Hammond 1
Darin L. Hammond
Prof. Attebery
English 623
11 April 2023
Drude Krog Janson’s Norwegian American Dream Meme:
Perpetuation and Evolution of Memes in the Cultural Marketplace
With her 1887 publication of A Saloon Keeper's Daughter in Norwegian, Drude
Krog Janson released a powerful literary artifact that has transcended space and
time, but living only briefly in the Norwegian American culture of the time. Orm
Øverland describes how the novel "fell into oblivion so rapidly that….[it] seems
never to have been noticed much in the first place" (“Introduction” XI). However,
in 2002 Janson’s novel re-entered the literary marketplace when Øverland edited a
new edition translated into English by Gerald Thorson. These two began the
critical dialogue concerning the novel. In the preface, Thorson observes that "most
of Astrid's difficulties grow out of the fact that she is a woman in a society
dominated by males" (“Preface” X ), and Øverland more acutely states in the
“Introduction” that Helene Nielson and Astrid Holm "will forge a meaningful life
for two independent women realizing their own special gifts in the service of
mankind. Not in the immigrant community, however – for it is declared to
backward and unready for the kind of life represented by Helene and Astrid – but
in the larger American society" (“Introduction” XXIX). These are valid and
somewhat obvious comments on the novel, but the importance is their publishing
of the novel and beginning the critical dialogue. Shortly after publication, Solveig
Zempel in a book review echoed this interpretation (115-16).
Hammond 2
Since then, in-depth critical arguments emerged in the collection To Become
the Self One Is: A Critical Companion to Drude Krog Janson’s A Saloonkeeper’s
Daughter. Gronstad and Johannessen in their “Introduction” establish the context
of the articles, "The essential and self-conscious activity of the self’s striving to
demarcate its distinguished and distinguishable space is the movement of the self's
coming into being. This is the ‘activity’ of the protagonist[,]… of the novel's
reception, and on one level it is also the activity of American literature and its
history" (9). They clarify here what is at stake in the novel’s interpretation and
reception in the cultural marketplace. Not only is Astrid's meta-cognition of self at
the core of the novel, but as scholars, so is our meta-criticism of American
literature and the canon.
In the collection, Kristina Aurylaite grapples with cultural and spatial binaries
of dominance and subordination that exist in the cultures that Astrid inhabits.
Aurylaite explores "strategies and techniques the protagonist relies on in her
attempts to rewrite the dominant order and to see how she herself is affected by
the process" (172). Stuart Sillars approaches the issue of self and cultures as well,
but employs Roland Barthe’s concept of frames in literary works, arguing that
Astrid's experience "offers a metaphor of the process and the problems of
maturation and isolation that unites the Bildungsroman with the narrative of cross-
cultural engagement" (159). In this he suggests that Astrid's individual character
growth works to metaphorically weave together two distinct frames: Astrid’s
coming of age story, which leads to an existence outside of culture and the novel as
a narrative artifact which enables cultural interchange and exchange (169). In a
study based on cognition and linguistics, Sandra Halverson creatively adopts the
interpretations of Thorson and Øverland, with the intention to examine the
Hammond 3
scientific underpinnings of their view, exploring "the cognitive structures and
processes that underlie all meaning creation, including the linguistic" (97). Her
article follows the recent trend in literary criticism to adopt the methods and
knowledge of current science to dig deeper into the human mind and emotion.
All of these interpretations are astute, and I intend to enter a dialogue with
them, not to undermine, but in the spirit of Halverson, to explore their foundations
in cognitive and evolutionary sciences and to examine the powerful ethos of the
"American dream" in Janson's novel. The methodology I will use stems from
collaboration among the diverse sciences that study memetics, but I ground my
interpretation in more traditional literary criticism, cultural studies. I intend to
discover, with an empirical emphasis, verification of the careful interpretations and
ideas documented above: cross-cultural engagement and circulation, self-identity,
maturation, isolation, and the creation and evolution of Astrid’s new Norwegian
American dream meme. These concepts are broad, but memetics provides a
unifying thread that weaves them together. Janson attempts the nearly impossible
in creating Astrid as a cultural force to resist and evolve the potently static
American dream meme that inaccurately reflects the realities of the immigrant
experience, generating both evolved and new memes centered on the individual
and the feminine thriving independently in the midst of the dominant, mainstream,
masculine culture.
The birth and resurrection of A Saloonkeeper's Daughter points to a unique
aspect of human cultures – that a multiplicity of artifacts (in the broadest sense)
are created and consumed by individuals and groups of people, and if they are
successful, they are perpetuated through time and geography. Janson’s novel is
Hammond 4
embedded in what Brad Evans refers to as "circulating culture[s]" (18). In pursuing
the nature and evolution of the cultural concept, Evans states that:
literature and objects of art, by the ease of their movement across any
number of imagined categorical boundaries, pose the limits of the ‘integrity’
and ‘wholeness’ of anything we might want to call a culture. They become
vehicles for the articulation and disarticulation of different systems of
meaning across discontinuous geographies and temporalities.… [and] move
out of the cultural time. (18)
Janson's novel moves in and out of cultural space (geographies) and time
(temporalities), defying preconceived notions of boundaries demarcating the
preconceived canon and culture. The rebirth of this novel proves Evan’s point
through its circulation of meaning in 1887 and recirculation in the present. He
maps a complex function of literary artifacts; their production and dissemination
impact the culture and are influenced by the cultural context at the time of
circulation.
In this sense when Janson physically writes her story of Astrid on paper, she
captures fragments of herself and the cultural milieu of her day, and once she
publishes the novel she releases these fragments in a cultural artifact unbounded
by time and space. Janson was certainly not the only (nor perhaps the most
important) Norwegian American author publishing in this period, and therefore
other cultural fragments remain to be studied. In fact, Norwegian Americans, in
large part, highly valued education and reading. The noted historian Odd Lovoll
discusses “many gifted men and women who possessed cultural tastes above the
normal” (205). Although these intellects and writers were naught broadly
recognized in the American reading public, “within this [the Norwegian American]
Hammond 5
group they enjoyed much greater respect than if they had tried to pursue a career
in the larger society” (205). There was a niche within the community that highly
valued the Norwegian American writers who wrote in the native tongue. With the
revival of Janson’s text and others, the fragments of culture recirculate, and
influence our culture and how we value and understand the Norwegian American
culture, multilingual immigrant American literature, ourselves, and our history,
extending into the future indefinitely. Evans analyzes the import of this effectively.
He adds that literature is part of “circulating culture—that is to say a thing
produced from relations within a system of meaning, but also that weaves a web of
signification around different geographical sites and times" (20). The ideas of a
circulating culture and a web of signification, within the context of the
transcendent nature of literature, adds needed terminology to utilize his ideas as
an interpretive device.
