Reading women/women reading: The making of learned women in antebellum America

Journal of American History

Volumn 83, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 401-424

  Kelley, Mary ^a  

^a DARTMOUTH COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039924668     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2944941     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. Bessie Lacy to Drury Lacy, Feb. 11, 1847, Drury Lacy Papers (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). Bessie Lacy's devotion to reading had been instilled by both of her parents. Before her death in 1846, Williana Wilkinson Lacy served as an important model for her daughter. A deeply engaged reader, she sprinkled her letters to Bessie with references to other learned women, including the controversial Germaine de Staël. See correspondence between Williana Wilkinson Lacy and Bessie Lacy, ibid.
2. The biographical information on Bessie Lacy is drawn from the Lacy Papers.
3. Roger Chartier, "Texts, Printing, Readings," in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley, 1989), 157.
4. Journal of Caroline Chester, in Lynne Templeton Brickley, "Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy," in "To Ornament Their Minds": Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Academy, 1792-1833, ed. Theodore Sizer et al. (Litchfield, 1993), 45.
5. Reading can empower those who are not literate. For insights into how Sojourner Truth learned from the Bible "not through seeing words and reading them silently, but in the traditional manner, through listening to someone read writing aloud," see Nell Irvin Painter, "Representing Truth: Sojourner's Truth's Knowing and Becoming Known," Journal of American History, 81 (Sept. 1994), 464-92, esp. 468.
6. For the work that brought the concept of self-fashioning to the fore of scholarly discourse, see Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980).
7. On the challenge that learned women posed to conventional gender relations and on female readers as a sympathetic audience for the writings of learned women, see Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1870 (New York, 1993), esp. 192-246.
8. The letters, commonplace books, diaries, autograph books, and journals on which I have relied map the inclusive pattern of reading that other historians and literary critics glimpsed in their research on the decades immediately after the Revolution. See Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980), 235-64;
9. Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700-1865 (New York, 1989), 160-96;
10. and Cathy Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York, 1986), 55-79.
11. In their analysis of families' inventories in Vermont and Virginia, historians have found similar patterns. William Gilmore's study of Windsor County, Vermont, from 1780 to 1835 highlights the continued significance of "steady sellers." The Bible remained the most popular choice, and families who counted only one book in their holdings possessed a Bible. Larger holdings included such secular literature as volumes of history, scientific treatises, politics, moral philosophy, travel literature, and novels. Inventories in Virginia during these decades were similar. Ronald J. Zboray's analysis of records of the New York Society Library suggests that history, biography, travel literature, and fiction became dominant categories by the middle of the nineteenth century. See William Gilmore, Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780-1835 (Knoxville, 1989), 254-82;
12. Joseph Kett and Patricia McClung, "Book Culture in Post-Revolutionary Virginia," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 94 (1984), 97-148;
13. and Ronald J. Zboray, A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public (New York, 1993), 156-79.
14. Surprisingly little research has been done on the traces left by male readers, 1790-1860. But see Robert A. Gross, "The History of the Book: Research Trends and Source Materials," The Book: Newsletter of the Program of the History of the Book in American Culture, 31 (Nov. 1993), 3-7;
15. and Zboray, Fictive People, 156-79.
16. Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, "Political News and Female Readership in Antebellum Boston and Its Region," Journalism History, 22 (Spring 1996), 2-14;
17. Elizabeth R. Varon, "Tippecanoe and the Ladies, Too: White Women and Party Politics in Antebellum Virginia, "Journal of American History, 82 (Sept. 1995), 494-521. I am indebted to Michael Kammen for observations about the genres that were gendered. The popularity of such texts as Plutarch's Lives suggests that men also used reading for purposes of self-making.
18. On the misconception that women readers in general are passive, see Janice Radway, "Reading Is Not Eating: Mass Produced Literature and the Theoretical, Methodological, and Political Consequences of a Metaphor," Book Research Quarterly, 2 (Fall 1986), 7-29.
