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English Pages 424 Year 1977
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How the Victorian aJliaiue Ik the clergy, aiid aJliaiue
gave
and the
wccn woiiu n ajid the popular literature to which that t
birth, fostered a sentimental society
Ix^ginnings of niodern
mass culture^
This
one of those rare
is
startling clarity
the ur
fluence through time of a brilliant
it,
at let
'
young
consumer culture
causes,
;
p:.
ji
,
us see with a fresh and
meaning, and
in-
ind cultural phenomenon. In
scholar traces the roots of our
modern
to the sentimental society of Victorian
America.
With
ico
originahty and sympathetic wit,
plores the alliance, beginning in 1820,
Ann Douglas
ex-
of two disenfranchised
of the middle class and the liberal Protestant clergy, both increasingly relegated to the edges of society (to the parlor, to the Sunday School, to the libraries) by the
groups: the
us the ladies and the ministers cultivat-
Ann Douglas shows
ing a realm of "influence," becoming the cultural custodians, taking control of the schools, preaching a reverence for the
imposed upon them: timidity,
qualities that society
piety, childish naivete, a disdain for the competitive forces in
the larger world. She gives us the missing social history of the Protestant minister in the Northeast, and the subtle decline of
She takes us through the magazines the women and the ministers edited {Ladies' Magazine, Godey's Lady's Book, The Ladies' Repository), through the his inherited theology.
etiquette books, into the saccharine biographies of ministers
and the books about
Woman
them.
women that
Suffrage:
which they tried orate on woman's
(among
the ministers wrote
The Reform Against Nature)
in
to fix the correct "feminine" role or elab-
"beautiful errand."
She gives us the contemporary novels and tracts— lachrynarcissistic, riotously
mose,
wildly popular {The
quirky, forgotten
Empty
Crib, Stepping
now
but then
Heavenward,
as
well as such scandalous books as Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Lady Byron Vindicated).
We see the authors, through their
works, colonizing, even domesticating, heaven (heaven has houses, streets, pianos, food, and clothing), projecting the
dead
as a
ment
kind of consecrated leisure
village,
class in a celestial retire-
conveying the impression that death widened
their appointed sphere: the church, faith, manners, morals.
We see the prayer manuals and the flood of almost necroWe see philiac pamphlets that the Victorians devoured.
.
.
.
.
the
women
ship in the
and the ministers competing for
community
as
.
.
spiritual leader-
they became more and more
self-
immersed.
We moral
see vapidity life
:o lO
women
prevailing entrepreneurial forces.
very
o ;o
masquerading
as a perpetual
progressively
more
anti
idealized not as a doer
I
the pretty objects that
'
'
as a sacred
innocence, the
ihood, the church becoming tual,
the middle-class
woman
lisplay case for the clothes v)uld lay at
her
and
feet, tragically
!C0
»rT '"' \ *
V2l
\Sra
'9^
Douglas, Ann Feminization of American 810.9 DOUGLAS
CENTRAL LIBRARY
DEC 2 7
f'^7
1977
ftN2 5;97B
DATE DUE
PB 2 7 J978
:M€^ "1~3~W4^ *H ^PR
8 1978 ,
ecial
urgency. Not
least
dilemma, was the problem of
and closely connected with
his political
intellectual leadership in his
community. In the period from 1820
his parishioners first
of these, his
to 1875,
found those sources of stimulation and opinion which
provide the average middle-class American today with his or her intellectual sustenance, such as
had
its
own
it is.
Unlike the southern Protestant congregation, which
reasons for skepticism
—
if
not dislike
—toward the fresh think-
ing and speaking brought by the burgeoning press and spreading lecture
system to
its
doors, the northern congregation was, within
open and responsive to Competition with libraries,
in the
intellectual
new forms of
the lyceum lecture
developments
in the
its
terms,
broader culture.
public address and persuasion
series,
own
—the lending
the periodicals, each relatively
unknown
eighteenth century but all-pervasive by the middle of the nineteenth
—complicated and accelerated the process of disestablishment for northern As many of them were well aware, their audiences were both better educated and more difficult to please than those men and women who had gathered twice on Sunday a few generations earlier to get their weekly,
ministers.
and only, contact with
literature, lectures, and, often,
each other.®^
Since the adherent of a revivalistic sect was likely to be and to remain less
educated and
less socially
terpart, his minister did not
prominent than
his non-revival-oriented
coun-
confront the same challenge. Methodism and
Baptism, both intensely evangelical sects, had hardly
made
their
tremendous
by converting Boston's Brahmins. Their success, as I have already suggested, was determined by the non-intellectual methods they evolved to gains
Clerical Disestablishment
meet the needs of lation.
The
decidedly non-intellectual immigrant and frontier popu-
a
violence of the revivals for which they were famous matched
the violence of the
At
37
life
of those
who were
converted under their influence.
mid-century, the Methodists found
least until
little
use for the arduous
training and intellectual achievement the Congregationalists their ministry.®^ Peter Cartwright (1785-1872), popularly
demanded of
known
as "the
Methodist bulldog" and one of the most powerful of the early itinerant Methodist preachers, had nothing but scorn for the complex requirements of the older denominations:
"illiterate
Methodist preachers
the world on
set
he boasted, "while they were lighting their matches!" In his Autobiography, Cartwright tells many anecdotes of ineffectual and efl^eminate eastern fire,"
West with no weapon but overextensive book-learning. One of "these little home-manufactured fellows" was unlucky enough to share a service with Cartwright. The newcomer tried to
ministers sent to evangelize out
read a sermon to the rather tough congregation, but, as Cartwright "the frame building
we were worshipping
blew hard," the candles
in
was not plastered
.
.
.
tells
it,
the wind
and he could barely see the pages before him. Cartwright of course took over and preached a vigorous, searching, and successful sermon without notes. When the "hot house reader" was sent flickered,
into the congregation to exhort the mourners, he did
fear of the violent emotion of an all-out
little better.
His timid
— conversion experience "Be com-
posed; be composed," he kept telling the struggling sinners, while Cart-
wright contramanded him: "pray on brothers; there's no compromise
—
in hell
him swimming feebly against the tide of salvation. Finally the "little preacher" was picked up bodily by a man in the throes of conviction and rushed around the congregation accompanied by deor damnation"
left
lighted hoots and
calls.
Once
released,
he disappeared ignominiously and
forever.^'*
Of
course well-bred non-evangelical easterners, secure on their
own
ground, could be as scornful of rivals as Cartwright was of competitors on his territory; ion,
they lavished uneasy disdain on revivalists who,
confused an insensitive
religious authority. in point.
a
A
moderate
Lyman
tasteless anti-intellectualism
in their opin-
with charismatic
Beecher's experience in Boston provides a case
Yale graduate, Beecher was a far cry from Cartwright; he was
who
disapproved of
many
of the
"New
Measures" introduced
by Charles Grandison Finney. Yet he was unmistakably rural in speech and manner, and frankly vehement in his emotions. Beecher arrived in 1826 in his usual intense and heated state of sincerity, ready to into revivalism
"kindle a
fire in all their [the Unitarians']
hoped that the liberal
churches around Boston."^^
He
own impassioned, electric style of ratiocination would attract intellectuals of the hub-city, men who patronized and dominated his
the select and genteel literary and social clubs
which were Boston's
pride.®®
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
38
Horace Mann, the great Massachusetts educator and cultured,
if
most
a Unitarian of the
reform-minded, variety, had heard Beecher preach
in Litchfield,
Mann could found the older man
Connecticut, in 1822 and had written his impressions to a friend. hardly deny Beecher's fabled eloquence, but he clearly bigoted, provincial, even primitive:
Dr. Beecher
.
.
.
published
dolorous
... a
condition of the people of the U. States
according to him,
sitting in the
had not hopkinsian creed. ...
I
.
.
.
.
.
.
[sic], six
upon
sevenths of
whom were,
shadow of death because
.
.
.
they
ministers to dispense the light of the Calvinist
never heard such a sermon
great an effect
about the heathenish
tale
my
tragedy well performed
feelings as
it
in
my
life. ... It
would have
as
to have heard a great
No more upon my
at a theatre!
produced
belief,
for belief
belongs to the understanding and should not be biased by hopes and fears.^^
Mann was not alone in his response; Boston as
one of them
later confessed
with
a
Unitarians went to hear Beecher,
touch of pride, "on the watch for the
amusing or the ludicrous."^® In 1832 Beecher
Brahmins to work out
their
own
salvation;
left
Boston and
its
"fastidious"
he was off to save the West from
Catholicism.
The
Unitarian or non-evangelical Congregational minister, however,
facing the same audience Beecher confronted in Boston, was not always
more comfortable. Their tastes and predilections were presumably his own, but this did not mean he automatically believed them adequate material for spiritual sustenance.
Both minister and congregation were
likely to
be
refined and highly literate. Cartwright stressed the foolish eastern novice's
over-devotion to the written page; Catharine,
Lyman
Beecher's daughter, in
made Boston's Unitarians so impervious to Beedescribed them as "literary" :^^ they oriented themselves
explaining to Finney what cher's brilliance,
through reading, through study, through conversation. Catharine Maria
Sedgwick (1789-1867), day, spent
a
popular and fervently Unitarian authoress of the
much time in Boston
communal
in the 1820s;
her diaries reveal an earnestness
makes the Unitarian circle of Boston intelligentsia the Channings, the Peabodys, and the Pollens, to name Miss Sedgwick's special friends sound like an extension of a Harvard of
talk
and
intellectual pursuit that
—
—
Divinity School seminar.^® Channing's parishioners, like Bushnell's in Hartford,^ ^
were people who expected
into religious awareness
—by
instances
susceptibilities
Even
from them
a
in
many
their self-consciously limited emotional
a literary dimension: they did not expect or
their pastor to elicit create.
be converted than to be socialized
—no matter how superficially or crudely
polite literature.
had
less to
perhaps want
response more vehement than a book could
— Clerical Disestablishment
39
Living as he did in a country whose whole history was, as one foreign visitor noted, "the history of revivals,"^^ the Hberal minister occasionally
had
trouble convincing himself that the relatively subdued interaction between himself and his congregation constituted genuine religious instruction; the
techniques of Cartwright or Beecher could be ridiculed, but they nonetherepresented the only religious experience which an overwhelming ma-
less
of Protestant Americans accepted as authentic. Non-evangelical
jority
Congregationalists like Bushnell frequently expressed an intense desire to witness
more
passion in their hearers.
divine of any prominence in the
There was hardly
a single Unitarian
half of the nineteenth century
first
not privately or publicly express the fear that the Unitarian
laity
who did were, as
opponents often claimed, "cold," over-intellectualized, bookish, lack-
their
ing in religious fervor.
Nor
did the liberal minister escape a similar charge.
William Ellery Channing was troubled by the problem of "languor and
were troubled by the The acknowledged leader of
insensibility" in his denomination;^^ other observers
coldness they perceived in Channing himself.
American Unitarianism, despite
his
immense and apparently
effortless pulpit
eloquence, was capable of taking notes during an informal conversation
on
his
own
words.^"*
Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843), bom of a Unitarian family and later to become a professor at Harvard's liberal Divinity School, as a young man found Channing more than sufficiently persuasive, but he worried about the attitude of his fellow Harvard candidates for the ministry. "Our Cambridge students 1812.
.
.
They
much
study religion too
.
"regard
to forget that
as a subject to
it
something to be
it is
he wrote his father
as a science,"
be reasoned upon felt."
.
.
.
in
and appear almost
Even while Ware found
revivals
of the Finneyite variety "outrageous and vulgar fanaticism," incredible displays of "indecorum,
.
.
profanity and blasphemy,"^^ he was troubled by
.
the fact that he as a Unitarian minister inevitably played on a smaller
emotional keyboard than the one on which a revivalist operated. achieve infinitely certain large
more
subtle variations, but he
and powerful
parishioners' "hopes
and
efl^ects.
He
might
was undeniably forgoing
In disavowing violent manipulation of his
he renounced the use of terror and the
fears,"
longing for grandiosity, profoundly rich religious resources.
Using trauma
as a basis for religious conviction
can produce every kind
of polarization.^^ Yet no one can dispute the efficacy of the nineteenth-
century revivalist preachers
catching the ear and opening the purse of
in
middle-class Protestant America. anxieties
and energies
is
a
way
To
say they were tapping non-religious
of saying that they were aggressively but
And whatever the case with their motives, Here is Lyman Beecher describing the start of his
surely in touch with their times. their first
energy was genuine. revival at East
Hampton, Long
Island, in 1807:
.
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
40
For some time there was no effect to anything I could do. I could not write any sermons that would take hold. Finally I resolved that I would preach the doctrine of Election. I knew what that doctrine was and what it would do. My object was to preach cut and thrust, hip and thigh, and not to ease off. I had been working a good part of a year with .
my
.
.
heart burning, and they feeling nothing.
mittens.
.
I
took hold without
.
[He preached last I
Now
his
sermon on Election on December
14, 1807.]
had found something that took hold. There was not an eye
At in
the whole church but what glistened like cold stars of a summer's night.
.
.
went home expecting; and word was sent up from the Springs that the Lord had come down the previous Sunday and that a meeting was appointed for Tuesday evening, and that I must not disappoint them. I went and preached. I saw one young man with his head down. I wanted to know if it was an arrow of the Almighty. I came along after sermon, and laid my hand upon his head. He lifted up his face, his eyes all full of tears; I saw it was God. Then I went to the Northwest and the Lord was there; then to Ammigansett, and the Lord was there; and the flood was rolling all around. Oh what a time that was!^^ I
Even
the non-evangelical clergyman was right in rejecting this kind
if
of energy as a perversion of genuine intellectual concern, the crucial question remained here as in the political sphere:
what did he have
to put in
its
by the new sophistication of his audience and the rapid development of highly specialized fields of knowledge, he was forced to abandon the claim to terrain which his predecessors had been wont to regard place?^® Driven
as their
backyard. His ministerial ancestors had seen themselves as
tual experts:
forebears
he had become the gifted amateur.
would have neglected or banned
sensitive brother, if
wrote
historical novels
conscientiously, tending his
New
his
when he was not somewhat
York City
flock,
men were
and Orville
ineptly,
Dewey
essentially outsiders
of art as Jonathan Edwards was decidedly not in the world of
secular philosophy. tellectually,
might enter areas
— William Ware, Henry Ware's
patronized painting and sculpture; but both in the field
He
intellec-
The
nineteenth-century liberal clergyman, checked
was simultaneously accepting, even courting,
on the emotional expenditure permissible
The equally
in his fiock
and
a
in-
kind of freeze
in himself.
non-evangelical Episcopalian rector, addressing an equally
educated, affluent, and reserved congregation, seemed to face a similar situation,
and face
it
with success.
It is
no accident
that the
first
church Unitari-
ans captured in Boston was the Episcopalian King's Chapel; the
two groups
kept up a complex process of rivalry and imitation throughout the nine-
41
Clerical Disestablishment
was
teenth century. ^^ But the rector's position
that of his Unitarian or Congregational peer. filled a special, discrete,
and separate
in
key respects different from
The EpiscopaHans had always
Their authoritarian
role.
ecclesiastical
structure and ritualized worship might be construed as a threat to the
American Way, but the denomination
to
which they adhered had not
origi-
nated historically in this country as a protest-sect.®® In contrast, the beliefs
which the
to
developed
By
in
liberal Congregationalist
or Unitarian minister subscribed had
the course of opposing and redefining the
had fewer traditions of their
definition, the Unitarian clergy
back on. Unitarianism was criticized by that
it
was primarily negative
for the creed
it
New England Creed.
in its
its
own
to
fall
enemies precisely on the grounds
animus, that
it
had nothing to substitute
defied except a half-hearted, literary piety and a
weak
imitation of Episcopalian ceremony.
The Personal
The
''Sphere''
dilemma of the non-evangelical clergymen was that of increasingly limited resources. The introduction of the voluntary system had compelled the ministers of the Protestant groups most aflPected to disavow in their different fashions any public pretension to tangible "power" in favor central
of the claim of invisible "influence."®^
former authority more
entirely,
None
of them had relinquished their
however, than the non-evangelical clergy-
man. Fearful of openly challenging the economic forces of compelled by unbeatable competition to abandon culture, both scornful
and afraid of the
his
under a sometimes claustrophobic pressure from
ways fervent congregation versatile,
former monopoly on
revivalistic reliance
agitation, attracted but cautious before the lure of
to be better trained,
his society,
Anglican
on fear and
ritual,
his fastidious
more
he was
and not
skillful,
al-
and more
while presenting a smaller number of topics and evoking a slighter
was asked to be more agile in an ever-shrinking space. One Maine clergyman, discussing "the magnitude of the ministerial work" in 1845, found the job's most painful demand to be on the sensibilities: it would be impossible, he wrote, to overestimate the tax exacted on the
intensity of feeling; he
minister's "sympathies." In fact, "his heart
and
falling
a
The
a perfect
barometer rising
according to the state of the atmosphere."®^ This metaphor
suggests an extreme subjectivity
dence.
must be
which
minister described here
fundamentally passive
role;
he
is
is
lacks even the merit of indepen-
doomed
to perpetual activity within
locked into an exhausting process of
no real sources of replenishment. Not surprisingly, it sometimes seemed to interested observers that the non-evangelical clergyman's subject matter was disappearing, thinning out into literary platitudes and trivialized piety. There were innumerable pleas instantaneous responsiveness with
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
42 in the
reviews and magazines of the
variety
from
their ministers.
complained that the
One
tions,
limited.
on
For the
was
monotony seemed
inevitable
when
options
was driven back on his own reactime when, through an obvious vicious circle,
liberal minister
himself, precisely at a
his self-confidence
writer in the Christian Examiner in 1840
weakness of the clergy was the "sameness" and
real
dullness of their sermons.®^ But
were so
and
liberal sects for greater force, vigor,
at
lowest.
its
He was
forced to professionalize
the personal simply because he had lost any solid impersonal basis for his authority.
The
liberal
clergy gave clear signs of the anxiety produced by their
Nervous that their society was deserting them, they noted uneasily the increasing abandonment of their profession by the "best" young men.®* Enrollment in Harvard's increasing sense of self-immersion and cultural isolation.
Unitarian-dominated and once-controversial Divinity School was low,
sometimes shockingly
so,
during the second half of the century; those
did go were often not of the social caste that had graced days.®^
Andover Seminary, once the school
under the innovative
liberal influences
its
who
halls in earlier
for Calvinists, at mid-century
of Austin Phelps (1820-90) and E. A.
