Laying in the Dark: The Literary Night in Nineteenth-Century American Prose

Abstract

This thesis examines nineteenth-century American prose via the lens of night studies, to demonstrate how the literary night was used to construct and challenge issues of gender and race in the United States. It focuses primarily on social justice texts (seduction novels, slavery narratives, and women's gothic stories) to highlight how the literary nightscape has been used as a site of protest throughout the century. These texts are compared to prose written by white authors which reinscribed notions of white male supremacy, such as proslavery novels, Indian hating literature, and self-making narratives. Using innovative approaches to literary analysis in the form of night studies and the nocturnal gothic, this thesis demonstrates how nineteenth-century U.S. prose reflected and built upon the newly-emerging nation?s preoccupation with nocturnal policing. In particular, the literary night becomes a tool to explore white supremacist beliefs regarding race mixing, the apex of fears regarding race and gender.