The literature review above proves his point with the circulation of A
Saloonkeeper's Daughter. In fact our culture is consuming Janson's novel; though
not yet making the New York Times Bestsellers List, it is having a cultural impact.
Even before its translation to English, critics who knew Norwegian, such as
Thorson in his 1957 dissertation, were including discussions of the importance of
the novel, integrated with their histories of Norwegian American literature.
However, the novel's consumption picked up remarkably with the 2002 translation,
and Gronstad and Johannessen reveal that "in the few years since then, the novel
has made its way into reading lists on pluralism, immigrant literature, 19th century
women's literature, to mention a few areas" (9). A couple of examples illustrate
this. In "Coming to America: 50 Greatest Works of Immigration Literature," Drude
Krog Janson is listed first (OEDB par. 2), and her novel receives praise on the PBS
Hammond 6
website under American Masters, “Melting Pot: American Fiction of Immigration”
(Nagle par. 3). A quick Google search reveals countless websites (8,380
actually)that refer to Janson's novel. Clearly, A Saloonkeeper's Daughter has
penetrated the cultural marketplace today.
Evan’s description accounts for this re-circulation, but a gap remains in that
he does not delineate the uniquely human qualities of cognition that explain how
and why it happens. Just as Evan’s cultural concept gives us the language to
discuss the marketplace, memetics provides us with theory and vocabulary to
analyze the underpinnings of how cultural exchange functions, in general, and
specifically in A Saloonkeeper’s Daughter. Most of the infant sciences that led to
the development of memetics began in the post-Cognitive Revolution in the 1960’s
and have exponentially increased what we now about human beings and cultures.1
Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene in 1976 and first proposed the meme
as the basic unit of cultural inheritance, not through offspring but cultural and
cognitive replication. Dawkins expresses excitement for what he refers to as a new
field of evolution:
still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but
already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene
panting far behind.
The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new
replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or
a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a
monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will
forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. (192)
Hammond 7
Dawkins began a discussion of how cultures might evolve in a manner analogous to
genetic evolution, though distinct from natural and sexual selection in the realm of
genes. The idea of cultural archetypes and mythos, in folklore, being perpetuated
through time had been analyzed for some time. Dawkin’s meme, however, adds
dimensions to our understanding of how and why the transmission of cultural
archetypes and mythos occurs. A Saloonkeeper’s Daughter can be thought of as a
meme, or better said, a huge collection of memes that once circulated in the
Norwegian and Norwegian American communities, and now circulating in a
contemporary, much larger society. Her novel, as a meme, competes in the
marketplace of the American literary canon, and the competition for survival is
enormous.
Memetics is a revolutionary cultural concept because it uses our
understanding of genetic evolution as a tool to explain cognitive mechanisms that
exchange, perpetuate, and evolve distinct elements of culture. This is powerful
when juxtaposed with Evan’s study of cultures because it can not only explain
circulation of artifacts in the cultural marketplace, but also how they originated,
how they evolve, how they perpetuate, why they perpetuate, etc. Since 1976,
scientists have studied memetics, and we now have a much clearer understanding
of the field. The word “meme” even has an OED entry: “A cultural element or
behavioral trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population,
although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as
analogous to the inheritance of the gene” (“Meme”). The meme is analogous to the
gene in the sense that it is the base unit of culture just as genes are the base unit
of organisms. However, genes do not transmit them, but rather, human beings do,
from mind to mind or through more permanent artifacts (mind to artifact to mind),
Hammond 8
through imitation principally. In other words, a human being picks up a new meme
by first seeing or hearing it, and then by imitating it. We even understand, now,
the science that allows human beings to imitate memes and other people through
mirror neurons in the brain, but this goes beyond the scope of my paper.
More recent definitions than Dawkins’ original help to inform our
exploration of the cultural circulation of Janson's novel, revealing how a cultural
artifact like this is taken up and spread throughout cultures. Richard Brodie,
synthesizing definitions used by a multiplicity of sciences from neurophysiology to
sociology, describes the meme as a “unit of information in a mind whose existence
influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds” (11). I
would add to this definition that memes can reside can in locations outside the
mind such as artifacts—language and writing most importantly (Blackmore 17).
Brodie and others have compared particularly powerful memes to viruses,
analogous to the biological and computer varieties,
Viruses of the mind [memes] have been with us throughout history, but
they are constantly evolving and changing. They are infectious pieces of our
culture that spread rapidly throughout a population, altering people's
thoughts and lives in their wake. Mind viruses include everything from the
relatively harmless examples, such as miniskirts and slang phrases, to those
that seriously derail people's lives, such as the cycle of unwed mothers on
welfare, the Crips and Bloods youth gangs, and the Branch Davidian
religious cult. When these pieces of culture are ones we like, there’s no
problem. However, just as the Michelangelo computer virus programs
computers with instructions to destroy their data, viruses of the mind can
program us to think and behave in ways that are destructive to our lives.…
Hammond 9
your thoughts are not always your own original ideas. You catch thoughts –
you get infected with them, both directly from other people and indirectly
from viruses of the mind people don't seem to like the idea that they aren't
in control of their thoughts. The reluctance of people to even consider this
notion is probably the main reason the scientific work done so far is not
better known….ideas people don't like have a hard time catching on. (xiv)
Memes that are powerful enough to get themselves replicated through culture
quickly are the mind viruses that Brodie discusses here. They are infectious, but
they can be helpful, innocuous, or harmful. For example, the concept of mind
viruses is useful when thinking of the American dream. This dream is a potent
collection of viral memes. They are viral because they are extraordinarily
successful in getting reproduced in the cultural marketplace. The American dream
appeals to many of the most basic desires of human beings such as land, food,
wealth, protection, and prosperity. The relatively new fields of cognitive science
and evolutionary psychology explain how and why these desires developed in the
primitive, ancestral human environment (see Daniel Dennett’s Darwin's Dangerous
Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life and Steven Pinker’s How the Mind
Works). Because these desires are so deeply embedded in human cognition
through evolution, the ethos of the American dream spreads through and attaches
to cultures rapidly, appealing to the universal and basic desires of human beings. It
is my contention the American dream mind virus is a pernicious one that brought
many immigrants to the “New World” with erroneous ideas about what they would
encounter here. However, despite this, the virus continued to replicate because the
ideas are appealing universal to human beings in all cultures—land for a home,
food for family and self preservation, wealth for permanence and stability, etc.
Hammond 10
Though the dream memes had already existed for a long time, historian
James Adams was actually the first to coin the term “the American dream” in 1931,
and he defined it as:
that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for
everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is
a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and
too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. ... a dream
of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to
the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by
others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth
or position. (Adams 410)
Adams captures the keys of the desire to immigrate to the United States, but of
course the way it would be defined before and after his day would be slightly
different because memes evolove. He created the term to capture this complex
collection of memes that resonate in human beings across the globe, residing in
the evolutionary ancestral parts of the mind.
