Labor and Leisure in the Tropical Environment

There is no shortage of encomiums to Florida's natural environment. Many writers have conventionally depicted it as a tropical paradise, a latter-day Eden in which leisure awaits the fortunate visitor. Building on this conventional attitude that aestheticizes Florida's nature, my dissertation argues that writers have repeatedly racialized and classed the tropical environment of Florida by using the frequently competing activities of labor and leisure. As an advocate for the development of Florida tourism, Harriet Beecher Stowe naturalizes black labor, using it as a foil to the white appreciation of natural beauty. Broadening the view of labor, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings romanticizes the rural work of poor whites while continuing to privilege the leisurely observation of nature as a superior behavior that allows for the philosophical and aesthetic contemplation of the natural environment. In contrast to these two writers, Zora Neale Hurston offers a more thorough and thoughtful treatment of African-American labor, seeing its cultural value as well as its relationship to an exploitative labor system. In the epilogue, I use Carl Hiaasen's work to discuss the way in which contemporary Florida theme parks intensify these romanticized attitudes toward labor, leisure, and nature.