Blog for Nov. 29: Concluding Thoughts

For this final blog I narrowed my focus the topics of education and abolition. These are areas that I will be working with in my dissertation research, so these three periodical pieces were especially relevant when compared to the others that I found this semester. Each piece presents an argument about American exceptionalism that also invites readers to action – another type of literature I am interested in.

The first piece, "On Female Education," comes from The Port-Folio (May 1809) and is published in Philadelphia. This article is a printing of a speech given by James Milnor, Esq., (a trustee) at the Philadelphia Academy for the Instruction of Young Ladies. What is unusual about this speech is that Milnor' claims American women are exceptional -- when compared to their contemporaries in Europe. He says, "the women, with few, very few exceptions, are modest, prudent, and well informed. [...] In our principal cities and great towns, the systems of education, judiciously adopted by wise and prudent teachers, are admirably calculated to form accomplished daughters, and good wives. The mode of instruction may be old-fashioned, may be rigid, may be even austere, but it is perfectly right, and the good fruits of such culture are every where visible" (382). The speaker further compares American women to the Ancient Greeks and Romans to show how the "polite and well-informed woman [of America] is the most welcome companion of the intelligent of our [male] sex" (382). The speaker then praises the scholars on their mastery of the topics he considers worthy for female education -- reading (but not of novels), writing, grammar, composition, geography, history, biography, arithmetic, and religion. Such a recipe today we would call a curriculum for Republican Motherhood, but in that time, it shows how exceptional these young ladies were and how important education was for the people in our nation's first capital.

The second piece that was the most meaningful to me was "Invention of the Cherokee Alphabet" printed in The Religious Intelligencer (Sept. 13, 1828) and published in New Haven, Connecticut. It is a reprint from the Cherokee Phoenix, the first periodical to be published by the Cherokee Nation. Written in the style of a letter to the editor, it is an article relating the facts of how George Guess (Sequoyah) created a written language for the Cherokee people in 1819. What is interesting about this piece is the praise it heaps on Guess, showing him to be exceptional since he was able to create a written language within about a year, even though he was not literate and had "no knowledge of any language but the Cherokee" (255). This language was so exceptional that "several persons" were able to learn it within only "a few days" (255). And within "a few month, without school, or expense of time or money, [the Cherokee nation was] able to read and write in their own language" (255). The author ends the article praising Guess, but the subtext is that the Cherokee people are just as intelligent as the whites and can learn and become civilized. This article, written in 1828, would have been published when the US government was trying to remove the Cherokee from their homelands in Georgia. Unfortunately, this sympathetic portrait of the Cherokee was fruitless. The Trail of Tears happened 10 years later.

The last piece I wish to discuss here was especially moving. It is a letter to the editor of The Religious Intelligencer by "Melissa" and accompanied by her poem "A Slave Mother's Address to Her Infant" (Apr. 15, 1826). The letter details the author's experience seeing a young enslaved woman sold away from her child in Washington City. The experience so moved "Melissa" that she wrote a poem about it, imbuing her motherly sympathies into the poem and inviting readers to feel a sympathetic connection with the subject of her poem. This poem is similar to others I had read before by Frances E. W. Harper and John Greenleaf Whittier. But, after reading this one, I began to wonder how many other people had written similar poems featuring a distraught mother to promote abolition? Well, my investigation is not complete, but the questions raised by this poem led me to do a lot of exploring and what I have found so far is that this image of the distraught mother appears over and over again in poems, in periodicals, gift books, and novels (most famously in Uncle Tom's Cabin). As a result, this very subject will be a major portion of my dissertation. Hopefully I will be able to come to some conclusions soon -- but this is where it all began, in Dr. Dan's class.

In conclusion, these three pieces have shown me that Americans are exceptional, as Starr claims, or perhaps I should say that American Periodicals often portrayed Americans in the Early National Period as exceptional. Either way, this has been a fun ride and I have learned and thought much from my investigations and hearing reports from my colleagues in our seminar. Cheers!

