NATIONALISTIC MYOPIA 123

 The revivalist group's female leadership also distances the staged
spirit-filled pocomania from other less 'respectable' forms associated
with male leaders' sexual impropriety. Sister Kate even announces her
sexual propriety to Deacon Manners and Reverend Peter Craig: "I is
not living in sin" (1.1). Neither Manners nor Craig refutes this asser-
tion. Situating the staged pocomania as more respectable troubles class
boundaries: neither the 'respectable' upper class nor the 'bestial' com-
mon class contains the staged pocomania followers. When Sister Kate
questions the presence of Stella at revival meetings, she states, "It is
not possible to be respectable and common at de same time" (2.1). In
response, Sister Mart says, "But we not common, we is destant." And
Brother Kendal echoes, "We is quite destant." The distanced version
of pocomania enables the middle-class audience to think outside up-
per/lower class binaries. As pocomania's staged version becomes more
real for an orthodox Christian middle- class audience, the real exist-
ence of the staged version becomes more probable.
 But the play also seems to kill a more respectable, more inclusive,
purer, spirit-filled form of pocomania. Both Sister Kate, the revivalist
leader, and David, the doctor, agree that pocomania meetings will harm
'respectable' middle-class women like Stella. Sister Kate says,

 Tek dem upper classes if dem come to de meeting and shout and sing
 dem will be sick, but eben dough some ob fe we people is tear[?] wid
 de debil dey get up nex day so go long dem business. (2.1)

The doctor extends pocomania's detrimental effects from the respect-
able middle class to all people: "In my short practice here I have had
some serious cases from their [pocomania] band. There is too much
that is base and erotic" (2.2). Stella's physical illness consistently cor-
relates with pocomania affiliations, and pocomania seems to expedite
Sister Kate's death. In Stella's eyes, Sister Kate's death signifies the
death of a spirit-filled pocomania. At Sister Kate's Ninth Night ceremony,
a service traditionally held at the deceased's home on the ninth night
following their death, Stella tells David: "There is no 'spirit' here now
she is gone. Only noise" (3.3). Even as the play appears to kill this form
of pocomania, it clarifies that no person kills pocomania; its effects
naturally kill it and the people it embodies.
 Staging pocomania's apparent death seems strategic. After experienc-
ing a more positive form of pocomania with Stella, and then experiencing
the death of that more desirable form of pocomania, an orthodox Chris-
tian middle-class audience could more completely recognize the absence