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.