Alienating Intimacy: Male Friendship and Author-Reader Relationship in the Antebellum Imagination

Abstract

This dissertation examines representations of male friendship in antebellum American literature, moving beyond idealized portrayals of unity to explore the dynamics of estrangement, disconnection, and failure. While male friendship has often been celebrated as a cornerstone of democratic ideals, this study introduces the concept of “alienating intimacy.” This paradoxical form of attachment emphasizes emotional distance and difference, challenging conventional notions of intimacy and communion. Through the works of Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman, I argue that these authors use male friendship to interrogate the tensions between intimacy and alienation, extending these dynamics to the author-reader relationship.The first chapter examines Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, connecting his failed contemporary relationships to a yearning for an ideal future reader. By situating his vision of friendship within a broader temporal framework, the chapter demonstrates how Thoreau anticipates a distant, sympathetic readership. The second chapter explores Hawthorne’s ambivalence toward intimacy in The Scarlet Letter and his prefaces, where he resists reader transparency. This resistance mirrors the failed relationships between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, with Hawthorne challenging traditional ideals of sympathy by portraying friendship as inherently isolating and hostile. The third chapter investigates betrayal and estrangement in Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and The Confidence-Man. The failures of these relationships reflect Melville’s anxieties about his readers, presenting friendship as both disconnected and paradoxically intimate. The final chapter analyzes Whitman’s poetics of impersonal intimacy in Leaves of Grass. Through themes of contagion, decomposition, and sympathy, Whitman reimagines intimacy as a radical, boundary-transcending force. By presenting various aspects of “alienating intimacy,” this dissertation reconsiders the dynamics of male friendship and the author-reader relationship, emphasizing negativity and disconnection as central to their representation. This framework deepens contemporary theories of intimacy and offers fresh perspectives on nineteenth-century American literature.