The addition of memeplexes to the scientific vocabulary helps to clarify a
concept as large as the American dream. These complexes of memes can vary in
size. By definition, a memeplex is a group of closely related memes that function
together and survive to replicate efficiently as a unit in the same way that certain
genes group together in order to be more effective in being perpetuated through
generations (more than a single gene, for example, group together to form the
fight or flight response). This broader concept better explains larger, more
complex units of culture such as making an arch or a weaving a quilt (Blackmore
19-20). The American dream, the Norwegian American dream, and Astrid’s dreams
Hammond 11
are better understood as memeplexes, contextually complex concepts. Blackmore
explains that “Memes [and memplexes] spread themselves around indiscriminately
without regard to whether they are useful, neutral, or positively harmful to us…
successful memes are the ones that get copied and spread, while unsuccessful
ones do not” (6). This is an important concept because when I say that the
American dream is a successful memeplex, I mean that it replicates efficiently, not
that it is realistically or conceptually valid. A good memeplex is one that
reproduces and spreads through a culture, not necessarily one that is deemed
good by other standards such as moral or ethical.
Astrid actually lacks exposure to many of the memeplexes in the cultural
marketplace of her time and place. We meet Astrid in Norway, prior to her
immigration, and she lives in relative isolation: "the old attic was such a splendid
place for a young girl. … Astrid was often alone" (3). In considering her cultural
knowledge, she receives most of her memes and memeplexes from her mother,
father, Annie the caretaker, books, and plays. From both her mother and Annie,
she receives love and kindness, but her mother is on the verge of her demise, and
Annie occupies a subordinate role, so her father becomes an important influence,
planting memes of class and culture that are so important to her father. He "did
not want his children to know about their mother’s ‘common’ origin" (3) by which
he refers to her acting career. In the opposition to what her father sees as the
common in her mother, we are told that "he was a respected merchant who
thought that he had bestowed a great honor upon his wife by raising her up to his
level" (4). While Astrid resists his negative opinion of her mother, the memes of
class are planted in her mind, which is not mature enough to resist the dazzling
view of the upper class and aristocracy. She also picks up the memes connected
Hammond 12
with acting and the theater, and "she acted out her plays and lost herself in
fantasy" (4). In isolation she imitates memes that please her. In her acting she
negotiates the cultural views that she has picked up from these different sources,
and her view of the culture of Norway largely develops in this fantasy. In the
theater Astrid "received new nourishment for her play times" (4). Not only is she
acquiring new memes, but she is evolving them in her playacting. Even when she
occasionally sallies forth with her father into society, she enjoys the solitude of
nature and the fantasy of the theater the most (4) because the memes of isolation
and fantasy are the ones she feels the most comfortable with. When she travels to
Bergen with her father, we see that she places the solitude of nature above that of
her acting, "how puny and paltry all her fantasies now appeared in comparison to
this contact with pure divinity" (5). She disconnects from memes of social reality as
if "she were dreaming of all the delight that life promised her" (4). Her dreaming is
clearly emphasized by Janson, and she characterizes her excursion in nature as "a
single beautiful dream" (5). Astrid is unable to communicate this "inner being," and
although "She wished she could speak to him about her dreams and inner
feelings[,]… she could not" (6). Dream and fantasy are important memes for Astrid
and the reader, and this is her Norway dream, memes connected with her "inner
being" (5) and have little connection with social realities. The narrator tells us that
Astrid is "almost 17 years old…[but she] was late in maturing" (4), emphasizing
that in societal matters she is juvenile. All this is important because Janson is
establishing the memeplex of Astrid's Norwegian dream life which she will
contrast with the memeplex of her American dream.
Books are another meme source for Astrid, a strategy for acquiring memes
in solitude. Reading feeds her Norwegian dream and provides a transition into the
Hammond 13
American dream (she will read in English later). Astrid, in fact, "read everything
she could lay her hands on. To her mother she would read aloud the new literature
as it appeared.… Astrid liked to read aloud even if she did not understand
everything, the words stirred her imagination and she did not read them poorly"
(4). Because of her mother's influence, Astrid is an avid reader, and this passage
indicates that she is acquiring memes in the form of new vocabulary and books
which she uses to feed her fantasies and dream worlds. Her Norwegian cultural
view is narrow, isolated, and fantastic. It is interesting that, at this stage, religion
does not interest her. As "the pastor spoke to her of sin and judgment and hell, his
words passed her by; for those were impossible subjects for her. Life lay in a
radiant light, and she had no use for such word. They did not belong to her dream
world" (4). We see Astrid's resistance to memes that do not belong to the dream
memeplex she has so carefully quilted together from the sources available to her.
Janson carefully crafts Astrid's character and dream memeplex in the space of just
six pages.
When her mother’s death is imminent and Astrid has resolved to become an
actress, "She had suddenly become an adult" (10). However, her mother shares the
story of how her father had crushed her mother's life as an actress and the fact
that she never experienced "a happy day since" (12). This is actually Astrid's next
step towards adulthood as her opinion of her father solidifies into "pure hatred"
(13) because he had caused "that her mother's life spirit had been broken" (13).
Astrid's conversation with her mother ends and "three days later Astrid's mother
died.… Then Astrid was alone" (13, 17). She is now more isolated than before.
Janson then strategically shifts the narrative to Astrid's enemy, her father, and
Hammond 14
transitions to a new memeplex that becomes the center of the novel, the American
dream.
Mr. Holm’s "sly business sense" (13) is quickly undermined by the fact that
"he lacked any real competence" (14). Since competence in business is built upon a
unique memeplex, we learn that her father lacks this, and we doubt his aspirations
for a prosperous new life in America. Janson plants the seed that will subvert the
American dream memeplex as her father will symbolically embody this for Astrid.
He is "spoiled, egotistical," and he treated her mother "like any other piece of
furniture, household possession that he could not easily dispense with" (14).
"Lately he had become extremely nervous and unsociable.…insecure and hesitant"
(14), revealing the emotions of discontent that make him susceptible to the lure of
the American dream memeplex. As the mind virus penetrates his brain, he begins
to think "It's the only way out. Over there I can still have a rosy future. Here all
paths are closed" (17).
