Architectural imagery is ubiquitous throughout history, yet, as a plethora of historical texts have shown, this narrative technique is not specifically limited to projecting visual metaphor, literary architecture functions potentially as conflict, as argument, as a condemnation of the social constraints of society. Given this, and addressing the specific social constraint of racial ideology, it would seem that few texts translate the propensity for oppressive domestic architecture in the United States as coherently as ‘Ramona’ by Helen Hunt Jackson, and Ann Petry’s ‘The Street.’
Petry’s text depicts, as Meg Wesling notes “the intricate structural arrangements that facilitate the economic exploitation of black women.”(1,135) As well as illustrating how the complex history of Harlem streets as well as the unstable relationship between both blacks and whites elucidates, what Elizabeth Machlan argues is not only architecture’s utility as a tool of social control, but also how segregation turned a lively neighborhood into the “dark double” of a predominantly white New York.” This is performed by simultaneously offering the architectural commentary on the “(Re)construction of American society.” (1,136) Similarly, the prospect of a racially tolerant “post-Reconstruction US” while simultaneously exploring “Manifest Domesticity” and what Kaplan terms “the antebellum nexus of imperialist and domestic discourse” (2,3) through the perception that John M. Gonzalez proposes of “the imperial nation as a home whose territorial expansion requires strict racial boundaries to remain white.”(2,3)
Furthermore, the exploration of the racial structures and their potential for reformation are examined in Petry’s text, while the efficacy of Jackson’s text as an expose in relation to the issues of California’s Indians is analysed in relation to non-fictional architecture. Both texts confront racial maltreatment through domesticity and despite the fact that they do not even share commentary on the same race, they both cogently exemplify how it is the white homes and individuals that damage and undermine the racial Other, either as a collective identity, or as individuals. Ann Petry’s 1946 novel ‘The Street’ articulates, as Elizabeth Machlan states, “the deceptive, malignant structures in which Jim Crow housing policies forced many African Americans to dwell, revealing the profound un-homeliness of these marginalized spaces.”(1,133) Meg Wesling furthers this statement arguing that Petry depicts “the intricate structural arrangements that facilitate the economic exploitation of black women and men and the sexual exploitation of black women by both white and black men.”(1,135)
An exploitation that circulates in Petry’s novel around the distressing streets of Harlem. Machlan discerns that Harlem “provoked the “repulsion and distress” characteristic of the uncanny.”(1,137) This term the “uncanny” is a Freudian definition which, in spatial terms is defined as “something one does not know one’s way about in.” (Freud, The Uncanny) Machlan suggests that this definition “evokes the constant need for subjects to re-evaluate their boundaries and demarcate their space, even within the home.”(136) She continues this interpretation by drawing an original architectural parallel, remarking that “If New York was a house, Harlem was a dark, cobwebbed basement filled with things better forgotten.” (1,137) Given this statement, Petry’s proverbial ghetto is perceived as a “sort of urban unconscious,”(1,137) Machlan provides evidence for this by referencing the contrast that exists between Lutie’s apartment and the Chandler’s Connecticut property,(138) The Chandler’s house, that Lutie describes “what with the size of the rooms and the big windows that brought the river and the surrounding woods almost into the house” (Petry 29) This environmental alteration is juxtaposed by Lutie’s lack of influence over Bub’s vantage of Harlem: the rubbish had crept through he broken places in the fences until all of it mingled in a disorderly pattern that looked from their top-floor window like a huge junk-pile instead of a series of small backyards.” (P,50) Machlan argues that the Chandlers property is a representation of model architecture “as a stable system of social organization that allows the family to literally “design” how they appear from the outside.”(139)
Taking the suicide of Mrs. Chandler’s brother for instance, we see how the family’s model structure abuses its influence to undermine any inferable humiliation, ultimately altering the circumstance from suicide to accident. Machlan proposes that “this event challenges the pastoral perfection of the Chandlers’ world; however, the power and prestige of the white family quickly repairs the rift in their social fabric in a way that Lutie cannot emulate.”(1,139) She builds upon this arguing that it reinforces “the symbolic “dead line” drawn by the real estate covenants between New York’s black and white communities by situating the only two white families Lutie encounters, the Chandlers and the Pizzinis, in residential enclaves to which she has no access.”(1,139)
