifies four core methods Chopin employs to establish her New Woman. First, Chopin reinforces racial essentialism in order to establish an 'other' against which white women measure and define their own subjectivity. Secondly, Chopin depicts the Civil War's crisis in masculinity via men ill-equipped to face a new and changing world, which establishes their institutions, including marriage, as inadequate. Additionally, Chopin defines white female empowerment using diction reflective of the slavery system, conveying women's rejection of paternalism and, consequently, white women's dissociation with Blackness. Lastly, Chopin creates female characters whose private lives remain inaccessible to men, outwardly performing gender as a means of survival but inwardly curating unknowable intimate lives associated with whiteness. Through these methods, Chopin portrays female characters who exert power and autonomy precisely because they demonstrate separation from enslavers' ethos and language, while simultaneously leveraging their own racial privilege to pursue that very freedom.
| | school |
The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University
| | degree |
D.Litt.
(2025)
|
| advisor |
Liana Piehler
Laura Winters
|
| full text | JSalthouse.pdf |
| |