This is a typical cause for Norwegian susceptibility to the American dream
memeplex, discontent with Norwegian economics and opportunities. Historians
have extensively studied this area of the period of The Great Migration. “The entire
complex of causes which historians have analyzed was compressed by the
immigrants themselves into a single idea: the hope of social betterment.… It was a
break with tradition, a gamble with the future, a cutting social ties which one
might almost term a revolutionary act” (Haugen 1). Paths seemed to be open to
Holm in a way he had not experienced in Norway, where he met with financial
failure. In a fascinating study of Norwegian immigrant letters, Solveig Zempel
expands on how the Norwegian version of the American dream may have begun
with the initial migration:
Hammond 15
These first immigrants, in spite of the rigors of pioneer life and their
relatively small numbers, established cultural institutions and created a
Norwegian American society ever eager to welcome new members and fresh
blood from Norway.… During the period of mass immigration, the desire to
attain better economic conditions was clearly the primary motivating force.
…Their letters were among the most valuable, accessible, and reliable
sources of information about the New World, the journey, the background
for and consequences of the decision to emigrate. Thus the spread of
information via letters was of great significance in encouraging emigration,
particularly from areas where the idea had already been planted and the
social and economic conditions were ripe. Reliable knowledge of the new
land and the promise of personal success, freedom, and equality that the
first immigrants reported in the letters was often the deciding factor for
others who were considering emigration. Frequently these early letters were
intended as much for public consumption as for private reading, and many
were widely circulated and even printed in newspapers. (ix-x)
Letters home to Norway, then, fostered and perpetuated the American dream, the
idea at first being the more Norwegians in America, the better chance all had to
thrive. However, Zempel also points to economic conditions as a motivating factor.
A mysterious detail has been prevalent in many works of immigrant fiction, and
in particular in A Saloonkeeper’s Daughter—the widespread prosperity of the
immigrant in America was inaccurate:
The reality was that though success and wealth did happen to a few, the
majority of immigrants were faced with financial hardships, social isolation
through prejudices and exclusions, and loneliness based on their memories
Hammond 16
of home. These forced immigrants to live in ethnic communities, where they
could establish a network of institutions and associations that allowed them
to function within an environment they knew through culture and language.
The overcrowding of the tenements, poverty, crime, and the separation of
families all contributed to the immigrant losing the American dream.
(Rhodes 11-12)
In The Ethnic Press: Shaping the American Dream, Leara Rhodes also explores the
significant role that newspapers played in perpetuating the memeplex. Through
advertising, stories, letters, and columns published in the ethnic presses, the
memeplex arrived back to old country, usually portraying a distorted and
exaggerated view of the New World.
Overcome by this powerful memeplex, Mr. Holm decides that "America is
the right place for me. There a man with knowledge and experience can get ahead.
It's a Republic and a land of free institutions. I belong there where one is free of all
this aristocratic nonsense.…lately I have come to believe that a republic is the best
form of government" (19). The virus is clearly taken hold, and despite the fact that
economic discontent drives his reception of the memeplex, the text reveals little
about any other vehicles which carried it to him. However, the historians I have
cited describe the likely sources.
After her father squashes her dream to be an actress, he reveals his plan to
relocate in America, and while Astrid is initially reluctant, she eventually embraces
this as perhaps the best possible way to fulfill her dreams. She asks herself "Would
she ever amount to anything in the world? She had had such wonderful dreams!
Oh, to be free! And now she was going to America. To America! Perhaps, when it
came down to it, that was the best. She lifted her head. There is so much freedom
Hammond 17
there. Maybe there could be freedoms for her, too. At any rate, she might just as
well venture out and see a little of the world" (20). She follows the same pattern as
her father, discontent leading to vulnerability to the American dream memeplex.
Astrid begins to embrace the idea fully, and she "read the English diligently on her
own, for she had no money to pay for lessons and that was much more fun than to
work in the house" (23). As is her habit, Astrid sheds her old dream but embraces a
new fantasy, preferring to read and learn English over the practical assistance she
might give to her aunt. The American dream memeplex overcomes her, and:
When she was alone, Astrid's thoughts turned more and more to America. It
was good that she would soon get away. She could no longer stand it in
Norway. Gradually, all her trainings were focused on America for she was so
young and vibrant with hope and zest for life that she had to dream. In
America she would begin to live again, and she dreamed of endless sun-lit
plains where people were happy, where all could follow a call, and where no
one treated others harshly because of prejudice. (23)
Her discontent with Norway grows because, since her mother's death, her
homeland has become a place of reality for her with sorrow and pain, outside her
dream world. We see that she believes faith and ambition are all that is needed to
embrace her calling in America and to realize her dreams. Astrid sees America as a
place without prejudice. This new virus excites her because she sees the
possibility of returning to a dream world in isolation on the romanticized "endless
sun-lit plains." The final impetus to embrace the memeplex arrives with the
reception of “a letter from her father. He wrote that he was in the wine business
and was earning good money. … Astrid became excited" (23). The letter is an
artifact that replicates and perpetuates the American dream, and ironically, this
Hammond 18
letter is a lie just as the dream itself. Zempel, as noted above, suggests that letters
from home often exaggerated the positive and deemphasized the negative in
America, and Astrid’s father’s letter fits in with this genre.
As Astrid sees "her last glimpse of Norway" (23) on the ship and “dreamed of
the unknown land toward which she was sailing … for Astrid there was something
strangely impressive in this steady course – a feeling of being carried forward
eternally with a divine power that was totally incomprehensible to her" (25).
Norway is now connected with the death of her mother, America is associated in
Astrid's mind with God, a significant part of the American dream memeplex. When
Astrid catches the sight of Long Island, she is overwhelmed initially with a promise
fulfilled:
She was happy as she gazed full of hope and youthful courage at the
promised land. … the steamship sailed into New York's harbor. What a
commotion and what beauty! How open it lay with its fully outstretched
arms so arrogantly confident in its rich splendor. It could easily welcome a
large share of the world's rejects, the poor, and the homeless! It was
confident of being the entrance to a better life, to human value, and to
human rights. Hope and courage for the future would fill even the most
forsaken when such an individual was welcomed by all this beauty after her
lonely voyage and anxious brooding on what the future might bring. … Star-
spangled banners waved from the ships’ masts. (26)
Astrid connects with all of the key memes in the American dream: a promised land,
a confident beauty, a rich splendor, a refuge for the world, a political force that
valued human beings, a land of hope, and a Star-Spangled Banner. Still in the
Hammond 19
dream, "such was Astrid's entrance into the New World" (27). However, cognitive
dissonance awaits her in the reality of the streets of Minneapolis.
Not surprisingly, based upon the memes that are programmed in her mind,
Astrid expects to be embraced, and not because of the reality she has experienced
in life, but due to the new dream world that she has created. She is struck by the
contrasting reality when "Late one dusty afternoon they arrived in Minneapolis"
(27), and Astrid "was so much the stranger and so alone" (27). Astrid is familiar
with isolation, but nothing like the experience of being a foreigner. Overland notes
in his book Immigrant Minds, American Identities that “ In common American
usage the noun foreigner has had one meaning not registered in major dictionaries
of American English: an American or a resident in the United States who is not of
British origin” (1). Ironically, this view was not just held by those of British origin,
but also by many immigrants who were of the previous generation of migration.