Park, did a bit better; but half-jesting stories about a mythological student
dedicated to the ministry by an uncle
and so half-witted that he
listed
who found him
"fit
for nothing else"
Benedict Arnold as one of the great Protes-
Andover had its dunces and its doubts.®^ Suspicion that American society was not consecrating its most talented sons to the ministry was exceeded by a powerful if less rational fear that it was tant reformers revealed that
ignoring, perhaps persecuting, those ministers
mentalized yet clearly
felt
it
already possessed. Senti-
accounts of ministerial destitution abound
One
liberal religious press of the day.
in
the
clerical sob-brother painted a doleful
picture of a small-town pastor, ill-paid, unheeded, eating his soul out in
"agony," driven by necessity to teach school: "at
minded grave generation
in his
own
knows him
last
secluded churchyard, or he
not,
he occupies an unlives until
another
knows nothing of the once glowing preacher
in
the old and jaded schoolmaster."®^
This
is
soap opera, but
of living burial, which has
it
expresses a fear of cultural excision, a terror
its
own
very
real historical significance. It
is
hardly accidental that soap opera, an increasing specialty of nineteenth-
century
liberal Protestantism,
is
a
phenomenon which we
special needs of feminine subculture. line heritage,
was pushed
Who
whether economic,
Cut
political,
associate with the
off at every point
from
his
mascu-
or intellectual, the liberal minister
into a position increasingly resembling the evolving feminine
was barred with him from the larger world of masculine concerns, who else was confined with him to a claustrophobic private world of over- responsive sensibility, who else but the American lady? Foreign one.
else
Clerical Disestablishment
observers in America were quick to
draw
43
the comparison between the
clergymen and those of women. Harriet Martineau reported that the commercial classes treated the clergy disdainfully as pow-
situation
erless,
and
interests of
between men and women."®® Alexis de more optimistic view of the status of women and
ill-informed "people halfway
Tocqueville,
who
ministers in the
took
a
New World, noted
in
both
cases,
however, that they carried
authority only within their largely domestic and personal "spheres"; out of
were careful never to trespass.®^ so many non-evangelical clergymen between 1820 and
these "spheres," de Tocqueville noted, both Little
wonder
that
1875 expressed a terror of being constantly uprooted, then allowed to take
even slighter hold
Dewey's trauma in Washington, D.C., comes into clearer focus. The liberal minister was losing his role among his society's leaders; his place was increasingly in the Sunday School, the parlor, and the library, among women and those who flattered and resembled them.
in
ever-poorer
soil.
Orville
FEMININE DISESTABLISHMENT
Feminine Hopes and Fears
Throughout the ante-bellum and
Civil
War
period, liberal ministers
preoccupied with establishing and fixing the correct feminine important, they defined
it
in
role;
were
equally
terms which strongly suggested clerical aspira-
Horace Bushnell, writing to his young daughter in 1845, summed up the womanly ideal in one short statement: "a woman should be a Christian." A woman is by nature, he continued, amplifying on his theme, one "whose character can be finished only by assimilation to God."^ Another minister, writing on the same subject a decade earlier in a popular Congregationalist magazine, had put the matter even more bluntly to his feminine readers: "religion is far more necessary to you than self-sufficient men. In you it would be not only criminal, but impolitic to neglect it." Your tions
and
anxieties.
importance to society, the writer went on to warn, elevation.^ Like the
realm, the
women
clergymen newly segregated
lies
solely in
your moral
in a strictly ecclesiastical
addressed by Bushnell and his Congregational contempo-
rary are both flattered and threatened: stay within your proper confines, and
be worshiped, their self-appointed mentors assure them; step out-
you
will
side
and you
will cease to exist.
And
to be of a peculiarly unassertive
feminine
faith, like clerical piety,
and retiring kind. Bushnell instructed
his
woman,
she
daughter to have no needs, almost no character of her own: as should be "above
all
was
... unselfish."
"We
a
demand," he explained, with
a
euphemistic flourish, "that she shall seem to have alighted here for the
45
Feminine Disestablishment
world's comfort and blessing
... all
variance with her beautiful errand."^ of
it,
the part he sketches for the
claustrophobically cramped,
if
ways of selfishness are specially at Whether or not Bushnell was aware
the
woman
sacred.
is,
of the liberal clergyman,
like that
She should prompt others rather than
by personal example. The necessary, almost punitive connection between femininity and a certain kind of Christianity, while a favorite theme among liberal ministers, was a commonplace of the day, and one endorsed as heavily by women as by men. Sarah Hale (1788-1879), the editor of Godey's Lady's Book and the
assert herself; she
is
to persuade passively
most important arbiter of feminine opinion of her day, frequently reprinted
women with obvious approval. The willingness of women like Hale and her readers to court such self-evalua-
clerical injunctions to
literary-minded tion
and
identity
self-restriction suggests that
and esteem
as real
they were engaged
and complex
ministry in the same period.
as the
To document
in a struggle for
one which absorbed the
this
feminine
liberal
crisis in self-confi-
dence, one cannot turn to direct or indirect statements of professional anxiety such as abound
comparable
oflicial
spokeswomen
among
clerical writers, for
profession.
for the cautious
were intensely absorbed
in
Yet
many
women
of course had no
of them, the self-designated
among their discontented
middle-class
sisters,
trying to manufacture and defend a kind of
pseudo-profession through the enunciation of a theory of female "influence."
Not
the most admirable
among
the self-aware American
women
of
among the clergy, They were vastly more
the mid-nineteenth century, they, like the liberal ministers are in a real sense the most significant historically.
numerous than their overtly reformist feminine peers; Sarah Hale of Godey V Lady V Book always commanded more adherents than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the suflFrage leader.
Moreover, the arguments Hale and others formu-
lated,
most notably the theory of "influence," were adopted not only by
those
who
avowed ries
thought
feminists."*
like
them, but, eventually, by the
sufl^ragists
and other
Theirs was to be a winning strategy, although
were hollow. This
is
I
victo-
not to suggest that Hale and her followers did not
advocate important reforms; they did, particularly
women's education.
its
am
in the critical area
of
admittedly downplaying such reform activities
here and elsewhere because they were contained within traditional, gically rephrased, notions of the feminine role.
if
strate-
Hale and her supporters
pursued partially feminist goals by largely anti-feminist means; genuine success
was hardly
possible.
Yet their caution was evidence not only of their
short-term shrewdness, but of their very justifiable anxiety. At mid-century, articulate northeastern
women,
like liberal ministers,
cerned about what viable place they might find
As
liberal ministers increasingly
marks and actual
were profoundly con-
in their society.
de-emphasized the traditional trade-
facts of their calling, the feminine promulgators of the
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
46
doctrine of "influence" habitually obscured women's biological and eco-
nomic function; they displaced and relocated themselves by defining femininity always in terms of
its effects,
never
in
terms of
for example, this ecstatic panegyric on the well-bred female
Magazine
Take,
causes.
its
from the
Ladies'
in 1830:
See, she
sits,
she walks, she speaks, she looks
ration springs
up
in
her very paths
—
—unutterable things!
follows her foot-steps.
it
is
awe,
and an
a reverence,
halo
For he approaches her with an
actually renovated. aff^ection
A
man not
of glory encircles her, and illumines her whole orbit. With her,
only feels safe but
Inspi-
which before he knew not he pos-
sessed.^
This apparent paean of self-love of invisibility
we saw
presented image. This ity itself
among
is
at is
work
model of self-evasion; the dread
actually a
in Orville
Dewey
hardly an assertion of a
painfully absent.
The
inflates
full
and mystifies the
feminine
ideal; physical-
constant reiteration of feminine "purity"
the proponents of influence was not only a denial of patriarchal
Reading
values, but of matriarchal ones. zine,
is
we have no
something to
this passage
Ladies' Maga-
from the
woman, or womanly ideal, is, except as be perceived and reacted to; she has no body and no personalidea of
what
this
The opening sentence reads today like an advertisement for a versatile doll. The first word, and the key to the whole statement, is "See": look at ity.
her, believe in her, the writer is
of value because she
is
unconsciously urging, so she can
is
able to
man; she represents nothing
work
finally
a
exist.
She
kind of religious transformation
in
but a state of susceptibility to very
imprecisely conceived spiritual values.
Dependent
as this
feminine creature
on masculine responses for her
is
very being, she can as easily be man's victim as his "inspiration."
Much
of
the contemporary writing on the stereotypic feminine figure suggests that, if
woman
precipitates
this precisely
by her
and indifferent
and represents
sensibility, she
sensitivity to pain.
The
relation
must inevitably prove
between
toiling pastor
flock, a frequent subject in the clerical fiction of the day,
echoed by the equally prevalent concern
in
was
feminine literature with the
necessary but tortuous bond between wife and husband, mother and child.
As one contributor
to the Ladies'
husband may cease to love silence,"
her,
Magazine explained
and she
will
in 1836, a
be called to bear
woman's
his neglect "in
only striving to win him back "by increased anxiety to please."
Again, a child
may
fall
ill,
and she
will, in
an abandon of irrational but
instinctive self-sacrifice, nearly kill herself in eflPorts to obviate
of discomfort: "if but a slight cloud passes over
its
its least
countenance,
if
pang but a
47
Feminine Disestablishment
disturbed motion gives evidence of suffering, she watches anxiously while others sleep, to soothe
if
Feminine suffering distinctly
about
its
more
violent
possible, its slightest pain."^
in the
popular writing of the period could take
and active forms, ones which raised painful questions
redemptive value. Indeed, paranoid terror that vulnerability would
among women writing about their position as among clergymen discussing theirs. The temperance cause in which clergymen and women worked side by side provides provide provocation only for brutality was as intense
a
good example;
was often promoted
it
the alcoholic but the
woman
at his
as a covert crusade to salvage not
mercy.
The
drunkard, usually a male,
destroys by his debauches himself and the saintly wife, mother, daughter,
or
sister
who
loves
him and would draw him from the saloon
His defiant drinking serves as he
is
willing to
kill
a
reminder of the
himself in order to attack
limits of its
to the fireside.
female "influence";
nearest representative.
Lydia Huntley Sigoumey (1791-1865), once famous as the "sweet singer of Hartford," author of countless popular and pious tales and in the pre-Civil
War era, published a collection of temperance stories in
fittingly entitled
brutality has
Her
poems
Water Drops. Their message
is
1
848
overwhelmingly that man's
Widow and When his devout
no function but the torture of woman. In "The
Son," the inebriate in question
mother pleads with him to mend laboriously enunciates
his
is
a fatherless boy.
ways, he "revolt[s]."
Sigoumey 's theme: "He despised
The
hurt mother
my woman's voice,
my motherly love." When the reprobate's pure sister touchingly admonishes him to reform, he spurns her advice as nothing but a veiled power play: "Always to be working under your orders, I suppose. No doubt that would be quite pleasing. All you women like to rule when you can."^ He takes his revenge by choosing the totally masculine career of a sailor. For the rebellious male, the whole world can function as a refuge from feminine authority. Sigoumey 's most famous temperance tale, "The Intemperate," makes the same point. It opens with a description of a family trudging on the weary road from a New England farm to a new home in Ohio. We know at once that all is not well, for the wife is staggering along under the burden of her two children while her spouse is reeling under a quite diflPerent load. The drunkard eventually murders his delicate son, his wife's special favorite. His motivation for this and other lesser enormities
he strove to distress "® sins.
his
wife and then
The happy ending
is
''visited
New
significant, if predictable:
her sensibilities upon her as
tellingly reserved for the real sufferer of the
story; the "intemperate's" wife, finally freed
to the
is
by her husband's death, returns
England homestead from which he has uprooted
her.
Even the determinedly moderate Sarah Hale, chief exponent of the doctrine of the feminine sphere, could occasionally describe the relation
between the sexes
in
terms whose fierce extremism
initially leaves a
modem
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
48
"Man
reader puzzled and disoriented:
mourner," "a fiend and an the
Roman
woman the mob destroyed
the murderer and
angel. "^ In 1834,
when
a
Boston
Catholic Ursuline convent, Hale found in their action not the
women:
excesses of bigotry but rather an extreme disrespect for
wrong
"it is
a
women," she exclaimed, "at which every female heart must revolt." ^° Hale was intensely sympathetic to all the overtlv oppressed members of her sex: Mormon women compelled by the iniquitous system of polygamy to lead lives of sensual indulgence, Asian women forced into demeaning servitude in a society which had no notion of feminine worth, American wives committed to insane asylums by husbands eager to escap>e the grim example of their sup>eriority.^^ Hale was usually supremely politic in her writings about male-female relations, but she was so precisely because cruelty, a
... to
she subscribed to a conspiracy view of history:
women must
engineer their
well-being in a world dominated by a sex essentially hostile to
Whether she was being like the
tactful or outspoken, hopeful or horrified, Hale,
authors of the temperance
nineteenth-century America
in
— rather
The
woman
as the register of
middle-class
like the minister's
ability of her
—
woman's depended
fate in in this
male peers, increasingly absorbed
which
the taks of settlement and competition, to recognize the values
their activities apparently denied.
or superannuated, narcissism at
work
disguise the fear
The
By
defined
tales,
man's capacity for personal experience.
view on the willingness and
it.
End of
a savior
in
The
well-bred
woman was either essential
or a creature destined to speedy extinction.
The
the very extremism of such alternatives could hardly
which gave
it
birth.
"'Mother Power''
woman
the mjddle of the nineteenth century the northeastern well-bred
was "disestablished" as surely as her clerical peers, although her disestablishment was hardly official. J. H. Allen, in discussing the efl^ects of voluntarism in 1868, lamented that the church, which had once been the "meeting house" of the town, the center for the vital community activities of worship, education, and business, was now merely a house of prayer, and place for words, not deeds. ^^
The
transformation occur
in
nal productive process
middle-class northern
children stayed before they began to
to clothe
and feed them;
had seen
her home: formerly an important part of a
under her direction,
after the strain of labor.
woman
Once
now
it
had become
a place
a similar
commu-
where her
work and where her husband
rested
her family had looked to her quite literally
they exp>ected
a
complex blend of nurture and
escape from her "voluntary" care.
The difficulties of discussing feminine disestablishment,
vital as
I
believe
Feminine Disestablishment it
49
to be to the understanding of nineteenth-century
enormous.
First of
all,
American
the disestablishment of middle-class
culture, are
women was
a
very haphazard and proximate process, compared to the end of state-sup-
No legislative acts banned home industries in early nineteenth-century New England, no feminine pressure groups lobbied for ported
religion.
and against the change. Furthermore, the
were not usually highly educated
down
writing
their opinions.
women affected, unlike the clergy,
societal leaders
Few even
of those
accustomed to voicing and
who must
have experienced
or witnessed in their lifetimes the shifting status of the matron of the house
from producer
consumer
to
left
detailed accounts of the transition. Unlike
their clerical contemporaries, they
ideas
were
history: they
had no awareness that their
were correspondingly
lives
or their
careless of preserving their
where women are concerned, sentiment was wanted, not facts. Literally hundreds of nostalgic memoirs were penned in the Civil War period abqut vanished rural ways, old New England farmsteads, and identities.
As
so often
once-abundant country Thanksgivings presided over by all-capable and generically hospitable housekeepers; such reminiscences, while valuable as a response to cultural
Even today there
change, hardly give us a trustworthy account of
is little
accumulated research to depend on;^^ accounts and
conclusions about the economic changes in the northeastern woman's the
first
it.
life in
half of the nineteenth century are inevitably tentative.
One must start by stressing that feminine "disestablishment" hardly affected all women in all parts of the United States. For the majority of American women living between 1800 and 1865, there was probably no economic dislocation and no concomitant "disestablishment" process comparable to that affecting the northern middle-class girls
who moved from a
life
for the feminine immigrants a ship to a
little
who came
women who
or no meaning.
cally in the
em
of labor on a farm to a
numbers
straight
from
The southern white woman, who belonged
techni-
same socio-economic category with her disestablished northeast-
this period.
"lady" was affairs
in increasing
of labor in a factory,
served King Cotton, disestablishment clearly
counterpart, found herself in
during
life
countless
northern sweatshop or a midwestem frontier, for the thousands
of enslaved black
had
woman. For the
still
many
respects in a quite different situation
Usually based on a farm or a plantation, the southern
performing an important function. Responsible for the
of a complex household often including a
nrmber
of slaves, she was
economically essential to the agrarian system of the South. Slavery gave her, as
it
gave the southern minister, an important role which, while limiting her
option and motivation for revolt, increased her opportunity for strategically
was not until after the Civil War that she had to deal with the problems arising from a modernizing urbanizing economy which had begun to beset her northern sister several generations before.^* placed support.
It
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
50
North
In 1800, by any reckoning, America,
Only
agricultural nation. in
six
percent of
was an
population of five million lived
New
York and Philadelphia could The common productive unit was the
towns of 2,500 or more; only
over 50,000 inhabitants.
its
as well as South,
boast rural
household; the processing and preserving of food, candlemaking, soapmak-
weaving, shoemaking, quilting, rugmaking, and
ing, spinning,
activities all
sale
less self-sufficient.
conducted on in the
other
took place on domestic premises. Although extra income might
be sought through the
more or
many
a barter
of produce and goods, such households were
Buying and
basis. ^^
selling,
The system
when
occurred, was often
it
of household industry prevalent
Northeast through the early decades of the nineteenth century meant
that the majority of
women
in
the area during that time were actively
productive activities of feeding, clothing, and equipping the
engaged
in the
nation. ^^
Nowhere was their importance
clearer than in the domestic
manu-
facture of woolen goods, most notably "homespun," a coarse all-wool and
undyed fabric from which most of the clothing worn in the Northeast was made.^^ The census of 1810 estimated that twenty-four of every twenty-five yards of wool produced in the United States was of domestic usually
origin;
during the Revolution and the
was hard individual
come
War
of 1812,
when imported
cloth
homespun was pushed on patriotic grounds and households were encouraged by bounties to prepare extra cloth
to
by,
for public sale.^® Within the household, adult certain difficult parts of the
men
traditionally handled
manufacture of cloth, but
pensable in spinning the wool and in
many
women were
other stages of
its
indis-
production.
Moreover, although from colonial days on professional workers had supple-
mented household procedures with
skilled techniques,
dependent on the domestic industry. like
When
the
first
they were entirely
labor-saving devices,
the carding machine and the spinning jenny, were patented at the turn
of the nineteenth century, they were intended for and absorbed by
household use.^®
By
1830, the picture in the
population was
still
farm products, the
North was very
diflPerent.
