Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T21:26:55.376Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Understudies: Miming the Human

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Susan M. Griffin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The title of understudies, Mary Wilkins Freeman's 1901 short story collection, situates us in the realm of theater, of performance—the space where actors and their seconds together learn the grammars of verbal and visual representation.1 On the cover of Understudies, cameo portraits linked by garlands mimic the arrangement of actors' head shots on a playbill (fig. 1). But the profiles are those of a horse, a dog, a parrot, a monkey, a squirrel, and a cat. Freeman's book displays on its face the art of representing animals and humans—and animals as humans. And her title articulates a distinctly turn-of-the-century (if still unresolved) question: who are the understudies and who are the leads—animals or humans?

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 511 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Paul, Carter. Parrot. London: Reaktion, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Grier, Katherine C. Pets in America: A History. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Brent, Kendrick. The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1985. Print.Google Scholar
Coral, Lansbury. The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985. Print.Google Scholar
Lutts, Ralph H. The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science, and Sentiment. Golden: Fulcrum, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Jennifer, Mason. Civilized Creatures: Urban Animals, Sentimental Culture, and American Literature, 1850–1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Morse, Deborah Denenholz, and Danahay, Martin A. Victorian Animal Dreams: Representation of Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture. Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Mary, Moss. “Some Representative American Story Tellers: II—Mary E. Wilkins.” Bookman 24 (1906): 20–29. Print.Google Scholar
Virginia, Patterson. Dickey Downy: The Autobiography of a Bird. Philadelphia: Rowland, 1899. Print.Google Scholar
Patteson, Susanna Louise. Pussy Meow: The Autobiography of a Cat. Philadelphia: Jacobs, 1901. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harriet, Ritvo. Afterword. Morse and Danahay 271–75.Google Scholar
Marshall, Saunders. Beautiful Joe. Philadelphia: Banes, 1893. Print.Google Scholar
Anna, Sewell. Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse. London: Jarrold, 1877. Print.Google Scholar
Thompson, Charles Miner. “Miss Wilkins: An Idealist in Masquerade.” Atlantic Monthly 83 (1899): 665–75. Print.Google Scholar
“Understudies.” Literary News 22 (1901): 229. Print.Google Scholar
Marina, Warner. Fantastic Metamorphoses: Ways of Telling the Self. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Mary E. Understudies. New York: Harper, 1901. Print.Google Scholar