Astrid is a foreigner in Minneapolis, and she notices "How ugly it was – flat and
dusty, with a few poorly constructed little houses scattered on the naked prairies.
God forbid! People could not live here" (28). The contrast between the dream and
reality is startling to Astrid and to the reader. Her father picks her up and takes
her to a small house where "She saw a barely distinguishable sign over the door on
which the word Saloon appeared in large letters. She smelled an unpleasant odor"
(28). Astrid is shocked when her father tells her, "This is where we live" (28).
Her reaction to this overwhelming experience is our introduction to the
temperance meme in the novel – "Saloonkeeper, saloonkeeper….We sell liquor, and
people come here to get drunk. That is what I have come to America for. It seems
ridiculous"(31). However, Holm had little choice in the occupation because he did
not speak English, and "it has not been as easy for Holm to make his way in
Hammond 20
America as he had thought it would be….His only choice was manual labor or the
saloon" (31). After a drunken brawl, we hear Astrid's view of the saloon through
the mouth of the drunkard, "you're no better than a swine taking money out of the
pockets of poor people.… You think you're so much better than simple laborers,
but I would rather get myself drunk every night than be a saloonkeeper – a
damned saloonkeeper" (30). For Astrid as well, laborer is far better than
bartender. This is the harsh reality that contrasts the "big dreams of carving out a
brilliant future in America" (32), and even her father sees his situation as "a
disgrace" (32). He finds his situation most disgraceful when he thinks of the old
country, but "It was, at any rate, a comfort to him that none of his old
acquaintances and friends saw him in these circumstances, and in America, of
course, you had to take life as it came" (32). The same idea of taking America as is
repeats several times, and when Holm thinks about how he has to mingle with the
class beneath him he sees it as a "necessary evil" (32). The memeplex of the
American dream has already been changed by the reality of existence in
Minneapolis in Holm’s mind, and rather than taking and acquiring things, he must
accept circumstances as they are. This also presents the meme of assimilation
which involves the shedding of old cultural values and adopting those of the new
country. This is a powerful survival meme as, sometimes, life becomes easier in
America when you abandon the old country completely. Unfortunately, Norwegian
Americans found it difficult fitting in either way.
From Astrid's point of view, she is a marginalized other in the landscape and
becomes a stranger to herself. She is horrified by this new world, and "It was as if
all her youth had passed away in one night and all that was left was a hopeless,
flat, despondent shadow" (34). She feels a loss of identity in America, and the
Hammond 21
dream that she held close is replaced by the harsh and vulgar reality of
Minneapolis and the saloon. In an attempt to placate her, Astrid's father tries to
clarify the difference between the old world and the new. "You must realize that
this thing isn't regarded the same way over here as it is in Norway," he reasons.
"In the eyes of others over here, one man is as good as any other – no matter what
kind of work he does – as long as he makes an honest living" (34). He appropriates
the language the American dream to rationalize his new position as a
saloonkeeper, but Astrid sees through his hypocrisy thinking to herself "for her to
be an actress was an impossibility and a disgrace, but this was not a disgrace"
(34). Her father has placed the title "saloonkeeper's daughter" upon her and
removed her individual sense of self as an actress. Her dream world is displaced by
reality. The loss of identity and her individual dream combined with the falsity of
the American dream meme cause a cognitive dissonance and depression. "She was
so infinitely lonely and forlorn in a foreign land without knowing a single person,
not one to whom she could relate her unhappiness" (35). She is not only a
foreigner in the land, but also a foreigner to herself as her sense of identity is
stripped away. In the beginning, "Astrid hardly ever went out" because she "feared
the swarm of strange people…when darkness closed in…[she] sneaked out" (37).
Her fear of society is not new, but more intense now in the foreign land full of
memes and people unfamiliar to her. "She alone slunk around forsaken and lonely
without person in the entire populous city who knew her or could help her in her
distress" (37).
Furthermore, she sees herself as a foreigner because of gender. While her
father repeatedly tells her to "be a sensible girl" (35), she questions "Was it not
just because she was a woman that he dared to behave in this manner toward her?
Hammond 22
Would he have dared do it if she had been a man?… Oh, if only she had been a
boy!" (35). Gender roles are webs of memeplexes, and she questions her value as a
woman, which contributes to her loss of self. If women are not valued, then she
cannot see herself as being valued. Her sexuality becomes foreign to her.
When she is stripped of the memeplexes upon which she has established her
identity, she latches on to a portion of the American dream memeplex as a possible
salvation. She feels that:
Her sense of misfortune had not abated, but a growing need to fight against
it awoke in her. She wanted to take forcibly what life did not offer her
willingly. Complex and strong characters bend far more hopelessly under
adversity than others, but they recover more easily, having absorbed new
courage from their misfortune. She began to consider what she should do.
(39)
She searches for bravery in the face of hardship and the will to take what she
needs by force and strength, and in doing this she is reconstructing fragments of
the American dream memeplex. When this happens, the American dream within
her is vulnerable to mutation, and Janson intends this for her character–to evolve a
distinct American dream memeplex, a new vision for American life. However, to
complete this vision, Astrid as a complex and strong character must bend some
more. The opportunity to mingle with "people of culture" (41) soon presents itself,
and Astrid begins to know her social self for the first time in her life. However,
society embodies all of the vices that she despises in her father and of culture in
the singular sense: gender, class, linguistic, and ethnic prejudices (40-7). Because
she is a novice in society, the cultured people of Minneapolis grasp her in their
clutches. She is especially enticed by the opportunity to act finally, but with the
Hammond 23
"intention to educate and refine the public" (46). With this pretension she begins
and quickly ends her acting career, admitting that "she did not know the public"
(46). But how can she when she has always isolated herself from it? Her forays into
society are dramatic failures as she is pulled this way and that by factions with
distinct agendas, and the masculine one is particularly dangerous for Astrid.
After attempting to kiss her and getting a "hard blow on the ear, " Meyer, a
would-be suitor, responds with "you will pay for this, you saloonkeeper's wench"
(55). Few things could have hurt Astrid more. He continues to slander her name
among those in society. The memes saloonkeeper and wench are powerfully
negative in Astrid's mind, and the bad reputation of a woman spreads quickly in
society; a sullied reputation is among the most negative, powerful, and viral
memes among this group. The strength and resolve that Astrid had gained from
drawing upon the American dream wanes, and Astrid thinks to herself "she was a
saloonkeeper's daughter, neither more nor less, and would never be anything else.
… The platitudes about culture, knowledge, and intellect that came so easily to her
father and Meyer – oh, how she hated it all. She had all of the sudden become so
terribly enlightened" (73). Again she feels the pull of isolation as she is mistreated
by society, and her sense of self and womanhood are undermined. She is left
vulnerable to her next male acquaintance.