Lutie’s quarters is, as Machlan describes, an “undifferentiated, insubstantial series of spaces that offer little protection or privacy, “like living in a tent with everything that goes on inside it open to the world because the flap won’t close,” where “the tenants who had apartments would sit on the stairs as though the hall were a theater and the performance about to start” (P,47, 11). (139)
The division is apparent at this moment between not just Lutie but the African American population, and the advantageous, as Machlan perceives it, “security available to the white community.”(1,140) The Chandlers confirm this divide in Connecticut, as Lutie imagines the inaccessibility of their culture “The figures on the other side of it loomed up life-size and they could see her, but there was this wall in between which prevented them from mingling on equal footing. The people on the other side of the wall knew less about her than she did about them. (P,31) Machlan suggests that this wall “recasts the Du Boisian veil as a physical structure preventing the union of—or understanding between—the black and white worlds.” (1,141) This wall sets an implicit architectural precedent and as Machlan argues “mutates, as the story progresses, into overt images of obstruction and containment.” In other words the wall illustrates how social constraints can be directly reflected through architectural imagery and undermines the expectations of Lutie as the racialised Other.
Machlan supports this claim by declaring that Petry makes it clear that Lutie is trapped inside a symbolically stifling place, an oppressive architecture she attributes explicitly to white oppression: “from the time (Lutie) was born, she had been hemmed into an ever-narrowing space, until now she was very nearly walled in and the wall had been built up brick by brick by eager white hands.” (P,201)(1,141) Machlan suggests that these hands are ultimately connected to Junto, the white landlord; “And all the time she was thinking, Junto has a brick in his hand. Just one brick. The final one needed to complete the wall that had been building up around her for years, and when that one last brick was shoved in place, she would be completely walled in,” (P,262) by making Junto (a white landlord) the “agent of her “imagined” imprisonment, connects the actual architecture of Harlem to the invisible architecture of New York City’s de facto segregation.”(1,141) At this point we can clearly see how the racist “structures (1,141) of Petry’s novel are clearly posited to place African Americans as the subservient.
Jackson’s text does not hugely deviate from Petry’s thematically speaking, the 1884 novel, in the words of John M. Gonzalez “brings together white women’s housework, pluralistic nation building, and domestic subject making.” (2,1) Furthermore, much like Petry’s text, ‘Ramona’ “territorial expansion” is prevalent and imposing “strict racial boundaries.”(2,3) Kaplan expands on this accordingly stating “The Manifest Destiny of the nation unfolds logically from the imperial reach of woman’s influence emanating from her separate domestic sphere” since domesticity “imagines the nation as a home delimited by race.” (3,597)
Gonzalez declares that “Antebellum domesticity consolidates manifest destiny by providing the conceptual framework through which to fashion colonial difference. Invoking the imminent threats of racial violence and interracial sexuality posed to white homes by colonized Others.”(2,3) As a novel constructed around the concept of Indian reform, Jackson’s text offered context to former Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz in 1881’s “stern alternative” of “extermination or civilisation,”(4,7) through reorganisation of Gonzalez’s proposed “antebellum domesticity’s logic of racial exclusion” into the “post-Reconstruction domesticity’s logic of national assimilation.”(2,4) “Antebellum domesticity” ultimately serves as a discourse of Manifest destiny depicting Indians, as Gonzales discerns as “literally disappearing “before the white man,” then, within the discourses of post-Reconstruction domesticity, “savages” were to disappear figuratively as the objects of white women’s civilising instruction.”(2,5) Jackson empowered the claims of white women to the public sphere through, what Gonzalez refers to as “the reconfiguration of colonial difference enacted in Ramona.”