WILLIAM E. LENZ

Henry Adams mourned and yet questioned the absence in nineteenth-century American literature of what he called an "American Venus," a woman who would insist on the classic potentialities of her sex as a natural and direct inheritance from Eve.

The monthly-magazine-made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but any one brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength. . . . Adams began to ponder, asking himself whether he knew of any American artist who had ever insisted on the power of sex, as every classic had always done; but he could think only of Walt Whitman; Bret Harte, as far as the magazine, would let him venture; and one or two painters, for the flesh-tones. All the rest had used sex for sentiment, never for force; to them, Eve was a tender flower, and Herodias an unfeminine horror. American art, like American language and American education, was as far as possible sexless.¹

Despite the deliberate playfulness and ambiguity of Adams’s tone, his insistent rhetoric suggests an underlying seriousness to his search that is decidedly contemporary. "Why was she unknown in America?" Were there no surviving visions of Eve in the American Eden? Had a dynamic force—and one-half the race—been discomfitingly covered with fig leaves?

In the gentleman’s magazines and Tennessee newspapers of the 1850s, however, George Washington Harris’s Sut Lovingood vividly describes, in a stylized dialect both sexual and endemic, his numerous encounters with candidates for an American Eve.² Presenting Sut’s pursuit in the tortured, self-consciously literary rhetoric of the conventional humorous frontier tale, Harris is able to insist, as the author of Democracy and Esther never could, on the cardinal power of sexuality. And although separated from Adams by much more than geography, Sut searches for an ideal woman possessing essential qualities—sensuality, vitality, and forcefulness—remarkably similar to those of Adams’s elusive "American Venus." Seen in these terms, an examination of Harris’s women, and of the themes governing their presentation, will result, it is hoped, in a greater appreciation of the Yarns and suggest avenues for further study.

In "Sicily Burns’s Wedding" Sut Lovingood informs simple George that "every livin thing hes hits pint, a pint ove sum sort."³ The following lesson makes quite clear Sut’s views concerning the points of men and women:

Men wer made a-purpus jis’ tu eat, drink, an’ fur stayin awake in the yearly part ove the nites: an’ wimen wer made tu cook the vittils, mix the sperits, an’ help the men du the stayin awake. That’s all, an’ nuthin more, onless hits fur the wimen tu raise the devil atwix meals, an’ knit socks atwix drams, an’ the men tu play short kerds, swap hosses wif fools, an’ fite fur exersise, at odd spells. (p. 88)

Women exist for the pleasures of men, to feed, fuel, and satisfy their physical appetites, and Sut’ s emphasis on sensuality is central. In "Parson John Bullen’s Lizards" Sut divides women into eight categories according to their reactions to the Parson’s nude figure, and in "Mrs. Yardley’s Quilting" he singles out widows as the most cooperative of women:

Hits widders, by golly, what am the rale sensibil, steady-goin, never-skeerin, never-kickin, willin, sperrited, smoof pacers. They cum clost up tu the hoss-block, standin still wif thar purty silky years playin, an’ the naik-veins a-throbbin, an’ waits fur the word, which ove course yu gives, arter yu finds yer feet well in the stirrup, an’ away they moves like a cradil on cushioned rockers, ur a spring buggy runnin in damp sand. A tetch ove the bridil, an’ they knows yu wants em tu turn, an’ they dus hit es willin es ef the idear wer thar own. I be dod rabbited ef a man can’t ’propriate happiness by the skinful ef he is in contack wif sumbody’s widder, an’ is smart. Gin me a willin widder, the yearth over: what they don’t know, haint worth larnin. (p. 141)

Sut’s description of Sicily Burns may serve as an example of his ideal female, at least in terms of external attributes and endowments. Her beauty marks her out as a possible "American Venus," almost a candidate for worship.

