Tone Shifts in Letter Writing

Letters fall in a peculiar place on the public/private binary, a status reflected in the history of letter writing. From the common letters in the bible to royal decrees to published “letters to the editor,” the concept of the letter as a private means of communication has been complicated by these incredibly public “letters” throughout history (Stanley 243, 6-7). And among letters intended to be private, they are constructed and operate differently depending on the distance between the author and subject. Liz Stanley specifies the distinction between ‘interrupted presence,’ or “people who are ‘together’ are frequently but transitorily apart on a day-to-day basis" who use letters to mediate frequent visits and nearly constant separation. (Stanley 243). As these distinctions in intention exist, there is also the underlying current of difference in execution. A public letter will be much more polite than a private, a letter to a long distance friend will contain much more context for the conversation. All of these distinctions come together to suggest and underlying protocol or social code for letter writing.

As early as the 1800s these protocols were being formalized and taught in American schools. Analyzing these teachings gives us historical insight into both the tone and the intent of letter writing. While this predates any of the novels we discuss in this project, these guides to letter writing still lay the foundation for the evolving American relationship to letters. Authors of 19th-century textbooks teaching children to write letters “often echo the letter-writing advice of Hugh Blair (1785) that letters be ‘conversational’ and ‘natural’, and in their advice to the letter writer, they embed and reproduce 19th-century conduct codes for children” (Burton and Hall, 117). Through this, we can see how letters are intended to maintain social relationships and to mirror face to face conversations. However, Burton and Hall also infer that these standards of letter writing were meant to reinforce cultural norms. Since common schools were primarily attended by white middle-class children (by the end of the century the class gap in school attendance was greatly diminished, but the racial gap was not), letter writing textbooks also reinforced racial and class hierarchies in the conduct codes they reiterated.

Given these conduct codes, letters have one more choice. Adhere or err. Burton and Hall touch on this possibility, writing that “for contemporary readers, 19th-century children’s letter-writing represents the interanimation of instructional practice and social practice, but it also represents the potential for expressing not just the residual but also the emergent values” (Burton and Hall, 111). This simultaneous upholding and subversion of cultural expectations are reminiscent of the act of passing itself, as passing subjects both subvert social hierarchies while reinforcing the stereotypes they rely on to pass.1 This parallel is evident in Clare’s purple inked, oversized letter. And, “as Clare’s letter at the beginning of the novel is ‘[f]urtive, but yet in some peculiar, determined way a little flaunting’ (9), Larsen’s small talk remains a mode of address both intransigent and strategic, both private and public,” extending Clare’s adaptations of social codes from letter writing to all her social interactions (Krumholtz 12). From here, we have to contend with how social expectations and mores affect all letter writing--though it is (at times) a private mode of communication, that does not make it an unfiltered medium. Instead of being a place to be unguarded with Irene, Clare’s letter is still simultaneously attempting to avoid suspicion and symbolically uplifting her proximity to whiteness.

In The House Behind the Cedars, Rena crosses the line of propriety, fully embracing Burton and Hall’s suggestion that letters may be a place to explore “emergent values.” In Daniel Hack’s analysis of The House Behind the Cedars, he fixates on Rena’s signature bearing the name “Rowena Warwick” when refusing to meet with George after their relationship ended. He states that “throughout the novel, John and Rena’s names index their racialized identity,” and that this signature, alongside the constant rotation in which name is used for the remainder of the novel, “indicates powerfully that, no matter how split Rena’s sense of self is in life, in death her social identity is clear” (Hack 111). Clare’s letter reinforced her tenuous hold, but deeply beneficial, hold on the white side of the color line. Rena, however, breaks from the traditional form of a letter in signing a name that her recipient would not know or call her by. This breakage reinforces her refusal of George’s proposal and her revelation of her passing, as well as the total social consequences of this revelation. This revelation has upended her standing in the society of the early 1900s, and her name, one of the most central representations of her identity, has been similarly upended.

In summary, the climactic letter in a passing novel can either serve to further assert a character’s passing identity, like Clare, or remove their ability to pass, like Rena/Rowena.

-BH


 * 1) This paradox of passing characters both subverting and reinforcing stereotypes and cultural norms has been investigated by our classmate Lily Aydt, who inspired this section.