(2,6) As they were considered through the post-Reconstruction domesticity the gap was increased between the Indian as a racial Other and that of the traditionally white. Gonzalez posits this claim stating, “colonial policies of racial tutelage generated new regimes of gender relations that allowed white women to become more fully enabled social actors.” (2,7) Jackson, ultimately, refutes domestic influence within the text, as is evident from Señora Moreno’s resistance to Ramona; only, what Gonzalez refers to as “familial obligation and Father Salvierderra’s mandate can compel her to deal “with such alien and mongrel blood” (R,35). Given to expressing the widespread belief in mestizo degeneracy, she remarks, “I like not these crosses. It is the worst, and not the best of each, that remains.” (R, 35)(2,10) Moreno maintains control of the household and as such, her sense, what Gonzalez defines as “absolute racial difference”(2,10) draws her “racial boundaries” against Ramona. (2,10) Her actions, as a consequence degrades the household; “no one was so happy as before.” In other words the racial insensitivity and divisionis embodied in the household as it is cohesively degraded and damaged in response to Moreno’s actions. Gonzalez implicitly mirrors this statement in relation to post- Reconstruction domesticity stating that it both “reflected and influenced the emergent anthropological theories of civilisational development that significantly altered the conceptual terrain upon which racial reform operated.” (2,12) Despite the lack of specificity in this statement the implication is clear, that the architectural space (of Southern California in this case) was inexorably linked to the racial positioning of the Other. Petry’s novel demands discussion for architectural space as well, however this is requested so that, as Lynette Myles argues in ‘At the Crossroads of Black Female Autonomy, or Digression as Resistance in QUICKSAND and THE STREET,’ African American women can “realize black female transformation and possibilities for change. These locations for black female subjectivity resist boundaries.” (5,84)
The importance of Myles’ theorised “Third Space” as a “post-colonial construct” is defined in her work “as “in-between” spaces… a location from which a group, through its displacement… form new strategies for self-representation.”(5,85) This theory of “Third Space” exists as the area that Lutie must move forward from in order to. as Myles theorises, “progress to black female selfhood.”(5,86) However, in a statement not dissimilar to Machlan’s who declares that “the racist “structures” that shape ‘The Street’ are, from Petry’s point of view, beyond all hope of reform,” (1,141)Myles declares that “actualizing subjectivity is unfeasible for Lutie while existing on 116th Street in Harlem. (5,87) The spatial conventions that Harlem conveys is, as the evidence suggests, thoroughly incapable of assuaging the racial constraints that condemn the African American Other. Myles proposes that it can however be done through the utilisation of “Third Space,” as a location of “resistance and restoration… Lutie can defy the continuation of Otherness.(5,89) Moreover, Myles posits that the presences of domination in a racialised society is not reformable by any degree, although “it is unlikely to have much force, if any, in a space where the oppressed articulate their existence freely.” However, in the current location, Petry posits domestic architecture as, what Machlan ultimately defines as “a material manifestation of racism, as well as the broken, lost promises of Reconstruction and (re)integration. Black New Yorkers, she suggests, as the exploited tenants of the white-owned city, are forced to dwell within a segregated system over which they have no control.”(1,147) This statement, in its specificity, is wholly supportive of the original claim that the spatial conventions of Harlem ultimately emphasise the segregation of the city, positioning the traditionally white tenants as the dominant and controlling figures within Ann Petry’s novel. Although the intentions of Jackson’s text have been elucidated in the third paragraph, one could be forgiven to assume that any explanation was not required in order to understand the intent of Jackson’s novel upon preliminary reading. However, as Errol Wayne Stevens notes in his essay ‘Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona”: Social Problem Novel as Tourist Guide’ “ It was Jackson’s unfortunate fate that her social problem novel would be transformed into the textual basis for one of southern California’s most enduring tourist attractions.”(6,158) Though the popularity of Jackson’s romance novel increased exponentially over the years, the intended enlightenment in regard to the racial issues regarding social injustice diminished. As Stevens remarks, “Even those who claimed to understand that Ramona was a work of fiction lost track of the boundaries between the book’s story and the reality that it purported to describe.” (6,161) While the historical character who served as her inspiration became a serious tourist attraction it was the thematically relevant “Home of Ramona” that aroused dispute, with both Rancho Camulos in Ventura County and Rancho Guajome in San Diego County claiming authenticity. According to Stevens’ reports Jackson used the Camulos “house and its surroundings because it fitted her purpose better that the Couts home, which was smaller and more modern than the home of the del Valle family.”(6,165) However the exposure of the property that inspired Jackson faced historical and architectural degradation.
