LITR
4232: American Renaissance
University
of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2002
Index to Student Research Projects
Megan Yeates
Dr. White
LITR 4232
18 April 2002
Journal: Women Writing in Nineteenth-Century America
Understanding one’s past history is necessary
in understanding one’s present. Although
sometimes taken for granted, American female authors are a fundamental part of
today’s literary culture. But
when and how did their emergence occur? How
did they rise from the dominant society of men who were writing?
Who led the way for women writers of the twentieth century such Edith
Wharton, Sylvia Plath, and Joyce Carol Oates?
Here, women writers of the nineteenth-century America will be given
credit for the imperative change in American literary history. Smart, funny,
serious, and brave, they are the originators of a movement that is perpetually
changing.
It is important to recognize that women have been writing for centuries,
long before the formation of America. In
early Greek civilization (approximately seventh century B.C.E.), the woman poet
Sappho become known, and is often remarked as being one of the first great women
poets. In fact, Sappho opened a
school for girls in Lesbos, were she taught and wrote poetry (Bailkey 154).
Likewise, Aspasia, a Greek prostitute turned royalty, was said to have
written several of her husband’s, Pericles, speeches (Pomeroy 90).
Considering this, it is still important to view these circumstances as
rare; not all women had the opportunity or the education that allowed for
writing as a part of life. Beyond
antiquity, there are many other unusual cases of women in societal positions
that permitted them to write, but the subject of this journal is, of course,
American women. In the nineteenth
century, American women were well aware of their English counterparts and their
production of literature, and Americans in general sought to establish a
literary presence that was exclusively their own, exclusively American.
This proved difficult for women, as Margaret Fuller, after reading Mme de
Stael as a youth pointed out, “no woman had ever come remotely near achieving
that kind on intellectual recognition in America” (Blanchard 46).
Being a fairly young nation with a relatively small, yet rich and
complex, history, America, from its beginning, was dominated and controlled by
the men of the society. When Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John Adams on
the subject of the Declaration of Independence, she warns that “If particular
care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a
Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no
voice, or Representation” (Adams 957). Indeed,
a rebellion was fomented, one of both words and action.
Of course, words, or literary avenues, were the medium of choice for
many, as can be seen.
Adams remark concerning “having no voice”
ultimately became the challenge for women in America.
How were these women able to make their ordinary, and, in some cases,
overlooked, lives into something bigger and greater, beyond themselves?
To answer this question, this journal will look at the lives of three
women writers of the nineteenth century as well as three contemporary works in
which nineteenth-century America is the subject.
Adams, Abigail.
“Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776.”
The Heath
Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter et al. 4th
ed. Vol.1.
Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
957.
Bailkey, Nels
M., Ed. Readings in Ancient
History: Thought and Experience
from Gilgamesh
to St. Augustine.
5th ed. Lexington:
D.C. Heath, 1992.
Blanchard,
Paula. Margaret Fuller: From
Transcendentalism to Revolution. New
York: Dell,
1978.
Pomeroy, Sarah
B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and
Slaves: Women in Classical
Antiquity.
New York: Schocken, 1995.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“She was a natural-born storyteller; she could no more have avoided writing fiction than she could have stopped her breath” (Wagenknecht 10).
Born
in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe was the seventh of
nine children to Calvinist clergyman Lyman Beecher and devoted mother Roxana
Foote. Her closest siblings,
Catherine and Henry Ward grew even closer after the sudden death of their mother
in 1816. As related in her
biography by Edward Wagenknect, Stowe watched her older sister Catherine,
founder of Hartford Female Seminary, progress as a pioneer for women’s higher
education (35), and she followed her sister and became a teacher as well. But teaching was not a permanent place for Stowe, and she
soon began writing articles for periodicals such as the Western Monthly
Magazine (13). Her husband
Calvin Stowe, whom she married in 1836, supported her writing career from the
beginning of their long, very loving relationship (58).
