Introduction

In 1879, Lafcadio Hearn described New Orleans (Figure 16.1) from the point of view of the Devil who had come to the southern city on a weekend break from a winter working in Chicago. The Devil was paying a visit to an old lover. He wrote, “the Devil could not suppress a sigh of regret as he gazed with far-reaching eyes along the old-fashioned streets of the city, whose gables were bronzed by the first yellow glow of sunrise. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘is this, indeed, the great City of Pleasure…the fair capital which once seemed to slumber in enchanted sunlight, and to exhale a perfume of luxury even as the palaces of the old Caesars? Her streets are surely green with grass; her palaces are gray with mould; and her glory is departed from her. And perhaps her good old sins have also departed with her glory’” (Hearn and Starr 2001: 173–174).

Literary convention of a more fanciful era encouraged writers to personify cities, boats, buildings – and even whole nations – as women. However, the image of New Orleans as a feminine figure is remarkably vivid and persistent and of a particular character. New Orleans is not simply feminine; the city is imagined as a sexually experienced woman wise in the ways of commerce. Sometimes she is the welcoming, aged courtesan. Other times she is a tragic, fallen figure as in the popular interpretation of the song, “House of the Rising Sun.”