She is next courted by "Mr. Smith, attorney at law" (78), who turns out to be
yet more dangerous than Meyer. Astrid has mixed feelings for Mr. Smith because
on the one hand, "in his company she was safe from their contempt" (81), and on
the other, he uses this same power to overwhelm her. Resulting from this is
another, more severe identity crisis—her newfound power in the American dream
meme erodes. She recognizes a lack of power because of her gender:
Hammond 24
What kind of the society was she living in? A man could be whatever he
wanted, and he was still accepted. No matter how immoral his talk or
tactless his behavior, he was always tolerated, while a poor defenseless girl
who had done nothing wrong was despised and shunned until she came
under the man's protection. Well, if that was the way it was, and she would
simply adjust. And that is precisely what she did.… She rode home with
Smith with a mixed feeling of gratitude for him and the deepest scorn for
herself. She trembled in fright when she thought about the way she was
going. She accepted the love of a man whose look burned her and his animal
desire made her tremble. Still, she had, of course, no other way to go. Life's
icey, cruel hand work its way with her. (81)
We glimpse, in the beginning of this powerful passage, Astrid questioning the
culture she is living in, a culture where men have the power and women are
severely mistreated unless shielded and possessed by a man. Again, she adjusts
the American dream memeplex that she is creating, and she points to the
problems. However, she is incapable at this point of pinning down the correct
solution. She sees no other way to proceed, thinking that she must give in to the
look that burns, man's animal desire. Not until she overcomes this great obstacle
in her thinking will she be able to solidify the new American dream memeplex. She
also fails to resist Smith when he undermines the old world, "those Norwegian
scoundrels that we have such a confounded overabundance of here in America.
They want to live but they don't want to work"(85). Astrid attempts to resist, but
the Yankee will not be counseled by man or woman.
Hammond 25
Astrid is at her best in the solitude of nature which ties her back to the
innocent time of isolation in her life. She makes progress in thinking critically
about the American dream:
The lake alone remembered the old days. It alone could not forget.
Civilization had made its entry. It had come with its all ruling, all crushing
power, and it had been in a hurry because all this had been done in thirty
years. What did it care about what it had crushed under its feet or that blood
and tears sprouted in the path of its victorious progress! Thirty years! How
much had changed! A long time, and yet only a drop in the larger stream of
evolution. (88)
Astrid recognizes the violent colonization of the masculine American dream that
invades, crushes, and conquers. She criticizes this mentally, but is stifled by Smith
when she voices her feminine opinion. "I was thinking about the poor Indians… It's
a hard fate they have endured" (89), Astrid offers astutely. Smith replies as the
masculine colonist: "Damned if they were worth any better. They're nothing but
scoundrels and thieves – the whole lot of them just don't worry your little head
over them" (89). As the embodiment of the masculine American dream and the
Yankee, Smith reveals his base prejudices against both the Native Americans and
women. Astrid condemns herself because "she had given them every right to talk
that way by always accepting everything from him.… Now, at least, they open their
gilded halls to her, she thought with a bitter smile" (90). She identifies here the
gap in her new American dream memeplex, that her silence surrenders her power
and that in order to be accepted in this culture she had to be silent. She must
locate her self identity and voice in order to complete a new dream. She sees in
nature the metaphor for her dream "– nature’s eternal, solemn stillness….How
Hammond 26
good this quietness was! Why did human beings have to torment each other with
their endless turmoil and fuss?...It’s as if one is the only living creature in this
mysterious world” (91). Her voice and self identity lie in this eternal stillness and
in a certain type of solitude, not the isolation of her past and not the masculine
concept of society that is torture. In nature, she sees a feminine stillness that is
powerful and quiet, but not silent. She must find this within herself to complete the
new memeplex and hope that the evolved American dream will be successful in
being replicated across the geographies of cultures.
Contrasting this vision, Smith forces Astrid's engagement with his masculine
conquering power. "Now you are mine!" (96), he exclaims. It appears as if the
cycle will repeat, Astrid entering marriage as a possession like her mother had.
The memeplexes transmitted to her since childhood seem to be replicated in the
next generation. Astrid recognizes what she has done, but reconciles herself to it,
thinking "Had she really sold herself? She touched her throat at the place he had
last kissed her, rubbing it unconsciously.… She had spent herself. Tomorrow she
would receive her betrothed" (96-7). She laments this but lacks the power to resist
as her new American dream memeplex remains incomplete. "Her dream" of acting
the part of a submissive wife, the dream of her past, "had become bitter reality, the
play most horribly serious" (99). She lacks the power to enforce her own will and
identity. However, she is the filling the standard Norwegian American dream by
marrying up and assimilating, and it immediately produces results. Now, she is
complete in the eyes of society, and:
Everywhere she was received with open arms and a friendly smile. The past
no longer existed.… Now she was one of them. Was she more happy? Well,
she had been attracted by a certain numbing sense of comfort. She was fond
Hammond 27
of wealth and being beautifully clothed in rich fabrics. She loved life, color,
beauty. (99).
The American dream memeplex is powerful, virulent, and consuming. In the arms
of a man in the upper class, she is accepted, elevated. The result of the American
dream fulfilled is numbness.
Astrid, in her pit of resignation, holds no hope of a savior, but one comes in
Bjørnson, "that miraculous man who from her childhood had stood in her
imagination as the greatest and the grandest. Now, in her hour of humiliation,
when she had given up everything, he was coming" (103). Bjørnson, based upon a
real Norwegian writer, is embedded deep within Astrid's mind as a powerful meme
with heroic qualities, but she has given up her dream entirely, resigned herself to
the Yankee fate despite the fact that Smith's "touch was repulsive to her" (103).
She doubts that men like Bjørnson can still exist in the world because the reality of
the American experience had so thoroughly proven otherwise. However, the man
does exist outside of her imagination. He is not simply a meme within her brain.
"She stared up in amazement at that strapping figure who stood in the middle of
the stage with his proud head cast back, determination and courage expressed in
every feature. So there were still such men to be found in the world! She had
almost forgotten it" (104). In the terminology of cognitive science, she had nearly
erased the meme that embodied Bjørnson.
Her hero immediately begins to change her perspective and draws her back
to the new Norwegian American dream memeplex she had been creating. Bjørnson
inspires Astrid with:
the joy of a new sense of faith, faith in mankind, a faith that there was still
something in life worth fighting for. She absorbed each word he said…
Hammond 28
words so vivid, so full of power, wit, humor, and gentleness that they
touched hidden heartstrings and caused the minds that never rose above
material concerns to soar in rapture it was the spirit's triumph over matter,
enthusiasm's victory over apathy. (104)
Astrid speaks her of specific memes and memeplexes, ones that appeal to her inner
being and sense of self. She speaks of the power of words, which in memetic terms
are individual memes, and Bjørnson taps into potent memeplexes, viral ones that
trigger emotion and thoughts in even those people that Astrid sees as uneducated.