Together, they adored one another and had seven children, and with the
publication of her first book of fiction, The Mayflower, in 1843, Harriet
Beecher Stowe begins a life of juggling writing, marriage, motherhood, and
womanhood.
However, even with her accomplishments of short
fiction and various magazine articles, her literary success began to flourish
indefinitely with the 1952 publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The novel tells the story of slaves and their owners both with subtle and
direct attacks on the horrors of slavery. Uncle
Tom’s Cabin sold 300,000 copies within its first year of publication, and
created much controversy, as it still does today. Stowe describes the process of writing the book as one of
fervor and passion, saying that she wrote, “with my heart’s blood” and
“freely,” as “nobody expected anything, nobody said anything” (166).
While Stowe experienced much praise for her work, as she was able to tour
Europe and experience the audience’s anticipation for further writings, many
critics of the twentieth century disagree with its message, suggesting that it
reinforces racial stereotypes. On
the other hand, some critics, like Lennox Bouton Grey, view Uncle Tom’s
Cabin as the “most comprehensive serious view of America and types of
Americans before Mark Twain” (4). Nevertheless,
whatever the view on the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an inescapable
piece of literature that Stowe, who “could write anywhere, under any
conditions, and at anytime,” (167) produced.
Although, as biographer Wagenknecht points out,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin “was her passport to immortality, […] it obscured
as much as it illuminated” (2), for Stowe created many other great pieces of
literature, including Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, The
Minister’s Wooing, Oldtown Folks, and Lady Byron Vindicated.
Often described as a “rabble rouser […] who could be expected to
pursue relentlessly any cause to which she attached herself” (176), Stowe
triumphed over the adversaries of her life (including the loss of four of her
seven children), creating important works of literature along the way. It is noted too, that perhaps Stowe, because she had a
certain amount of freedom (because “nobody expected anything”), she was able
to write more truthful and honest works. Mostly,
Stowe loved humanity and did not hesitate to stand for her beliefs.
Appropriately, her last words spoken on July 1, 1896 were “I love
everybody” (220).
Wagenknecht, Edward.
Harriet Beecher Stowe: The
Known and Unknown. New York:
Oxford UP, 1965.
Emily Dickinson
“Her swift poetic rapture was like the long glistening note of a bird one hears in the June woods at high noon, but can never see” (Emily Dickinson’s obituary, written by Susan Huntington Dickinson, quoted in Hart 267).
The
story of Emily Dickinson’s life is somewhat mysterious and obscure, and often
highly romanticized. Those often
introduced to her poetry for the first time are commonly given the image of a
“tormented, delicate woman dressed in virginal white, pining away in
seclusion, removed from the vibrant nit, grit, and passion of normal life”
(Hart xiii). But through her poetry
and letters, it is realized that her life, although perhaps guarded in many
ways, was lead with extreme passion and exuberance for life.
Dickinson lived most of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she was
born in December of 1830. As the
middle child (to older brother Austin and younger sister Lavinia), she
maintained a close relationship with most of her family.
Attending Amherst Academy, and, later, Mount Holyoke College, Dickinson
was said to be an extraordinarily bright student, but because of the lack of
religious conviction, was labeled as having no hope. From her twenties until her death, Emily remained in Amherst
with the exception of a few trips to Boston.
It wasn’t until her death in May 1886 that
discoveries were made on the enormity of her writing.
