FANNIE HURSTS PAPERS

PhD PROJECT PLAN

SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR: DR.MICHAELA MUDURE
PhD STUDENT: CONTRAS DANA

Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Fannie Hursts biography.
1.2 Fannie Hurst-Anatomy of Me: a feminist perspective of the self.
Hurts ties commodifications maternity and reproduction. Thus she reveals her successful
career through her struggle with her mother, but she also depicts her
ambivalence towards her public life, her ambitions, and its relation to
stereotypes of Jewish feminity. She goes on to paint the portrait of her
overbearing religious Jewish mother and relates this through hyperbole to her
role as a popular author.

Chapter 2. FANNIE HURST AMONG OTHER JEWISH WRITERS :( Grace

Paley, Tillie Olsen, Anzia Yezierska).
2.1 In this chapter I want to open a discussion of the short fiction of four women writers:

Fannie Hurst, Anzia Yezierska, Tillie Olsen and Grace Paley. In doing so, I have got two
main purposes:
Firstly, to confirm and elaborate the central idea of this part of the thesis: that women
writers have been marginalised within canons of experimental literature.
Secondly, I want to use the work of these writers to suggest that it is not enough to
understand literary experiment as a ruffling of the linguistic surface of a text. Instead, I
tentatively suggest a different conceptual basis for understanding literary experiment,
which proceeds from an understanding of literary strategies as situated social practices.
This feeds back into the first point. It may be that the problem of women being
marginalised within experimental canons cannot be resolved by retroactively assimilating

women into existing canons. For, drawing on work undertaken in my thesis, I will
suggest that the conceptual and ideological frameworks that inform these canons were
established through a set of active exclusions.
A key concept of this chapter is that of subaltern modernism, which
elaborating before moving on.

will need

2.2 Anzia Yezierskas story America and I.

In Yezierskas work the everyday is very specifically located: it is the everyday of the
young immigrant women working in the sweatshops and the ladies garment factories, and
of the Jewish mothers, cursing in Yiddish, as they scrub floors and peel potatoes in the
tenements. Every story in her 1922 collection, Hungry Hearts, concerns this day-to-day
labour, as well as its female characters attempts to escape this endless drudgery. When
Olsen and Paley were writing short story collections in the mid-50s, their fiction was still
underpinned by this collective subject - the ethnic working-class, living in the ghetto
tenements even as they mark out social change in the increased possibilities open to
their more Americanized second generation female narrators: culturally, economically,
educationally, sexually, and so on. Moreover, they still felt that this exploration of the
lives of working-class women was something strange, necessary, daring. For example,
Paley has said in an interview that she put off writing about the lives of working-class
women for a long time because a lot of the literature around her was heavily masculine.
2.3 Tillie Olsens and Grace Paleys writings influenced by Fannie Hurst :
Fannie Hurst passed the valorisation of language down to Olsen and Paley. This
valorisation of ordinary, spoken language is perceived in Olsen and Paleys work. Paley
particularly has the trick of making language work double-time just like her predecessor
in Anatomy of Me both as expressive vernacular and as symbolic imagery for
everywhere she employs a language which first appears idiomatic, but, on second glance,
decomposes into metaphor. In Goodbye and Good Luck, for example, Aunt Rose tells
her life story to her niece. Explaining how she afforded to live alone, she uses different
nuances of the language comparing story-telling to making paper flowers.Hurst, paints a
colourful portrait of her own overbearing mother and ties this, through hyperbole, to her
own role as a popular writer.
Chapter 3 CONSUMPTION OF BLACKNESS- F.HURST \Z.N. HURSTON,
LIFELONG FRIENDS.
3.1 PATRONAGE AND COMMODIFICATION .

During her lifetime, F.Hurst had many an encounter with the idea of
Blackness and Jewishness alike, and, sensing a special connection with
the marginalized, she used her work to unearth and shed light upon
the plight of women trying to surpass their Otherness. That is to say,
they tried to create an identity for themselves and this was only
possible through the written word. Nonetheless, there were many

critics who frowned upon Hurst\Hurston relationship, deeming it as

unequal and racist. However, I plan to prove this wrong, by
demonstrating it was actually flourishing and even innovative and
ahead of its time.
3.2 CAN FANNIE HURST AND ZORA NEALE HURSTON BE CONSIDERED
POSTMODERN OR EVEN POST -HUMAN?- IF SO, IN WHAT WAYS?
Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his essay, "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge," defines postmodernism "as incredulity toward metannaratives
(Lyotard, 71)." This works out to mean that the overarching metanarrative of the
world, which is given to us by the ruling class if one subscribes to class theories,
that forms our worldview has failed to fulfill our needs. The world is now seen as
intersecting micronarratives; people can relate because their personal
explanation of the world connects with anothers explanation, but are
recognizably individual because no two worldviews are identical. All
micronarratives are equally valid in Lyotards theories, and this fits in nicely with
postmodernisms push towards inclusion rather than marginalization. This theory
also pushes postmodernism into one of its other major facets, the breakdown of
binary systems.And this is the very point where Hursts and Hurstons works will
be subjects to scrutiny.
Women can be seen as micronarratives in their stories.
3.3 JACQUES DERRIDA AND HIS IDEAS OF DIFFERENCE \DIFFERENCES.
Speaking of difference, Derrida was fond of the term. He defines it as the area
between what X and Y have in common and what is different about the two. This
is the area that Hurston and Hurst explores. The most prominent example of this
awareness of the difference is at the end of Their Eyes Were Watching God:
"She pulled in on her horizon like a great fish net. Pulled it from around the waist
of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes
(Hurston, 184)!" Bond comments that, "The fishnet as an image of integration
figurally maintains the ultimate disjunction of sign and referent (Bond, 216)."
Derrida also brings up the idea of this difference causing a rupture in language
and communication that has had a decentering effect on us (Derrida, 225). The
authors entire body of work had at least a disturbing effect on many of their
peers. Bond notes for example, that Zoras anthropological work vascillates in
voice between objective researcher and subjective participant (Bond, 211). Its no
coincidence that Hassan lists "participation" as one of the postmodern traits
(Hassan, 280), and he was aware of Derrida.

