Date of Award
Fall 12-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
English
Department
English
Major Professor
Rioux, Anne Boyd
Second Advisor
Steeby, Elizabeth
Third Advisor
Hazlett, John
Abstract
Throughout the nineteenth century, New Orleans was repeatedly plagued by yellow fever epidemics. In this paper, cultural representations of yellow fever are considered in three novels: Baron Ludwig Von Reizenstein’s The Mysteries of New Orleans (1854-1855), George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1880), and Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis’ The Queen’s Garden (1900). Because the etiology was unknown during the nineteenth century, yellow fever becomes a floating signifier on which to project the ills they observed in New Orleans society. Yellow fever thus becomes a representation of loose sexual mores, as well as a divinely retributive punishment for slavery, or a sign of adherence to an unequal, antiquated, aristocratic and un-American social system. Yellow fever, in these texts, exposes the struggles with race and racial superiority and illuminates tensions between groups of whites as New Orleans became an American city.
Recommended Citation
Downes, Kathleen M., "Contagious Deadly Sins: Yellow Fever in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans Literature" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2065.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2065
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.