LITR
4232: American Renaissance
University
of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2002
Index to Student Research Projects
Kate
Payne
LITR 4232
Spring 2002
Women of the American Renaissance
Women authors have been a part of America’s history since before it was “America”. Women who were among the first settlers in this country wrote about their experiences and ideas from the time they set foot on this land. The depth and history of women authors in America amazed me as I did research. Our course covers a short, but pivotal time in American history, the American Renaissance. The influence of women authors in this time is vast and farther reaching than one would expect. Not only did were women influential as authors to their readers; they also inspired other writers, changed the face of politics and helped to develop society in America.
In discussing women authors of the American Renaissance, one must also discuss the lifestyle and societal position of all women. The women authors of that time were representatives of all women, and were often their works were a reflection, not of their own life, but that of women around them. The women’s rights movements made great strides during the American Renaissance and this was largely due to the awareness that women (and their male supporters) gained by having their works published.
In my journal, I want to draw awareness to the history of women authors, their rise in popularity, and their influence on society. First, I will discuss the general happenings of the time, as far as trends in women’s literature and women’s lifestyles. Next, I will discuss the two books that I found most interesting in my research: Beneath the American Renaissance by David Reynolds, and American Women Writers and the Work of History by Nina Baym. Both of these works deal with the movements of literature during the American Renaissance, and both put forth very distinct impressions (sometimes opposing) about women authors of the time. Third, I will give brief biographies on Margaret Fuller and Emily Dickinson. These two women had major impact upon not only women’s literature in their time, but upon all literature, from their time and continuing even today. Fourth, in doing research I found many websites pertaining to the American Renaissance movement. I will discuss and review two websites that I felt had information to offer that was in some way standout from the books and other publications that I found. Finally, I will close with a discussion of why we study women authors in this time, and why my journal contains what it does.
Basic
Background
One of the first things that I noticed when I began reading about women authors in the American Renaissance was the differences in opinion that remain firmly in place. So, for the purpose of this journal I will discuss the two major themes that were consistent in many of the books and articles that I read. First, there is the theme of women authors as the rising stars of literature. Second, there is the theme of women characters as a changing, deepening breed. These two ideas are two that cannot be contended with, they are fact.
First, women were becoming more educated during this time. They were attending school longer and being allowed to read more. Women wanted to read about other women and not just in etiquette books. Since the demand for books about women was on the rise, and women were becoming more educated, the result was more women authors. Also, despite the fact that more women were being educated, many careers were still off limits to them. Writing was considered delicate enough a career to be suitable for women. As early 1775, Hannah Adams was a professional writer and historian (Baym, 16). In our country, based on freedom, women gained more and more opportunity to better themselves and expand their views.
They were still under strict supervision though. It wasn’t until the 19th century that women began to be truly free to express their opinions. During the 19th century women authors like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller spoke out against the oppression of women. Another significant change in this time period was the freeing of the blacks. With blacks no longer slaves, but free people they were allowed to educate themselves and tell their stories. If it had not been for the personal accounts of slavery, written so truthfully, many today would not even begin to understand the atrocity of slavery. The rise of the oppressed in society, women and other minorities, and their writing about it, are what set this nation apart from others the world over.
Another major difference that was seen in this country during the American Renaissance was the change in female characters in literature. Both women and men had to change the types of female characters in their works to both reflect and inspire the changing women of reality. In his book, Beneath the American Renaissance David Reynolds discussed the types of female characters that became popular in this time. Other authors that I read also described these characters, that seem classic to us now, but at the time were revolutionary. However, I will discuss by the names given to the by Reynolds, for the sake of avoiding confusion. First, there is the list of distinct female characters in the American Renaissance literature. These types are all stereotypes, and they may be combined and changed to suit the authors purpose, but they were radical characters, and therefore worth pointing out.
Often in literature we see female characters that are “moral exemplars”. The most well known example of this, which was mentioned by both Reynolds and Ann Douglas (in her book The Feminization of American Culture), is Eva St. Clare, in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Eva was an angelic little girl, who despite being on her deathbed became a beacon of hope and goodness to those around her. Other forms of the moral exemplar were often mothers or mother figures that would help lead characters to find their own goodness within them.
Another type of character that began to become popular during the Renaissance was the “adventure feminist”. This should come as no surprise considering what was happening at the country during this time. Women like Fuller and Stanton were encouraging women to stand up for their rights, and characters in the popular novels of the time reflected these attitudes. The adventure feminist was also a bit like the moral exemplar in some ways. Both types of women were fighting to bring about goodness in those around them, however they did it in very different ways. The adventure feminist would place herself in situations where most women were not allowed to go. They would be working jobs that were only thought to be suitable for men; they would be arguing politics with men, and in general invading male society.