Blog for Nov. 22 on Novels in Early British North America

Dear Ms. Elizabeth Barnes,

Your section on novels was interesting and thoughtful. I especially enjoyed your points about "the difference between seduction and education" in early American novels (444). And definitely, Charlotte Temple is the best example of a seduction novel. However, what I don't agree with is your claim that the character Charlotte Temple's "death in America confirmed her as an American" (449). There is nothing about Charlotte that speaks to the American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She is a reluctant American, at best. She doesn't want to be in America nor does she want to associate with Americans. All she does is stay in her little cottage and wait for Montraville or Belcour to come and visit her. The only "work" she does in America is grow Montraville's baby inside her uterus. The real Americans in the story are Julia Franklin and Montraville. A re-examination of the text shows us that they are the ones who live the American Dream and leave their mark on America.

First of all, Julia Franklin wins Montraville's hand in marriage due to her superior qualities and independent fortune. The text tells us that Julia is:
"the very reverse of Charlotte Temple: she was tall, elegantly shaped, and possessed much of the air and manner of a woman of fashion; her complexion was a clear brown, enlivened with the glow of health, her eyes, full, black, and sparkling, darted their intelligent glances through long silken lashes; her hair was shining brown, and her features regular and striking; there was an air of innocent gaiety that played about her countenance, where good humour sat triumphant."

Such a physical description shows us that she is the model American female. Rowson's description of her as “brown” may indicate she has indigenous ancestry – or it may merely say she is a solid and sensible brunette, as opposed to the flighty blond Charlotte. Furthermore, one only has to look at early images of Lady Liberty to see the resemblance to Julia Franklin.

Also, the fact that her surname is Franklin, reminiscent of a Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, automatically imbues her with an American identity. Her first name, Julia, according to www.thinkbabynames.com, “is of Latin origin, and the meaning of Julia is 'youthful; Jove's child.' Feminine form of Julius. Used among the early Christians, but rare in the Middle Ages.” Her name also sounds like jewel, which connotes treasured or precious. This meaning is illustrated in a scene when the Franklin's house is on fire and Julia's uncle entrusts the family jewels to Montraville (before he is introduced to the family). Montraville returns the jewels and earns Julia's affection as a result. In marked contrast, Charlotte has no jewels, (she has already given Montraville her only treasure --her virginity) and no cash or wealth of any kind. She costs Montraville money. She is a passive character who is always fainting or crying. She is easily led by Madame LaRue, Montraville, and Belcour, and she disobeys her parents by eloping with a soldier for America.

Montraville becomes the other true American in the story because of connections and exchanges with Americans in the story. His relationship with Julia, the archetypal American woman, becomes an exchange with their marriage. He gains her fortune and connections to the upper-classes in New York and she gains respectability as a married woman. Montraville, though callous in his treatment of Charlotte, spurns her when he believes she is unfaithful and clings to Julia because she is. Montraville chooses a woman who is virtuous and honorable, the ideal Republican mother for his children, Julia Franklin. The closing scenes of the novel, in which Montravill mourns Charlotte's death, further show that he is a man of sympathy and remorse, allowing American readers to empathize and sympathize with him. These reasons show why he and Julia are the Americans – they go on to live and build up America.

I am sorry Ms Barnes, but the tragic death scene in New York is not enough to warrant Charlotte's citizenship (sentimental or otherwise) in the USA. Even though she has a grave in Trinity churchyard in Lower Manhattan, the grave is empty!Charlotte Temple is only a ghost, a mere phantasm, while Julia Franklin is the embodiment of Liberty, who tames a rakish Englishman with a French name into becoming a model husband and father (as shown in the sequel, Lucy Temple) -- indeed, a model American male.

Very truly yours,
Larisa Asaeli, a lady of Fort Worth

For more about Charlotte Temple's grave:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/nyregion/13trinity.html

Blog for Nov. 15 on Women's Writing in the Early Republic

I consider myself a budding expert on women's writing and therefore did not expect to find much in chapter 8 that was new. What I did find was a fresh argument that women's writing in the early national period was hegemonic but also varied in it's content, genre, and style. This argument agrees with what I have seen for myself as a reader and nascent scholar of women's writing. Dodson & Zagarell also seem to be specifically taking on Nina Baym's argument in Woman's Fiction that women wrote about certain topics (domesticity) and that their writing followed a specific recipe. Instead, Dodson & Zagarell are arguing, like David Leverenz, that writers in the early republic, whether female or male, had to be a Jane- or Jack-of-all trades to make money. Also, like  Leverenz's argument about male authorship, Dodson & Zagarell point out that women's writing was engaged in political dialogues of the day, specifically the construction of the new nation and the cultural life that nation would have. 