She shows amung wimen like a sunflower amung dorg fennil, ur a hollyhawk in a patch ove smartweed. Sich a buzzim! Jis’ think ove two snow balls wif a strawberry stuck but-ainded intu bof of em. . . . She kerried enuf devil about her tu run crazy a big settilment ove Job’s children; her skin wer es white es the inside ove a frogstool, an’ her cheeks an’ lips es rosey es a pearch’s gills in dorgwood blossum time—an’ sich a smile!⁴ (pp. 75–76)

Such sensuality seems to fit in well with Sut’s philosophy, but distant worship cannot satisfy him for long: to be a candidate for his perfect woman, one must have the correct attitude and inclination;

Sicily Burns is almost too classical (as Adams might say), existing "tu drive men folks plum crazy, an’ then bring em too agin. Gin em a rale Orleans fever in five minits, an’ then in five minits more, gin them a Floridy ager" (p. 87).

Sal Yardley’s enthusiasm out-weighs her lack of physical attractions and raises her initially to the status of Magna Mater:

Sal wer bilt at fust ’bout the laingth ove her man, but wer never straiched eny by a par ove steers, an’ she wer fat enuf tu kill; she wer taller lyin down than she wer a-standin up. . . . She wer the fairest-lookin gal I ever seed. She allers wore thick woolin stockins ’bout six inches too long fur her laig; they rolled down over her garters, lookin like a par ove life-presarvers up thar. I tell you she wer a tarin gal enyhow. Luved kissin, wrastlin, an’ biled cabbige, an’ hated tite clothes, hot weather, an’ suckit-riders. (pp. 136–37)

Yet throughout the Yarns women have quite different purposes from those imagined—needs and desires which often run contrary to Sut’s simple equation. Sicily Burns, for example, after parading her pleasures before him, promising "a new sensashun," gives him soda-powder as a love potion, curing rather than satisfying his immediate appetite. She is, like most spirited women in the Yarns, more serpent or siren than simply Eve. Even Sal, for all her willingness to be kissed, succeeds only in getting Sut kicked by her father.⁵ In this rough-and-tumble, exaggerated, frontier world, wives don’t stay long faithful to their loving husbands, the experienced widows don’t experience Sut at all, the most respectable members of society are hypocrites, and even the proverbial nuptial bed is not what it once seemed.

Wat Mastin, because "at las’ he jis cudn’t stan the ticklin sensashuns anuther minit," marries widow McKildrin’s daughter, Mary:

Oh yas, he married Mary tight an’ fas’, an’ nex’ day he wer abil tu be about. His coat tho’, an’ his trousis look’d jis’ a skrimshun too big, loose like, an’ heavy tu tote. . . . Purty soon after he hed made the garden, he tuck a noshun tu work a spell down tu Ataylanty, in the railroad shop, es he sed he hed a sorter ailin in his back, an’ he tho’t weldin rail car-tire an’ ingine axiltrees, wer lighter work. . . . (pp. 230–32)

Nothing is sacred or secure, and between appearance and reality, between imagined intention and actual intent, grows a widening gap. Sicily Burns, who had seemed to promise love (or at least a variety of physical equivalents), uses her sexuality as a weapon; Wat Mastin’s "ticklin sensashuns" are irritated rather than relieved by marriage, and he eventually learns that his new bride, the previously and con-

tinuously unfaithful Mary, has lured him into matrimony so that her child could have a legitimate father. Appropriately, they are married on April Fools’ Day.

In Sut’s world such attacks demand revenge. This forms a second theme in Harris’s Yarns, one which seems to be a force of almost equal importance. Indeed, revenge is usually coupled with sensuality and functions as a form of confirmation: it can take a direct and immediate form, as in Sut’s revenge on Parson Bullen, or it can be drawn out and intricate. In either case, however, return payment must be in kind.

The day Sicily marries the "suckit rider" Clapshaw, Sut manages to have the Burns’ bull, Sock, knock over their beehives and to lead "the bigges’ an’ the madest army ove bees in the world" into the reception. The result is widespread damage, chaos, and sexual revenge.