19. On women readers' strategies in the construction of meanings and the significance of historical context in shaping the meanings that readers inscribe in texts, see Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill, 1984);
20. Barbara Sicherman, "Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of Women's Reading in Late-Victorian America," in Reading in America: Literature and Society, ed. Cathy Davidson (Baltimore, 1989), 201-25;
21. Barbara Sicherman, "Reading and Middle-Class Identity in Victorian America: 'Cultural Consumption,' Conspicuous and Otherwise," paper presented at the "Conference on Constructing the Middle Class: Consumerism, Domesticity, and Middle Class Identity," New York, Jan. 15-17, 1993 (in Mary Kelley's possession);
22. and Barbara Sicherman, "Reading and Ambition: M. Carey Thomas and Female Heroism," American Quarterly, 45 (March 1993), 73-103.
23. Chartier, "Texts, Printing, Readings," 156.
24. Emphasis added. Sharon M. Harris has suggested that early American women's letters, diaries, and journals were "self-creating acts" and that "to articulate one's thoughts on paper is often to move toward a sense of self as distinctive from the prevailing cultural conceptions about women." See Sharon M. Harris, "Early American Women's Self-Creating Acts," Resources for American Literary Study, 19 (no. 2, 1993), 225.
25. For a survey of recent scholarship on the ideology of domesticity, see Linda K. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History, 75 (June 1988), 9-39.
26. For critiques of the assumption that nineteenth-century women were constrained by this ideology, see Linda K. Kerber, Journal of American History, ibid.;
27. Ar'n't I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York, 1985);
28. Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist (New York, 1987);
29. Gerda Lerner, "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson," Midcontinent American Studies Journal, 10 (Spring 1969), 5-15;
30. and Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York, 1984).
31. Hannah Adams, A Memoir of Miss Hannah Adams, Written by Herself with Additional Notices by a Friend (Boston, 1832), 4-5.
32. David Ramsay, Memoirs of the Life of Martha Laurens Ramsay (Charleston, 1812), 12, 13, 24.
33. Mary Kelley, ed., The Power of Her Sympathy: The Autobiography and Journal of Catharine Maria Sedgwick (Boston, 1993), 84, 74, 82-83.
34. Nearly two decades ago, Anne Firor Scott alerted historians to the significance of female academies and seminaries. Nonetheless, much research remains to be done. See, Anne Firor Scott, "The Ever-Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, 1822-72," History of Education Quarterly, 19 (Spring 1979), 3-25.
35. On the number of academies and seminaries founded between 1790 and 1830, see Lynne Templeton Brickley, "Female Academies Are Every Where Establishing': The Beginnings of Secondary Education for Women in the United States, 1790-1830" (unpublished qualifying paper, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1982), 48-49, and appendix C.
36. Brickley notes that this list "is just a beginning and only meant to be suggestive." There is no count of academies and seminaries founded in the last three decades before the Civil War, but my research in the American Antiquarian Society's extensive collection of catalogues indicates that hundreds more were established then. See also Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States (New York, 1929);
37. and Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York, 1994). Maria Campbell to Mary Humes, Sept. 21, 1819, Campbell Collection (Manuscript Department, Duke University, Durham, N.C.).
38. Brickley, "Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy," 45-46.
39. Brenda Stevenson, ed., The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke (New York, 1988), 58, 59.
40. See Nellie McKay, "The Journals of Charlotte Forten-Grimke: Les Lieux de Memoire in African-American Women's Autobiography," in History and Memory in African-American Culture, ed. Genevieve Fabre and Robert O'Meally (New York, 1994), 261-71.
41. For the argument that women are attracted to teaching as a means by which to achieve intellectual and cultural objectives, see Jo Anne Preston, "Domestic Ideology, School Reformers, and Female Teachers: Schoolteaching Becomes Women's Work in Nineteenth-Century New England," New England Quarterly, 66 (Dec. 1993), 531-51. The volume that Jane Barnham Marks gave Harriet Hayne is deposited in the South Carolina Female Institute Papers (South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia). Bessie Lacy to Drury Lacy, Jan. 27, March 2, 1848, Lacy Papers.