His speech is so potent memetically because he is a dynamic lecturer speaking of
ideas that connect with the cognitive structures in the minds of his audience. The
lecture is similar to the American dream memeplex in that sense, but it is not the
false dream, the misrepresented reality that drove the Norwegians to immigration.
With this inspiration, Astrid finds the courage or, as she phrases it, the
"Desperation [that] gave her strength, and she tore herself loose" (104) from
Smith. While this is not their final parting, it is the beginning of the end. In his
toast after the lecture, Bjørnson speaks of "the homeland –‘That great home which
we each have in ourselves.’ He had never known until now, he said, quietly and
seriously, what power the homeland had over a person's mind" (109). From both a
cognitive and cultural perspective, Bjørnson is accurate in naming the potent
influence of one's native culture, the old country Norway in this case. And they
possess that great home through the powerful memeplexes embedded in the
cognitive structures of the mind.
Once home, Astrid finds that "It was impossible for her to think of sleeping.
She was wide awake. She had not been so wide awake for a year. What had she
been thinking all this time?" (113). Sleep is an apt way of describing her lack of
Hammond 29
thinking over the past year, or more precisely, her abandonment of the new dream
memeplex which ironically requires her to be wide awake as she is now. She writes
a letter to Smith telling him "I will never be your wife" (114) and removes the
engagement ring that has been fixed upon her finger, strangling her. She goes to
Bjørnson, knowing that he is the one from the old country that possesses the final
memes she needs in order to construct her own individual Norwegian American
dream memeplex. She tells him her story, revealing her past vision of the American
dream, saying "I thought of America as the land of freedom where something must
be waiting for me" (117). She asks him to reveal her mission, that which is missing
still.
Astrid has known the answer all along, but it's as if she needs a great man to
give her permission to retain the meme. In the midst of the lengthy conversation,
Bjørnson reveals that he is:
more assured in my mind than ever that women's capabilities are equal to
men's. It is only the terribly unjust circumstances of society that have
intimidated women and held them down. Therefore, you women who now
begin to see clearly have a double responsibility: first, to save your own
lives, and afterwards by your example to save those of the thousands of
women who follow you.… to develop her own individuality and to sacrifice it
for her suffering sisters… You must take charge of your life. You have no
excuse. (121)
He even plants the meme in her mind of becoming "a minister like those found
here in America – gentle, loving men and women who proclaim peace on earth"
(120). Astrid must read and become informed, Bjørnson instructs her. In other
words, she must gather memes and memeplexes that will inform and educate her.
Hammond 30
"You will better understand, not only yourself," he tells her, "but all of life around
you….Be a part of the great, pulsing human life" (119). With the help of her
acquaintance Helene, who is already on this journey, Astrid is able to complete her
own feminine Norwegian American dream memeplex, but since memes are units of
culture, the help she finally receives from others is necessary as she reenters
society for the first time in a healthy way. Bjørnson indicates that her memeplex
will become viral as she helps her fellow sisters acquire it. Although she decides on
this mission, she remains doubtful that she will be able to accomplish it:
She would be a minister who took as her mission the defense of the
oppressed and who taught her fellow beings that the main purpose in life
was a noble life. But could she speak so others would be moved? Was her
own enthusiasm pure enough and strong enough for her to influence others?
Would those who heard her grow in their desire to live higher and nobler
lives? (140)
Astrid wonders whether the memeplex is strong enough to catch in the minds of
those she serves. She questions whether she is an individual has the power and
charisma to convey these memes in a way that makes them attractive, persuasive,
and viral.
In some ways the conclusion is disappointing, as Astrid is temporarily
silenced by Meyer and other masculine rowdies. However, "For a moment all
became quite still, and Astrid began to speak.… She impressed them with her
calm, erect bearing. A power emanated from her that subdued the rowdy
temperaments" (142). The narrator makes clear that Astrid does possess the power
now to spread the new memeplex, but after she speaks for a while "It was
impossible for Astrid to get a word out" (142). She is silenced by the meme in the
Hammond 31
novel's title. Meyer reveals that she is "a saloonkeeper's daughter." The resolution
is satisfying in that she escapes Minneapolis, as recommended by Helene, and is
ordained a minister at Unity Church in Chicago. Astrid ends the novel by speaking
with her uniquely feminine voice, and for the first time "She felt that her words had
power. She was at home here. She had not mistaken her call. She had reached her
destination" (150). Her memes (her new spoken words) and her memeplex (her
newly conceived call) have power and are successful.
What remains to be seen is whether Janson's memeplex, the novel, will
retain its power. Thorson and Øverland have made this a possibility by
recirculating it in the cultural marketplace, and many other scholars have made
the marketplace more receptive to immigrant, multiethnic, and multilingual
literature. If her novel survives the canon selection over time, Astrid's beautiful,
feminine, Norwegian, American dream memeplex has the chance of surviving as
well.
Although I have described each of its parts along the way, I have yet to fully
define this new memeplex that Astrid (Janson) creates. If I were to create an OED
entry, it might look something like this:
Astrid's Norwegian American dream n. an alternative and contrast to the
traditional American dream. The aspiration that every human being is
entitled to the opportunity of maintaining equal status and power
(regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, language, or any other qualifier),
living a noble life, pursuing a calling, achieving a strong self identity and
happiness, receiving justice and freedom, and retaining all aspects of
cultural identity. The belief that all human beings are obliged to
Hammond 32
courageously assist all life on the land in attaining these entitlements and
that no human being on the land shall be considered a foreigner or stranger.
Hammond 33
Note
This upheaval in the science of the mind began with Noam Chomsky’s Verbal
Behavior, by B. F. Skinner in 1959 which thrashed the then definitive behaviorist
conception of humans promoted by B. F. Skinner. This stunningly powerful attack
prompted scholars to notice Chomsky’s previously published Syntactic Structures
(1957) which permanently altered the way scientists conceived the human mind.
He replaced the obsolete model with the idea that infants are born with innate
structures in the brain which are preprogrammed to learn and produce
grammatical language. The idea of “innateness” in the human mind started the
revolution—a plethora of new disciplines springing out of nowhere to catch up with
the power of Chomsky’s view into the brain (all disciplines with the
prefixes/suffixes of cognitive, evolutionary, and neuro as well as every discipline
involving computers). See Stephen Pinker’s The Language Instinct: How the Mind
Creates Language (1994) and How the Mind Works (1997) for a detailed history
connecting Chomsky to current cognitive sciences.
Works Cited
"Meme." The Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.