Although the
over five-sixths rural and exports consisted largely of
industrial revolution, as
modem economic historians tend
was under way.^^ Commercial farming replaced subsistence farming; self-sufficiency was giving way to specialization. The urban population was growing faster than the population of the country as a whole. The War of 1812 and the embargoes, blockades, and tariffs which accompanied and
to agree,
succeeded
gave support to America's manufactures.
it
the staunch defender of agrarian
taught
me
.
.
.
our comfort,"
manufactures are political
life,
now
When Jefl^erson, once
explained in 1816 that "experience has as necessary to
our independence
endorsement of the economic
shift
Between 1820 and 1840 the number of people engaged
as to
was complete.^ in
^
manufactures
Feminine Disestablishment
51
increased 127 percent, while those occupied in agriculture increased only 79 percent. Massachusetts and
New
committee of the Massachusetts pleasure, that
little
By
ing people."^^
inhabitants
its
1840, there
States, two-thirds of
them
in
York
still
were "becoming
were
as
much
essentially a
manufactur-
1,200 cotton factories in the United
New England. The wool industry, now subject
economic scene
accounted for
acknowledged, although with
legislature
changed dramatically. Although one ob-
to competition with cotton, had
server of the
industrialized soonest. In 1836, a
1839 estimated that domestic manufacture
in
cloth as factory production in
America
whole, the household was clearly losing out to the factory, especially Northeast. ^^
Homespun had owed
its
With
the
boom
opening of canals and
the
in
success to primitive technological
conditions and the absence of a real domestic market for material.
as a
in inventions, the
protection of the
railroads, the factories
more
finished
tariffs,
and the
had within reach
a
low-priced
woolen product and a market able and eager to buy it. By the time of the Civil War, homespun was common only in certain undeveloped parts of New England and in the western settlements. Middle-class women in the Northeast after 1830 were far more interested
in the
purchase of clothing
than the making of cloth. It is
a
interesting to note that this
decided alteration
number of
in
woman's
economic
shift
position in society.
among them
their legal privileges,
was concomitant with
Women lost a significant
the right to vote.^'* Despite
were barred from a newly deThey vanished more or less entirely
their long record as expert midwives, they
fined
and restricted medical profession.
from
a
number
of occupations; they appeared
less
frequently in public
records as printers, blacksmiths, arms-makers, or proprietors of small busi-
To
ness concerns.
woman
with
a
put
it
simply and perhaps simplistically, the independent
mind and
a life of
her
own
slowly ceased to be considered
Widows provide a good index of this change in opinion. Since by definition a woman suddenly deprived of male support, the
of high value. a
widow
is
opportunities her culture affords her, the attitude especially revealing of
New
England, a
"Widows"
its
widow
stance toward
it
adopts toward her, are
women more
generally. In colonial
could be a powerful force
in
her community.
constituted a special order in the Protestant Church; even the
tendency of the colonial mind to associate widowhood with witchcraft was a sign,
if
a negative one, of the
presumed power of widows.
A
recent study
of seventeenth-century Wethersfield, Connecticut, reveals that
its
widows
actually tended to remarry less often and after greater intervals than
widowers; they apparently did so because they had greater options for and busy single
lives
than did their male counterparts.^^
full
the early nine-
widows were conventionally viewed as pitiful Numerous organizations formed to relieve "widows and or-
teenth century, in contrast, charity cases.
By
its
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
52
phans"; stories turning on the pathos of the newly
were popular.^® There are no riage in the later period, but
same pattern of In
common
statistics available as
it
self-reliance
bride or mother
yet on the rate of remar-
seems highly unlikely they would reveal the
which the study of Wethersfield highlighted.
widow
nineteenth-century conception, the
new
widowed
—to help
waited for a
any show of
man
was valuable chiefly as evidence of her worthiness of such aid. She had no communal tasks deemed appropriate to her widowed state; she was obligated to undertake nothing but the heavily self-involved business of mourning. The process of adjustment was seen as a private and psychological one. The widow had become a source of sentimentality; a woman without a man a brother, a son, a
lover
her;
self-reliance
was an emblem of frailty and unproductivity. Contemporary observers sensed and articulated a connection between the economic shift and the change in middle-class feminine status taking place in their society. In 1851, when Horace Bushnell came to Litchfield, Connecticut, to deliver an address in honor of the county's centennial, he testified that a
major and complex upheaval had occurred since
his
own
boyhood days on a nearby farm a half century earlier. By 1851, industrialization was a fact in Connecticut; between 1800 and 1850, manufactures had replaced shipping and agriculture as the Bushnell's speech, however,
was
chief source of wealth.
less a tribute to
lament for the "Puritan Arcadia" of the vision of the vanished era,
state's
which he
past.
tellingly
spun," are the economically functional
^^
current progress than a
At the center of Bushnell's entitles "The Age of Home-
woman,
the "frugal, faithful, pious
housewife" spinning the clothes and linen of her family, and the organically productive household over which she presided: "[They were] harnessed, together, into the producing process,
the
boy
that rode the plough-horse to the
spectacles.
.
.
producer for nell's
young and
.
male and female, from
grandmother knitting under her
The house was a factory on the farm; the farm a grower and the house." The passing of the "Age of Homespun," in Bush-
mind, has resulted
manners": a
old,
all
loss
in a
"complete revolution of domestic
life
and
social
of self-reliance and social responsibility, the "severe" yet
"sublime" virtues of the earlier day. Bushnell
is
aware
that the "transition
from mother and daughter power to water and steam power" is both so momentous and so final that "the very terms 'domestic manufacture' have quite lost their meaning." Domesticity
women no longer marry
itself is
beyond recognition; living, but to help them
altered
to help their husbands get a
spend their income.^®
words on the transformation of the socio-economic role of the New England woman are implemented by his private testimony, which, while more limited in scope, is more illuminating in its detail. His mother belonged to the old school, his wife to the new; he loved them both, Bushnell's public
Feminine Disestablishment
53
but he loved and used them very differently. His mother, Dotha Bushnell, in
her son's words, "had no advantages of wealth or family connection above
Her
the level of industrious respectability. it
was
that she
won
field
was
in
her family and there
her best honors." She possessed tremendous "physical
endurance and tenacity" which enabled her to "bear severities of toil that would have reduced almost any other woman to the level of a drudge." To say that she
was economically functional would be an understatement. She
was, according to her son, economically indispensable:
She was providing and training her six children, clothing her whole family in linens and woolens, spun, every thread, and made up in the house also to
to administer, also
months
in a
by herself. She had a farm-and-dairy charge the farm workmen to board, and for five or six
a great extent
year the workers, besides, of a homespun cloth-dressing
shop. All this routine she kept
and clear such
as the
a stress
moving
astronomic year.
of burden!
And
.
.
.
in exact
order and time, steady
What mortal endurance could
bear
showed
dam-
yet she scarcely
a look of
age.^^
Mrs. Bushnell dedicated her son early to the ministry and was directly responsible for his final choice of a clerical career, but she never
much
showed
overt religiosity; she trusted to the example of Christian habit rather
than to devotional display to effect his conversion. She was reserved, even
was her prudence, her industry, and her "tact" which her son found "sublime." She was "tender," "motherly," and "self-sacrificing," Bush-
taciturn;
it
nell notes,
but her real greatness to his mind lay in her wisdom, her "wonder-
ful insight
and discretion."^® As her son
and
in secular
sees
them, her strengths
matters were unmistakably at root economic ones.
in spiritual
By
his
own
account, Bushnell paid her the tribute one ideally only pays to genuinely factual experience: he took her word,
more or
less
uncorrected and unal-
tered.
Mary A. Thorp of Hartford, a descendant
Bushnell's wife, ter
woman of charm and education, in contrast seems him where he should go so much as sustained him in
John Davenport and to have directed
less
of the minis-
chosen course. Her
a
any
was the nurturing one of affection, not the disciplinary one of authority. His mother was his leader, able to make him avoid error; his wife was to be his follower, instructing him as to his mistakes only by the pain they forced her to register. Insofar as she was to exert control over him, it was, as he once his
explained to her in a
not heard: "[hers] sive,
is
role, as
letter,
he
at
rate liked to conceive
to be as an "influence."
not an ambitious noisy power;
and often so deep
as to
have
its
it,
She would be
it is
silent,
felt,
but
calm, persua-
hold deeper than consciousness
itself.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
54
.
.
.
He
when he
loves her
is
be conscious of his love.
.
.
too weary or too
much
bent on his objects to
She ministers and yet
.
seldom ministered
is
unto."^^
The and
his
causes for the difference in the roles played by Bushnell's mother
wife are varied.
more authority over
a
Of
man
course a
then
(as
now) expected
spouse than a mother. Yet
it
is
to exert
Dotha
clear that
Bushnell did not perform the same wifely duties for her husband that Bushnell did for Horace.
One remembers John Adams' remark on
pidity of an English general during the
would have put
Adams
Howe
in possession
from
clearly expected and got
wife, Abigail
American Revolution: his
own
Mary
in his
own
Bushnell, in other words, one itself
the subject of change
also pertinent to argue,
social mobility.
He
married up. Even
lived in Litchfield a quarter or a half
century
earlier,
been found spinning homespun; she would have lived
and educated daughter of Yet
mother. In discussing
between Dotha and Mary Bushnell was
shift in identity
Bushnell's
It is
Mary Thorp's
women
we have,
image of her
in
however, that the evidence of
in part
if
Mary Thorp had
she
would not have
town, the protected
of local importance.
self-definition as
biographical information to her husband's
man
a
"a smart wife
and independent
intelligent
must assume that the concept of wife has been rather than a cause of change.
the stu-
of Philadelphia a long time ago."^^
Adams, what Bushnell looked for
the different functions of Dotha and
Mary
it
woman
and
as
wife
—and from the
seems to have conformed
fairly closely
— was nonetheless dependent on the disappear-
Dotha Bushnell. The transformation in the feminine economic status did not mean that the same women turned from running the spinning wheel to playing the spinet; it involved, rather, a change in the concept of female labor which significantly altered the meaning of either occupation. When large numbers of respected and intelligent (if hardly upper-class) women like Dotha Bushnell were contributing by their work to their society's economic life, feminine labor, although unpaid, was neces-
ance of
sarily
judged
like
essential,
within limits to
and
women were
act, in essentially
inevitably defined, and allowed
productive ways.
proportion of the middle-class population engaged
farming families were involved
in
in
When
a
dwindling
farming and fewer
domestic production,
when women
in-
homes of their "productive" spouses or in relative discomfort working in newly established factories at low wages, female labor was devalued and the feminine identity was correspondently reconceived. There was an enormous difference becreasingly either lived in relative ease tending the
tween the eighteenth-century matron tending her wheel and the nineteenthcentury factory girl at her loom. The first was in a sense self-motivated, at the center of her productive unit; the second was the employee of others, a
mere cog
in a
system of which she had
little
understanding.
Feminine Disestablishment
SS
do not wish
to idealize the eighteenth-
important to be clear here.
It is
I
century middle-class woman's "productivity" or totally condemn the
more
nineteenth-century middle-class woman's emerging, er-oriented role;
gaged it,
is
women
in
both centuries and
essentially, if in different
perhaps
much
of
it,
ways,
oppressive,
that feminine labor and
its
in
in service
some of
it
leisured,
consum-
both capacities were en-
broadly defined
rewarding.
function in society were
The
—some of
essential point
visible in
the earlier
period, and this visibility assured a minimal recognition, and a minimal
degree of directness
in the assessment
mid-nineteenth-century middle-class "lady"
will be discussing
I
necessarily as idle as her various critics and admirers
She had many
responsibilities;
The
of the feminine contribution.
even servants,
was not
on occasion painted
her.
like the technological aid
which succeeded them, could create as much work as they performed. It is rather that the lady's leisure, whether hypothetical or actual, was increasingly treated as the most interesting and significant thing about her; her function was obscured and intended to be so, and evaluations of her worth consequently tended to become exercises in indirection. Eliza
Famham,
York, had occasion to spend time
New
and active-minded writer from
a self-educated
in the late 1830s
and early 1840s
in the
As was customary in those days, she took advantage of her sojourn to publish an account which she called Life in Prairie Land. Despite the fairy-tale quality of her title, Famham's book is actually the record of western
a
states.
confrontation between the
woman
new
disestablished middle-class northeastern
and the circumstances which had presumably shaped her grand-
mothers.
As economic
historians
have noted, ^^ the older methods of
household production of commodities, particularly homespun, prevailed
in
the cruder western communities long after they had been discontinued in the
more
western
industrially developed East.
woman enjoyed a
This hardly meant, however, that the
position in society better than the
one her eastern
counterpart occupied. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the transplanted
when feminine toil was equated with degradation, often had the worst of two worlds.^'* Eliza Famham, a publicist for the superiority of women, faced with her overworked frontier sisters, clearly felt like a missionary among the heathens; she was indignant, pitying, conde"pioneer" wife, forced to
toil
scending, didactic.
At one and
a
point,
farmer.
Famham
The man,
recounts a crucial conversation between herself
shrewd, tough, uncharitable, and unsentimental,
Famham's questions how he found his wife, and why her. She is a good worker, and this, to Famham's intense disgust, concems him. At the start of their exchange, she asks him if he
reveals in answers to
he values is all
is
that
building his
new house
supposed to realize that
to protect his "bird."
Famham
is
We the readers are of course
referring to the farmer's wife; her
little
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
56
metaphorical flourish literary
is
a calculated
good breeding and of
way both
he
is
woman. The
own
what elegantly
instructing the farmer with
euphemistic terms he ought to honor any insists that
of reminding us of her
westerner, however,
not sheltering a delicate creature weaker and more sensitive
than himself; indeed, he crassly compares his wife's physical strength to that of several of his beasts of burden. His clinching line "I don't
know what you Yankees call
a 'bird,'
but
I
is
call
the edged remark:
her
a
woman. "^^ The in which people
from a frontier situation were scarce and men far outnumbered women; whatever the value attached to it, woman's labor in the opening West was necessary. Famham was a product of the East, where the work of settlement was past and women already outnumbered men;^® women there might be indispensable but it was not their working powers which made them so. Such encounters could only make Farnham wonder whether the middle-class woman in the Northeast was in some sense superfluous. If she were, both the writer and her eastern reader were asking, might there not be a special worth potentially attached to superfluity in a utilitarian culture? What, they wondered, was to be the value of a euphemism? farmer's attitude sprang inevitably
Education for Exile
The confusion about cially
the role of the middle-class northeastern
woman,
espe-
during the crucial years of transition between 1820 and 1840, was
nowhere more apparent than
in
the
efl^orts
to train her,
whether through
advice books or actual schooling, for her part in national well, the counselor
must usually have
a definite goal in
life.
mind,
To
counsel
a clear sense
of what the purpose of the counseled should be; yet the advice and instruction profusely
showered on the northeastern
and 1830s had no such end
in sight.
girl
or matron during the 1820s
One might say
not only that her mentors
and teachers obfuscated her function, but that the function they urged on her was
itself
obfuscation of a culturally
vital kind.
To do
her part
in
the
sexual division, or redefinition, of labor in a modernizing society, the lady
was decidedly expected
to be a "bird"
and not
a
"woman."
In 1830, Sarah Josepha Hale reviewed The Frugal Housewife, a "how-to"
domestic manual written by the noted Abolitionist and reformer Lydia
Maria Child (1802-80). Hale's reactions were both ambivalent and
signifi-
economic transformation by rationalizing the middle-class woman's new domestic identity, was part of a growing effort Hale officially approved and aided. Catharine Maria cant. Child's book, designed to ease the tension of
Sedgwick,
whom
Hale consistently applauded, was
of popular stories which would
cover drama
in
make
a
just
beginning her series
heroine of the housewife and
dis-
her struggles with her servants, her children, and her hus-
Feminine Disestablishment
SI
band.^^ Catharine Esther Beecher (1800-78), another
woman who had
Hale's
continuing support, was inventing and popularizing what she called "domestic
economy,"
which be, a
called
it
a phrase ideally suited to disguise the
into being. ^® Child's
manual was,
very disfunctionalism
as all
its
successors
would
cautionary book. Beneath a veneer of modernity. Child was sanctioning
the genteel housewife's inevitably short-sighted economic struggles; she
was
urging her readers to cling to updated versions of their grandmothers'
domestic methods as their best refuge
in a sophisticated
beyond their control or comprehension. Hale was well aware that Child was at
least
attempting to combine the
virtues of the older feminine ideal with those of the practicality
market situation
newer model,
to unite
and elegance. Indeed, Hale showered praises on Child herself
combination of Mary and Dotha Bushnell: "a lady of the
a kind of
literary attainments,
as
first
[who] yet shows herself acquainted with housekeeping
in its
most minute and closely calculated
their
common
problems were not
details."
finally Hale's.
Yet Child's solutions to
Hale was palpably uneasy
with Child's celebration of economic wariness and practicality, the legacy
"Age of Homespun"; she was distressed, however, not because it offered a mere palliative to the modem housewife's profound confusion but
of the
because
money
might breed an over-concern and over-awareness of the value of
it
unsuited to
women. "Our men
explained. "Let us keep our
are sufliciently money-making," Hale
women and
as possible."^^ Hale's priorities are clear.
female decorum;
from the contagion as long Male dollars must be ignored by
children
women should forget or at The
laws of acquisition and accumulation. to her competitive-minded husband
is
least
appear to forget the sordid
lady's role as spiritual
clearly
more
exemplar
vital in Hale's
mind than
woman
should be
her function as his helpmate. Hale's sub rosa conclusion
was
that the middle-class
trained to play the part, not of a directly facilitating comrade, but of an indirectly beneficial laggard in the
march of
capitalistic progress.
Other
would-be educators of the northeastern lady agreed. Etiquette books of the
day make
it
amply
clear that
women were to cultivate domestic
closed doors while their male counterparts
were to
face,
piety behind
and
if
possible
conquer, the competitive world of commerce. Charles Butler, author of The
American Lady (1836), instructed
his
female readers on such subjects as
"Female Influence," "Emulation," "Motives to Exertion," "Dress," "Operas and Concerts," "Dancing," "Storing the Memory," "Female Conversation and Epistolary Correspondence," and "The Duties of Matrimonial Life."