An eventual total of approximately 1,775 poems by Dickinson were found,
most of which came from her own room, in the form of fascicles, or bound books
of sorts, created by Dickinson herself. Other
poems were eventually gathered from letters from Dickinson to numerous
correspondents throughout her life. One
of the most frequent recipients of letters was Susan Huntington Dickinson,
Emily’s sister-in-law, to whom she credits, “with the exception of
Shakespeare,” to “have told [her] of more knowledge than anyone living”
(Hart 238-239). As detailed in Open
Me Carefully, Dickinson and Susan Huntington Dickinson shared a very
intimate relationship, which was lived out considerably through letters and
poems. In fact, editors Hart and
Smith point out that “most readers of Dickinson are unaware of the intense and
long-lived relationship that was at the very core of the poet’s emotional and
creative life” (xiii). (Consequently,
Hart and Smith blame Dickinson’s original editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, who was
having an affair with Dickinson’s brother, Austin, for the exclusion of Susan
Huntington from Emily’s poetry. In
recent years, however, more information has surfaced about their intense
correspondence and Dickinson’s reliability on Susan Huntington for literary
advice. Likewise, other letters to
other individuals raise questions about Dickinson’s love for a man, whom we
will most likely never know the identity. Beyond
all this mystery and intrigue that surrounds Dickinson, it is her poetry that
still lives today, and although she, unlike our other two writers, never
established a public voice during her lifetime, has accomplished much in her
legacy of words and writing.
Hart, Ellen
Louise and Martha Nell Smith, ed. Open
Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s
Intimate
Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson.
Ashfield: Paris Press, 1998.
Margaret Fuller
“I accept the universe.” (Fuller, at age 24, quoted in Blanchard 87)
Sarah
Margaret Fuller’s childhood is essential knowledge to those who wish to
understand her life and literary career. Born
to Sarah Williams and Timothy Fuller in May 1810 in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Fuller was prepared by her father to become a scholar, learning Latin and
reciting passages from Virgil and Plutarch by age six (Blanchard 20-21).
Her father’s insistent studying led to an often rocky relationship,
which later had psychological implications for Fuller.
Too, with all of the fierce education, “she [became] a moody, silent,
priggish, indolent, forgetful, untidy ten-year old who could not converse with
her peers and preferred not to converse with adults” (33).
Needless to say, being caught in between intellectualism and femininity,
Fuller experienced mixed emotions. Even
with this difficult childhood, she becomes highly educated and a prolific
reader, and begins to realize that her life choices as a young woman are very
limited, and “Her own goal, a ‘life of letters,’ was far less clearly
defined than [boys], though no less deeply desired.
She had no American models to follow” (46).
However, Fuller persevered, and, among tending to sick siblings and
parents, and countless household chores, she attempted to begin writing.
Greatly admiring Goethe, Fuller set out to write his biography, wishing
to discover more about the man himself. Goethe,
perhaps the first transcendentalist (although not officially termed so), had a
profound impact on Fuller’s life, and as she read him, she began to feel that
she had more control over herself and her future.
Becoming a transcendentalist herself, Fuller began to associate with
Ralph Waldo Emerson and others in the Concord circle of thinkers.
Often, she was said to be more known for her conversationalist skills
rather than her writing, attracting many people to her discussions (56).
However, after many disappointing efforts at writing, Fuller published
her first book, a translations of Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann,
and, in addition, became increasingly well-known for her accomplishments as
editor of The Dial and as instructor at her “conversations,” or
classes that she held to advance women’s knowledge of literature and other
subjects (especially Italian, French, and German literature).
Of course, Fuller’s most well known work, Woman in the Nineteenth
Century, “based on the belief that all souls are equal, not only in
heaven, but here on earth” (213), received the much recognition.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century reinforced Fuller’s views on
woman’s equality.
In the midst of her successes, Fuller traveled
to Europe and finally lived among the places she had loved and studied as a
child. In Italy, she met Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, with whom she
experienced he first love affair (at the age of 37) (267).
Just as her life and career seemed to be progressing happily, Fuller and
her newly formed family (including son Angelino) were tragically killed in a
shipwreck off the coast of New York (Fire Island), her body never found.
Fuller’s life and work examined her struggle
for identity in a society that provided women with conflicting ideas.
The lifestyle that she chose, that of an unmarried intellect, was brave
and unnerving for most people of her time, and through her writings we see her
grow in and with the idea of feminism. It
was her refusal to be silent and her determination to write that gives her a
solid position in American women’s writing.
