Where My Thoughts are These Days: 19th Century Final Paper

Songs and Silence:  Concealment of Home and the Natural in Chopin, Dubois, and Harper
Linda Dowling has written that both the Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890’s encountered a paradox between the restoration of Nature and the new worlds they wished to realize (Dowling 449). In my own paper, I wish to explore this paradox by expanding it further within  Chopin's The Awakening, Harper's Iola Leroy, and Dubois' Souls of Black Folk. The parallels which are evident throughout these three works will inform this paradox and how its resolution could be achieved i.e. the realization of a better, more honest, freer world. The parallels I will highlight consist of: the emphasis/de-emphasis on the Pastoral and the earthly, indigenous land and nature, nostalgia, roots and family, time, memory, and history, the metaphors of both water and hands (alien and otherwise), and voices and voiceless-ness.  Ultimately, the search will result in what it means to be “home” and how does an individual take ownership of this place, or the sense of being “at home” somewhere, especially those who are not given the agency to “be at home”? Burnham’s writing on the concept of “alien hands” will be an important jumping off point, as well as Gilbert’s theory that Edna’s entrance into the water is expressing the myth of Aphrodite will serve as a primary place of exploration. I wish to undergo a deep analysis of what home means as far as body, mind, and spirit, and how this applies to the grounded, natural world, as well as how we choose to express how we feel about this home, be it through song, poetry, or stories. Finally, I will be addressing the reason why there is a consistent separation between the old establishment vs. nature. Why not let them combine together as one, inseparably, and why so much effort to suppress the natural, even if chaotic?  Is this potentially linked to the concept of having a voice, thus linked to Nature and a true ownership of place?