  Sicily, she squatted in the cold spring, up tu her years, an’ turn’d a milk crock over her head, while she wer a drownin a mess ove bees onder her coats. I went tu her, an’ siz I, "Yu hes got anuther new sensashun haint yu?" Sez she—
    "Shet yer mouth, yu cussed fool!"
    Sez I, "Power’ful sarchin feelin bees gins a body, don’t they?"
    "Oh, lordy, lordy, Sut, these yere ’bominabil insex is jis’ burnin me up!"
    "Gin ’em a mess ove SODY," sez I, "that’ll cool ’em off, an’ skeer the las’ durn’d one often the place. . . ."
    Ove all the durn’d misfortinit weddins ever since ole Adam married that heifer, what wer so fon’ ove talkin tu snaix an’ eating appils, down ontil now . . . her an’ him cudent sleep tugether fur ni ontu a week, on account ove the doins ove them ar hot-footed, ’vengeful, ’bominabil littil insex. (p 95, pp. 96–97)

Not satisfied with this, however, Sut—or, noticing the less active role of simple George (he is only spoken to) and the verbal carnage created by such coinages as "suckit rider" and "insex,"⁶ one is tempted to say Harris—completes his revenge in "Sut Lovingood’s Chest Story," a tale undoubtedly intended for inclusion in the 1867 Yarns. He discovers and drives off Sicily’s lover, Gus, and leaves Sicily at the end "warin thin, her eyes am growin bigger, an she has no roses on her cheeks."⁷ Sut destroys both her physical beauty and her sexual freedom—she will never tempt or taunt another man.

The revenge in the "Rare Ripe Garden Seed" trilogy takes a more complex form, and brings to our attention almost by accident another "American Venus." At the conclusion the conniving and meddlesome

widow McKildrin disappears, the adulterous Sheriff Doltin is humiliated and torn up by cats, Mary loses her lover and is frightened into fidelity and submission, and Sut, Wat, and Wirt are well avenged. Yet "Rare Ripe" is too densely packed with actions, emotions, and impostors to be summarized; it deserves to be read, as it is perhaps the finest story of revenge in the Yarns. I mention it first as a further instance in which revenge and sexuality are intertwined, and will abstract from it a third variation of the Eve motif.

Wirt Staples’ wife appears briefly in "Trapping a Sheriff," the conclusion of the "Rare Ripe" story. She is an interesting version of the "American Venus," who appeals, unlike Sicily or Sal, to Sut’s stomach:

    Wirt’s wife got yearly supper, a rale suckit-rider’s supper, whar the ’oman ove the hous’ wer a rich b’lever. Thar wer chickens cut up, an’ fried in butter, brown; white, flakey, light, hot biskit, made wif cream; scrambiled aigs: yaller butter; fried ham, in slices es big es yur han; pickil’d beets, an’ cowcumbers; roas’in ears, shavd down an’ fried; sweet taters, baked; a stack ove buck wheat cakes, as full ove holes es a sifter; an’ a bowl ove strained honey, tu fill the holes. . . . I kin tas’e em es low down es the bottim ove my trowsis pokits. Fur drinks, she hed coffee, hot, clar an’ brown, an’ sweet milk es cold es a rich man’s heart. Ontu the dresser sot a sorter lookin pot-bellied bottil, half full ove peach brandy, watchin a tumbler, a spoon, an’ a sugar bowl. Oh! massy, massy, George! Fur the sake ove yure soul’s ’tarnil well-far, don’t yu es long es yu live ever be temtid by money, ur buty, ur smartness, ur sweet huggin, ur shockin mersheen kisses, tu marry ur cum ni marryin eny gal a-top this livin green yearth, onless yu hes seed her yurself cook jis’ sich feedin as that wer. Durnashun, I kin tas’e hit now, jis’ es plain es I tas’e that ar festergut, in that ar jug, an’ I swar I tasis hit plain. I gets dorg hongry every time I see Wirt’s wife, ur even her side-saddil, ur her frocks a-hangin on the closeline.
    Es we sot down, the las’ glimmers ove the sun crep thru the histed winder, an’ flutter’d on the white tabilcloth an’ played a silver shine on her smoof black har, es she sot at the head ove the tabil, a-pourin out the coffee, wif her sleeves push’d tight back on her white roun’ arm; her full throbbin neck wer bar to the swell ove her shoulders, an’ the steam ove the coffee made a movin vail afore her face, es she slowly brushed hit away wif her lef han’, a-smilin an’ a-flashin her talkin eyes lovinly at her hansum husbun. I thot ef I wer a picter-maker, I cud jis’ take that ar supper, an’ that ar ’oman down on clean white paper, an’ make more men hongry, an’ hot tu marry, alookin at hit in one week, nor ever old Whitefield convarted in his hole life. . . . (pp. 261-62)