Yet another type of female character that arose during this time was the example of the “women’s wrongs”. These female characters were women who suffered greatly at the hands of society, and more often, specifically men. These were the wives of drunks, the innocent girl seduced and abandoned, and the abandoned wives forced to struggle with raising a family alone. These characters served a dual purpose. They showed the horrible plight of women in the country, and also shifted the blame of moral right and wrong onto the men in their lives. They lifted these characters up as what not to be, and then said, “It’s not their fault”. These female characters helped raise awareness on several fronts.
There are two types of women are those that show the dark side of women. That is the “feminist criminal” and the “sensual woman”. These women not only defied the men around them, they used their femininity to their advantage to get what they wanted. One prime example of the “sensual women” was Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter. Whether Hawthorne is praising her sexuality or discouraging it can be disputed, but the role of sex in Hester cannot. These women went against the norms of society in extreme ways, and were heroines and sinners fairly evenly.
The most important female character that I found was the role of the “working woman”. These were the female characters in the literature of the time that reflected most honestly what was happening to women in society. As Reynolds states, “In 1850, women constituted about a third of New York City’s manufacturing work force.” Women were being forced to work, while they were receiving no benefits of equality. These works portrayed women as they often were in factories; broken women both physically and psychologically. In 1849, George Lippard wrote in his novel, The Sisterhood of the Green Veil, about the women who worked in factories, “that patient and gentle sisterhood, whose order of worship has but one word for its litany, Toil, Toil, Toil; whose Convent is a Factory; whose way of life is darker and drearier than that of any Nun in the most severe of Catholic Convents.”
Works like this made people aware of the conditions that women were facing, and helped to bring about change that helped the Women’s Rights Movement progress. All of these characters were important in literature. The characters and the authors are what helped America become the nation that it is today. If these women’s stories had never been told, and their voices not heard, it may have been centuries before women were given equal rights.
Not only that, but women authors in the American Renaissance have given us some of the most powerful and well written pieces of literature that our country has ever seen. The advancements that were made in the Renaissance were at least partly due to the changing roles of women in society. The women of the time were radical and rebellious, and they changed the world.
Two
female authors that I feel had the most influence on literature were Margaret
Fuller and Emily Dickinson. While
Fuller lived, she exemplified the modern woman.
She went against the norms of society, yet remained true to her feminist
beliefs. Likewise, Dickinson did
not relent when society would have had her conform.
Both of these women seemed far ahead of their times in both their beliefs
and their writing. Not only were
these strong women, they were extremely gifted authors.
They did not only inspire women to be stronger and to fight for their
rights, they inspired men and women both to become better authors, readers and,
in general to lead more honest and full lives.
First,
let’s look at Fuller; her life and her works.
Fuller was born to a fairly well off family, in 1810.
She is the eldest of nine children.
Fuller and her father have a very close, if somewhat unorthodox
relationship. He encouraged her to
turn her back on the typical female experience and to embrace becoming a
scholar. In fact, he was so adamant
against her relying on feminine ideals that he “forcibly cut her off from the
feminine subculture of etiquette books and sentimental novels” (Douglas, 319).
While this at times seemed harsh Fuller later stated that her father had
taught her to rely on herself, which she felt her female peers could not do.
After
Fuller attended school in Massachusetts, she became a teacher in Rhode Island.
Fuller’s father had passed away in 1835, and Fuller became the sole
provider for the family. She taught
for several years, and began developing relationships with other writers,
including Waldo Emerson. She began
to hold “Conversations” in her home with other avid readers and writers.
After several years, Fuller becomes editor for The Dial, a
transcendentalist newspaper. She
also writes for the paper often. In
this publication, she first begins to express in writing her frustrations with
the state of women in society. In 1847, Fuller traveled to Rome. She became deeply involved in the Revolution that was taking
place. She also met, and fell in
love with, a man Marchesse Ossoli, who was eleven years her junior.
After Fuller found out she was pregnant, she secretly married Ossoli.
In the fall of 1848, Fuller gave birth to a son, Angelo.
She wrote to her friends and family that she would return home in 1850.
Fuller never made it home. The
boat she was on sank just outside of New York, on July 19, 1850.
Fuller, her husband and child all drowned.
What was meant to be a glorious return to her homeland was never to be.
Fuller’s
life defied the norms of society from the time of her birth.
In her lifestyle alone, she was a heroine to women, but what truly set
her apart was her writing. She was
so well read and intelligent that many men could no longer dispute women’s
ability to learn and function as intellectuals.
As Douglas mentions in her book, Fuller’s writings and life affected
author’s years after her death. She
discusses Henry James, and his inability to pinpoint Fuller and her role in the
Italian revolution. Fuller was an
honest, forthright, strong sometimes abrasive woman.
If she had not written and published her masterpiece “Woman in the
Nineteenth Century” who knows how long it would have been before women began
discussing what their lives should be like.
Much
like Fuller, Emily Dickinson seemed to be vastly ahead of her time.