Hannah Weld


Something else refreshing about their argument is pointing out the movement in women's writing from radical writing early in the republic to "domesticity" later in the 19th century. Too often the writing of domestic women is seen to be the only recipe for women writers -- so I appreciate that the authors were conscientious to point out the shift. Women like Lydia Maria Child and Lydia Sigourney were radicals and not afraid to promote social justice. Unfortunately Lydia Maria Child today is mostly remembered for her little ditty "Over the River and thru the Woods," not her stories of social justice, like "The Quadroons" that examines the slave system and the ensuing emotional and physical costs to women. One of the first to write about rapes of enslaved women by their masters, Child was a radical who we should remember as such and not let her happy little ditties and domestic advice manuals neutralize her complex and sophisticated authorship. So, kudos to Dodson & Zagarell for showing us that women authors have been, and continue to be, diverse, powerful, and not fitting into any "uniform definition" (381). Tuwanda!

Lydia Maria Child, The Juvenile Miscellany,3rd set., 3 (1832), title page from the Dartmouth College Library

Read here for more on Nina Baym: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/67bzb5kg9780252062858.html
Read here for the story, "The Quadroons": http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cusww/lb/Q.html

Blog for Nov. 8th on "Men Writing in the Early Republic"

David Leverenz's discussion about Nathaniel Hawthorne in this chapter interested me since he was so vexed about the "scribbling women" writers of the antebellum period that I so adore (such as Maria Susanna Cummins, who wrote the bestseller, The Lamplighter, which according to lamplighterpublishing.com, “outsold The Scarlet Letter ten to one in 1850!”

Hawthorne, according to Leverenz, was embarrassed by engaging in the literary marketplace. The authorial persona he tries to create is one of "a retiring and unambitious man who writes only for a few friends, as a gentleman should" (352-53). This definition intrigues me since my understanding of Hawthorne's authorship, via his son's biography Hawthorne and His Circle (1903), is that Hawthorne was a craftsman, dedicating time and space to his writing. In the passage that follows, Julian Hawthorne describes his father's beginning of The Scarlet Letter:

"...the nadir of my father's material fortunes was reached about the year 1849. At that time his age was five-and-forty, and I was three. The causes of this financial depression were several. One morning he awoke to find himself deprived, by political chicanery, of the income of a custom-house surveyorship which for some while past had served to support his small family. Now, some men could have gone on writing stories in the intervals between surveying customs, and have thus placed an anchor to windward against the time when the political storm should set in; but Nathaniel Hawthorne was devoid of that useful ability. Nor had he been able to spend less than he earned; so, suddenly, there he was on his beam-ends. Leisure to write, certainly, was now abundant enough; but he never was a rapid composer, and even had he been so, the market for the kind of things he wrote was, in the middle of the past century, in New England, neither large nor eager. The emoluments were meagre to match; twenty dollars for four pages of the Democratic Review was about the figure; and to produce a short tale or sketch of that length would take him a month at least. How were a husband and wife and their two children to live for a month on the mere expectation of twenty dollars from the Democratic Review--which was, into the bargain, terribly slow pay? Such was the problem which confronted the dark-haired and grave-visaged gentleman as he closed his desk in the Salem custom-house for the last time, and put on his hat to walk home."

Luckily, when he gets home, Hawthorne finds out that his wife has a stash of money set aside. And he is able to write the story that has been haunting him, without finding other work.

"Stimulated by the miracle, he remembered that the inchoate elements of a story, in which was to figure prominently a letter A, cut out of red cloth, or embroidered in scarlet thread, and affixed to a woman's bosom, had been for months past rumbling round in his mind; now was the time of times to shape it forth. Yonder upon the table by the window stood the old mahogany writing-desk so long unused; here were his flowered dressing-gown and slippers down-at-heel. He ought to be able to finish the story before the miraculous savings gave out; and then all he would have to do would be to write others. And, after all, to be rid of the surveyorship was a relief.”

“But matters were not to be run off quite so easily as this. The Scarlet Letter, upon coming to close quarters with it, turned out to be not a story of such moderate caliber as Hawthorne had hitherto been used to write, but an affair likely to extend over two or three hundred pages, which, instead of a month or so, might not be completed in a year; yet it was too late to substitute something more manageable for it--in the first place, because nothing else happened to be at his disposal, and secondly, because The Scarlet Letter took such intimate hold upon the vitals of his heart and mind that he was by no means able to free himself from it until all had been fulfilled. Only men of creative genius know in what glorious and harrowing thralldom their creations hold them. Having once been fairly begun, The Scarlet Letter must inevitably finish itself for good or ill, come what might to the writer of it."

