摘要(英) |
People have long valued social norms because they are a means of social control. In addition, social norms stabilize social hierarchy and bulwarks social boundaries. However, social norms changed drastically in the United States since it transformed into a self-governing urbanized country. Social positions, therefore, ceased to be fixed and transparent as before, and misrecognition caused anxiety in this scenario.
I will investigate crisis of misrecognition in four American texts in this thesis. The thesis begins with Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” (1819) to pose the apprehension that misrecognition generated after America’s independence. I will then examine three scenes from three different nineteenth-century narratives in which a protagonist is publicly misrecognized, much the way Rip van Winkle is. I will argue in each case that this act of misrecognition expresses continuing anxiety about democratic freedom in the United States, in particular when it involves the public conduct of the social group represented by the protagonist. The first scene I will examine occurs in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1840) when witnesses who have overheard the murders of the two women all misidentify the killer, who turns out to be an “Orang-Outan,” as a foreigner based on the fact that they cannot understand the language it speaks. The second scene I will examine comes from Henry James’s Daisy Miller (1878) when Mrs. Walker insists that she rides in the carriage with her, rather than walk with the Italian, Mr. Giovanelli, suggesting that people who see her will think she is not respectable. The third scene I will examine occurs in Stephen Crane’s “The Monster” (1898) when Henry Johnson, Dr. Trescott’s black carriage hand, strolls down the main street looking to have a good time on a Friday evening only to cause an anxious debate among white male bystanders about who he is.
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