She led a very different lifestyle from Fuller, but was in her own way
just as rebellious and opposed to the restrictions that were placed on women in
society. Dickinson’s poetry, most
of which was not published until after her death, had such an immense effect on
its readers that people today are still fascinated by the poetry and its author.
Emily
Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 to Edward and Elizabeth Dickinson.
She had one brother and one sister.
Her family, like Fuller’s was well to do and well educated. Her father was a politician for many years and encouraged all
of his children to educate themselves. While
many people view Emily as an eccentric recluse her chosen lifestyle was not as
drastic as many would have it seem. Emily
attended college for a year at South Hadley Female Seminary.
While she did not care for college and moved home after a year, she still
developed relationships that would be vital to her throughout her life.
After
school Emily moved back to her family’s estate.
She cared for her parents in their declining years and was a companion to
her sister Lavinia, who also never married.
Emily was a writer through and through.
Her main form of significant interaction took place in letters.
In her lifetime Dickinson wrote thousands of letters to her friends and
family. Hundreds of letters were
written to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, who lived next door to Emily with
Emily’s brother Austin. The two
had an extremely close relationship and many of Emily’s letters to Susan
contained poems. Emily never
published her poetry, yet several of her poems were published by her friends
anonymously. After her death in
1886, her friends and family got together all of her remaining poems (some
sources say as many as 2,000 poems) and had them published.
Her poems received immediate attention and praise.
Dickinson
did not become famous during her life, and that was most likely what she wanted.
Her poetry is so deep and honest, that her writing may have faltered in
the face of criticism. Dickinson’s
poetry deals with such profound subjects in such a stark way that many people
have difficulty accepting that she was content in her life.
Dickinson did write about death, but she also wrote about love,
frustration and life. Often people
tend to focus on the oddities of Dickinson’s life, and in a way, demean her
work. However, Dickinson lived a
vivid and full life in her own mind and poems.
What
Dickinson and Fuller did for the literary world cannot be expressed simply.
They opened the doors for women and men both to write about ideas that
society had seen as off limits. They
both lived their lives true to themselves, and they both contributed great works
to literature. These women were
great writers, who changed the face of literature.
They were also great women, who were very much the heroines that women of
the time not only needed to read about, but to see.
There were hundreds of websites that I could have visited about women authors in the American Renaissance, and I visited a lot of them. The best resources I found often came from other colleges and universities. Many colleges offer women’s literature as a separate class, and the American Renaissance is a major focal point in many of these classes. This was a time when women the world over were gaining independence and a voice to be heard.
One
website that I found particularly helpful (not for this project) was Georgetown
University and DC Heath Publishing’s website about teaching the American
Literatures. As a future English
and Literature teacher I found this website, found at http://www.georgetown.edu/tamlit-home.html,
extremely helpful. This site
includes links to other teachers’ sites that include syllabi, newsletters and
essays. All of the links that I
clicked on were extremely helpful and informative.
I especially enjoyed looking at John Getz’s course outline for his
course on the American Renaissance, taught at Xavier University.
To be able to look online at how other courses are set up and taught was
really useful to me. As I stated
before, it did not lead to much information about this particular assignment,
but I feel that it will be an extremely valuable too to me in the future.
Another
website that I found very informative and useful was one that had set up links
to hundreds of websites about women authors.
This website, http://www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/general/women/html,
had links to many websites about women authors. The time period ranged from the first women authors to the
most recent. It was fairly up to
date and I found myself using it time and again to find useful websites.
This website did not have a lot of information directly about the topic
of women authors, but it did help me immensely in getting where I wanted to go.
This journal has been an interesting way for me
to see how women authors have affected literature, both past and present.
Women like Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller, Fanny Fern and Harriet
Beecher Stowe have brought characters and situations to literature that no man
could have. I have never thought of
myself as a feminist by any means, but in doing this journal I see that if it
hadn’t been for these women, I may have had to be.
These women broke the mold that society had placed them in.
They fought these battles against the world, and we tend to take that for
granted. By speaking out these
women set a precedent unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
For an oppressed people they spoke out.
Not only did these women help a minority rise up, they also contributed
amazing pieces of literature to the world.
These women left examples of how wonderful, funny, touching, heart
breaking, honest and deep literature can be. This journal has been a journey for
me to discover who these women were and why the timing was so perfect for them
to surface. They have helped make
this country what it is today and inspire us still to make it better.
To look back and take all of the women authors out of American literature
is unthinkable. Part of what makes
America so unique is the idea of equality.
While we may never reach that goal, what sets us apart is our willingness
to try. These women tried, and they
succeeded. They are American
authors. Not just women, and not
just authors, but women authors of the American Renaissance.
Works Cited
Baym,
Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860.
Rutgers University Press. New
Brunswick, New Jersey, 1995.
Douglas,
Ann. The Feminization of American Culture. Avon Books, New York, New
York, 1977.
Reynolds,
David. Beneath the American Renaissance. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988.