The meta-mythical success archetype in the works of Pauline E. Hopkins

American success literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used the archetype of the self-made man to advise readers how to overcome hardship and become moderately wealthy through hard work and ambition. These "rages-to-respectability" stories constitute the gospel of success. Even though a number of scholars have neglected to examine the impact this genre has had on African American readers, some success guides were, in fact, produced by and targeted at African Americans. Pauline Hopkins, an editor of the Colored American Magazine and author of Contending Forces, was a prolific writer who frequently addressed the subject of success in her fiction and non-fiction. This dissertation argues that the gospel of success occupied Hopkins's literary imagination throughout her writing career. It proposes that by Signifying on some of the common tropes of success literature, namely setting changes, luck, and the benevolent benefactor, Hopkins critiques the racist social and political structures of the United States that often prevented blacks from achieving the American Dream. Hopkins also offers an alternative model of success that encourages blacks to help uplift themselves and their community. Chapter One examines how Hopkins uses the biographical series "Famous Men of the Negro Race" and "Men of Vision" to construct a definition of success that is germane to African Americans. Chapter Two looks at Peculiar Sam, "General Washington," "The Test of Manhood," Contending Forces and Of One Blood, to see how she revises the traditional Horatio Alger success plot to argue that young black men either fail to acquire wealth and social acceptance, or can become successful only outside the borders of the United States. Chapter Three examines how Hopkins redefines and applies the gospel of success to black women in Contending Forces and Hagar's Daughter. Chapter Four looks more closely at her role as editor of the Colored American Magazine and questions how her writings and editorial policies contributed to her dismissal from the magazine when it was surreptitiously purchased by Booker T. Washington. In the past Hopkins has been criticized for assimilating the social and literary values of white middle-class Americans. This dissertation suggests an alternative reading of Hopkins's oeuvre and proposes that by Signifying on key literary tropes, she does not assimilate a popular American myth but constructs a significant revision of it instead.