42. Martha Hauser to Julia Conrad Jones, March 9, 1853, Jones Family Papers (Southern Historical Collection).
43. Ibid. On the debate surrounding this epistemology, see Mary Kelley, "'Vindicating the Equality of Female Intellect': Women and Authority in the Early Republic," Prospects, 17 (1992), 1-27.
44. See also Susan Phinney Conrad, Perish the Thought: Intellectual Women in Romantic America, 1830-1860 (New York, 1976), esp. 3-44;
45. and Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens, Oh., 1976), 71-82.
46. Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, ed., Chronicles of a Pioneer School from 1792-1833 (Cambridge, Mass., 1903), 219;
47. E. Latimer, ed., Life and Thought; or, Cherished Memorials of the Late Julia A. Parker Dyson (Boston, 1871), 62, 65.
48. Benjamin Blydenberg Wisner, ed., Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Susan Huntington (Boston, 1826).
49. Caroline Howard to Ann Maria Howard White, [1810s], Caroline Howard Gilman Papers (South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston); Margaret Bayard Smith, "My Books," Ladies' Magazine, 4 (Sept. 1831), 404-5. Fredrika Teute, who is writing a cultural biography of Margaret Bayard Smith, shared this essay with me. Mary Eliza Sweet Commonplace Book, [1820s] (Georgia Historical Society, Savannah).
50. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, 1963), 27. Some of the ideas explored in these paragraphs have developed from conversations with Michael O'Brien. I am indebted to his insights.
51. Mary Early to Elizabeth Early, Oct. 26, 1839, Early Brown Family Papers (Virginia Historical Society, Richmond); Alice Aldrich Lees to Lucy Aldrich, March 8, 1830 (Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence).
52. Maria Drayton Gibbes Commonplace Book, [c. 1820], Gibbes-Gilchrist Papers (South Carolina Historical Society).
53. Julia Hyde to Lucy Goodale, Sept. 26, 1839 (Mount Holyoke College Archives, South Hadley, Mass.) An essay on the reading done by a circle of prominent Elizabethan political figures shows that, like Hyde's reading, it was "an active, rather than a passive pursuit." See Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton, "'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy," Past and Present, 129 (Nov. 1990), 30-78.
54. Maria Davies Diary, Nov. 14, 1850, Special Collections (Duke University).
55. Maria Davies Diary, Ibid., Jan. 28, 1851.
56. Maria Davies Diary, Ibid., Feb. 3, March 26, 1851.
57. Maria Davies Diary, Ibid., April 1, 7, 25, May 15, 16, 21, June 4, 1851.
58. Stevenson, ed., Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke, 105, 63;
59. Julia Parker Dyson Journal, July 5, Nov. 15, July 24, 1841,
60. in Life and Thought, ed. Latimer, 60, 74-75, 62.
61. Margaret Fuller to Susan Prescott, May 14, 1826, in The Letters of Margaret Fuller, vol. I, ed. Robert N. Hudspeth (Ithaca, 1983), 154.
62. Mary Telfair to Mary Few, Jan. 30, 1835, Mary and Frances Few Papers (Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta).
63. Wisner, ed., Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Susan Huntington, 95; Williana Wilkinson Lacy to Bessie Lacy, Aug. 4, [1845], Lacy Papers. Williana Lacy also cited Germaine de Staël.
64. Evelina Metcalf to Anna Gale, [May 10, 1838], Gale Family Papers (American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.).
65. Mirroring the convictions of those newly independent Americans who deplored the reading of fiction, members of the Boston Gleaning Circle declared that novels were "absolutely forbidden." Later literary societies displayed little compunction in this regard. Regulations of the Circle, [1805], Boston Gleaning Circle, Manuscripts (Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass.). Although Karen Blair mentions a female literary society established in Chelsea, Connecticut, in 1800, the earliest records that I have located are those of the Boston Gleaning Circle. Deposited at the Boston Public Library, they include regulations, listings of regular and honorary members, minutes, recitations, treasurer's reports, responses to questions posed by members, and short essays. See Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York, 1980), 12;
66. Regulations of the Circle, Boston Gleaning Circle Record Book, Manuscripts (Boston Public Library); Transactions of the Circle, Boston Gleaning Circle Minute Book, Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (ibid.
