Inventing the Addict: Drugs, Race, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century British and American Literature

320 Pages·2008·5.54 MB·English

by  Susan Zieger

INVENTING THE ADDICT
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INVENTING THE
ADDICT
Drugs, Race, and Sexuality in
Nineteenth-Century British and
American Literature
Susan Zieger
e
University of Massachusetts Press
amherst
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Copyright © 2008 by University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
lc 2008031442
isbn 978-1-55849-680-4 (paper); 679-8 (library cloth)
Designed by Dennis Anderson
Set in Janson Text
Printed and bound by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zieger, Susan Marjorie.
Inventing the addict : drugs, race, and sexuality in nineteenth-century
British and American literature / Susan Zieger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-55849-680-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-1-55849-679-8 (library cloth : alk. paper)
1. American literature—19th century—History and criticism.
2. English literature—19th century—History and criticism.
3. Addicts in literature. 4. Drug abuse in literature.
5. Alcoholism in literature. 6. Addicts—History. 7. Drug abuse—History
I. Title.
ps217.a32z54 2008
820.9'3561—dc22
2008031442
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.
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In memory of Nancy Zieger,
and to Herman Zieger
and Nathan Boyd
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CONTENTS
j
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Addiction and History 1
PART I: TRAVEL, EXILE, AND SELF-ENSLAVEMENT
1 Pioneers of Inner Space: Drug Autobiography and
Manifest Destiny 33
2 “Mankind Has Been Drunk”: Race and Addiction in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin 61
3 Impostors of Freedom: Hypodermic Morphine and the Labors
of Passing in E. P. Roe’s Without a Home 98
PART II: DISEASE, DESIRE, AND DEFECT
4 Needling Desires: Women, Morphinomania, and
Self-Representation in Fin-de-Siècle Britain 127
5 “Afflictions à la Oscar Wilde”: The Strange Case of Addiction
and Sexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 155
6 Un-Death and Bare Life: Addiction and Eugenics in Dracula
and The Blood of the Vampire 196
Afterword: The Biopolitics of Drug Control 233
Notes 243
Index 295
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Many people and institutions have enabled me—in the best sense of the
word—to complete this book, and I am grateful to them all. They brought
out the best in the project; the flaws are all my own.
Generous grants and fellowships from the ACLS Fellowship Program
and the Huntington Library provided the time and money to conduct the
research for this book. Additionally, two Regents’ Faculty Development
Awards from the University of California, Riverside, and a number of Ac-
ademic Senate Research Awards funded trips for research and conference
presentations. At UC Berkeley, a Townsend Center for the Humanities
Fellowship, Mellon Fellowship, Vice Chancellor Research Fund Award,
Humanities Research Grant, and Phi Beta Kappa Fellowship helped
launch this project in its formative stages.
Staff at several research institutions were most helpful: the British
Library, the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of
Medicine, the Royal Society of Medicine, UCLA’s Michael Sadleir Col-
lection, and UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection. Two librarians whose tire-
less efforts to locate a copy of Maria Weed’s 1895 novel, A Voice in the
Wilderness, deserve special thanks: Janet Moores and Maria Mendoza at
UC Riverside’s Interlibrary Loan. I am also indebted to Steve Gertz, for-
merly of William Dailey Rare Books in Los Angeles, for introducing me
to E. P. Roe’s Without a Home.
Catherine Gallagher, Tom Laqueur, and Sharon Marcus at UC Berke-
ley have remained supportive mentors to whom I am grateful. Ian Duncan
continues to give generous intellectual and professional advice. Priya
Joshi, Celeste Langan, and David Lloyd influenced the project at its ori-
gins. Tina Choi, Genevieve Guenther, Rachel Teukolsky, Karen Tongson,
and others offered an intellectually rich environment for developing this
project. The Nineteenth Century and Beyond British Cultural Studies
ix
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