Blog for Sept. 27th

Dear Ms. Davidson,

I love your work, Revolution and the Word! We met when I was a first-year graduate student, taking a seminar in early American literature. As I have told others, that class was like trying to drink out of a fire-hose turned on full blast. My mind was blown by encounters with novels I had never heard of before, such as, The Female American, The Coquette, The Power of Sympathy, Secret History, and Wieland. These were texts that were varied in their stories, style, and structure. But what made the class even more fascinating was reading your book and thinking about the novel as a subversive tool for women readers. It lead me to think about my own reading practices and literary history -- and how novels have empowered me to go places I might never have gone. As a child, I discovered my own American identity through novels like Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. And through her stories of pioneering on the North American prairies, I came to know my family's own pioneering legacy of being early Anglo settlers in Connecticut, Georgia, Texas, Utah, and Arizona. I began to see myself as part of the story of the United States.

I also learned early on that if I wanted to know anything, I just had to turn to a book. When my mother's answers to my precocious  questions did not satisfy me, I went to the family reference books or pedaled my bike down to the public library. When I became curious about love and romance, I turned to novels on our family book shelves like pride and prejudice and little women. I even tried to find answers in novels like Judy Blume (not intellectually satisfying). But what lesson I learned best of all was that girls and women could do anything they want, no matter the obstacles in their way (thanks to Caddie Woodlawn, Anne Shirley, and the Pevensie sisters). The daughter of first- generation college students, I saw the financial security that education brought But most important for me, novels were the key to power because they allowed me to understand and create knowledge outside my idyllic suburb of Pleasant Hill, California. When I had chances to visit other places and even live outside the USA I wasn't afraid because I had traveled so far already via novels.

Now here I am, 3/4 of the way throughout my PhD program, and novels have taken me  beyond what any other woman in my family has done. And much of that is due to the empowerment of the subversive novel. Thanks, Ms Davidson, for showing me how to see a novel as a revolutionary tool. Now the challenge for my future is seeing how I can teach the novel and show students how the novel can empower them.

~Sincerely,
Larisa Asaeli

The Novel and Reading Early California History

Davidson argues that the novel allowed Americans in the emerging republic a voice in the evolving nation – what she calls “an alternate public forum on democracy” (7). After reading this and thinking about the novels I just read for my exams, I saw a connection with two novels of early California, specifically John Rollin Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit and Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don: A Novel Descriptive of Contemporary Occurrences in California. These two novels allow the voices of indigenous people to be heard when the over-riding cultural attempt was to colonize, domesticate, and silence them. These novels are a response to “the mythic identity” of the USA – the “innocent […] world crusader” (14). They illustrate how the novel in the emerging state of California represents the “aspirations, disappointments, ambitions, frustrations, and contradictions [of the indigenous people] that get minimized in the official process of nation building” (15).

The narrative that I learned as a child in California's public schools is that the state was once a happy and quiet place where Catholic missions civilized native peoples and were the center of life. And then suddenly, gold was found! Then just as suddenly, California was a state, and we all lived happily ever after in a land of milk and honey, citrus fruits, vineyards, with great weather and a Golden Gate (Bridge). What was omitted from that happy narrative was the darker reality about displacement of the Californios, former citizens of Mexico, who were living on the land when the gold prospectors arrived. It was in novels like The Squatter and the Don and The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta that the people's “aspirations, disappointments, ambitions, frustrations, and contradictions” emerged (15). The Squatter and the Don is the tale of the concerted efforts of squatters and railroad barons to displace Californios from their land and reducing them to second-class citizens in the emerging state. Joaquin Murieta takes justice into his own hands after been kicked off his land multiple times, roaming about the state killing and robbing Anglos, Chinese, and Californios alike. In the end of both novels, the state is triumphant and the Californios are displaced and most are dead, thanks to the colonizing power of Manifest Destiny.

