The Haunted Valley by Ambrose Bierce -- Commentary
The
Haunted Valley
Short Story by
Ambrose Bierce, Commentary
"The Haunted
Valley" was Ambrose Bierce's first published story. It appeared in 1871 in the Overland Magazine. It deals with gender ambiguity, same sex
relationships, racial bigotry, and murder in the American West. The story is divided into two parts. In the first part, the narrator is traveling
through a remote area, presumably in California, although it doesn't say so
specifically, where he encounters Jo. Dunfer, a rancher whose most salient
personal qualities seem to be his bigotry against Chinese people and his
penchant for whiskey. Dunfer launches
into a narrative about taking on a Chinese man, Ah Wee, as a cook and servant
five years previous. Ah Wee and a man
named Gopher assist Dunfer in felling trees for a cabin he had wished to build
on a remote part of the ranch. Ah Wee is
incompetent at felling trees and Jo Dunfer admits to killing him for this and
other faults. The narrative is disrupted
at this point by a dramatic scream and Jo. Dunfer's collapse. Jo. Dunfer's assistant [Gopher, although he
is not named at this point] enters and the narrator briefly encounters him. This incident is not explained in any great
detail and the narrator leaves it in this ambiguous state. He departs Jo. Dunfer's residence in a
disturbed state of mind and on his journey chances to come upon the grave of Ah
Wee with this curious inscription.
AH WEE -- CHINAMAN
Age unknown. Worked for Jo. Dunfer.
This monument is erected by him to keep
the Chink's
memory green. Likewise as a warning to Celestials
not to take on airs. Devil take 'em!
She Was a Good Egg.
The choice of
pronouns is an operative point.
The second part of
the narrative takes place four years later when the protagonist returns to the
same area. This time he encounters
Gopher, the other (white) assistant to Jo. Dunfer. The narrator inquires about Jo. Dunfer and is
informed that he is dead and in the grave beside Ah Wee. Gopher accompanies the narrator to the grave
and tells him that indeed Jo. Dunfer had killed Ah Wee, but not out of
frustration with his abilities as a house servant, but out of jealousy over Ah
Wee's relationship with himself, Gopher.
One day Jo. Dunfer had caught Gopher and Ah Wee together and killed Ah
Wee with an ax in a jealous rampage.
Dunfer buried Ah Wee in the grave and created the curious memorial
marker.
Now comes the crucial
turn on the very last page of the story which I will quote.
"When
did Jo die?" I asked rather absently.
The answer took my breath:
"Pretty
soon after I looked at him through that knot-hole, w'en you had put something
in his w'isky, you derned Borgia!"
[referring to the narrator's previous visit, four years prior]
Recovering
somewhat from my surprise at this astounding charge, I was half-minded to
throttle the audacious accuser, but was restrained by a sudden conviction that
came to me in the light of a revelation.
I fixed a grave look upon him and asked, as calmly as I could: "And when did you go luny?"
"Nine
years ago!" he shrieked, throwing out his clenched hands -- "nine
years ago, w'en that big brute killed the woman who loved him better than she
did me! -- me who had followed 'er from San Francisco, where 'e won 'er at draw
poker! -- me who had watched over 'er for years w'en the scoundrel she belonged
to was ashamed to acknowledge 'er and treat 'er white -- me who for her sake
kept 'is cussed secret till it ate 'im up! -- me who w'en you poisoned the
beast fulfilled 'is last request to lay 'im alongside 'er and give 'im a stone
to the head of 'im! And I've never since
seen 'er grave till now, for I didn't want to meet 'im here." (Bierce, p.
126)
I found three
different commentaries on this story and I believe all three misunderstand
it. Bierce is admittedly not striving
for clarity, but the story is clear if one is attuned to the possibilities of
cross-gender identifications and same sex relationships.