The
lady's preoccupation
feelings,
is
to be with herself: her clothes, her manners, her
her family. Butler feels no need to
society of
which she
is
a part.'*®
When
tell
her anything about the larger
Butler speaks to the "American
Gentleman," however, he ignores domestic and religious concerns to focus
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
58
on such topics
"Supporting the Dignity of the Commercial Character"
as
and "Hints for Those
Who Are Designated for a
Reverend Daniel Eddy,
Mercantile Life."
Young Woman
Twenty
V Friend (1858)
and
The Young Man's Friend (1855), reiterated Butler's sexual bifurcation.
He
years
later,
grooms the "Young
and
solicitous mother,
Man"
Woman"
in The
appropriate to
in the virtues
a docile
tender wife, a
a
daughter, but he inculcates in the
"Young
Industry, Frugality, Temperance, and Honesty, the "Four Sources of
The "Young Man"
Success in Life."
is
warned
against the sins of the world,
Woman" against the lady here who is seldom
gambling, drinking, smoking, and so on; the "Young sins of the soul.
There
is
even cautioned about the not her strength, which
a certain flattery for the evils
is
of liquor, for example; yet
it is
her ignorance,
complimented. Hers are to be the cloistered and
untested virtues of the non-participant.
What
formal education there was for
girls in
the pre-Civil
enforced on them the same lesson of economic and cultural
Revolution most middle-class American
girls
home-workers: their early and brief years occasional attendance at the
summer
important than the years they passed cal
domestic
at a
more formal
receive longer and
Before the to be
"dame-school" and their
academy were
less
mother's side acquiring practi-
when they began
In the post-Revolution period,
skills.
exile.
period
were frankly educated
session of a local
at their
War
instruction, they did not, as
to
one might
logically predict, get even a modified version of the curriculum currently
offered their brothers.'*^ a special situation.
conversationalist,
They
received a special course, designed to meet
Margaret Fuller (1810-50), the famous transcendentalist,
and feminist, complained that
girls
"run over superficially
even more studies [than boys] without being really taught anything.'"*^ At the "Female Academies" which proliferated in the middle decades of the
nineteenth century, literature, history,
young
ladies studied
modem
languages, sewing, music,
and geography; they were seldom asked to tackle the
masculine subjects of mathematics, theology, Greek, and the natural sciences.
At
a
could define
when an apologist and defender for the feminine intellect woman as "the connecting link between man and the infetime
.
rior animals, possessing a central rank latter
.
.
between the mysterious
and the unattainable energies of the former,'"*^
that girls
Education
it is
were sedulously protected from the more in
instinct of the
hardly surprising
difficult disciplines.
general depended heavily on memorization, but
numerous
were asked to do even less independent reasoning than boys. Explanatory visual aids, maps, and charts were common in the young critics
noted that
girls
gentlemen's academies before they reached similar institutions for young ladies.'**
Apparently,
world by
rote;
to understand
it
was assumed
that girls only needed to
they were not going to change
it? If all
education
in
it,
so
why
know
the
should they need
mid-nineteenth-century America was by
Feminine Disestablishment
modem
definitions casual, education for
flippant.
The
and
academy had no entrance examinations; since stayed more than a semester or two, there were few
girls
curricular planning.
little
were often
social souls
families," caring little
about their love
who
am
enjoyed receiving students from the "best
bom
Sara Clarke (1823-1904), a popular writer
of feminine education as a means of
triviality
convinced," she stated in the half-jesting tone which was
her characteristic
style, that "there
is
an alarming conspiracy formed by
and guardians to patronize only such keep damsels
as are calculated to
from
establishments
lives.'*^
and reformer, analyzed the oppression: "I
The women heading such
about their pupils' advancement and rather more
"Grace Greenwood,"
fathers
young women might be termed
typical female
only a handful of tests
59
institutions of female learning
in subordination, in
fulfilling their natural, lofty destiny
order to prevent them
—from aspiring to equal power
Church and State."^^ Greenwood clearly had a point: in the superficiality was the specialty, for young ladies were being educated to be themes for thought, not thinkers; they were to be the muses not the practitioners of the arts, aesthetic or practical. Contemporary observers noted, some with distress, others with pleasure, the extraordinarily high cost of feminine education. Curiously, the price was its own justification. Girls' and influence
education
in
testified to a
widespread
if
contested conviction that middle-class
know more about spending than about learning. The "educated" lady was on her way to becoming what Thorstein
females needed to middle-class
Veblen would proclaim her
a half
century
later:
an emblem of conspicuous
consumption.
The educational
trend in the training of girls toward costly superficial-
was deplored with emotion and fought with energy. The ladies' magazines of the day united in denunciation of the meaningless gentility of ity
current feminine training.'*^
York, taught her foe
girls
who remarked
Emma
geometry
Willard (1787-1870) of Troy,
in the 1820s
bitterly, "They'll
even
in the face of
(
were
fully as sharp
and almost
as well trained as their
College. Catharine Esther Beecher founded
in
women,
modem
make
like
Sarah Hale
who
neighbors
at
Williams
more progressive female acadein operation.
Yet
vociferously supported them, were not
eyes altogether successful. Serious education for
significant gains until the
Mary
the 1830s and 1840s
mies between 1822 and 1870 than she could possibly keep these
one male
be educating the cows next."
Lyon 1797- 1849) knew her Mount Holy oke students in
New
women
did not
decade after the Civil War. In raising funds
for their educational enterprises, Willard, Beecher, and even
Lyon took
self-conscious care to gather male patrons, to appeal to male authorities, and to
couch
as
they presented
their
arguments it,
in
terms of male
was simply
interests.'*®
Feminine instruction,
a guarantee of masculine rights; the well-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
60
was advertised largely as a better and more understanding wife and mother.'*^ The effort on the part of these women to camouflage their activities was understandable, and probably necessary, but it was nonetheless educated
girl
debilitating.
Behind
the efforts to train the
all
young
middle-class
woman
in the
Northeast, then, whether on the part of conscious conservatives or an-
nounced reformers, was
a
common
compete or even
serve her male counterpart, not significance
was
to
lie
in
at least oflicial
assumption: she was to
participate with him; her
advisors and teachers purposely defined her role vaguely;
whose
details
were
to be filled in
by
a masculine hand.
an outline which could not be altered. ors and educators wished to shape in
whose operations she had
on her
—
a saint
and
in
little
The
was
part,
ideal
it
was
a sketch
Yet the sketch had
woman whom the counsel-
to exert moral pressure
and to spend money
on
a society
—or have
an economy she could not comprehend. She was a
Her
her connotations rather than her actions.
in
it
spent
embryo both
consumer. Naturally the lady and her advisors underplayed her
consumer and overplayed her status as saint. They were largely ignorant of the developing economic situation of which they were a part; they were more aware of the sincerity of their conscious religious motiva-
status as
tions than of the reality of the
them. Middle-class women,
economic forces which
like those
who
partially
determined
counseled them, inevitably pre-
ferred to stress their moral and religious "influence" rather than their evolving importance as highly socialized and expert shoppers. In actual fact,
however, the two
roles, saint
and consumer, were interlocked and mutually
dependent; the lady's function
in a capitalist society
was
to appropriate
and
preserve both the values and the commodities which her competitive hus-
band, father, and son had
an antidote and
a
little
time to honor or enjoy; she was to provide
purpose for their labor.
The Economic Value of the Euphemism: Finery as Flattery Foreign travelers to the United States frequently remarked on the deference
which seemed
in their
eyes to be a trademark of the middle-class American
male's relations with the female. Isabelle Bird, a spirited English observer of
the American scene in the 1850s, found this courtesy exaggerated and even ludicrous.
Such
chivalry, she
commented, was not infrequently carried to
was seldom fully appreciated by its recipients: "The thousand acts of attention which gentlemen, by rigid usage, are compelled to tender to ladies, are received by them without the slightest acknowledgment, either by word or gesture."^® Most travelers also noted the elaborately fashionable, sometimes tasteful, and often impractical clothes American women wore; they agreed with Timothy Dwight, a well-known educator "absurdity," and
Feminine Disestablishment
and writer, that American
61
taught to regard dress as a momentous
"girls are
concern."^ ^ Their elegant garments were presumably but another manifestation of the veneration in
which they were
natural protectors. Yet Bird also observed that
shortage of servants as
by
much
as
men, who, "immersed
their
by their home by the
officially held
women, kept
at
by domestic devotion, were often neglected
in a
whirl of business, spent only short periods
with their families."^^
We
seem to
see a process of
politeness suggests
plained to his
atonement
German
as
compensatory etiquette here,
much
in
which
as recognition. Charles Follen ex-
relatives in 1826 that
"women and clergymen
while
are most honored" in America, lawyers and businessmen have "the greatest influence."^^ Harriet Martineau
women
tartly: "Indulgence,"
summed up
the situation of American
observed the English radical,
given as a
"is
substitute for justice."^'* Just as in certain matriarchal societies males are
treated with elaborate and ceremonious deference ors, in
their feminine superi-
Amermore as a
the patriarchal middle-class culture of mid-nineteenth-century
females were apparently being granted special status
ica the
substitute for
their finery
power than
own
accrue their
ings and
as
an acknowledgment of
it.
Yet such substitutes
prerogatives. Girls v/ere encouraged to exact deference;
symbolized the
cated, well-treated,
not
by
flattery
which was
their due. Expensively edu-
and well-dressed, they could both advertise male earn-
compensate themselves for their
make homespun; they
own
They
lost productivity.
displayed fine cottons and
back door through which middle-class northern
silks.
did
Fashion was the
women
re-entered the
American economy. Fashion was their form of reprisal, a contrapuntal commentary on economic productive processes; in its avowed disf unctionalism, it was capable of expressing, at its best, complex irony, at its worst, sheer pinched hostility. The self-involved style favored by the Victorian lady
—
waist, swelled bosom, and proliferating profusion of looped skirts and lacy
petticoats
—both obliterated and exaggerated the female body;
and enforced the feminine function
as
it
objectified
euphemism.
Yet the supreme product of feminine fashion, the chief emblem of the
emerging female consumer, was not found
odd
as
it
may
initially
sound, in her reading and writing.
proclivity for novels, the a standard its
theme for
serious side.
socialized to
A
in the lady's clothing,
young
jest in
miss's resort to the
but rather,
The
feminine
pen and the confidante,
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, had
Marxist might argue persuasively that American girls were
immerse themselves
in
novels and letters in order to
powerlessness in a masculine and anti-humanist society
more
make
their
certain and less
painful. In 1828, Sarah Hale, inaugurating Godey's predecessor, the Ladies'
Magazine, shrewdly exploited this unstated dynamic. She assured the hus-
bands and fathers of her prospective readers that her periodical would make
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
62
for
more
loving, because less bored, wives
and daughters. During the men's
women would
perhaps lengthy absences, the
be reading avidly and profita-
bly in Hale's pages.^^ Nathaniel Willis, the popular magazine writer, not
commented on
infrequently
the increasing tendency of the American male
to absorb himself in business and leave his wife to busy herself with practi-
dwindling
cally
if
psychologically inflated domestic duties and cultural
concerns too exclusively her own. Lydia Maria Child promoted
of
a love
reading as an unspeakable blessing for the American female. She explained
ominously, sion;
it
if
honestly: "[reading] cheers so
gives the
mind something
Sarah Edgarton
Mayo
many hours
to interest itself about.
wrote countless
New
stories
illness
and seclu-
"^^
(1819-49), the Universalist poet, provides a clear
example of the feminine reader and writer. Raised of brothers in rural
of
one
as
among
girl
a host
Hampshire, she read omnivorously. Later she
about young
and personal significance through
women who found
a well-designed
lovers, social status,
course of reading.
Mayo
continued to read constantly and feverishly herself, and corresponded de-
number of like-minded feminine
votedly with a
Mayo's
clerical friends noted,
seemed to ladies
live in the
"She had
As one of
Universalists.
a passionate love of letters,
correspondence of her friends."^^
wrote to each other about the joys of
The
and
Universalist
literary friendship
and about
books from feminine pens: they enthused over Corinne and Consuelo and Mrs. Hemans. Like her Universalist tined for the boarding-house lotte
Fillebrown (1820-45),
—the unhappy
Mrs. Case, des-
sisters
of a small-time divorced litterateur; Char-
life
a lower-class writer of real talent
who became
insane and died at twenty-five; Sarah Broughton, starved in girlhood for
stimulation in rural
Vermont and forced
feminine martyr in an
adulthood to glorify her role
marriage to an alcoholic^®
ill-starred
herself literally, utterly,
in
and unsuccessfully on
as
— Mayo staked
a life of letters.
Fine-minded,
genuinely devout, subject to depression, astutely aware of the limitations of her
own work,
she evinced
symptoms of
near-hysteria as she felt her
thinning out in her hands. She died in 1849 at thirty. first
of that large class of
women who,
phrase of several decades
later, lived
in
Henry
Mayo was one
James's
Middle-class
The
literary
market
women became
stories they read
mentality, exercises in
served as the rationale
if
maturation
women
for
women
America from the 1840s through the
in a
very
real sense
consumers of in
1880s.
literature.^^
the shopping
euphemism essential to the system of flattery which for the American woman's economic position. Mayo in the sentimental sagas
arrested femininity in a
somewhat worried
and wrote were themselves courses
and her successors found idealized
in
of the
"by the immediate aid of the novel."
Sentimental "domestic novels" written largely by
dominated the
life
which
world uninterested
of the day an icon of
forestalled the disappointments of
at best in their intellectual
and emotional
63
Feminine Disestablishment
adulthood. Indeed, this hterature seems today both ludicrous and painful in
enormous need of its authors and readers for confirmation of themselves and instantaneous satisfaction of their
the evidence uncritical
it
offers of the
appetites.
The
typical heroine of such stories was, of course, beautiful.
beauty was
Her
matter of looks, however, than a privilege of protection,
less a
which camouflaged her needs as other people's demands and endowed her with almost superhuman powers. The transcendent heroine of Bertha and Lily (1854) by Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-93) habitually emits a faint radiance from her fingertips. In Uncle Tom V Cabin, Harriet Stowe's Little Eva manages to give away on her deathbed innumerable locks of her hair to her family, friends, and slaves, and still go apparently a condition of invulnerability
unshorn to the grave. The sentimental heroine could afford to be modest; without any special assertion on her
a
to
fictive fate
compliment
her.
—
sorrow, her piety
Her
her universe conspired as by
Her image was inviolable; she did not candid camera. Whatever made her beautiful her looks, her
Newtonian law need to face
part,
—was the one thing she would never be asked to give up.
might be harsh, but the person on
whom she was ultimately
dependent, her reader, would never reject her. She was a narcissist freed of the obsession of self-involvement. Metaphorically speaking, she never had to shop. In the streamlined emotional
thing
was delivered
to her door.
economy
of the domestic novel, every-
She never had to pay; she operated on an
unlimited credit system. Special treatment was her destiny.
The Wide, Wide World, the
first
of the best-selling domestic novels for
women, was launched in 1850 on its way to long-lived popularity by Susan Warner (1819-85) of New York. The story apparently turns on the unwillingness of the old-fashioned little girl, Ellen Montgomery, to participate in which a cruel fate thrusts her. All Ellen's miseries begin when her father is clumsy enough to lose a vital lawsuit, and with it, his income. Mr. Montgomery's the "wide, wide world" of masculine competition and business into
surly incompetence and insecure aggressiveness threaten the idyll of femi-
nine sensibility shared by his wife and daughter. Ellen makes a rather unfilial point of evading her father, but she cannot long escape the forces which he represents.
When
mission to select humiliates,
her ailing mother sends her off alone on her
some
adult
material at a store, a rude and busy clerk cheats,
and dismisses her because she
commerce, because she
first
is
a child
and
a girl.
is
unused to the chicanery of
Although
a
benevolent elderly
gentleman indignantly intervenes and Ellen accomplishes her errand,
Warner Ellen
is
has
made her
point.
The
clothing-store setting seems important.
completely dislocated from her economic
past; those
the production of her apparel are utterly foreign to her. tion that she
It is
who
control
Ellen's distinc-
must be rescued from the world. She never requests or wishes
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
64
any way actually to function within her
in
Brewing consolatory
society.
cups of tea for her several beloved and diseased lady friends
Her undeclared
of her productive effort. tive forces
The
is
hostility to her culture's
too enormous to allow her to contribute to
Bible and those
who
love
it
Yet Ellen's otherworldliness
the full extent
is
its
competi-
economic
life.
are Ellen's only business.
not as straightforward as
is
it
The
seems.
actual buying under her mother's discreetly spiritualized supervision of an
elegant
little
Bible features as prominently in her story as her perusal of
it.
In the bookstore, Ellen feels the quintessential pleasure of the consumer, the
luxuriously difficult privilege of choice: "such beautiful Bibles she had never seen; she
pored
very evidently
in ecstasy in love
over their varieties of type and binding, and was
with them
indecision, she alights at last
on
all."^*'
a red
After a protracted period of happy
leather-bound volume.
of an ornamented writing table on the same excursion
is
an equally raptur-
ous experience. Ellen's obvious love of the act of possession
Shopping for the
necessities of
food and apparel
is
and somehow not shopping
at
all.
Ellen
is
is
here sanctified.
painful, even unnatural;
shopping to furbish the refined pursuits of religion and ful,
The purchase
literature
is
delight-
constantly being orphaned and
adopted, and the underlying question of her saga
who
is,
can prove the best
who
right to this jewel of a girl? Tellingly, the undeserving villains are those
force on her ugly objects; the deserving heroes those delicate tastes. a
A
mortally wounded. She the dainties she
is
later
would not stoop
that luxuries are
by
Age
of Homespun. Ellen
taken in by rich relatives
as her titular indifference to the is
her
cruel aunt at one point dyes Ellen's fine white stockings
coarse but durable brown: a reminder of the
all
who pamper
who
to acquire for herself. Ellen
goods of
this
definition her needs.
lavish is
world
will permit.
She
to be
is
is
on her
as grateful
The
truth
decked out and
would never say so, the tribute of extravagance. Heedless as she is of economic realities, she has her very real place in the economy, if only because she is a symbol of expenditure. At first glance, Ellen's extraordinarily single-minded ladylike proclivities appear to set her apart from other contemporary fictional heroines. These multifaceted ambidextrous maidens can usually run a household and
adored. She expects, although she
save lives with the same quiet feminine spirit they bring to
belles lettres
and
what Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96), undoubtwoman writer of the period, called "faculty." As the
Bible-reading; they have
edly the most gifted
decades wore on, however,
this capability
rather than functional. Aristocratic
how
representative she
was
little
came
to be curiously ornamental
Ellen might have hated to
know
to be.
