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