Defined by Possession

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century in America is an interesting time when examined through the lens of property ownership and self ownership. Technically and legally, married women could own property and many had enjoyed this right since the first Married Women's Property Acts in the 1840s. Technically and legally, African Americans enjoyed freedom and the rights as citizens of the United States. Additionally, authors were gaining rights of ownership over their published texts in a manner striking in its contrast to the culture of reprinting that thrived mid-century. We can understand these three systems of ownership as interrelated as they all connectively feature in the debate over who will have power and access to power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and as they all have a significant role to play in the attempt to preserve national manhood. The literature of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Charles Chesnutt, and Mark Twain posits the questions of debates over access to power and autonomy and explores the roles property and self-ownership play in the defense of national manhood. Each author offers a rather dark perspective on these issues. The heroines of Chopin, Wharton, and Chesnutt's works all die, either through suicide or some terrible accident. The effect of these tragic endings is unsatisfying to the reader, deliberately, in order to provoke thought about the inability of these othered characters to successfully participate as propertied members of society. The literary works here demonstrate the prevalent thought of Critical Legal studies that the law is written and/or adjudicated in such a way during this time period as to maintain existing systems of power, which exclude and other women and African-Americans. Because of the power of custom created by American law, it is difficult if not impossible for certain groups of people to succeed in self-ownership or property ownership.