Blanchard,
Paula. Margaret Fuller: From Transcendentalism to Revolution. New York: Dell,
1978.
Doing Literary Business:
American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century
(Susan Coultrap-McQuin)
In
an attempt to examine the literary business of nineteenth-century
American women, Susan Coultrap-Mcquin offers a study of five successful careers
of women writers: E.D.E.N.
Southworth, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Abigail Dodge, Helen Hunt Jackson, and
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (Ward). Doing
Literary Business offers a brief, yet, thorough history of writing and
publishing as a woman of nineteenth-century America.
Revealing some surprising statistics, including that by 1872, women wrote
nearly three-quarters of the novels published (2), Coultrap-McQuin looks at the
realities of the business of publishing and marketing books in the 1800s.
Coultrap-McQuin introduces the concepts of the
“Getleman Pulisher” (publishing companies efforts to promote “personal
relationships, non-commercial aims, and moral guardianship” (28)), and “True
Womanhood” (a view of womanhood that contained both conservative and liberal
views, concerned with women’s duties and capabilities (9)).
As the author explains, men and women, although of the same writing goals
and abilities, existed in entirely different spheres of the publication
business: “[…] the position of
women writers in the mid-nineteenth century […] was paradoxical: they had a
place in the literary world, yet that world often rendered them invisible”
(7).
Doing Literary Business also explores
the dynamic between female writer and publisher through each of the previously
mentioned writers, each differing on their approach to the business.
For example, from E.D.E.N. Southworth’s “perspective, woman’s
sphere could be satisfying enough” (59), while Mary Abigail Dodge “was much
more challenging to cultural norms than either Southworth or Stowe” (113).
Each writer is compared and contrasted, revealing that each not only
wrote for extremely different reasons (Southworth for financial need, Jackson
out of grief), but that each also conducted themselves in business matters very
differently.
Overall, Coultrap-McQuin’s Doing Literary
Business is an excellent tool for exploring the workings of the business of
books in the nineteenth century. Although,
as the author admits, the study is not entirely thorough, as it neglects those
women who were unsuccessful in business endeavors.
Nevertheless, it an interesting resource, especially when concentrating
on one of the five particular authors.
Coultrap-McQuin,
Susan. Doing Literary Business:
American Women Writers in the Nineteenth
Century.
Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990.
Declarations of Independence:
Women and Political Power in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. (Barbara
Bardes and Suzanne Gossett)
Barbara
Bardes and Suzanne Gossett’s Declarations of Independence examines
women’s status in America’s political culture as it was reflected and told
in the fiction of the nineteenth century. A
close examination of the interaction between male and female characters, as well
as analyses of female characters (created by both male and female authors),
shows the relationship between history and literature. Chapters entitled “Women and Property Rights,”
“Capitalism, Sex, and Sisterhood,” and “The Power of Professionalism,”
all cite examples of different female characters reacting to their position in
life, often making “declarations of independence.”
For example, in the chapter “Women and Property Rights,” the authors
discuss Fanny Fern’s novel Ruth Hall:
“[…] the autobiographical heroine discovers that she is at the mercy
of men as soon as she is widowed. Her
husband’s father claims his clothing, certain that Ruth is too ignorant to
protest” (95). Obviously, it
would benefit the reader to have already read the novels being discussed by
Bardes and Gossett.
Declarations of Independence is not
limited to woman writers, but includes examinations of James Fenimore Cooper and
Nathaniel Hawthorne, for example, discussing The Scarlet Letter:
“[…] the letter Hester wears is simultaneously her silenced voiced
and the revelation of her sexual activity” (58).
This tactic, using male writers who have written about extraordinary
women, helps balance the books subject by not relying solely on women’s
writers. However, this point in
particular may serve as a reason not to utilize the book as an exclusive source
for studying nineteenth-century women’s writing.