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I have quoted at length because Sut’s description is lengthy, and the image of this "rale suckit-rider’s supper" is pivotal: Sicily Burns may have a beautiful bosom, and Sal Yardley may be willing, but Mrs. Staples actually satisfies. She understands that "‘Less a feller hes his belly stretched wif vittils, he can’t luv tu much pupus, that’s so. Vittils, whisky, an’ the spring ove the year, is what makes luv. . ." (p. 123). Notwithstanding her desires, Sal Yardley is essentially a child, still dominated by the force of a paternal boot. And when Sicily marries Clapshaw, she loses her freedom, her ability to compete with Sut on his own cruel and chaotic terms. For to be bound to an institution of authority, be it family, church, or state, is to limit oneself and surrender the personal mobility necessary to ultimate victory.⁸

Mrs. Staples, however, is able to transcend these limitations and has not, although she is married, lost her ability to function actively as an effective—and forceful—individual. Sut recognizes the wide range of her talents and pays her additional high tribute in the following passage from "Trapping A Sheriff":

Wirt’s wife did the planin, an’ ef she aint smart fur an ’oman, I aint a nat’ral born durned fool. She aint one ove yure she-cat wimmin, allers spittin an groanin, an’ swellin thar tails ’bout thar vartu. She never talks a word about hit, no more nor if she didn’t hev eny; an’ she hes es true a heart es ever beat again a shiff hem, ur a husban’s shut. But she am full ove fun, an’ I mout add as purty es a hen canary, an’ I swar I don’t b’l’eve the ’oman knows hit. She cum intu our boat jis’ caze Wirt wer in hit, and she seed lots of fun a-plantin, an’ she wanted te be at the reapin of the crap. (p. 260)

Wirt’s wife is a powerful combination of thinker, looker, and doer, a credible "American Venus." And, of perhaps most importance, she is aligned with Sut. This is not to imply that either Sut or Mrs. Staples is an agent of morality or universal justice, as Brom Weber suggests.⁹ Indeed, they are decidedly amoral, and what justice they desire is personal revenge. What they do form is a rather loose community in search of momentary pleasures, keen competition, and unlimited freedom: to compete is to assert one’s individuality; to triumph is to secure it.

Mrs. Staples is undoubtedly the most successful woman in Sut’s—and in Adams’s—terms, and her appearance at the conclusion of the "Rare Ripe Garden Seed" trilogy forms a locus of meaning. Harris dwells upon her portrait, insisting by extended description on her integrity and importance. Forceful and able, she is nevertheless "full ove fun," and while managing an ornery husband like Wirt, she still

has the strength of will to maintain her identity as an individual. Like Sut, to whose character she is a key, Mrs. Staples celebrates the eternal joys of victory and survival, and delights in the rejuvenating energy of vigorous action. If Sut can be seen as the prototypical Adam of the Yarns, she is certainly the most nearly Eve.

Yet Mrs. Staples is Wirt’s wife, and her attractions, though great, must remain for Sut those of an unattainable ideal; for in spite of the spirited women he encounters, Sut is ultimately, like the conventional trickster or fool, bound by immutable laws to reveal what he cannot himself possess. Full of "onregenerit pride," Sut shares with Natty Bumppo and Huckleberry Finn a clear if sobering perception of the price to be paid for independence: "Now ef a feller happens tu know what his pint am, he kin allers git along, sumhow, purvided he don’t swar away his liberty tu a temprins s’ciety, live tu fur frum a still-’ous, an’ too ni a chu’ch ur a jail" (p. 88). The discovery of Adams’s "American Venus" in a frontier landscape is all—and it is quite a lot—that he can accomplish.