Stowe's female characters are emblematic of this trend, for they progressively lose their "faculty."®^ (1859)
is
Mary Scudder
in
The Minister's Wooing
pure, delicate, even ethereal, perpetually framed in flowers and
Feminine Disestablishment
65
make the lightest biscuits and chum the men in her world who are, econom-
singing along with birds, but she can
the creamiest butter in town.
It is
worst downright
ically, at best unreliable, at
shiftless.
Mary's extraordinarily
mother had supported her visionary and poetic father before his appropriately early death. When the story opens, Mary and her mother practical
board and look after the local minister. Dr. Hopkins,
on divinity but could not possibly get an economic critique here,
women
think while their ratiocination
and
feeling,
Stowe's sympathies
bestows
all
if
a
his
symbolic
work;
women
men
provide the community luxuries of
the necessities of food and clothing.
at this point are
women
can write treatises
own dinner. Mrs. Stowe is offering one. The male poets and preachers
with the laboring classes on
the rewards at her disposal.
Stowe's early
who
The enforced
characters with the real business of
And
whom
she
close contact of life
makes them
useful in every sense; in the long run they are not just the providers, but the
true ministers and seers.
It is
Mary who
brings the lost sheep of the book,
the agnostic James Mervyn, back into the fold, not Dr. Hopkins.
Mary Scudder had many
predecessors in Stowe's fiction and few suc-
Mara Lincoln in the later novel The Pearl ofOrr's bland (1862), like Ellen Montgomery, is absolutely addicted to pretty things. Her grandparents, with whom she lives, lavish money on fancy clothes for her to wear running around alone on the seashore. They incur community reproach for cessors.
it,
they feel guilty about
it,
but they persist
in
the extravagance, obscurely
sure that they are only performing an act of justice. Mara, an artist of real talent,
has no "faculty" of any kind, although she regards her lack as a
regrettable deficiency. Stowe's a
own
ambivalence
second heroine, merry Sally Kittredge,
is
clear in her creation of
who has mastered all the skills Mara
Stowe reluctantly weds the story's somewhat insensitive hero after Mara's death. Eva van Arsdel, the heroine of the New York novels. My Wife and I and We and Our Neighbors, which Stowe wrote in the early 1870s, like Mara has no practical ability, but unlike her has no
has missed.
It is
to Sally that
Her lovely clothes are her very essence. Henry, her husband, passes the honeymoon appropriately in literal worship of the mysteries of feminine regrets.
Eva and Henry, one might add, are hardly the last American couple to confuse female finery with female sexuality. Eva is proud to be a parasite. Her charming wardrobe, her success as the ideal wife and hostess she purports to be, indicate not how much she can do, but how much her charm
dress;
can coerce others to do for her. Although Eva
world of aesthetic
on her cook, the
taste
Irish
fixes
up her home with
and even practical ingenuity, she
Mary, to attend to
all
the real
relies
work of
She makes almost nothing; she buys almost everything. She
is
a
completely
domesticity. a
"manager"
because she stretches her presumably limited budget, not because she imple-
ments
it.
She creates nothing from scratch,
as the
women
gifted with "fac-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
66
ulty" did. She
much
admiration as
We are we
shopper rather than
a
is
as their souls,
worker; she wants her friends'
a
and she tends to confuse the two.
watching here more than the evolution of the Stowe heroine:
are witnessing also Stowe's ongoing historical analysis of the changing
societal
and economic role of the middle-class northern
Mary Scudder
preceding century.
woman
over the
lives a relatively self-sufficient existence
{performing certain important, even indispensable, tasks in a small eight-
New
eenth-century
England
decorative part, not so
up the poetry"
much
village;
Eva van Arsdel plays
keeping a household
in a post-Civil
Eva
is
if
her words, "keeping
War urban metropolis. Stowe is explicit about
the almost vindictive affection she feels for
and her
as, in
dependent
a
Eva
in a
way
that Susan
Warner
could never be about their over-involvement with their heroines.
ilk
the apotheosis of
fiction of the day; she
van Arsdel
is
justified
is
all
the saints
even, as her
who
name
starred in the popular feminine
on the usual religious grounds
number of male conversions
—
to her credit; but she
Eva
Eva she has the customary
suggests. Little
is
revisited.
on
also vindicated
economic grounds. In the newly commercialized and urbanized America of the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the
demonstrates,
more important, more
is
woman
consumer, Stowe
indispensable, than the
ducer; luxury items can and must function as necessities.
woman
With her
prousual
acumen, Stowe had grasped the actual meaning of the sentimental heroine and her crucial role
Advertising and
in
the
of consumer culture.
rise
The Transformation of the Euphemism
''Influence''':
David Potter has argued persuasively that the most important "institution" in a
consumer
society, dedicated as
satisfaction of artificial wants,
and values
in those
it
is
it is
advertising; advertising instills
America began
economy
in the
its
momentous
as consumers.®^
shift
from
Sewing Machine for the use of a losing battle. Daniel
Hints
fts
down
Frohman, involved
to Advertisers
( 1
well-known
in
in advertising.®^ In
$18,000
oflf^ered
by
the
Howe
back cover, but the magazine was fighting in
869) that "a
advertising."®'* Available surfaces in cities
advertisements
historians agree
productive to a consumer
prodigious growth
first
early 1870s, Harper's Magazine could turn
in
a
Most
decades between 1860 and 1890. Certainly, this was the
period which witnessed the
argued
"new needs"
addresses, thus "hastening their adjustment to potential
abundance" and "training" them to act that
and
to the creation, multiplication,
both advertising and theater,
man
do business without were increasingly covered by can't
the 1860s; advertising agencies formed rapidly. \^arious
writers, including
Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, and
Harte, lent their talents to the budding industry.®^ as early as 1867 labeled advertising the
A reviewer for the
"monomania of the
times."®®
Bret
Galaxy
By
the
67
Feminine Disestablishment 1880s, the advertising business
1900
life
had tripled
pre-Civil
its
was spending $95 million a year.®^ Advertising was more than a business, however;
War expenditure; by
it
and
a
theory of
human
it
involved a
way
of
nature. Both, moreover, had crucial links to the
feminine subculture of which Eva van Arsdel was a representative. In 1871, the year in which the
George Powell,
of Stowe's
first
New
York novels was
published,
a pioneer in advertising, directed the advertiser to "ignore
every person, place or thing except yourself, your address, and your "the great point," he concluded,
article";
of course to attract attention."^® Despite
"is
the crudely theatrical aspect of the
stage of advertising,
first
its
theorists
were early convinced that theirs was the technique of suggestion, of anticipating and even forming consumer tastes and needs without activating the consciousness of the potential buyer. Theirs, in short, was the technique of "influence" carried to
nology or
its
Unhampered by
logical extreme.
could talk frankly about the economic
aspirations, advertisers
One
purpose of such "influence."
religious termi-
writer explained that "a lack of ability to
long concentrate the attention and disinclination to concentrated mental eflFort is a
American
distinctly
trait";
the "busy pace" of American
life
anyone wishing to hold the attention of the public must be
that
means alert,
flamboyant, and ready to take advantage of the slightest opportunity.^^ "Influence," whether exerted is
a technique
adopted
society too
ist
much
less
in a
by advertising or anything else,
other words,
to challenge than to seduce a competitive capital-
hurry to get
its
tastes
and values
on the run, on the sly, and unawares. Indeed, "influence" if
in
is
a
in
any way but
form of
flattery,
dangerously insidious and ambitious one, for the advertiser studies the
a
needs and wants of his potential market with extraordinary care and intensity.
One
could say that the
late
nineteenth-century advertiser was as ready
and explore the unconscious;
as Freud, if for diflferent reasons, to posit
forced to abandon the conscious
occupied
as
it
life
was by commercial
and mind of the American public,
cares,
he was proportionately eager to
know and manipulate all the unconscious impulses of his subject. Nor were the new advertising agencies unaware that their logical audience was feminine; they knew that, in some not altogether fanciful sense, women would operate as the subconscious of capitalist culture which they must
tap, that the
feminine occupation of shopping would constitute the
dream-life of the nation. Nathaniel Fowler, the most important figure in early
American
advertising, asserted that
should be oriented toward
all
ads,
women. "Although
even those for men's items, substantially
all
men
are
readers of advertisements," Fowler explained, "an advertisement has not one
twentieth the weight with a
gence and the same .
.
.
man
social status.
that .
.
.
it
has with a
Woman
everything from shoes to shingles."^®
woman
of equal
intelli-
buys, or directs the buying of
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
68
Harriet Beecher Stowe was aware as early as 1871 that the
woman was
particularly conditioned to be not only the most likely object
of advertising, but
its
ablest
amateur practitioner. Eva van Arsdel,
essentially advertising techniques, she skilled at their exercise.
She
is
adept
brilliantly
is
any tricky billboard
so basic to her that
become
religion, has
poster.
I
have
responsive to their pressure and
is
second-guessing the real
at
wants of her friends and acquaintances; addicted to attention, she as cute as
as
what are
suggested, represents the proto-consumer mentality; formed by
and
modem
The giving and
is
as
quick
getting of flattery
functions as her epistemology. Domesticity, like
it
for her an aspect not of
work or
effort but of leisure,
manufactured Utopia which advertising incessantly suggests. Eva's
that
tastefully decorated
home, into which she
admiring friends, stands
as a sociological
invites her special
and especially
phenomenon midway between
the
\ ictorian home, a place whose (male) occupants were allowed to relax as a
reward for working, and the
modem
home,
a place
whose resources
provide their (male) residents with a reason for living and the only tion for
working
to Little Eva.
at all.^^
It is
not
Eva van Arsdel
just that
is
in
every
Eva van Arsdel
her urban environment as Little Eva was
among
is
way as
justifica-
the fitting successor
pampered and
her slaves on
idle in
a plantation
Old South. Both are promulgators of "influence." And feminine "influence," no matter how genuine the religious convictions which inspired its formulation and exercise, represented the first appearance of what would be the most important means of forming and controlling opinion in fully developed capitalist culture: "influence" was ironically the mother of advertising, the only faith of a secularized consumer society.
in the
The Moral Value of the Euphemism: Influence as Subversion
Most of the women engaged an's role, the
was
Stowe
who
are of special interest to
stressed the moral, not the
Yet they encountered
difficulties in
wom-
economic, aspects of
doing
so,
for the plain fact
that they not infrequently unconsciously modified moral principle in
the light of a
the rationalization of the middle-class
exponents of female "influence"
this study, unlike
their suasion.
in
more
was ideally exerted in was most successful where its function,
pressing circumstances. "Influence"
world of gentlemen and
ladies;
it
both overt and covert, was already understood and accepted. Its^roponents, like the liberal clergy,
avoided testing their grandiloquent claims on occa-
where protest, not mediation, was unmistakably called for. At such moments, they tacitly confessed that they were, as Bushnell depicted his wife, followers, that their "influence" was most potent in persuading people to go in the direction they were already heading. This is hardly to suggest that their conformity was unmotivated or unmitigated. The situation at the
sions
69
Feminine Disestablishment
heart of the temperance stories little
— women with few
men who
physical force fearing and resenting
even brutalized them
— was potentially
a
legal rights
and relatively
ignored, exploited, or
very real one.
was
Inevitably the pressure the formulators of "influence" exerted
moral than psychological, claimed, without realizing advertisers
outspoken than
less
insidious.
what they were admitting,
— wished to address the unconscious
of their audience. Their ethics were closely ethics of the marketplace, the
if
as
much
less
They proudly
that they
—
like the
as the conscious life
unintentionally related to the
methods of acquisition and
infiltration
by
which buyer and seller measure and manipulate one another. Conservative as Sarah Hale and the other exponents of "influence" seemed, they were in some sense extremists, inevitably untrained in public responsibility and acChurchgoers
countability.
most attracted to
all,
they clung to Christianity; yet they were
potentially subversive uses in a secular culture.
its
Participation in radical causes
on the part of the practitioners of
"influ-
ence" was strikingly low. Ladies, Sarah Hale had once tactfully reminded
Lydia Maria Child, an early and courageous opponent of slavery, were not
encouraged to deliver rine
Beecher and
political views. Hale's closest allies,
Emma
Willard, took neutral or conservative stands on
crucial public issues. Beecher
the view that the
Grimke
women
was the self-designated feminine apologist for
had no business
sisters for their
later years, she
women like Catha-
in politics. In the 1830s, she
attacked
public lectures on behalf of Abolitionism; in
published several books to demonstrate that
women
need of the vote.^^ Willard's conservatism was equally pronounced, eccentric.
On
the eve of the Civil
War, she argued
had no
more
if
in print that conflict
Her extraordipowers of euphemism could not
could be avoided by making the slaves perpetual servants.^^
nary suggestion found few backers.
If
the
avert national struggle, they could ignore
it.
Hale discreetly piloted
Godey's through the perilous waters of the Civil
about slaves or
—and
battles; she has
royally.^'*
War
a
shaky
with nary a word
the distinction of having "cut" the Civil
War
Harriet Farley (1813-1907), also an educator and an editor,
was committed with Hale, Beecher, and Willard to the effort to extend women's dominion without running the risk of rewriting their charter. Farley, however, was forced to apply the politics of politeness directly to the relations of labor and capital.
Her career consequently oflFers a
case study
both of the painful limits of "influence" as an agent of genuine social change
and of
means of devious social control. In the 1820s, Francis Lowell designed the Lowell factories, to be located on the Merrimac River, on shrewdly semi-utopian and largely practical lines.^^
its
manifold
By
possibilities as a
the 1830s and 1840s, the factories were celebrated for their
by relatively high wages and good living condicame from farms all over New England and the central
mill-girls; originally lured
tions, these girls
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
70
Atlantic states. Bright, ambitious, literate, they were, as their best-known
Lucy Larcom (1824-93), later claimed, rather like the girls from the same area who would be going to Mount Holyoke and Vassar in the next generation. They were required to attend church at Lowell by their representative,
employers, as they had probably been required to do at families; a
number
of
them
joined the
"Improvement
home by
their
Circles" at the Univer-
and Congregational churches. From these two groups, two very ama-
salist
teur magazines appeared in the late 1830s.
Lowell Offering, edited in
its
They were soon merged
as the
most interesting phase by Harriet Farley and
Harriott Curtis.
According to her own account,^ ^ Farley was the daughter of
poor
a
and mobile Congregationalist clergyman and an eventually (and understand-
was one of ten children, most of whom died relatively young of consumption. She took the usual routes for an aspiring but impoverished New England girl of the period: although she picked up French and embroidery in a short stint in a nearby academy, she largely educated herself; she taught school; she wrote rather bad verse and fiction. Eventually she tended first a loom and then the Lowell Offering in the mills whose absentee owners boasted discreetly of their profits, and their periodicals. She does not tell us in the autobiographical revelations sprinkled a la Hale amid her editorials that by 1844 and for long after she was extra-
ably) insane mother. She
salaried
by Amos Lawrence, one of the most
influential shareholders in the
Lowell operation; she reveals only that she finds
must have, "to hear herself spoken of This was the charge being leveled Offering
mined amid
by operatives
in the
mid- 1840s against Farley and her
mill-girls,
like the labor
now almost
worsening conditions to win decent wages and hours.
steadily
Brownson
never high, was
organizer Sarah Bagley, deter-
Farley had risen to prominence in 1840 Orestes
rather hard, as indeed she
as a vile tool for aristocratic tyrants."^^
(whose circulation among the
non-existent)
it
for his attack
when
she publicly rebuked
on factory conditions. She had then
lished a kind of confusion engage as her specialty:
"Neither have
estabI
ever
discovered that any restraints were imposed upon us but those which were necessary for the peace and comfort of the whole and for the promotion
of the design for which of
it
and
as fast as
we
we
money, as much and approved "pic-
are collected, namely, to get
can."^® Farley
opposed
strikes
niques" as suitable protest demonstrations for ladies.^®
It
is
too easy to
assume, however, as Bagley sometimes did, that Farley was bought and sold.
As
she told
it,
her purpose had been to win respect for the class to which
known former mill-girls, she said, who spent their living down their former occupation. As though to substanti-
she belonged. She had lives
hiding or
ate Farley's defense,
one operative years
later
was
to reminisce in telling
terms about the boost the Offering's pieces once gave to factory morale:
Feminine Disestablishment
71
"they appeared to us as good as anybody's writings.
who had
written by people
was
literature
themselves
never worked
at all!"®®
How
precisely Farley's aim.
They sounded as if To palliate work by
could the operatives respect
they were acknowledgedly accepting skimpy pay for long
if
hours and poor accommodations? Farley's thinking here was of the liberal minister lauding the voluntary system. Offering
itself,
was
a traditionalized
had already been treated well (how
and would
like,
due from render
it
a
else the picnic little
The
spontaneously.
a notice that
or the periodical
one
at all?)
would announce one must now force one's
better; a strike
policy had not worked, that
group apparently
like that
"picnique," like the
form of euphemism,
perhaps, to be treated a
flatly that laissez-faire
A
much
insufliciently impressed or intimidated to
painful trap Farley
to her radical feminine descendants
if
found herself
in
is
obvious
not to her radical feminine contempo-
raries.
Farley had of course a rather different explicit political rationale for her conservatism. to them": to
own.
We
"To convince
do
we
this,
people," Farley explained,
"we must
gain access
cannot assault them with opinions contrary to their
cannot alarm them by revealing the deprivation which could
suggest our rage, and their danger. In an immensely telling,
must "do good by
if trite
stealth."®^
We
must sugarcoat the proverbial
summed up
phrase, Farley
On
her doctrine:
pill.
we
the one hand, in this phrase as everywhere
her editorials, Farley was elaborating on the Christian prescriptions to
in
which the proponents of female "influence" so often referred: turn the other cheek, return good for evil; reform by example not by protest. On the other hand she was, of course unconsciously, suggesting something faintly subver"do good by
sive in its connotations:
has implications other than
stealth''
was advocating the decorous deviousness which was Sarah Hale's Godey's Lady's Book, from which ladies well as obey their superiors, or in Catharine Beecher's
Biblical ones. Farley
presiding policy in
learned to cajole as
Hartford Female Seminary, where curves.
girls
were instructed always to "move
in
^^
The
novels and poetry published by
women between
1845 and 1875,
heyday of feminine authorship, continually manifest an apparent and sometimes actual confusion of moral standards. There are countless sentimental stories in which the heroine is accused of some fault or sin in the great
precisely because she
is
too naive or too pure to clear herself. Astrea Har-
mon, the heroine of Mrs. 3.
popular Civil
War
Bella Spencer's Tried
story published in 1866,
Confederacy when she has South to devote herself only because she as
it
is
in fact
and True or Love and Loyalty,
is
believed to be a spy for the
given up her family and fortune
as a nurse to the
Union
cause.