Peter Boag (2012) in
his study of cross-dressing in the American West states that "Ah's sex is
never entirely clear; feminine and masculine pronouns interchange readily right
up to the story's conclusion. . . Thus Ah Wee may have been a Chinese woman
dressed as a man, or a (typically) feminized Chinese man" (p. 192)
William Wu (1982)
read the story as Ah Wee being a girl whom Dunfer had won in a poker game. Wu notes that the reader is misled through
the whole story to think that Ah Wee is a man, but fails account for this misleading
or to perceive the significance of the pronoun changes in the story. Wu is focused on the racism in the story and
thus misses the sexual implications that are really the crux of it, resulting
in a misunderstanding of the murder and the sex triangle. (Wu, 1982, p. 22)
Hellen Lee-Keller
(2006) also tries to normalize the story in the same way as Wu.
As the tombstone
indicated, Ah Wee was not, in fact, a he, but rather a she, and Dunfer killed Ah Wee in a fit of jealous rage thinking
that Ah Wee and Gopher were involved in a sexual relationship.
Ultimately, Dunfer, who had fallen in love with Ah Wee over the years, fell
into despair when he realized what he had done, started drinking heavily again,
and grew even more anti-Chinese.
Lee-Keller follows Wu
in seeing Ah Wee as female all the way through, but she doesn't address
Dunfer's referring to Ah Wee as 'he' throughout, and seems to call into
question that there was a sexual relationship between Gopher and Ah Wee. In other words, she suggests that Dunfer
killed Ah Wee out of misunderstanding and self-delusion.
The straightforward
assumption that Ah Wee's is a girl, won in a poker game, and subsequently
killed in a sex triangle, does not make sense of the text, the shifting
pronouns, and particularly the contrast between Dunfer's and Gopher's
constructions of Ah Wee. If you follow
the shifting pronouns, there is a logic to their modulations. They do not "interchange readily right
up to the story's conclusion," as Boag reports. Ah Wee is portrayed as a man by Jo. Dunfer through
the whole story up until the very end of his narrative, with the exception of
the curious epitaph on the tombstone.
Dunfer always referred to Ah Wee as 'he.' If Ah Wee were a girl, won in a poker game, why
would there be any need for Jo. Dunfer to disguise her as a man, or for Ah Wee
to adopt the identity of a man? If that
were the case, then it would mean that Jo. Dunfer imposed the male identity
upon her out of his own psychological need for a male sexual partner. But if that were true, why would he even take
a girl home to his ranch, if what he really wanted was a boy all along? The idea that Ah Wee was a girl straight up is
untenable. It fails to make sense of Jo.
Dunfer's referring to Ah Wee as 'he' throughout, and Gopher's pronoun shift
when he begins to talk about his own relationship with Ah Wee. If you think Ah Wee was "really a
she" as Lee-Keller thinks, then you have to explain why the whole story
leads you to assume Ah Wee is male. I
don't see any way to do that. The story
will simply not make sense if Ah Wee were really a female all the way through
from the outset.
Alternatively, if Ah
Wee were a female-to-male cross dresser, as one possibility suggested by Boag, it
would mean she was presenting as a male throughout the story. A full grown adult male would make an
unlikely prize in a poker game and this raises a question mark over the whole
tale about Ah Wee being a prize in a poker game. This
is Gopher's version probably concocted to mask the fact that Ah Wee left him
for Jo. Dunfer. The poker game story is
Gopher's attempt at face saving. Ah Wee
was very likely Gopher's lover before leaving him for Jo. Dunfer and moving to
his ranch in rural California. But was he/she
male or female?
If she were a
cross-dressed female-to-male, a la Alan Hart (see Boag, pp. 9-14), then you
would have a female who gender identified as male becoming involved in
"homosexual" relationships with two different males. A rather convoluted maneuver for a female to make. This is not a realistic scenario. I was not able to find any instance of a
female who gender identified as male, who then went on to form sexual
relationships with other men in her cross gender identity. Somebody out there come forward if you have a
counterexample. There is no plausible
interpretation of this story where Ah Wee is a natural female.
Gopher says that
"the scoundrel she belonged to refused to acknowledge her and treat her
white." This refusal to acknowledge
her I think refers to Jo. Dunfer's denoting Ah Wee as 'he,' that is, refusing
to acknowledge his/her full identification as a female. In other words, Jo. Dunfer insisted on Ah
Wee's biological gender as the proper identifier rather than accepting her psychological
identification as a female. This seemed
improper and disrespectful to Gopher, and he attributed it to Dunfer's shame
and denial of his own relationship with Ah Wee, and consistent with his further
maltreatment of her. Gopher referred to
Ah Wee as 'she,' when he was relating his own relationship to her, fully
acknowledging Ah Wee's psychological make-up.
