Novels are "Charming repositories of love..."

I enjoyed digging around in both the APS and Early American Imprints, Series I for something tantalizing on novels and novel reading. I expected to find a lot of cautions about how bad novel reading is for women and girls, especially novels like Charlotte Temple and The Power of Sympathy. So after skimming over those tiresome pieces, I looked for something pro-novels and found "Defence of Novels" in Weekly Visitor, or Ladies' Miscellany (23 Apr. 1803) a reprint from the Boston Weekly. This article was written by "Betsey Thoughtless" and seems to fit in well with a women's magazine since women were the earliest readers and writers of novels. And it was delightful to read Betsey's "defence" because her obsession with novels mirrors my own. I wrote in my last posting that I was a "voracious" reader as a child, even though I could do other things that women and girls in 1803 couldn't do. So Betsey's descriptions about her books and feelings for them really tickled me and I have to share a few gems here.  She sets herself up as a defender of novels and shares the "pleasurable enjoyment they afford me." 

 "Novels and romances are my greatest delight. They are my constant companions by day, and at night often rest under my pillow. I have novels on my toilet, novels on my table, novels on my chimney-place, novels on my chairs, novels all over my chamber. I would prefer a new novel to a new gown, and had rather loose [sic] my dinner than break off from a tender love-scene. In novels I find all the nourishment of food, all the refreshments of sleep:-- with my novels I am most happy; with out them I should be miserable. For what do I not posses with my novels? Would I have lands and estates?" 

She then cleverly lists all the novels that have had meaning in her life, which is interesting since it shows us what women in 1803 in Boston were reading. I only recognized a few titles, like The Power of Sympathy and Mysteries of Udolpho. She not only defends novel reading as a more important reality and life than the one she lives in but also has more fulfilling. This is her "virtual reality" or her "MySpace" -- she retreats into her "chamber" and enters these other worlds the way people today put on an avatar and enter MyLife and other virtual realities. After reading Starr's first few pages for today (1-46), I can see the connections from early print culture to modern "print" culture that takes place in cyberspace. Betsey's argument or "defence" is her participation in the public sphere, her effort to shape "public discussion, public knowledge, and public opinions" (5). She wants other readers to love novels as she does and to see how they can make one's life more meaningful. She is prescribing a list for readers of the magazine -- if they read her top picks, their lives will be as pleasurable as hers. And since she is writing this article for a periodical, there is an understanding that it would circulate, at least in Boston (with a population close to 25,000) -- but maybe even further out into the countryside.  (I could not find a record of this periodical in Frank Luther Mott's A History of American Magazines, 1741-1930 so I am not really sure on its publication history.)

But most of all, I love Betsey's article because she is a dedicated lover of novels, as I am. Or, in her own words, "And who is not happy in having the heart and the imagination their sources of pleasure?"