She arouses
in
the
distrust
attempting to shield her infamous husband, a rebel and,
evolves in the rather extraordinary denouement of the book, one of
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
72
With a reckless abandon not characteristic of her sister Spencer makes the fair Astrea guilty of bigamy and minor treason
Lincoln's assassins. novelists,
precisely to display the imperishable
innocence. Spencer's heroine
her heart Elsie
is
by
constantly assailed quality of her
no longer subject to the law: the impulse of
is
definition holy.
Dinsmore (1868) and
famous of the
if
"Elsie"
Elsie's
Holidays at Roselands (1869), the most
books turned out
Finley (1828-1909), a bedridden single
woman
frontation between feminine sanctions and
ower
father, the youthful
by Martha from Ohio, focus on a con-
in a nearly endless series
man-made
Horace Dinsmore
dictates. Elsie's
(usually mistaken
for Elsie's brother), adores his saintly and tearful
little girl,
wid-
by strangers but he also
demands absolute and unquestioning obedience from her on all occasions. Elsie is usually eager to comply with his demands, even to anticipate them, except when he requests her to do anything which conflicts with her interpretation of God's commands. Since Horace is not a real believer, he twice attempts to make her violate her conscience. Both incidents turn on the issue of the preservation of the Sabbath. On the first occasion, Mr. Dinsmore asks Elsie to play a secular air
determines to
with a
on the piano.
make her sit on the piano stool without food
his wishes.
She does not
most efficacious
relent; she falls
The second
faint.
angered father
Elsie refuses; her
until she
complies
the stool in what proves
oflF
confrontation occurs
when
Elsie will
not read aloud to her ailing father from a secular book on Sunday; her
punishment consists of months of
isolation,
poor food, and, most important,
the loss of her father's embarrassingly coveted kisses. Mr. Dinsmore claims
on
with some
his side
justification the sanction of
father and mother"; Elsie
is
Holy
treated like an abject criminal
writ:
by
all
"Honor thy the members
of the large household in which she resides.
The
fact remains that, even at age eight, the
little
girl
knows
best.
So
meek and mild, Elsie at bottom possesses a self-confidence as great as any of the Old Testament prophets she delights to read. She triumphs by a lengthy illness which terminates in her apparent death, the reading of her touching will,
and
a
miraculous and timely resurrection into a thoroughly repentant
and converted Papa's arms. Christianity with
its
messages of hope for the
— oppressed "the him become fool that he may be be wise" — has been pressed into the service of the beleaguered feminine ego. last shall
It
must have been
a
first," "let
winnow commandments
difficult for Finley's fans to
satisfaction at Elsie's
unconscious delight
adherence to the
at
out their conscious of
God from
their
her resultant defiance of the commands, paternal or
otherwise, of men.
Even when is
absorbed
in
a pious
female figure
in the sentimental literature
of the day
virtuous actions or self-sacrificing feelings which her whole
world unites to applaud, she
is
often
still
exploiting the paradoxical anti-
Feminine Disestablishment
morality of the
New
which appeared
in Godey's in 1852, a distraught
73
much about midnineteenth-century American culture as about Christianity. The feminine self-abnegation lauded in the temperance tales and in so much of the popular fiction of the time is in some real sense immoral. In a poem by one "M. W." ises
Testament
who
her criminal husband,
we
despairingly
ways
in
that reveal as
but determined wife prom-
has apparently asked (whether hopefully or
are not informed)
Forsake thee? Never!
she
if
going to leave him:
is
Though
the
mark
Of Cain were stamped upon thy brow, Though thy whole soul with guilt were dark, Fear not that
We
The
curious way, she
He has given
less
is
pledging to treat her sinful spouse equally unfairly.
than what she has earned, she will pay him with more than
somehow impervious
response
is
is
wife has been (one assumes) unfairly treated; but,
he deserves, but the principle is
now.®^
notice amid this extravaganza of self-immolation that morality
strangely irrelevant. in a
will leave thee
I
punitive in
the same. Each of
them
outward influences and
to its
is
mercy: he cannot shake
This strangely vengeful streak
is
is
self-involved, each
common
And
sense.
her
her.
not only in the feminine fiction
visible
of the day but also in innumerable "straight"
comments made by women on
public and private concerns. Sarah Hale, in one of the earliest issues of the Ladies' Magazine, explains with
diplomacy and insight
open to her feminine readers and what Authority over the
may,
if
they
men must
.
.
.
its
just
what power
gratifications are:
never be usurped; but
will, exert their talents,
is
still,
women
and [by] the opportunities nature
has furnished, obtain an influence in society that will be paramount to authority.
They may enjoy
the labors to acquire cares,
it;
the luxuries of wealth, without enduring
and the honors of
and the glory of victory, without
oflice,
without feeling
suflfering the
its
dangers of the
battle.^*
This
is
Hale
is
a crucial passage for the history oflFering
them and
of middle-class northern
rationalizing for
them the joys of
women,
for
vicarious livers,
of parasites. 1 hese are their pleasures, not just (of course) as readers of Hale's periodicals but as readers, period
admitted or understood
it,
—and
as
women. Hale would not have
but the role she outlines for the lady
is
that of
Eva van Arsdel, that of the consumer. Hale was transforming feminine exclusion into exemption. In her monumental Woman's Record (1853), a vast collection of biographies of every
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
74
distinguished
woman from Eve down
to
George Sand, Hale calmly
excul-
pated female criminals at the lenient bar of feminine understanding. She
evolved a highly original interpretation of the Fall according to which Genesis was a testament to female superiority: woman's servitude to
was her punishment for better stuff.
sin precisely
man
because she was made of finer and
A writer for the Congregationalist magazine, the New Englander,
indignantly protested Mrs. Hale's whitewash job on Nero's mother, Agrippina
II.
Hale had acknowledged
pleaded eloquently that she was it
a
a
few defects
"still,
above
and
all
stock villainess, but
in this
"Was
a motherV
in all
mother's heart that murdered Lollia Paulina?" the reviewer demanded,
with
a certain justifiable sense of outrage.®^
Yet Hale had hold of tives of maternity.
The
argument
a well-nigh invincible
cult of
motherhood was nearly
in the
preroga-
as sacred in
mid-
nineteenth-century America as the belief in some version of democracy.
Books on mothers of famous men, especially Mary Washington, mother of
George Washington, poured from the presses in the 1840s and 1850s;®® their message was that men achieved greatness because of the instruction and inspiration they received
from
The
their mothers.
divergent devotees of maternity were
many and
motives of the often-
moth-
substantial. Praise of
erhood could bolster and promote the middle-class woman's biological function as tantamount,
if
not supjerior, to her
imprison her within her body by glorifying her to outproduce her over, such tributes
were
prolific,
its
economic productivity;
unique capacities; encourage
uneducated immigrant competitors. More-
acknowledged some potent
power Dotha Bushnell had
losing the
lost
facts.
Mothers, while they
exercised,
were
in actuality
power of a different kind. In the mid-eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards kept a stem fatherly eye on his flock and on his own offspring. Samuel Hopkins, who lived for several years with the Edwards family, described Edwards' close familial surveillance: "when they [the children] gaining
first
discovered any considerable degree of self-will and stubbornness, he
would attend to them til he had thoroughly subdued them and brought them to submit."®^ Edwards was a model of eighteenth-century paternal practice, although probably not representative of
ble that paternal authority
was
a
waning force
it.
home: before the for lunch; after
it
seems indisputa-
in the middle-class
family in the century following Edwards' death.
locked into tightening business patterns, was
Yet
less
American
The American and
father,
less likely to
be at
War, for example, he usually went back to his house he was more likely not to. The middle-class mother had
Civil
it,
an increasing monopoly on her children's time,
if
not on their respect.
In her widely popular Letters to Mothers (1838), Lydia
Huntley Sigour-
ney explicated the omnipotent quality of maternal influence:
Feminine Disestablishment
How
and perfect
entire
is
dominion over the unformed character
this
of your infant. Write what you will
wand
75
upon the
printless tablet
with your
of love. Hitherto your influence over your dearest friend, your
Now you
most submissive servant, has known bounds and obstructions. have over
mind
a
new-bom immortal
exercises over the body.
indeed pass away; but while
It is
this
it
almost that degree of power which the
The period of this influence must 88 lasts, make good use of it.
.
.
.
the lure of the total control found only in
illicit
authority planted within
apparent warning about the perils and pleasures of legitimate power
which makes Sigoumey's words
so fascinating.
A
kind of heresy
is
once
again the feminine subtext. Significantly, mothers increasingly took over the
formerly paternal task of conducting family prayers.®^
Emmons announced lived
Nathaniel
to his Franklin congregation that his son Erastus had
and probably died "stupid" with
sin,
he clearly
judgment lay with himself; yet he was laying door or that of Mrs. Emmons. Like
was
salvation of his oflFspring
He
When
little if
predecessor Edwards, he assumed the
his
finally a
some obligation of any guilt at his own
felt
matter between them and their Savior.
could and did instruct, discipline, and evaluate them; Mrs.
presumably aided him
in the process;
but they could do no more.
Emmons Emmons
never envisioned the Last Judgment scene which the theories of latter-day educators like Mrs. Sigoumey, not to speak of Freud or Dr. Spock, would suggest: a scene in his family,
which the accused Erastus would
and not so much to
his father as to his
pass the
mother!
mother of the mid-nineteenth century, encouraged to and educate her
child,
blame on to
The American
breast-feed, oversee,
was theoretically assuming, for
better and worse,
almost godlike prominence.
The cult of motherhood,
like the
Mother's
Day
it
eventually established
American calendar, was an essential precondition to the flattery American women were trained to demand in place of justice and equality. in the
It oflFered
them, of course,
a
very genuine basis for self-respect.
It
gave them,
moreover, an innate, unassailable, untestable claim to charismatic authority
and prestige, a sanction for subjectivity and
erhood promulgated by
grams of
women
like
child-raising, but they also
self-love.
The theories of moth-
Sigoumey generated important
pro-
found wide use
as justification for
women
over the course of
conventionally unmatemal pursuits. American
the nineteenth century were able to exonerate almost any action performed
name of motherhood. During the Civil War, countless northern women demanded on the grounds of their maternal nature the right to follow, nurse, and occasionally harass the Union army. It was no accident in the
sacred
that Clara Barton's "boys" liked to call their childless nurse "mother"; or that
the most famous maverick nurse of the war, a middle-aged
woman who
left
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
76
her
Illinois
hospitals,
the
last
army "Mother" Bickerdyke. Elizabeth Blackwell was not
family to "clean things up" on the battlefield and
was christened
woman doctor to argue for her sex's right
its
moral and
development, with the simple time-worn reminder of their
"God-given
.
.
.
call,
the
to full participation in the
medical profession, and even to guardianship over procreative capacities, what she liked to
in
scientific
at least potential
with ringing emphasis, their
maternal nature."®*^ Even the vote was claimed by many,
including that most courageous and prolific pioneer, Elizabeth
Cady
Stan-
ton, as a destined portion of the maternal inheritance.^^
Neither medicine nor politics was to prove the most productive area for feminine influence. Perhaps the distant
from the nursery
forum and the
hospital
still
seemed too
fully to substantiate the maternal rationale.
grade-school teaching appeared a mere step firm conviction displayed by
many
away from
cribside duty.
But
The
early nineteenth-century feminist pio-
women's education that classroom control of America's primaryschool system was as surely the divine prerogative of their sex as absolute sway over their children's unformed souls proved prophetic. Over the course of the nineteenth century, women gradually came to constitute the overwhelming majority of grade-school teachers in America's public and private schools, a feat they accomplished in no other country, and one which was to cause immense uneasiness in the men involved in American neers in
education by the turn of the twentieth century. ^^ Typically, however, they gained their supremacy by working for a mere half of the salary customarily ofl^ered to ity
men; despite their numbers they never achieved economic equal-
or leadership positions.
The
which characterized the feminine takeover of America's schools symbolized women's more general position pattern of defeat within victory
within their culture. public
life
If
they had been spared the contagious corruption of
—and the gains
this
exemption achieved for
they had also missed the benefits, the education manifest spoils and responsibilities of oflice, less
it
women
women were
oflFers.
real
Barred from the
understandably sought
legitimate rewards for their very real energies: psychological, emotional,
what they
called "moral" or "religious" control over the
minds of
their
actual or symbolic offspring. Naturally desirous of seeing others in a state
of ideal susceptibility to their "influence," they were inevitably conflicted about, sometimes hostile
to,
whatever diminished that receptivity: atheism,
"demon rum," or the kind of scientific, intellectual, and artisti^c achievement from which they had themselves been painfully isolated.
Feminine Disestablishment
11
The Feminine Advantage
Both
liberal ministers
and
women
literary
had
lost practical
function within
American society and were anxious to replace it with emotional indispensability; they turned of necessity from the exercise of power to the exertion of "influence." Both would in their
and knowledge, whether ity;
in the
they would substitute,
own ways exchange dogma
form of
for prayer
or of scholarship, for sensibil-
skills
in a sense, literature for life.
Yet there were
obvious and important differences between the position and reaction of the ministers and those of the
development of
I
1875, neither the literary
women
nor the
have been discussing had a room of their own.
She was reported capable of tending dictatir^g a
new
crucial to the
culture.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's creative efforts
and
which would be
differences
modem American
Between 1820 and clergymen
women,
is
a typical
one
in
The
liberal
saga of
feminine annals.
a child, giving instructions to the cook,
story simultaneously.
The
ministerial pattern
was
strik-
ingly similar. Sylvester Judd, an innovative eccentric Unitarian minister, did
romped around his study; Horace Bushnell liked to work in the same situation; Henry Ware, Jr., actually composed his sermons with a child in his arms. Virginia Woolf has written with extraordinary perception of a woman's constant and constantly frustrated need to have "a room of one's own." Perhaps she understood less well why women,
all his
writing while his children
and others
in a like situation, failed to
not even formulate
it
as a goal. If a
achieve that goal, indeed often could
person
sciously or otherwise, devalued, pushed aside,
foremost reassurance of her or
America,
women
no matter whether conshe or he craves first and
feels,
So
his existence.
in
and ministers were not simply denied private rooms: they
denied themselves. Given their cultural isolation, a their
on
own
life,
could seem
like further
little
demand
for a
room
The
professional
women who
studies they supposedly coveted, ladies like the popular
authors "Fanny Fern" (Sara Pay son Willis, 1812-72) or Lydia Huntley
goumey,
of
renunciation of an already slender claim
acceptance of solitary confinement.
got those
mid-nineteenth-century
Si-
obsessively reminded their readers of the incessant flow of inter-
ruptions which was their daily
lot: a just
reminder of the obstacles they
faced and overcame, yet also a hint of the multitudinous nature of their indispensability.
The ministers who designated their studies communal terri-
tory where the children played with toys, mother darned or read, and father
wrote sermons,
also feared the isolation of a
room of
their
own; they too
sought domestic importance as compensation for societal neglect.
Yet the ministers
in
sional prerogatives as the
forgoing their privacy were abandoning profes-
women were not.
Their Edwardsean predecessors
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
78
had made of their studies protected sanctuaries; Samuel Hopkins and Nathaniel
wives
Emmons were shielded from their often-numerous offspring by their in
ways
still
American
familiar to successful
They
males.
hardly
turned to their children for occupational inspiration or camouflage.
women
The
Sigoumey and Fern, in contrast, had never possessed any space for their own use. Hence, what was extraordinary about the vignette of Harriet Beecher Stowe could be that she was writing, not that she had a baby in her arms. What was notable about the mothers and grandmothers of
was hardly
picture of Sylvester Judd
other words, the
setting. In
be advertising her
was
new
like
woman
own
without a room of her
significance, but the minister in the
calling attention to his
new
same
women were freed
as
still
situation
as well as enfeebled
consumers than they had enjoyed
as
by
more quesproducers. More-
the shift in their economic status; they were to have greater,
powers
could
insignificance.
In certain ways, middle-class
tionable,
domestic
his literary activity but his
if
which they paid tribute represented no ethical they were women advocating the womanly, even
over, the domestic values to
transvestism on their part: if in
aggressive ways.
By
locating their careers en famille in several senses,
they were on one level making the best of a bad situation.
and large
in the
home;
And
but as unworthy? ally
undomestic
why the
not debunk the outside world not as indiflPerent
home could
activities. It
upward mobility on the
They were by
was
sanction rather than limit tradition-
a sign of the
new
self-conscious sense of
part of literary middle-class
women
that they
whose domain in so many ways seemed, if conspicuously more elevated than their own, yet tantalizingly contiguous to it. The liberal ministers were in a different position. Their economic loss did not necessitate any automatic compensatory economic gain. Certain of their traditional privileges had ceased to be efficacious or possible. As we shall see, they assimilated and catered to coveted the
elite
prerogatives of their ministers,
proto-consumer values; they coveted, even emulated, maternity and the illicit
sanctions and real satisfactions
it
off^ered.
Yet
in
modeling themselves
women parishioners, whose sources of strength seemed less vulnerable to the forces of debilitation sapping their own prestige, they were partially
on
their
patterning themselves on a group ally
less
publicly distinguished and profession-
accomplished than the members of their
been.
And
own
the feminine sources of strength were
calling
had traditionally
less substantial
than they
seemed.
The upward
mobility of the
sumers gave them an edge in status
improvement
in their lot it
power;
it
in is
or self-esteem. This
genuine gains
century, but that
in
women
and
question as natural proto-conuncertain that is
not to say that
in their self-image
was perhaps
it
them there was no
ofl^ered
over the mid-nineteenth
significantly less than they thought
it
was.
