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.