At the same time, life imitates art, so the examples of fiction given, in
particular those by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Stuart
Phelps, and Sarah Orne Jewett, suggest, if not directly state, the history of
politics in nineteenth-century America.
Bardes, Barbara
and Suzanne Gossett. Declarations
of Independence: Women and
Political
Power in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
The
Madwoman in the Attic addresses the issue of “the social position in which
nineteenth-century women writers found themselves and […] the reading that
they themselves did” (xi). While
this book mostly discusses English writers, especially the Brontes, Jane Austen,
and Mary Shelley, Gilbert and Gubar do devote their study to Emily Dickinson,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott as well.
Even so, the book is unfortunately presented as a feminist study rather
than a literary one, utilizing seemingly every opportunity to make a statement
against a male literary critic or man of the nineteenth century.
Gilbert and Gubar make it seem as though all women writers were obsessed
with their position in life, so much so that it became detrimental to their
physical and mental well-being: “Like
most women in a patriarchal society, the woman writer does experience her gender
as a painful obstacle, or even a debilitating inadequacy” (50).
Even the title, which is intended to be an allusion to Jane Eyre,
suggests that women lost their minds with fury or repression, causing them to go
“mad.” Too, Gilbert and Gubar
reinforce the stereotype of Emily Dickinson as a neurotic recluse, writing that
Dickinson became “both ironically a madwoman (a deliberate impersonation of a
madwoman) and truly a madwoman (a helpless agoraphobic, trapped in a room in her
father’s house)” (583).
However, The Madwoman in the Attic does allow for comparisons of
English women writers to American women writers, which is useful when studying
the types of work each produced. Mostly,
Gilbert and Gubar’s book, although well written, weighs too heavily on the
subject of exaggerated feminism and popular British writers (with the exception
of those previously mentioned), making it rather unsuitable for a study on the
rise of American women writers.
Gilbert, Sandra
M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman
in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the
Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
The Future of American Women’s Writing
Women
writers now make up a significant portion of college course reading lists and
bookstore shelves. Often, American
society considers female writers today equal, if not possibly more influential
than male writers, and, as an overall consensus, they are highly accepted in the
business of literature production and critical theory.
However,
one must wonder if America, as a whole, is still behind in its acceptance of
women writers. After all, we still
must use the label “woman” as an overall, although typically initial,
description. Likewise, in my
research process, I found that many writers, both biographers and
non-biographers referred to female writers by their first name, not their last.
(Would we dare address Poe as “Edgar Allen?”) Too, we must question whether it is a requirement to study
women writers because of political equality issues, or because their works are
fundamental in our understanding of specific literary movements? I feel that the latter is a better response.
In
general, I found my research to be much more rewarding than I had at first
expected. After reading Open Me
Carefully, connections to Emily Dickinson increased, finding that, in her
letters, she was a fairly normal woman, talking about things like the weather
and wondering about life. No longer
is she merely a writer of poetry, essentially “floating around” somewhere in
the literary universe, she is a figure with important ideals and passion, and
her poetry now has a deeper meaning. I
had similar experiences with Fuller and Stowe as well, which will be an immense
reward in further readings of their works.
In
the case of further research, I would most likely look at Dickinson’s letters
to other correspondents, including those to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and
explore Fuller’s time spent in Europe and Italy more closely. Too, if considering a blatantly feminist angle, The
Madwoman in the Attic, would prove useful in the research of
nineteenth-century English women writers, which is indeed full of interesting
and fundamental to the history of literature as well.
As
a twenty-year old female literature student of the twenty-first century, I have
progressed (in terms I have come to use) from being a Judy Blume-child to an Ayn
Rand-adolescent to, now, a Margaret Fuller-young adult.
Continuing to learn more about literature and its impact on people
historically and currently allows for viewpoints to be changed and for a better
understanding of the world in which we live.
As women’s writing continues to evolve, the foundations set by those
women in the nineteenth century cannot be shaken.