Freedom can result in solitude, in escape, and the license it provides may go at first undetected. Wat Mastin must learn from Sut the benefits accompanying his newly earned liberty:

   "Sut, hell’s tu pay at our hous’. Mary’s been hid out sumwhar till this mornin. She cum up draggil’d an’ hungry, an’ won’t say a durn’d word. An’ ole Missis McKildrin’s plum gone." Sez I—
    "Ain’t yu glad?"
    He stretched his mouf intu the wides’ smile yu ever seed, an’ slappin me on the back, sez he—
"I is, by golly!" (p. 275)

It is this delight in and awareness of the moments of life, the reassertion that humor can provide a meaning, that vigorous living can restore one’s purpose in defeat and confirm the integrity of the individual in triumph, that informs Sut Lovingood’s Yarns. Sensuality and revenge are major forces in this world, stark frontier humor is the modus operandi, and the goal, or rather, the final achievement, is an undeniable affirmation of freedom.

Sal, Sicily, and Mrs. Staples reveal that on the imaginative frontier of Harris’s Yarns, American women existed who would have been recognized by Adam. Their awareness that sex is a power before which men are helpless suggests a tradition of American women characters who flaunt their inheritance in a popular, male-dominated genre, one that Harris had the good fortune to discover and exploit.

CHATHAM COLLEGE

NOTES

    ¹Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918; rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1961), pp. 384, 385.
   ²Adams, we suppose, dismissed or carefully overlooked the heroines of Hawthorne, Howells, and Henry James as sensual but unsuccessful, ultimately impotent to change men’s lives; and, if he knew them, the fates of Sister Carrie and Edna Pontellier must have seemed clear illustrations of the tragic extremes to which an emerging "American Venus" might easily be reduced.
   ³George W. Harris, Sut Lovingood. Yarns Spun by a "Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool" (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1867), p. 87. All future quotations will be from this edition unless otherwise noted, with page numbers incorporated into the text.
   ⁴Sicily’s breasts are, to my knowledge, the first revealed in American literature. Although they suffer some obvious domestication through misspelling and metaphor, Sut’s admiring description seems anything but "sexless"; Harris’s humor—he even wryly identifies the sexes of animals—is always subversive.
   ⁵Although Sut is caught "convarsin wif a frien’" named "Sall" in "Parson John Bullen’s Lizards," I don’t believe this constitutes sufficient evidence against my point that Sut is frustrated. In both "Sicily Burns’s Wedding" and "Dad’s Dog-School" Sut refers to his sister as "Sall."
   ⁶These orthographic gymnastics, although occasionally careless, reveal an energy primarily sexual in nature and, as opposed to Sicily’s "buzzim" discussed in note 4 above, attract attention to themselves as deliberate obscene neologisms. The enthusiasm Sut displays is here more obvious, perhaps—as I suggest—because the distance between Sut and Harris has greatly decreased. The effect and intention are quite different from those observed in "Trapping A Sheriff," where Mrs. Staples "seed lots of fun a-plantin, an’ she wanted tu be at the reapin of the crap" (p. 260).
   ⁷George W. Harris, "Sut Lovingood’s Chest Story," rpt. in High Times and Hard Times, ed. M. Thomas Inge (Vanderbilt University Press, 1967), p. 125. I am indebted to Mr. Inge for information concerning the probable intention of Harris to include "Chest Story" in the 1867 Yarns.
   ⁸In "Blown Up with Soda" it will be remembered that Sicily thought nothing of using a cruel deception to trick Sut. Milton Rickels, in his invaluable study, George Washington Harris (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965), notes: "Sut has matched cruelty with Sicily. As long as she is free, she wins, when she binds herself with the institutions, she becomes respectable and has a social place to lose" (p. 54).
   ⁹See his introduction to Sut Lovingood (New York: Grove Press, 1954), pp. ix–xxiix, especially pp. xxv–xxvi. I also strongly disagree with what Mr. Weber calls "the necessary task of simplifying the text" (p. xxvii), for in so doing much of the raw, untamed energy of the Yarns is reduced. As Sut warns in his Preface to the 1867 edition, one should be very careful "afore yu takes eny ove my flesh onto yer claws, ur my blood onto yer bills. . ." (p. x).

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