79
Feminine Disestablishment
Nothing
is
more
distressing to the feminist historian than the
flushtide self-congratulation that pervades the
Hale;
it
is
work
of a
atmosphere of
woman
like
Sarah
understandable, but nonetheless painful that, to groups whose
potentialities are largely suppressed,
and probably
is,
any enlarged exercise of faculty seems,
at least in the short
whatever inner conflicts
it
creates,
range an almost unmitigated good,
whatever limitations or long-term conse-
condemn the anticipatory complacency of women like Hale as to condescend to members of ethnic or racial minority groups who "waste" their money today on big cars and fancy
quences
clothes.
it
carries. It
The
is
as pointless to
self-conscious
and others was natural, yet ministers and
women
if it
devious sense of social mobility
was
by Hale
delusive. Inevitably the uneasy alliance of
deepened their mutual entanglement
unperceived forms of dishonesty.
felt
in intricate
and
MINISTERS
AND MOTHERS Changmo and Exchanging
Roles
The Data of Biography: Devotees of the Press In discussing the ministerial and feminine impulse
change, zines,
we need
toward articulation and
not rely solely on impressions gleaned from novels, maga-
memoirs, and
By picking thirty liberal women who were among the leading liter-
tracts, invaluable as these are.
ministers and thirty middle-class
ary propagandists for a sentimentalized culture, and analyzing the relevant facts of career, geography, class, religious affiliation, family, in
the context of a broader sample,
it
and self-image
seems possible to obtain more precision
about the causes and workings of the feminization process under discussion. (See
Appendix
A.)^
should disclaim here, however, any attempt
I
quantitative methods.
questions of
my
discussed here;
between groups
I
use the information gleaned
from asking
at
hard
certain
control groups to detail and explore the self-images already I
am
ministerial
admittedly clarifying the similarities and differences
and feminine groups rather than comparing them to
in the larger culture.
To start
with generalized collective characteristics, one might note that
the sixty people in question were
all,
not
just
spokespersons, but self-con-
scious spokespersons; they formulated the problems and policies of the
groups from which they came and they placed inordinate, value
a
tremendous, perhaps an
on the process of formulation. They were dedicated
to the
active promulgation of liberal religious ends through literary means.
ministers of course
were
official
representatives of the liberal
The
wing of the
1
Ministers
Protestant Church.
A
Almost intent,
all
women came from
third of the
several married ministers,
and Mothers
many were
8
ministerial famihes,
regularly reviewed in religious organs.
of them were noted for their religious commitment, sermonizing
and the fervor with which they reinterpreted and softened Calvinism.
Ministers and
women alike saw themselves and the groups whose views they
Henry Bellows, a Unitarian minister and reformer, inquired rhetorically: "From what other body of men in proportion to their numbers, has this country drawn so expressed essentially as
largely
its
men
of
members of
a literary class. In 1869,
letters, its poets, its historians ... as
from the Unitarian
denomination and even the Unitarian pulpit?"^ Sarah Hale, collecting her Record of distinguished a
women
of
all
ages, found, especially in her
own
era,
preponderance of authors.
A few of the clergymen and ladies under consideration wrote primarily
—Joseph Tuckerman (1778-1841) and Catharine Beecher come to mind — but had some ambition for career reform- or religious-minded tracts
a
all
of
belles lettres.
The women
usually published primarily fiction and poetry;
the ministers sometimes turned their hands to fiction or poetry
— Andrews
Norton (1786-1853), the Ware brothers, Sylvester Judd, Henry Ward Beecher, James Hosmer, and John Abbot (1793-1879) did so but they were more likely to undertake less directly imaginative work. They might write
—
literary criticism for the
New
North American Review or the Christian Examiner
Peabody brothers did. Teaching literature was a possibility; Charles FoUen instructed Harvard students in German letters, Bela Edwards (1802-52) introduced Andover or the
Englander, as Austin Phelps and the
pupils to the English classics.
and studies with
Some
ministers published historical
memoirs
a strongly literary bent: the biographical sketches of
Em-
mons and Hopkins by E. A. Park (1808-1900) are justly famous, as the tributes of Henry Bacon (181 3-56) to Sarah Edgarton Mayo and "Charlotte" are justly forgotten. Clergymen might compose highly elegant and polished sermons very much designed for publication: Those penned by F. W. P. Greenwood (1797-1843) were snatched up by the "gemmy" ladies' annuals of the day. Ministers could edit a newspaper as Henry Beecher did in New York, or a denominational periodical as Horace Bushnell did in New Haven. Whatever aspect of literary activity these men and women practiced, they did so intensely, profusely, and more or less successfully. It is
important to realize that
advantage of a revolution with the process of
women
in the press
clerical
and ministers
alike
were taking
which had occurred concomitantly
and feminine "disestablishment."
No
"profile"
can be established for them without a discussion of the relatively
meaning of their
literary activity. Until the early nineteenth
ship had not been a profession in the a matter of finding a
new
century author-
modem sense of the word:
it
had been
paying patron rather than of pleasing a reading public.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
82
In 1820, the books sold in the United States netted half a million dollars; in 1860, this figure
become
of a
risen to
and
a business,
it
twelve and
had
a half million.^ Publishing
operated increasingly under the laws of capitalist
was dependent on technological breakthrough, centralizaof resources, strict attention to profits, and the creation and exploitation dependable large market through advertising and quick transportation
development; tion
had
it
facilities.
The Harper
brothers offer a case study in the commercialization of
northeastern culture.
When the four young men, middle-class and ambitious
Methodists from Long Island, gradually expanded their prosperous printing business to a full-time publishing effort over the course of the 1820s, they
were making and heralding trends
new and quick methods of printing. They
they experimented shrewdly with
invested early in stereotypes, introduced in 1830s, they
had
installed
thousand copies of before.
The
a
During the same period,
in their field.
New
York around
1813;
by the
steam presses. By 1848, they could turn out twelve
page
in
an hour, a rate undreamt of a short two decades
Harpers, and those
who were
quickly to imitate them, had the
machinery to support mass production.'*
The so
brothers were of course in
were most of the
New York City, and, by
possibilities for
highly lucrative,
gious, publishing. Before the 1820s, an author
the local printer, often at his
own
was
War,
the Civil
not entirely presti-
if
likely to take his
book
to
expense.^ In the years between 1800 and
was published outside New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.^ Small-town firms were to find it harder and harder to survive in the 1840s and 1850s; in the years between 1840 and 1850, 1810, fifty percent of
American
fiction
only eight percent of American fiction was published outside Boston, and Philadelphia.^
And everyone knew which
New
York,
of these three cities
had the commercial edge. Even the cultivated, philanthropic Careys of
American publishers before the advent of the Harpers, did not achieve national circulation. Catharine Maria Sedgwick and Lydia Huntley Sigoumey, known for their pious and evangelical works, in mid-career switched from New England publishers to a New York firm Philadelphia, the most important
— Harper's, of course. At mid-century, Edward Everett, the great Brahmin orator,
and Henry
Ward
Beecher, the famous Brooklyn preacher,
when they published in Robert Bonner's spectacularly the New York Ledger; they ignored their critics, for the Bonner's paper, a pioneer
in the use
a
fire
successful weekly, plain fact
was
that
of advertising, was the most widely read,
best-paying weekly in the country. Bonner was an educated the Harper brothers were neither.
drew
The
eldest,
if
rakish man;
John, liked to say,
"I
am
only
humble maker of books," and, as his biographer adds, "he spoke the truth."® The brothers were kind to writers by the rather unkind standards of
their day, yet their
primary
interest,
not surprisingly, lay
in
the public and
.
Ministers
its
demands, not
these
new
and Mothers
authors and their needs.
in the
83
The pubHc was
available to
no public had ever been before. Reformers and lament the lag between America's rapidly increasing
publishers as
educators were wont to population and
its
educational
but nonetheless schools
facilities,
at all levels
—day schools, Sunday Schools, academies, high schools, and colleges— were and
proliferating in the 1830s, 1840s,
1850s.
A
nation of democrats,
its
by burgeoning newspaper coverage of current doings, was willing to read different fare purveyed by the same cheap press. For various
appetite whetted
reasons, the southern readers
pens, but this loss literary
sometimes eschewed the products of northern
was more than canceled by the opening of midwestem
markets to eastern publishers with the advent of the railroads
1850s.^ In 1826, Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, z popular
and
in the 1840s
laid
Fanny Fern's Fern Leaves From Fanny's Portfolio sold 80,000 copies and was read literally from coast to coast. ^° Not inappropriately, a Pullman car was eventually christened with book of the
time, sold 5,750 copies; in 1853,
the successful author's name.
Given such as just that
—
a
market, shrewd publishers naturally treated their business
The
a business.
circulation; they capitalized ies.
Harpers' motto was cheap prices and large
on
religious family series
and educational
Like their competitors, the brothers encouraged writers to
librar-
suit the
supply to the demand. ^^ In 1843, a reviewer for the North American Review, a prestigious periodical
which the
best
minds of Boston could not save from
dullness and poor circulation, complained bitterly:
Literature begins to assume the aspect and undergo the mutations of
The
trade.
printer and the bookseller, to the
becoming as mechanical as that of the being created by the same causes and subject
author's profession
same
laws.
.
.
.
The
is
for a particular kind of authorship just at a restaurant.
^^
Drawing on the ing business, the thors: to
principles of the
new
emerging and closely related
keep up demand, the public must be constantly reminded that
slow creative author,^^ It
Such
much
a policy less
was hardly helpful
helped prolific and careless souls like
if
truthfully, that
Sigoumey 's
writing great works, but by "merely
.
.
.
a
to a careful and
to a theologian, laboring for years
Lydia Sigoumey, as intent on acquisition unkindly,
advertis-
publishers encouraged high productivity in their au-
particular writer existed.
"system."
name of his customers calls as he would bespeak a dinner
publisher in the
on
a
Henry Ward Beecher and
Poe could point out enormous fame came not from as
on
art.
keeping continually
in
the eye,
.
.
by appealing continually with little things to the ear of the great, overgrown, and majestical gender, the critical and bibliographical rabble."^'*
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
84
Fanny Fern, was destined, as a contemporary put it, "to feed the multitudes on the plain rather than to pour nectar for the Olympians."^^ Henry Ward Beecher published his sermons in the weekly press almost as fast as he spoke them: then he collected them in volumes, like his "Lyceum" lectures, to gamer extra profits. One commentator, tartly noting Beecher's shrewd instincts for publicity and cash, extolled him sarcastically: "Oh! most noble Mr. Beecher! Money has no charms for thee, never dost thou debase thyself by exhibiting "^^ [thyself] like a showman. It was no accident, moreover, that Sigoumey, ^^ Fern, and Beecher were all primarily magazine and newspaper writers. Edgar Allan Poe, a brilliant analyst of a market he was never able fully to Lydia Sigoumey,
like the equally successful
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
exploit for himself, realized that the "energetic, busy spirit of the age [tends]
wholly to the magazine
saw
literature."^®
magazines proliferating
literary
enough, they were
The decades between in ever-greater
1800 and 1865
numbers; interestingly
content and orientation predominantly domestic and
in
religious.
meaning of these changes
In assessing the
activity of the ministerial is
not that
and feminine groups,
clergymen and
all
in literary
women who
I
should
— but rather that they turned to
stress that the point
entered the literary
1820 and 1875 were intent on making a financial killing
not
production for the
field
between
—many clearly were
literature precisely at a time
when
it
was
becoming a business, and that the majority of them made a success of it. These facts inevitably colored their literary activity and their attitude toward it. Literature, with its apparent lack of professional requirements, could be treated as
a
hobby; most of the
men and women
in
question
preferred to define themselves as primarily ministers and theologians,
women and
housewives: Christians
first,
and writers second. In any
whatever their actual predilections, current opinion forbade a
woman
to publish a
work concerned with thoroughly
informed by secular ambitions for
artistic excellence.
Peabody (1799-1847), praising Lydia Sigoumey view
in 1835,
in the
skill,
and
clerical
clergyman or
secular themes or
Reverend William North American Re-
demonstrated the conjunction of femininity,
ocre literary
a
case,
religiosity,
medi-
complicity in one loaded compliment.
Because her genius makes no claim to "the very highest attributes of poetry," he points out, spirit"
with
its
true feminine genius; for in contrast to man's "militant
is
it
"fierce energy," "feminine creativity will
always be found on
religion's side."^^
"Fierce energy" marked neither the practice nor the production of the
men and women revival rallies
if
in question.
only because
The women it
from the was considered undecorous for refrained
tactics of a
lady to
exhort anyone for anvthing, even salvation; the ministers, because such
methods were held
ro be equally inappropriate
by
their creed.
As groups
Ministers
and Mothers
working unobtrusively but
85
by "influence," they could hardly ignore the lure of what one clerical commentator called the "continual droppings of the press";^® the press was a very model of "influence."^^ Where a knock-down in-person plea would be out of place, a well-written "effusion" was by definition polite. A reader can regulate the effect of the printed page on him more easily than an auditor can control interested in
his responses to a speaker;
it is
ail-pervasively
always simpler to close a book than to walk
away from someone openly intent on retaining his audience. The sheer facts of the literary medium posit a dependence on the reader's tastes and announce reading
as a potentially
consumption-oriented activity.
women
offered liberal ministers and literary
distance preaching as a calculated display of
The
press
an opportunity for long-
good manners:
a kinder
God
presented in a kindlier fashion.
Yet the question
is
literary
and commercial success of the ministers and
significant because
it
women
underlines the fact that they pursued
in
less
vocations than careers; they were professionals masquerading as amateurs.
They evaded
or at
least
mitigated just those restrictions imposed by pastoral
and domestic duties which they celebrated
in print; in disseminating praises
of the private virtues, they gained access to the public realm. If they were
confined to the kitchen and the church, they could table or the desk
sit
and send out sermons, poems, and
down
at the
stories to
kitchen
compete, as
they themselves were forbidden to do, in the markets of the masculine world.
The
differences
between the two groups, both committed
as
they were
to literary self-definition, are as important, however, as the similarities.
majority of these ministers and
women engaged
The
in the feminization
of
American culture were prominent in the period between 1820 and 1875, but the clergymen were older than the women. Approximately two-thirds of the ministers were bom before 1810, while two-thirds of the women were bom after that date. There is a father-and-daughter grouping, so to speak.
The
ministers began the process of sentimentalization; the
women, some-
times quite literally the daughters, often the admirers and disciples, of the older ministerial group, carried on and drastically accelerated the process.
men were
In the 1820s, 1830s, and part of the 1840s, the later 1840s, 1850s,
and part of the 1860s, the
The
their shared cultural terrain.
of theology and
its
early period
implement reform,
if
The
increasingly dominated
saw the
recourse to literature; the
subordination of theology to literature. literature to
women
later,
first
in charge; in the
initial liberalization
the assimilation and
period marked the use of
hardly of a radical variety; the second, the
absorption of reform as literary inspiration. Both theology and reform were
subsumed
in the accelerating
self-justification, for
which
and complicated
literature
clerical
and feminine need of
provided the best vehicle.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
86
This
emphasis
shift in
separate groups.
While the
is
apparent even within the confines of the two generation of
first
and
1810, devoted themselves to religious
generation,
bom
women, bom
social betterment, the
after that time, although hardly
more
defined themselves
usually before
second
without societal purpose,
entirely in literary terms.
Both feminine genera-
were adverse to theological speculation, but women like Catharine Esther Beecher and Lydia Maria Child were more likely to cast their very objections in the form and language appropriate to doctrinal debate;
tions
younger
women like Harriet Stowe or Elizabeth Oakes Smith used
basically
bom
a convic-
modes. Catharine Beecher,
literary
in 1800,
always harbored
tion that she could have been an inspired imaginative writer; her production,
however, consisted largely of tracts devoted to the causes of tantism, feminine education, and in 1811,
thought of herself with
home economics. Her
justification as a
liberal Protes-
sister Harriet,
moral crusader.
bom
The themes
works remained closely tied to Catharine's concerns, but the works themselves were almost exclusively novels and stories. Ministers bom after 1810 were also significantly more interested than of her
their clerical predecessors in avoiding theological
argumentation and
in
exploring the possibilities of the essay, the poem, even the novel as apt
conveyances for their views; there
were like
is
reason to think, however, that they
following the women's example. First-generation
in large part
women
Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867) or Lydia Huntley Sigoumey,
who began to conceived practice reflected
publish in the 1820s before book-writing could be realistically
in sheer business terms,
on male this
were
advisors, frequently
alliance;
Warner or Fanny
likely to
men
depend
in
theory and
of the cloth, and their writing
second-generation
feminine authors
like
Fern, in direct and profitable contact with a
literary scene largely consisting of
Susan
new mass
feminine readers and periodicals designed
to please them, could and did bypass clerical sanction even while they
usurped
clerical authority.
Andrews Norton might with some cause
think
of himself as a patron of female letters; Austin Phelps, thirty-four years his
observed the omnipresent feminine novel as
junior,
which he exercised no authority but Literary sentimentalism, as late
a
women bom
my
ture as a vehicle of first
its
its
extreme form
in
the
masculine backers and mim-
indiflPerent to assertive respon-
the secular or sacred realm. Significantly, the northeastern
after 1810
not included in
the
—despite
feminine concern, and one potentially
sibility in either
phenomenon over
considerable envy.^^
established itself in
1840s and 1850s, was definitely
—
ics
it
felt
a
who engaged
themselves primarily with reform are
sample precisely because they tended not to use expression. ^^
woman doctor,
litera-
Neither Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910),
nor Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), the leader
of the suffrage movement, nerved as they undoubtedly were by the strategic
^
Ministers
and Mothers
87
narcissism of feminine literature, cast medical abuses or feminine
wrongs
in
fictional guise.^'*
The
liberal ministers
bom
after 1810
who were
active in social causes
or in the formulation and defense of dogma, in contrast, are included in sample.
As clergymen and simply
as
men, they had
my
broader
at their disposal a
range of sophisticated and demanding literary forms suited to the expression of essentially social and political opinions than did Blackwell or Stanton:
they did not need to disavow literary aspiration to espouse reform. Nonetheless, it is
striking that, even while those ministers
criticism of their society could write elegant ject
theology and reform to literary
ideals,
their overt preoccupation with belles
the social
commitment of
lettres.
a given liberal
committed to some genuine
and forceful prose, even sub-
they minimized, by and large,
Unpleasant as
it is
to observe,
clergyman often seems inversely
Horace Bushnell, who bookstores, would never have
related to his direct involvement in popular literature.
was rumored
to
browse through
fiction in
written a novel; and despite his liberal theology and his conservative, occasionally naive politics, his intellectual
Henry Ward
able.
Norwood at
and
social integrity
was and
is
unassail-
Beecher, whose sermons were as racy as stories, published
(1867), a best-selling novel of village
life.
Beecher's posturing, his
times indiscriminating interest in popularization, have rightly seemed
more
solid
and more interesting to posterity than
his principles.
