18 Introduction: Yellow Fever
The metaphor of “infection” and the racist rhetoric surrounding it in American Literature dates back to the early years of European settlement. The term “yellow fever” refers to an actual disease, a virus in the genus Flavivirus, brought to the Americas from Africa, most likely as a result of the slave trade. One of the symptoms is jaundice, caused by liver damage, and hence the name yellow fever.
Although none of the readings in this unit are about the actual disease, they are unified by the idea of an infection from perceived “degenerate” influences, whether that influence is racial, or literary, or in the case of the Yellow Wallpaper, pattern and aesthetics from so-called “inferior” and “debased” cultures.
As you might infer from the title of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, the color yellow became associated with more than just a disease. All of the stories for this unit take place in the same decade: the 1890s. It was during this decade that Oscar Wilde, an Irish writer, was famously tried for being a sodomite and sentenced to hard labor at Reading Gaol—a punishment that was a prolonged death sentence for a man of Wilde’s social class, wholly unaccustomed to manual labor. Wilde carried a yellow covered book to one of his court appearances, and rumors quickly spread that it was a copy of The Yellow Book, a leading literary periodical that was associated with aestheticism and dandyism and decadence. Long before this periodical became a sensation, French novels often had yellow covers, and were considered an inferior and somewhat salacious form of amusement.
The color took on other connotations of undesirable “foreign” influences. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s narrator obsesses on the elaborate pattern of the arabesque wallpaper. Because she has artistic training but cannot “follow” the pattern or make sense of it, she compares it to toadstools and unwholesome “oriental” influences. If an association with hallucinogenics and opium comes to mind, it is most likely no accident. And although there is a powerful feminist message in the story, there is also a lurking connection to the dismissal of oriental art and culture as impure and ultimately irrational, degenerate influences on “pure” and “clean” Western culture.
The King in Yellow is a volume of short stories by the American writer Robert W. Chambers, published in 1895. The “King in Yellow” is the title of the book and the center story as well as the name of a mysterious character within them. The book and character are referenced in American pop culture and literature, including the H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction and the True Detective Series Season One (2014). The name of the city referenced in the poem that opens the book, Carcosa, comes from a fictional ancient city in a story by Ambrose Bierce, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa.” The central trope in Robert Chambers’s stories is that anyone who reads the play The King in Yellow is irremediably corrupted. And yet, like Pandora and her famous box, several characters are driven by curiosity to the edge of madness and beyond before they finally succumb and seal their fates. In the first short story, The Repairer of Reputations,” an unsavory character is named Mr. Wilde and described as having a yellow face—a type of in joke for readers who know Oscar Wilde’s story.
Roughly between the 17th and 19th centuries (1600s to 1800s), Westerners (Europeans and Americans) referred to people from Asia as the “yellow” races. In the 19th century, Chinese men were allowed to come to the United States and help build the transcontinental railroad, but they were hardly welcome. Most of them were not allowed to bring over their wives and children. They were forced to spend their lives isolated from their loved ones, sending money back home to families that they would never see. Asian, most especially Chinese, immigrants and culture were perceived as a threat which was labelled the “yellow peril.” Very few Chinese women were allowed into the United States, and when they immigrated most were forced into prostitution. “Maiden Lane,” which is now a high end lane of designer shops off of Union Square in San Francisco, was once something quite different. Eventually, the Chinese were allowed to bring wives and children over, but the hurdles were very high and children were frequently separated from their parents, just like Native American children were, so that they could be “Americanized.” In “The Land of the Free,” Sui Sin Far tells a heartbreaking story that happened far too frequently. The television series Warrior (2019-2023) is based on a concept by Bruce Lee and set in 1870s San Francisco. The characters and story are fictional, but broadly speaking the experience of the Chinese, the tensions between them and the Irish, and the political machinations of wealthy individuals are rooted in reality.
The racist connotations of “yellowness” and the idea of racial “infection” or miscegenation include African American ancestry as well as Asian. In “Desiree’s Baby,” a young Louisiana couple wed, and everything seems ideal until their child is born with atypically dark skin and hair that can only lead to one conclusion—he is of mixed African and European race. Mixed heritage children and adults were not infrequent in Creole New Orleans, but their social standing was tenuous at best. It was not uncommon for wealthy young men to have “Octaroon” mistresses before they were married. An “Octoroon” was a person who was 7/8 white and 1/8 black. Many of these women were very fair, very beautiful, and were raised very conservatively. Their only sexual experience was with their wealthy lover, and if they were fortunate he would care for her, at least financially, for life. But marriage was strictly forbidden.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, the term “high yellow” was coded slang for extremely fair mixed race individuals—for example in song “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” In the original lyrics she is a “yellow girl” and the singer refers to himself as a “darkey.” In Gene Autry and Jimmie Long’s 1933 version, the one most well known today, “yellow rose” has replaced “yellow girl” and “fellow” has replaced “darkey.”
The term comes with complex and ugly baggage. Inherently a slur, Black slaves and free individuals nevertheless sometimes enjoyed higher status in a society that valued “whiteness” if they were “high yellow.” In some cases, a fair skinned individual chose to “pass” as white to escape prejudice and limitations—but these practices came at a high personal cost, as they had to renounce contact with all of their family and often move far away to avoid detection. In “Desiree’s Baby,” the Desiree’s family background is unknown—she was adopted. Because her husband begins to shun her and their baby after his birth, she assumes that her husband thinks that she has some African or Creole ancestry; and perhaps he does. But the truth is far more tragic.