Stevens’ reports state the tourists and their defamation became so intolerable that the owner was forced to nail a notice that issued a warning to tourists: “Ladies and gentlemen calling here, in my absence, will kindly remain from assuming liberties in and about these premises that would be objectionable to you if exercised by strangers in your homes. This is private property and must be respected. Sightseers are only tolerated, NEVER WANTED”(6,165) The impact of Jackson’s novel, while appreciated in an architectural sense was ultimately undermined, Stevens’ remarks that “None of this, of course, did much to improve the lot of the Mission Indians. Sadly, Jackson’s book failed completely as a social problem novel.” It was a depressing outcome that despite Jackson’s best efforts, her architectural imagery ultimately served, for a large portion of its readers, to widen the gap between the Indians and the traditional whites. The prospect of diminishing the specific social constraint was undermined as they were turned into a spectacle, a source of amusement, an object of their culture and not a cohesive member. Both Ann Petry and Helen Hunt Jackson had the intent of creating work that illustrated the plight of the racial Other. The hope was that the specific racial constraints, would be challenged, condemned and eviscerated. However as the essay navigates the spatial conventions of Ann Petry’s text, the complexity involved in the evisceration of the racial boundaries through illumination in Jackson’s text. Furthermore the influence and impact that each text exuded, and how, in Jackson’s novel it ultimately undermined the heritage and location of Southern California’s Indian population. Moreover, the response in Petry’s text to the streets of Harlem and the collective identity of the African American’s that gathered there that finally confirmed the original statement: ‘Both texts confront racial maltreatment through domesticity and despite the fact that they do not even share commentary on the same race, they both cogently exemplify how it is the white homes and individuals that damage and undermine the racial Other, either as a collective identity, or as individuals.’ It is my hope that this essay has confirmed that the racial Other is consistently juxtaposed with the traditional white, and while this remains a regrettable conclusion it does illuminate the misgivings of this history and ultimately serves as a cautionary tale, a warning, a plead for reform from a time where reform was not perceptible.
Bibliography:
Hunt Jackson, Helen. ‘Ramona.’ Signet, 2002
Petry, Ann ‘The Street’ Mariner Books, 1998
1. Machlan, Elizabeth Boyle, ‘Diseased Properties and Broken Homes in Ann Petry’s The
Street’ SUNY PRESS, 2012
2. Gonzalez, John.M. ‘The Warp of Whiteness: Domesticity and Empire in Helen Hunt
Jackson’s Ramona’ Oxford University Press, 2004
3.
Kaplan, Amy. “Manifest Domesticity.” American Literature 70 (1998): 581
4. For summaries of the “intractable savage” viewpoint, see Pearce; Rawls; Heizer, Destruction; Drinnon; and Berkho
5. Myles, Lynette. D. ‘At the Crossroads of Black Female Autonomy, or Digression as Resistance in
QUICKSAND and THE STREET,’ Palgrave, 2009.
6. Stevens, Errol Wayne. ‘Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona”: Social Problem Novel as
Tourist Guide’ University of California Press, 1998