And yet it was not until this year, as a graduate student, that I learned this “alternative” history of California. I can't help but wonder how my perceptions of my home state would have changed if I had known, as a child or teenager, that the land I was living on had been wrested violently from its original inhabitants? Or how would I have felt about the Gold Rush of 1849 if I had known it was a time of violence and rampant greed, as portrayed by Ridge? If it weren't for the power of novels, I most likely would still be thinking the popular tale of Zorro as merely a myth, and not a narrative based on the real-life experiences of women like Ruiz de Burton (who lost all their land and livelihood due to the greed of the Anglo-American migrants and railroad moguls). These novels then, as Davidson points out, are part of the revolutionary genre that allows us to see the “unbridled versions of the nation, featuring a vivid and diverse cast of characters” (6). Even thought these novels have shown me troubling narratives of California's past, I still relish the genre and anticipate more experiences with revolutionary texts. Bon apetit!

PS Davidson, I love you! Thanks for including women equally in your discussions of print culture and the history of the book. 

Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton

 

Dear Mr. Starr,

For the most part, I have enjoyed reading your book and learning about the history of print culture, the growth of the media, and why the United States is so exceptional. However, your claim that the “major writers of the era” are “Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman” (137) is misogynistic claptrap. 

You state that they are “genuine” writers who wrote “enduring literature” (137). You completely disregard best-selling authors in the antebellum period and merely allude to them as "popular authors” – because they are women. This is not only irresponsible but also aggravating for those of us who missed authors like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Maria Cummins and their delightful girl-power novels like The Hidden Hand, Ruth Hall, and The Lamp Lighter. Not until going to graduate school did I meet these authors. Instead, in high school I had to read Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter – novels that not only bored me but reinforced negative stereotypes about women and people of color, while privileging male experience. When you ignore women writers you effectively add to the attempts to silence and erase them and their works. Instead, you have validated male writers that were irritated by the “scribbling women” who outsold and outranked them in popular culture.

To rectify that erasure, I will circulate the names of only a few of those “popular” women writers in this blog. These women inspired the so-called “enduring literature” of these male writers with their “'new rhetorical strategies'” (137). They are:

Louisa May Alcott,

Catharine Beecher,

Alice Cary,

Lydia Maria Child,

Maria Susanna Cummins,

Mary Andrews Denison,

Fanny Fern,

Hannah Foster,

Grace Greenwood,

Sarah Josepha Hale,

Marion Harland,

Caroline Hentz,

Eliza Leslie ,

Elizabeth Oakes Smith,

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,

Lydia Sigourney,

Harriet Beecher Stowe,

E.D.E.N. Southworth, and

Susan Warner.

I can recommend any of these authors as more entertaining than Hawthorne, Melville, or any of their colleagues. Give them a try.

Sincerely,
Ms. Asaeli

P.S. Read these posts for further enlightenment: “From One Writer To Another: Shut Up, V.S. Naipaul” by Diana Abu-Jaber, http://www.npr.org/2011/06/03/136919974/from-one-writer-to-another-shut-up-v-s-naipaul; “The 10 Most Powerful Women Authors” by Avril David, http://www.forbes.com/sites/avrildavid/2011/06/06/the-10-most-powerful-women-authors/; and “250 Books By Women All Men Should Read” by Brian, http://www.joylandmagazine.com/brian/blog/250_books_women_all_men_should_read. Enjoy!

"the utility and beauty of Female Education"

Thoughts on James Milnor's address "On Female Education" and Paul Starr's chapters 2 & 3 in The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications

Starr's emphasis on American divergence and difference between American, English, and European public spheres was especially intriguing when compared with the article I found about female education. Even though Starr does not comment directly on the differences between English, French, or American female education, there are some interesting points that I would like to discuss based on my reading of both Starr's text and a commencement address delivered to the Philadelphia Academy by James Milnor, Esq. (reported in The Port-Folio, May 1809).