This makes sense of the pronoun changes in the story and is consistent
with the details in the narration.
The most likely
scenario is that Ah Wee was a male-to-female cross-dresser, probably fully
gender identified as female in the mode of Mrs. Nash recounted in Boag's Re-dressing, Chapter 4.
Mrs. Nash was a
Mexican male-to-female cross-dresser who successfully passed herself off as a
woman among the U.S. Seventh Calvary in the 1870s and 80s for at least a ten
year period during which she was married to three different soldiers in the
Seventh. Although it was widely known
that she had a beard and shaved every day, she dressed and lived as a female,
winning high praise as well as financial rewards for her skills in laundering,
sewing, cooking, delivering babies, caring for infants, and witchcraft. When she died of appendicitis it was
discovered that "she had balls as big as a bull's. She's a man!" (Boag, pp. 130-137) The story became a national sensation.
I believe Ah Wee was
a comparable figure to Mrs. Nash, a biological male who dressed and
psychologically identified as a female.
Both Gopher and Dunfer knew Ah Wee's "real" gender. However, Jo. Dunfer did not recognize Ah
Wee's cross-gender identification, referring to him/her always as 'he,' whereas
Gopher, loving Ah Wee in her cross-dressed identity, referred to her as 'she,'
when he began talking about his own feelings for her.
The story told by
Gopher of Ah Wee's having been won in a poker game and his following her to
Dunfer's ranch suggests that the original attachment was between Ah Wee and
Gopher. Gopher was involved with Ah Wee
as a cross-dresssed male-to-female. Jo.
Dunfer came between them by some means or other. The poker winnings story seems unlikely to
me. If Gopher loved Ah Wee with the
dedication that he seems to evince, why would he wager her in a poker
game? More likely is that Ah Wee fled
with Dunfer to get away from Gopher. But
Gopher was a persistent, hopelessly attached lover who pursued Ah Wee to
Dunfer's ranch, got himself hired as a ranch hand by Dunfer, and continued his
relationship with Ah Wee whenever possible.
Dunfer caught Ah Wee
and Gopher together and killed Ah Wee in a jealous rampage. Gopher suggests that the encounter in which
they were caught was actually innocent in that he was reaching into Ah Wee's
clothing to remove a spider. But this again
sounds very self-serving on Gopher's part.
Dunfer had almost certainly known of Gopher and Ah Wee's prior
relationship and very likely had an inkling that they were continuing on the
sly behind his back. The violent jealous
rampage was probably the breaking of a dam of accumulated suspicion and
resentment. Dunfer confessed to killing
Ah Wee before the authorities, recounting the version he had given the narrator
and the case was judged a justifiable homicide.
He then erected the grave that Bierce describes with the curious
epitaph, where he acknowledges, finally, her true (psychological) identity as a
female.
In response to the
narrator's question about the time of Dunfer's death, Gopher levels the
accusation that he, the narrator, had
been the one to poison Dunfer. The
"revelation" that comes over the narrator at that moment is that
Gopher is making a confession. Indeed it
was Gopher who had killed Jo. Dunfer and buried him beside Ah Wee. How does he know this? Both he and Gopher know that he, the
narrator, did not poison Dunfer. So why
would Gopher make such an accusation?
The accusation that the narrator had been the one to poison Dunfer is
Gopher's thin -- or rather outrageous -- cover story, and it brings up the
suggestion that Jo. Dunfer did not die of natural causes. Why would Gopher make such an accusation if
he knew Jo. Dunfer had died a natural death?
In fact he knew perfectly well that Jo Dunfer did not die a natural death.