Adams, James Truslow, and Whit Burnett. The American Dream : A Reprint of the
Epilogue to the Epic of America Reprinted from this is My Past. San Jose,
CA: Industrial Arts Laboratory Press, San Jose State College, 1945. Print.
Aurylaite, Kristina. "Spaces of Access and Prohibition in Drude Krog Janson's A
Saloonkeeper's Daughter." To Become the Self One is: A Critical Companion
to Drude Krog Janson's A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Eds. Asbjørn Grønstad
and Lene Johannessen. Oslo, Norway: Novus Press, 2005. 171-184. Print.
Hammond 34
Axtell, James, William J. Baker, and Orm Øverland. American Perceived. New
Haven, CN: Pendulum Press, 1974. Print.
Bergland, Betty A., and Lori Ann Lahlum. Norwegian American Women :
Migration, Communities, and Identities. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical
Society Press, 2011. Print.
Blackmore, Susan J. The Meme Machine. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
Brodie, Richard. Virus of the Mind : The New Science of the Meme. Carlsbad, CA:
Hay House, 2009. Print.
Castillo, S. "A Saloonkeeper's Daughter (Drude Krog Janson)." Womens Writing
11.3 (2004): 512-4. Print.
Chomsky, Noam. Syntactic Structures. The Netherlands: Mouton, 1957. Print.
Chomsky, Noam. Verbal Behavior, by B. F. Skinner. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1959. Print.
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Print.
Dennett, Daniel Clement. Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings
of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Print.
Evans, Brad. Before Cultures : The Ethnographic Imagination in American
Literature, 1865-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Print.
Grønstad, Asbjørn, and Lene Johannessen, eds. To Become the Self One is : A
Critical Companion to Drude Krog Janson's A Saloonkeeper's Daughter.
Oslo, Norway: Novus Press, 2005. Print.
Halverson, Sandra. "Cognitive Resonance in A Saloonkeeper's Daughter." To
Become the Self One is: A Critical Companion to Drude Krog Janson's A
Hammond 35
Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Eds. Asbjørn Grønstad and Lene Johannessen.
Oslo, Norway: Novus Press, 2005. 97-112. Print.
Haugen, Einar. The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual
Behavior. 1 Vol. Philidelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1958. Print.
Heath, Chip, Chris Bell, and Emily Sternberg. "Emotional Selection in Memes: The
Case of Urban Legends." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81.6
(2001): 1028-41. Print.
Higham, John. Strangers in the Land Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1992. Print.
Hochschild, Jennifer L. Facing Up to the American Dream : Race, Class and the
Soul of the Nation. Ewing, NJ: Princeton UP, 1995. Print.
Janson, Drude Krog. A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Tran. Gerald Thorson. Ed. Orm
Øverland. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2002. Print.
Lovoll, Odd Sverre. Promise of America : A History of the Norwegian-American
People (Revised Edition). Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1999. Print.
Luebbering, Ken. "Redefining 'American:' the Creation of Identity in A
Saloonkeeper's Daughter." To Become the Self One is: A Critical Companion
to Drude Krog Janson's A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Eds. Asbjørn Grønstad
and Lene Johannessen. Oslo, Norway: Novus Press, 2005. 57-66. Print.
Nagel, James. "Melting Pot: American Fiction of Immigration." March 2007. Web.
12 October 2011
<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/ideas/melting_article.html>.
OEDB. "Coming to America: 50 Greatest Works of Immigration Literature." Web.
12 October 2011 <http://oedb.org/library/features/coming-to-america:-50-
greatest-works-of-immigration-literature>.
Hammond 36
Øverland, Orm,. America Perceived: A View from Abroad in the 20th Century. West
Haven, Conn.: Pendulum Press, 1974. Print.
---. America Perceived: A View from Abroad in the 20th Century. West Haven, CN.:
Pendulum Press, 1974. Print.
---. Home-Making Myths : Immigrants' Claims to a Special Status in their New
Land. Odense: Center for American Studies, Odense University, 1996. Print.
---. Immigrant Minds, American Identities : Making the United States Home, 1870-
1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Print.
---. The Western Home : A Literary History of Norwegian America. Northfield, MN:
U of Minnesota P, 1996. Print.
Øverland, Orm. "Becoming White in 1881: An Immigrant Acquires an American
Identity." Journal of American Ethnic History 23.4, The Study of "Whiteness"
(2004): pp. 132-141. Print.
---. "Introduction." A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Tran. Gerald Thorson. Ed. Orm
Øverland. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2002. xi-xxxiv. Print.
Pimple, Kenneth D. "The Meme-Ing of Folklore." Journal of Folklore Research 33.3
(1996): pp. 236-240. Print.
Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 1997. Print.
---. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: William
Marrow, & Co., 1994. Print.
Ragaisiene, Irena. "Desire, Dream, and Reality: The New Woman in A
Saloonkeeper's Daughter." To Become the Self One is: A Critical Companion
to Drude Krog Janson's A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Eds. Asbjørn Grønstad
and Lene Johannessen. Oslo, Norway: Novus Press, 2005. 83-96. Print.
Hammond 37
Rhodes, Leara. The Ethnic Press : Shaping the American Dream. New York: Peter
Lang, 2010. Print.
Semmingsen, Ingrid. Norway to America : A History of the Migration. Minneapolis,
MN: U of Minnesota P, 1978. Print.
Sillars, Stuart. "The Visual Sense and Cultural Exclusion in A Saloonkeeper's
Daughter." To Become the Self One is: A Critical Companion to Drude Krog
Janson's A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Eds. Asbjørn Grønstad and Lene
Johannessen. Oslo, Norway: Novus Press, 2005. 159-170. Print.
Thaler, Peter. Norwegian Minds-- American Dreams : Ethnic Activism among
Norwegian-American Intellectuals. Newark; London; Cranbury, NJ:
University of Delaware Press ; Associated University Presses, 1998. Print.
Thorson, Gerald. America is Not Norway : The Story of the Norwegian-American
Novel. 1980. Print.
---. "Translator's Preface." A Saloonkeeper's Daughter. Tran. Gerald Thorson. Ed.
Orm Øverland. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins U P, 2002. xi-xxxiv. Print.
Winter, Molly Crumpton. American Narratives : Multiethnic Writing in the Age of
Realism. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU P, 2007. Print.
Zempel, Solveig, et al. "Review of A Saloonkeeper's Daughter." Journal of American
Ethnic History 22.3 (2003): 115-6. Print.
Zempel, Solveig. "Book Review: a Saloonkeeper's Daughter by Drude Krog Janson."
Journal of American Ethnic History 22.3 (2003): 115-6. Print.
---. In their Own Words : Letters from Norwegian Immigrants. Minneapolis, MN: U
Minnesota P, 1991. Print.
Top Related