Oceanic without Voyage: The “Wet” Interior of The Morgesons
1
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This essay argues that Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons reimagines the oceanic not through voyages but through the inland domestic spaces where the afterlives of maritime movement take shape. Reading the novel’s kitchen as a “wet” interior and “way-station,” I show how teas, preserves, and textiles materialize mid-nineteenth-century global circuits structured by the Guano Age. These objects anchor an oceanic presence that persists long after circulation has reached shore. I pair this reading with Stoddard’s persona as a Pacific-facing “Lady Correspondent,” whose longing for maritime horizons is articulated from the parlor rather than the deck. Within the novel, this dynamic is most fully realized through Temperance Tinkham, a nearly overlooked figure whose curatorial labor turns her into its most oceanic presence, sustaining a relation to the sea without travel. Cassandra Morgeson’s increasingly possessive engagement with the same materials reveals a contrasting, inward-turning response. Together, these scenes illuminate an “oceanic without voyage,” a mode in which the sea endures through domestic practice and the quiet labor that keeps its materials in motion.
Abstract
This essay argues that Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons reimagines the oceanic not through voyages but through the inland domestic spaces where the afterlives of maritime movement take shape. Reading the novel’s kitchen as a “wet” interior and “way-station,” I show how teas, preserves, and textiles materialize mid-nineteenth-century global circuits structured by the Guano Age. These objects anchor an oceanic presence that persists long after circulation has reached shore. I pair this reading with Stoddard’s persona as a Pacific-facing “Lady Correspondent,” whose longing for maritime horizons is articulated from the parlor rather than the deck. Within the novel, this dynamic is most fully realized through Temperance Tinkham, a nearly overlooked figure whose curatorial labor turns her into its most oceanic presence, sustaining a relation to the sea without travel. Cassandra Morgeson’s increasingly possessive engagement with the same materials reveals a contrasting, inward-turning response. Together, these scenes illuminate an “oceanic without voyage,” a mode in which the sea endures through domestic practice and the quiet labor that keeps its materials in motion.