The narrator grasped all of this in an instant hearkening back to the
moment in Jo. Dunfer's house when he
saw
that the knot-hole in the wall had indeed become a human eye -- a full, black
eye, that glared into my own with an entire lack of expression more awful than
the most devilish glitter. I think I
must have covered my face with my hands to shut out the horrible illusion, if
such it was, and Jo.'s little white man-of-all-work [Gopher] coming into the
room broke the spell, and I walked out of the house with a sort of dazed fear
that delirium tremens might be
infectious. (Bierce, p. 120)
The narrator's visit to
Dunfer's ranch gave Gopher the opportunity he had probably been seeking for
some time. Gopher could claim that the
narrator had poisoned Dunfer and thus cover his tracks as the murderer. Gopher had plenty of motivation. Gopher had loved Ah Wee, but Ah Wee preferred
Dunfer to him -- at least that is the way it seemed to Gopher. Dunfer had taken Ah Wee away from Gopher -- allegedly
in a poker game, but most likely by other means. I think it probable that Ah
Wee left with Dunfer willingly to escape Gopher's clinging attachment. Dunfer treated Ah Wee badly, according to
Gopher -- this is plausible -- and eventually killed her in a jealous fit for
continuing her relationship with Gopher.
It was Gopher who buried Dunfer beside Ah Wee. It all fits.
Ah Wee is consistent with the type of male-to-female cross-dresser
described earlier in the case of Mrs. Nash and the Seventh U.S. Calvary. Jo. Dunfer's referring to Ah Wee as male but
then changing the pronoun on the tombstone:
"She was a Good Egg"
indicates that he had no illusions that Ah Wee had a dual gender
identity.
I think Bierce
understood what he was doing, and realized some people would be confused by the
story. He probably wanted it that
way. I suspect the story is based
somehow on real events and that it is not simply a product of Bierce's
fantasy. It was his first published
story, and I think it is significant that he would choose this topic as the
subject of his first public effort.
The story was written
around 1870, shortly after the Civil War.
The frontier was still very much an unsettled place of adventure and
opportunity. It was rapidly changing,
however, as were prevailing attitudes toward the many variants of sexual
expression. America was becoming more
anxious even as it grew stronger, men were becoming less confident in
themselves and in their place in the emerging industrial society, and people
were becoming conscious and questioning of the sexual behavior of
individuals. These strains and anxieties
are reflected in the intense racism in the story. However, the racial bigotry, which is quite
blatant, does not extend to the cross-dresser.
The cross-dresser is a curious anomaly, but is not yet pathologized per
se. Sexual and gender deviance are being
associated with race, and it would not be long before the reflexive racial
bigotry that was taken for granted and widely accepted would be extended to
sexual minorities of every sort. This
story represents a transition stage between a time when sexuality was less of a
public preoccupation to one where it became central to one's position and
acceptability in society.
The three published
commentaries on this story that I was able to locate gloss over or miss the
full import of the pronoun changes which are the heart of this sordid story of
sex and murder. The tendency is to
normalize the story, to heterosexualize it first of all, and to completely
ignore, or fail to perceive, the cross-gender identification that is central to
the whole drama. But Ah Wee's
male-to-female cross-gender identification is the only way to make full sense
of the text. If you pay attention to it,
the text is clear. It might have been
clearer to Bierce's audience in the late nineteenth century than it is to
us. Cross-dressing and cross-gender
identifications were much less obtrusive and much more amenable to integration
in society than they are today, as Boag's excellent examination of the subject
points out. The bigotry against the
male-to-female cross-dresser, was not as pervasive or even as widespread in the
nineteenth century as it is today.
Racial bigotry was certainly intense and taken for granted. This story illustrates how the country had
not yet solidified what would later become rigid stereotypes and expectations
for masculinity and male sexual behavior, but present day commentators tend to
project back onto the story our own present-day biases and preconceptions which
were still forming at the time the story was composed and were far from the fully
entrenched cultural norms they later became.
This historical blindness not only simplifies the story and robs it of
its psychological complexity, it also neutralizes the lessons it has to teach
us in how our own culture has evolved in its notions of masculinity and proper male
sexual behavior.
Notes
Bierce, Ambrose
(1984) The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce. Edited by Ernest Hopkins. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press.
Boag, Peter (2011) Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press.
Lee-Keller, Hellen
(2006) Ambrose Bierce Project Journal, Vol 2, No. 1.
Wu, William F.
(1982) The Yellow Peril: Chinese
Americans in American Fiction 1850-1940.
Hamden, CT: Archon Books.