The editor prefaces Milnor's address by pointing out several differences between female education in America as compared to foreign women. His first argument is that American women and girls are NOT like foreign or French women. The orator is marking the differences by commenting on Rousseau's character Sophia (from "Emile, a celebrated Tract on Education"), whom he calls "quite a courtezan" [sic]. Such a title shows that she is not only intellectually inferior to American females, but that she is very likely sexually promiscuous. The editor seems to be dispelling contemporary beliefs that women who think are promiscuous or likely to be seduced (as in last week's discussion about novel reading leading to female depravity). He says, "But in America, [...] the women, with few, very few exception, are modest, prudent, and well informed. They have all the vivacity, all the spirit, all the talents, and genius of Sopia, without one particle of her infidelity, on the one hand, and of her levity on the other." The result of American education, the editor claims, "form accomplished daughters, and good wives." He then commends Philadelphia and Boston for their "sedulous care in the moulding of the minds, manners, and habits of women." All these claims and points support Starr's claims about America's communication and exchange of information taking divergent paths from British and European models. Or, at least, the American newspaper editors at the time were promoting a BELIEF that Americans were different than their European contemporaries; this belief likely helped form the developing American culture and was easily circulated in the print culture of the time.

By reproducing Milnor's speech, the editor of The Port-Folio is not only showing readers how different they are from (and indeed superior to) the Old World, but also is creating an instructive argument on why female education is important and how girls can/should be educated. And because this argument for female education appeared in the most successful monthly literary magazine of its time (according to Frank Luther Mott p. 223-46), it is likely that this argument had wide circulation throughout the new republic.

Milnor's speech itself is a good example of Starr's points about the revolutionary nature of female education and its role in creating a democratic nation. Starr illustrates the role of women in building up the new nation with his reference to Dr. Rush's 1787 essay about Republican Motherhood -- Rush "argued that women should receive an education so that they could instruct their sons in the principles of liberty and serve as 'stewards and guardians of their husbands' property'" (102). Likewise, Milnor, in 1809, commends the graduating class from the Philadelphia Academy to use their education not only for their own benefit, but as a tool to "prepare for the duties in life to which she may be destined" or, in other words, motherhood. Thanks to the explosion of print culture, the easy access of information, and a culture that promoted education, women were not only better educated but also better informed on how to teach their children. The curriculum the girls receive in reading, writing, composition, handwriting, arithmetic, geography, biography, history, and sacred music all allow her to "display" the "utility and beauty of Female Education."

However, [surprise!] a great obstacle to Milnor's version of "correct" education is novel reading. He advised the young ladies listening to/reading his address that even though there are a few honorable novels available, "it would be infinitely better for a young lady never to open one, than to seize them with total neglect of discrimination" [...]. This caution is ironic since these young women are supposedly well educated and have been given the charge as future mothers to educate the rising generation. Why, then, cannot they not be trusted with certain books? Obviously, it is as Starr says, even though education for women was "revolutionary" it was still limited (103).

This newspaper article, as read alongside Starr's two chapters, shows how interconnected information, education, and print culture were-- and how different and divergent the American path was from England and France. It is exciting to see the beginnings of female education for women and to know that its "utility and beauty" was just one of America's revolutions.

Something interesting I observed this weekend...

I went to visit my great aunt in Amarillo this weekend and had a fabulous time! She let me look through her coin collection of silver coins from the 19th and 20th centuries. Something interesting I noticed is that most of the coins had Lady Liberty on them (in different poses) until about the 1930s. Then she was replace by dead white men -- okay, they were presidents and other such important men. But really, the Liberty coins were so beautiful. Why did they have to go away? Was this some kind of anti-woman plot? We did get the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagewea dollars later in the 20th century, but they never were circulated much. I can't help but think we have lost something from our culture by replacing images of Lady Liberty with dead presidents. Just some thoughts before I post my assigned blog later tonight. Here are just a few example of other Lady Liberty coins: http://www.coinfacts.com/silver_dollars/silver_dollars.html