This passage shows that Hawthorne was, and wanted to be, an author who made his living by his work. Julian's description later in the chapter of his father's study and his desk shows it to be a reified space for engaging in the literary marketplace as an author. And he was an author, according to Leverenz's "social definition" -- "someone making a public impact" (353).

So, what perplexes and interests me is that Nathaniel Hawthorne protested that he was an "absurd" man to try and support his family by writing (354). And yet his son's biography, Hawthorne and His Circle, shows clearly that Hawthorne consistently worked at his writing, crafting his stories, in hopes of making a name for himself as an author (and Julian himself asserts his own authorship by writing about his father’s authorship). Julian’s description of the sale of The Scarlet Letter illustrates Hawthorne’s participation in the literary marketplace as an author:

"One day a big man, with a brown beard and shining brown eyes, who bubbled over with enthusiasm and fun, made his appearance and talked volubly about something, and went away again, and my father and mother smiled at each other. The Scarlet Letter had been written, and James T. Fields had read it, and declared it the greatest book of the age."

Therefore, the problem then seems to be one of definition that intersects with questions about the marketplace and notions of masculinity. I am not sure I have an explanation. I just think it is an interesting and perplexing question – was Hawthorne an “author” or wasn’t he?

Blog for Nov. 1: The Periodical Press in An Extensive Republic

Andie Tucher's part 1 of ch 9 is an informative overview, sprinkled with delightfully playful language (such as her description of President Harrison as "an image, not a man-- the sizzle, not the steak(408)), and compelling statistics. And yet I just couldn't get excited about writing a blog posting after reading this part of the chapter. So, I went on and read parts 2 and 3, looking for something to tickle my intellectual fancy. I found it in part 2 by Mary Kupiec Cayton and her discussion about Harriet Newell, a missionary to Burma. Since I have read a little on missionary women (and was a missionary myself in New Zealand for 18 months) I thought this section would be more engaging than part 1. What fascinated me was Cayton's examination of Newell's life, memoir, print culture, women's lives, and most importantly, that missionary women became "cultural heroines" and "important players on a global stage"(409). Though I had read about and thought about women mission memoirs before, especially after hearing Dr Sarah Robbins discuss her work on Nellie Arnott (http://www.parlorpress.com/pdf/arnott-flyer.pdf), I had not thought of them as engaging women in the public sphere until reading Cayton's essay. The thought that struck me was that, really, these memoirs were a gateway to woman's participation in print culture. As Cayton points out, originally women's stories were told by men -- usually in their funeral sermons. Eventually women began to speak for themselves through letters and diaries that were quoted in these biographical narratives that promoted women's religious experiences. Eventually poetry, letters to the editor, and their own first-hand accounts were published.

What intrigued me about Cayton's argument is that texts and periodicals, which could easily be classed as confining and restrictive, were actually entry points of female engagement and public discourse. As she puts it, these women "became visible in them, both as subjects and as authors"(411).

Something else that struck me was that women also played an important economic role in evangelical print culture by fund raising and contributing to the various missionary and evangelical associations. Restricted from official membership in the societies, the women could "circumvent" that restriction by joining the women's auxiliaries and by donating money and purchasing texts. Their exclusion was really in name only -- they were contributing both cultural and monetary capital to print culture's nascent moment. They were a "new breed"-- women whose "domestic piety" in the missionary memoir allowed them "to be publicly heard" and "to make a difference"(416). Good work, ladies! As one of your literary daughters, I thank you.

Blog for Oct. 25th

Reflections and Questions upon Reading Richard D. Brown's "The Revolution's Legacy for the History of the Book"

One of Brown's opening assertions is that, "only an informed citizenry could properly identify and repel threats to liberty" (58) leaves me wondering how WOMEN were able to fulfill their part as de facto citizens. Obviously, it was through reading, as Brown points out that women were able to become "informed" so they could "identify and repel threats to liberty" -- and yet not all women had access to print and print culture. There were exceptional cases, as Mary Kelley points out, in the lives of women such as Polly Warner (who received a 155-volume library from England for her 16th birthday in 1765). This leads me to ask how were women, especially the elite classes, able to gain access? Even though Brown does not attempt to answer this question, it is one that niggled at the back of my mind while reading his chapter in An Extensive Republic.

