“Dens of Iniquity and Holes of Wickedness”: George Lippard and the Queer City

Abstract

This article examines George Lippard's portrayal of “queer space” in his 1845 novel The Quaker City. Despite William Penn's meticulous urban grid rooted in the democratic ideals of national space, Lippard presents Philadelphia's landscape as unruly, illogical, and transgressive. The novel's manor of vice, Monk Hall, is as twisted as the city streets, facilitating behaviors and experiences unregulated by hegemonic forces. I argue that by perverting the places of his novel, Lippard creates ruptures in the ideological underpinnings of a national geography. In so doing, he attempts to enact a radical social critique to reconstitute the Philadelphia of Penn's egalitarian plan. Yet while Lippard's exposé reveals Philadelphia's illicit elite, his sensational narrative undercuts any social transformation he may have imagined.