67. For a challenge to the common idea that reading is necessarily an isolated activity, see Elizabeth Long, "Textual Interpretation as Collective Action," in The Ethnography of Reading, ed. Jonathan Boyarin (Berkeley, 1993), 180-211.
68. On the social character of reading in women's literary societies in late-nineteenth-century America, see Ann Ruggles Gere, "Common Properties of Pleasure: Texts in Nineteenth-Century Women's Clubs," Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal, 10 (no. 2, 1992), 647-63.
69. Adams, Memoir of Miss Hannah Adams, 7;
70. Hannah Mather Crocker, Letters on Free Masonry (Boston, 1815), n.p.
71. Sarah Brown to Priscilla Brownrigg, Sept. 28, 1818, John Lancaster Bailey Papers (Southern Historical Collection); Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, Dec. 11, 1773, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 72 (1917), 19;
72. Amelia [Pringle] to Sarah Lance Huger, [c. 1820], Bacot-Huger Papers (South Carolina Historical Society); Sophia Cheves to Eleuthera Du Pont, Nov. 27, 1822, Cheves papers, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 19; ibid.; Eliza Mordecai Myers to Rachel Mordecai Lazarus, May 22, 1831, Myers Family Papers (Virginia Historical Society).
73. With the notable exception of two articles on African American women's literary societies, these antebellum institutions have yet to be examined by historians (See note 44, below). On their late-nineteenth-century counterparts, see Theodora Penny Martin, The Sound of Our Own Voices: Women's Study Clubs, 1860-1910 (Boston, 1987).
74. On the social activism of those organizations, see Blair, Clubwoman as Feminist; and Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Urbana, 1991), esp. 111-40.
75. On those late-nineteenth-century societies that maintained a focus on self-education, see Gere, "Common Properties of Pleasure."
76. S ee also Ann Ruggles Gere, Writing Groups: History, Theory, and Implications (Carbondale, 1987). Elizabeth Phillips Payson Collection (Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass.).
77. Records of the Female Reading Class, Colchester, Connecticut, Manuscripts (Connecticut Historical Society, Hanford). For the founding statement and the minutes of the literary society of the Lenoir Female Institute, see Washington Sandford Chaffin Journals, Washington Sandford Chaffin Papers (Special Collections, Duke University). Documents relating to the Deerfield, Massachusetts, Female Literary Society (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Society, Deerfield, Mass.). Jere Daniell generously shared those documents with me. Sigourney Club Papers (Southern Historical Collection); reports of New-Hampton Female Seminary's Young Ladies Literary and Missionary Assocation (American Antiquarian Society).
78. See Dorothy B. Porter, "The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828-1846," Journal of Negro Education, 5 (Oct. 1936), 555-76.
79. On Philadelphia's Female Literary Association, Female Minerva Association, and Edgeworth Literary Association, which were founded in the 1830s, see Julie Winch, "'You Have Talents - Only Cultivate Them': Philadelphia's Black Female Literary Societies and the Abolitionist Crusade," in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Home (Ithaca, 1994), 103-18.
80. Janet Duitsman Cornelius, "When I Can Read My Title Clear": Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South (Columbia, S.C., 1991).
81. Although Cornelius focused on enslaved African Americans, her point is also relevant for free African Americans, including those who established literary societies. Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), esp. 104-19.
82. Both of these organizations were models for the other literary societies formed by African American women. For Sarah Mapps Douglas's statement, see Liberator, July 21, 1832.
83. Records of the Female Reading Class, Colchester, Connecticut.
84. Literary and Missionary Association of the Philadelphia Collegiate Institution for Young Ladies Annual Report (Philadelphia, 1839), 34 (copy in Library Company, Philadelphia, Pa.).
85. John Price to Isabella Downing Price, May 29, 1853, Charles Barrington Simrall Papers (Southern Historical Collection). Price might have added that the "command," the meaning derived from a text, was also "a consequence of being in a particular situation in the world," as Jane P. Tompkins has aptly phrased it. See Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, 1980), xxv.
86. Martha Prescott Diary, May 30, 1836 (Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Mass.).