Brown does point out that, "Women and girls read extensively to become fit wives and mothers to citizens" (71) -- not a new idea for those of us who have read books about Republican Motherhood (such as Sarah Robbins' Managing Literacy, Mothering America: Women's Narratives on Reading and Writing in the Nineteenth Century and Mary Beth Norton's Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800). They read, according to Brown, the Bible and "other religious works" along with periodicals, "compendia, and textbooks" (71).

This is a good summary of the scholarship out there about white women's reading practices in the privileged classes of the Early Republic. But Brown overlooks obvious texts that would have been crucial in formulating women's reading AND writing practices -- letters, diaries, and cookbooks. He doesn't mention poetry either. All these texts were in circulation. Maybe he leaves them out of his discussion because he is focused on the public (male) sphere of information and print culture. But I would argue, along with other feminist scholars, that accounts written in "private" forms like letters and diaries were considered "public" by the women who wrote and read them. But perhaps Brown does not consider them "public" because they weren't printed for mass consumption like newspapers were?

I really appreciate Brown's points about women and his including them in the discussion of the history of the book, but his chapter leaves me with so many more questions. For instance, if women were to, as part of an educated citizenry, "identify and repel threats to liberty" there were caught in a double bind because they themselves were left out of the notion of citizens. Their own liberties were threatened by the practice of citizenship in the Early Republic. As merely the mothers and wives of citizens, they were merely a conduit of knowledge that marginalized their place in the republic. Or did they have a role that was fulfilling and important, but I haven't read enough yet or discovered the scholars who wrote about them? Is there a diary of a women reader hidden in an archive somewhere, detailing her own reading habits for herself -- and not to pass on to a man or boy? These questions are fascinating and I hope to find out their answers soon.

Blog for October 18

It is difficult to know what to blog about since much of what we read in Robert Gross's introduction to An Extensive Republic is familiar from reading Starr and Davidson. But I did find one intriguing idea that merits exploration -- or at least it is interesting to me so I am going to blog about it. This idea specifically is that while print was unifying the nation and homogenizing our culture, certain people were still left out of the conversation about building the new nation. For example, Gross points out that Godey's and Graham's both positioned themselves as mainstream periodicals, yet neither one ever made mention of slavery and abolition before the Civil War (50). How can we have an "extensive republic" if important voices are left out? And how can we call ourselves "democratic" when the voices of the powerful elite (such as southern plantation owners) dictate the content of periodicals and the print culture they produce?

Luckily for us, some of those excluded voices were included in the conversation thanks to powerful mentors. (While these examples are a little bit later than the time period we have been discussing, I hope you will accept my ideas on their merit.) For example, Harriet Jacobs' voice were heard thanks to Lydia Maria Child. Her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl gives us an important insider view on the horrors of slavery, especially for women. The Narrative of Frederick Douglass, facilitated by mentors like William Lloyd Garrison, allowed Douglass' voice to be heard and become part of the conversation about slavery. Both Jacobs and Douglass point out that slavery degrades everyone -- the enslaved and the enslavers. Indeed, both show how the entire nation was "degraded" by slavery. Thanks to the hugely popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, and its other iterations, the nation began to realize the horrors occurring because of slavery. Print culture was pivotal in ending slavery and bringing about emancipation in 1863.

Likewise, I have been thinking about how inclusion and exclusion still happen today. For example, our print culture is still wrestling with the questions about what voices should be heard and how they should shape our nation. The recent protests known as the Occupy Wall Street movement are an exciting example of how print culture allows the "weak" --those outside the positions of power -- to have a voice. From their website, they describe themselves this way: "Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future." http://occupywallst.org/

Thanks to social media the movement is spreading quickly. Hopefully, real change will happen and our country will begin to find ways to bring us back to a society that truly is governed by the people and for the people, a society where teachers can make a living wage, and where graduate students can get funding. A society were those who were ignored will be heard -- and thanks to the exploding electronic print culture, I can write these thoughts, post them on my blog, and anyone in the world with internet access can read them. Amazing!

If you want to think about the explosion of print culture and information in more detail, watch EPIC 2015 on YouTube.