3.4 HOMI K. BHABHA-THE LOCATION OF CULTURE , AND HOW

BHABHAS THEORIES CAN BE RELATED TO FEMININE WRITING AND
FEMINISM.
There are some key concepts, that Bhabha introduces and need mentioning
:Ambivalence, Hybridity and Mimicry. The last two are closely related as mimicry, the
act of imitating the colonizer\ master is imposed by the ruling power upon the margin, but
finally this act takes on a meaning of its own, as it is transformed into a subversive
weapon aimed at hegemony the centre. As a concrete example,one would notice that
language , the means ,the channel of communication is altered ,in most cases adapted in
order to form a new identity seeking for legitimacy and approval. It is from this idea that
a connection with feminism could be made, also having in mind that a woman is
perceived as the other.
Zora Neale Hurston , Black American and Fannie Hurst, Jewish American ,both writers
and lifelong friends ,both hybrids in Bhabhas terms ,both writing back to power, in this
case the American canon ,which was not prepared to usher in new ideas and new
discourses .In both of their discourses one definitely perceives some imitative resistance
Vernacular English but also Yiddish traditions represent a mode of resistance and why not
a mode of surpassing their otherness.
With thorough research, I am sure that Bhabhas key concepts will apply to Fannie Hurst
and Zora Neale Hurston.
Chapter 4. RACE PERFORMATIVITY IN HURST' S NOVELS4.1 JUDITH BUTLER GENDER PERFORMANCES IN IMITATION

OF LIFE
This chapter will entail the subtle race and gender performances in
Fannie Hursts novels and short stories, but also reveal these aspects in
the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, especially in the short story
Sweat
The African-American woman in Imitation of Life is disempowered
through her position as both the servant and the product of a
consumer culture that stigmatises her race. This is represented
through the fate of Delilahs passing daughter which demonstrates that
the African-American womans inclusion in this culture is one in which
she plays a secondary role.
Judith Butlers theories can be linked to the aforementioned.
4.2 HELENE CIXOUS: WRITE YOURSELF ,YOUR BODY MUST BE
HEARD.

Anatomy of Me ,Hursts autobiography displays an array of methapors

and parodies of her commercial status.
4.3 FEMININE WRITING \POST- STRUCTURALIST FEMINIST
THEORIES AND HLNE CIXOUS CRITURE FMININE .
The following shall be discussed in this chapter:
Feminine writing Cixouss essay The Laugh of the Medusa
Writing from the body
Can Imitation of life and Their Eyes Were Watching God be studied from poststructuralist feminist theories?
Relationship between desire and feminine writing
References to the body sensuality
Meaning proliferated in the texts
Metaphors multiplicity within the text
Patriarchy deconstructed disempowering of men.
Fixed gender roles.
Silenced women emancipation VOICE
Existence of femininity jouissance and sensuality.
Privilege of voice.
I shall give reasons for positive answers to the questions above and demonstrate that
Hurst was ahead of her time thoroughly contributing to the overall frame of XX th
century feminism.
ANSWERS:
|
Erotic, well-wrought story about black women
Narrative technique heavy on free-indirect discourse
Rebellion against patriarchal rules (Delia, Janie, Bea)

Exploration of womens power

Multitude of metaphors
Cixous impels to break their silences and enter the site of speaking, and this is exactly
what Hurst and Hurston did. a voice to working class women and black women.

Chapter 5. CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bond, Cynthia. "Language, Sign, and Difference in Their Eyes Were Watching God."
Appiah and Gates 204-17
Burstein,Janet: '' Writing Mothers Writing Daughters ,Tracing the Maternal in
Stories by American Jewish women''.(1996)
Denning ,Michael: ''The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in
the Twentieth Century'' (1988)
Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discouse of the Human Sciences."
Hutcheon and Natoli 223-43.
Feldstein,Ruth: ''Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American
Liberalism, 1930-1965'' (2000)
Flitterman-Lewis,Sandy: ''The Black Woman' s Double Determination as
Troubling Other''.(1988).
Foucault, Michel. "Excerpts from Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism." Hutcheon and Natoli 333-341.
Harrison Kahan,Lori: ''White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the BlackJewish Imaginary (The American Literatures Initiative) , (2011)
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row

Publishers, Inc., 1990.

Hutcheon, Linda, and Natoli, Joseph, eds. A Postmodern Reader. New York: SUNY,
1993.
Hurst, Fannie: ''Fannie Hurst Papers'' (1910-1965)
Hurston ,Zora Neale : ''Two Women in Particular''. Dust Tracks on a Road : An
Autobiography(1984).
Klein,Marcus: ''The Making of American Literature 1900-1940''. (1981)
Kolodny,Annette: " The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History
in American Life and Letters'',(1984).
Koppelman,Susan: '' The Educations of Fannie Hurst'' (1987)
Koppelman,Susan: ''The Stories of Fannie Hurst"(2004)
Kroeger,Brooke: '' The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst''(1999)
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "Excerpts from The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge." Hutcheon and Natoli 71-90.
Sochen, June: ''Consecrate Every Day: The Public Lives of Jewish American Women, 1880-1980''
.(1981)
Wortmann, Susan: The concepts of Ecriture Feminine in Helene Cixouss The Laugh of the
Medusa.