Moreover,
the cultural irresponsibility of feminized sentimentalism was revealed by
its
eventual fate. After the Civil War, no longer backed by any significant
segment of the male
(or female) cultural elite, feminine literary sentimental-
ism became by definition lowbrow;
esteem to
its
it
had begun
its
downward trek
in public
present degraded position as the staple of the poorer religious
press, saccharine greeting-card poetry,
and the weakly soulful
lyrics of
certain popular singers.^
The majority
of the ministers and
been deeply disturbed even
political
initiate.
The
if
felt
under discussion would have
they had fully foreseen the religious,
literary,
and
consequences of the sentimentalizing process they helped to
ministers obfuscated their profession and
remembered enough of they
women
responsible
its
duties, but
they
their past to be at least nostalgic about clarity,
enough for the future to preserve
a
and
minimal commit-
more influential feminine collaborators, who intended to elaborate the clerical position and make it more fully consonant with feminine needs and ideals, in actuality transformed it. Examples are numerous. Edward Pay son (1783-1827), a Congregationalist ment
to actual possibilities. Their finally
preacher of Portland, Maine, magnified the religious importance of prayer,
which he likened to poetry; his daughter Elizabeth Prentiss (1818-78), a well-known novelist and religious writer, made this devotional and antidogmatic exercise the absolute center of Christian life. Austin Phelps of
THE FEMINIZATION OF
88
Andover Seminary developed, he
as
A
M
ERICA
which was
his
LT U R E
.
he wrote, "a concept of heaven
testified to a fervent belief in the reassuring
afterlife, a belief
N CU
promise of
refuge and solace
a
as a place";
concretized
very troubled
in a
His daughter, the popular writer Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844-191
1),
life.
enter-
tained a "concept of heaven as a place" in an extraordinarily literal sense. In
her novel The Gates Ajar, published in 1868 and dedicated to her father (to the horror of the collective theological world and probably to his dismay),
heaven was very
much
a "place,"
with houses,
clothing, just like earth, only better
sums
it
up.
What
in
overwrought and
— Kansas with
one character
hills, as
the father's strained but brilliant
borrowing the consoling
food, and
streets, pianos,
mind was
a
concept
indistinctness of fantasy, in the daughter's equally
sensitive consciousness
became fantasy usurping the
au-
thoritative outline of a concept. If the ministers gathered the firewood, the
women
applied the match.
Ministerial
The
and Feminine
Profiles
ministerial profession, as
we have
already seen, held an increasingly
conservative, even retrogressive status in
American
clergymen attempted to rob such criticism of intercepting
it.
They courted
its
autobiography with
a
a privileged oblivion; a peculiar ministerial
deceptive disavowal:
not been great. "^® Bushnell was ambitious peers,
however, were
to suggest that they
by anticipating or
sting
modesty became fashionable. Even Horace Bushnell his
society. Certain liberal
"My
figure in this
every sense;
in
compelled to begin
felt
many
only claimed to
as retiring as Bushnell
world has
of his clerical
be.
This
is
not
were unsuccessful: success and aggression are of course
by no means synonymous, and most of the ation did extremely well
liberal ministers
by the standards of
their profession
under considerand by broadly
conceived humanistic standards. But the majority of them, desiring to avoid the competition for which they were permanently out of practice, sought victories
which were by
definition theirs.
They were by and
large not
men
given to chances or changes.
With notable little
exceptions, the clergymen in question placed relatively
value on sheer bodily energy, and increasingly assumed a conjunction
between
their profession
and poor health. As early
writing for the Christian Examiner, reported that
it
was notorious
health of a large proportion of clergymen has failed or suffer
from dyspepsia, consumption, and
a
as 1826, "Clericus,"
is
failing
same periodical warned the
consumptive away from the ministry, admitting that "there our profession.
Many
of
have been compelled by
its ill
them"; they
"gradual wearing out of the
constitution."^^ In 1847, another writer for the
in
"that the
is
much
illness
brightest ornaments have died young. Others
health to seek diflPerent employments."^® In
and Mothers
Ministers
listing
89
current resignations of ministerial posts, the editors of the Examiner
frequently gave "insufficient health" as the reason. ^^ Carlos Wilcox (17981828), the poetic
preacher
who
preceded Bushnell
Congregational Church, knowing
full
at
Hartford's Second
well the hazards of a minister's
lot,
would bring early death to him. In 1839, Sylvester Judd, a student at the Harvard Divinity School, liked to wander in Mt. Auburn Cemetery and muse on "the clergy all sick and dying. What is the disease?"^** No clerical commentators attempted to check ministerial mortality felt
sure
it
against mortality rates in other masculine professions
clergymen
to argue that
in actuality died in greater
non-clerical peers. Several points do, however,
among prominent and
and
seem
am not equipped
I
numbers than
youthful members of the
relatively
The
clear.
liberal
their
death
toll
clergy in
was at least conspicuous, and highly Wilcox died shortly after assuming ministe-
the period between 1820 and 1860
publicized within clerical ranks.
Judd was dead a decade after his Mt. Auburn rummations. The Unitarian imagination was struck by a constellation of deaths in 184243: F. W. P. Greenwood, Henry Ware, Jr., and William Ellery Channing rial duties;
passed
all
away within months
tuberculosis,
were
liberal ministers
still
of one another; the
in their forties. Literally
found early graves during
first
two, struck by
dozens of promising young
this period:
Joseph Buckminster,
Levi Frisbie, John Abbot, William Peabody, Oliver Peabody, Charles Follen,
Samuel Thacher, William Thacher among the Unitarians; and Daniel Temple,
Mathew Poor among the
Chester Islam, Oliver Alden Taylor, William Bradford Hames,
Rice Dutton, James Richards, Levi Parsons, and Daniel Congregationalists
come to mind, almost all
victims of consumption.
A third
of the ministerial group under consideration suffered from a tubercular condition.
It is
new perils for the but it may have pos-
unlikely that the ministry had developed
potentially consumptive in the nineteenth century, sessed a stronger claim
on them;
associate the ministry with
ill
it
may have seemed more
health,
appropriate to
and to dramatize the connection.
We
must remember that religion was increasingly associated with feminine
in-
Boys with weak health or indoor tastes, likely to be introspective and sensitive, stayed at home. Of necessitv more closely drawn to their homebound, religious, and supposedly "weaker" mothers than to their more secular-minded, active fathers, they were naturally attracted to the clerical profession. In other words, a fluence and disassociated
from masculine
activity.
poor physical constitution could be linked in "feminine,"
of
ill
to,
domestic, and religious pursuits.
health with the clerical image
The social and
is
even confused with,
The
interest
conjunction of the idea
nonetheless significant.
vocational patterns of the clergymen under examination
confirm the lack of aggression which their health condition indicated and enforced. Most were middle-class; most were,
if
anything, socially mobile
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
90
but hardly dramatically of farmers, the in
New
jump from
England.
Few
Although
so.
was
a traditional
of them considered alternative callings or
homogeneous and
a
but solid minority were sons
agriculture to the ministry
seriously at other kinds of jobs.
were
a small
From
worked
religious point of view, they
a
Fourteen were Unitarian,
stable group.
one
five
ultra-Unitarian or transcendentalist, six liberal Congregationalist, one Congregationalist,
two
Universalist,
one
liberal Presbyterian,
and one Unitarian-
tumed-Episcopalian. All but two of them adhered to the faith
in
which they
women strikingly similar to themselves in social and cultural background, women raised, so to speak, to marry them. were
reared.
They tended
Channing wed
Ware
a cousin; the
devoted and like-minded
marry
to
sisters.
Henry and William, picked two time when America was on the move,
brothers,
At
a
which they were
these liberal clergymen were, in the main, apt to remain in the area in
Spokesmen for the disestablished clergy, able to protect themselves from the most obvious perils, and opportunities, of the voluntary system; they were both fortunate and anachronistic. Henry Ward Beecher, bom in Connecticut, settled in Brooklyn; James Freeman Clarke (1810-88), the son of an old New England family, spent several years
they had been
in
raised.
Kentucky; Edward Beecher (1803-95),
few examples, spent
just a
Furthermore,
many
Connecticut man, served for
a
Even such limited mobility, Channing, Ware, Jr., and Greenwood, to cite
while as president of the College of
however, was hardly typical.
a
Illinois.
the majority of their lives in the Boston area.
of the ministers under discussion promoted lack of
mobility as an ideal: they delivered panegyrics on the village-centered past; they took the lead, as
we shall
more
see, in
the
stable rural,
new
nostalgic
antiquarianism of mid-century.
The self-appointed
was the conservative one of cultural custodian.^ In the literary realms which they increasingly entered, they were more respected than popular. There were exceptions. Channing's sermons were destined to an extensive circulation that depressed Matthew Arnold, and Henry Beecher achieved a hit with Norwood even role of the liberal ministers
^
though, he liked to joke,
it
proved conclusively that he could not have
ghost-written Uncle Tom's Cabin as some critics had once thought. Such
was not only unusual, but perhaps unnecesquestion were in the main not dependent on the crass
literary success in clerical ranks sary.
The
ministers in
evidence of numbers and dollars to establish their claim to literary
very profession gave them status.
edit
its
They could head
at least
life.
Their
minimal educational background and
the nation's most prestigious schools and colleges,
most important magazines. They functioned
as
spokesmen for
their
country's cultural aspirations, although they were often unwilling or unable to
meet
its
actual literary needs.
Caretakers for their culture, dedicated to taste rather than creativity,
and Mothers
Ministers
91
apparently disdainful or incapable of the competitive mobility of contemporary
the ministers under examination approximated rather closely the
life,
conventional feminine
ideal.
As the century wore
were described
on, they
more and more frequently by themselves and by contemporaries
Buckminster Lee (1788-1864),
that stressed their softer susceptibilities. Eliza
the sister of the eloquent Unitarian prodigy Joseph Buckminster
had always seemed "an angel
1812), said her brother
commonly depicted
as feminine.^^
J.
terms
in
(178^
in disguise"; angels
were
H. Allen, speaking of Channing,
praised his "almost feminine" "native sensitiveness of organization" and his
"womanly temperament."^^ Henry Bellows found
Dewey
an "almost feminine
W.
sensibility."^'* F.
in his friend Orville
Greenwood remarked
P.
James Freeman, the founder of the King's Chapel, the first Episcopalian church in Boston, and later Greenwood's colleague there, an expression as in
"bland and gentle as a woman's."^^ William Thacher, a Unitarian minister
who
died young, was apparently characterized by a "winning and almost
feminine gentleness of demeanor."^^ Even
"womanly" were not used were employed suggested
when
the
to praise a given minister,
words "feminine" or the adjectives which
traditionally feminine virtues: "sweet," "meek,"
"gentle," "sensitive," "poetic," "delicate,"
come up
again and again. Carlos
Wilcox, for example, was remembered as "a most gentle, amiable, and loving spirit,
much
with
of the ethereal in his countenance"; he had "poetry in his
countenance and manners
mind and
as well as in his
heart.
"^^
In sum, the most literate and articulate of the Unitarian and nonevangelical Congregational clergy courted, with whatever ambivalence, a
feminized image which echoed and rationalized their conservative career
women who were both their supportMost of the women under consideration propagated and
and family patterns.^® What about the ers
and their
rivals?
which the liberal ministry was appropriating. Indeed, they espoused and swore by the passivity appropriate to their sex. Many may have been skeptical about its efficacy; only a few bold ones like "Fanny Fern," who enjoyed dressing up in men's clothes in private and baiting the male world in her public column for the New York Ledger, sanctified the feminine stereotype
attempted to make capital of their skepticism about the efficacy of feminine helplessness.
Even the
spirited
Grace Greenwood
fell
meekly into
line
when
she defined "true feminine genius" in 1850 as "timid, doubtful and clingingly
dependent; a perpetual childhood. "^^
and the clergymen
which underlay ministers,
were
it
lies less in
The
difference between the
the image they projected than in the reality
and the uses to which they put
in certain
ways, as
we have
reveal the aggressive characteristics of one.
not defend or analyze
Let
me
start
women
it.
The women,
seen, a rising group,
unlike the
and they
They sought power; they
did
it.
with the question of health.
The
literary
women
sampled
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
92
here
made no claim
was reputedly
to physical vitality. Feminine health
as
poor as clerical health. In Physiology and Calisthenics (1856) Catharine Beecher warned her readers that "there is a delicacy of constitution and an increase of disease, both among mature women and young girls, that is most alarming, and such as was never
known
in
any former period. ""^^ In
Letters
up her apocalyptic rumblings with statistics. She had asked all of the numerous women she knew in cities and towns across the United States to make a list to the
People on Health
of the ten
women
and Happiness, Beecher attempted
each
knew
best,
to back
and rate their health
as "perfectly
heahhy," "well," "delicate," "sick," "invalid," and so on. Her report, which covered hundreds of middle-class women, was as "alarming"
Beecher
as
could have desired. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, provides a typical example:
Milwaukee, Wise. Mrs. A. frequent sick headaches. Mrs. Mrs.
well, except chills. Mrs. L.
S.
B.
very feeble.
poor health constantly. Mrs. D.
subject to frequent headaches. Mrs. B. very poor health. Mrs. C. con-
sumption. Mrs. A. pelvic displacements and weakness. Mrs. H. pelvic disorders and a cough. Mrs. B. always sick.
woman Just as liarly
many
the health of
liberal
know one
clergymen were convinced that
its
which made Beecher was sure that
their profession
practitioners,
domestic duties of middle-class
reality
not
healthy
in the place."*^
demanding nature of
suffering.
Do
As
in
women
it
was the pecu-
so hazardous to
it
in the sexual
and
lay the secret of their physical
the case of the ministers' fears, there was an undoubted
behind Beecher's exaggerated statements.
A certain number of liberal
ministers did die young, usually of consumption; and the constant pressure to talk and preach,
endemic to
clerical
life,
could hardly have been helpful
to those with an incipient tubercular condition. In an age
knowledge was primitive even by
modem
standards,
whose medical
many women
undoubtedly suffer chronic infections attendant on menstruation, course, and childbirth. Moreover, "attention" to a
problem
in a
did
inter-
given period
which may be almost impossible to determine; American women and clergymen of the eighteenth century may have been in fact more sickly than their supposedly frail nineteenth-century is
as telling as its actual "incidence,"
successors, but they did not define or talk of themselves as sick,
descendants did.
The
and their
cultural uses of sickness for the nineteenth-century
was a way for both punitively to dramatize their anxiety that their culture found them useless and wished them no good; it supplied them, moreover, with a means of minister and lady are undeniable.
To stress their
ill
health
getting attention, of obtaining psychological and emotional
power even
while apparently acknowledging the biological correlatives of their social
and
political
unimportance. 42
Ministers
Yet there
between
a real difference
is
and Mothers
93
clerical
and feminine complaints
of sickness, at least as they are revealed in the sixty individuals under consid-
While almost
eration.
with the physical
women were
the ministers and
all
trials to
in actuality a
women
expressed their concern
which their profession or sex was subject, the somewhat healthier group than the clergymen.
Approximately one-half of the ministers experienced chronic and occasion-
women did. Ten of the clergymen died women. Twenty-three of the women lived past
ally disabling illness; one-third of the
before
of the
fifty; six
seventy; twenty of the ministers. longevity, logical
were
besieging those in their it is
their strength or
and sincere spokespersons for the very
as valid
real physio-
were the ministers for the trying difficulties profession. The issue is in no simple sense one of
problems of their sex
hypocrisy;
The women, whatever
as
a matter of unconscious, sociologically
determined strategy
based on a psychological conflict, even bifurcation, which was undoubtedly
and anxiety to the
a source of pain
perhaps talked about so,
ill
women who
health rather
experienced
it.
The women
more than they experienced
it;
in
doing
they were trying to palliate not only their failures in their society, but
their successes.
new
strength.
Feminine modesty, broadly conceived, was an apology for It
assured
its
public that
its
possessors,
if
they had
come
so
would come no farther; they would not presume. Ministerial humility at any level, whether physiological or professional, was a means of covering and conceivably bettering a newly weakened position. The majority of the women in the group under consideration lived out a display of competence while they talked and wrote of the beauties of far,
incompetence. Sarah Hale, an astute self-apologist, was given to dropping little
personal explanations in the midst of articles on varied subjects.
consideration of statement: "It sacrifice of
is
Anne Boleyn, only
in
for example, leads
somehow
to this dignified
emergencies, in cases where duty demands the
female sensitiveness, that a lady of sense and delicacy will
before the public, in a manner to
make
in
her pretensions.
may be considered
as allusions to
and
a pursuit "foreign to the usual character
work,
our
come
There is little These remarks
herself conspicuous.
danger that such an one will be arrogant editorial
A
own case." Hale engages in her literary and occupations
of her sex," only in order to "obtain the means of supporting and educating
her children in some measure as their father would have done." Clearly anxious that she has
somehow usurped
her husband's
her only real source of happiness in her fame
name
she stresses that
the sweet thought "that his
bears the celebrity." Hale's culturally imposed self-alienation
and
distressing; her
ing.
She
bit
is
role,
is
its
real
mimicry of industrial split-level consciousness, frightennot above using her declared maternal motivation for a shrewd
of advertising.
deserve
is
The
public
is
given the "surest pledge" that she will
patronage: "the guaranty of a mother's affection."*^ Hale was a
THE FEMIN'IZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
94
mother but she was
businesswoman. Femininity was too valuable an
also a
insurance policy to be openly abandoned.
The
similar life patterns of the
women
under consideration suggest the
aggressive nature of their underlying motivation. Like the ministers, they
came predominantly from a mobility
of
and
solid middle-class
backgrounds, yet they showed
a resourcefulness often absent in their clerical peers. Several
them eventually
rose in the
world from rather modest beginnings. Lydia
Sigoumey, for example, the daughter of a provincial gardener, married into a wealthy mercantile family. Sarah Hale came from a small New Hampshire farm to become the arbiter of American Godey V Lady
V Book. ^^ In
changed their religious the
women were
church than for
was
it
a lay
treated as highly significant Protestant. Furthermore,
almost half of the
lives,
women
eleven had been baptized in another
all
clearly
more momentous
for a minister to
person to leave his or hers, such a change was
by any devout nineteenth-century American
most of the women, including those
with their original denomination, experienced ions; this
editorial job at
only two of the ministers did. Eleven of
Episcopalians, and
denomination. Although leave his
the course of their
affiliation;
through her
taste
who
a shift in their religious opin-
represented a genuine change, although one
less
conspicuous and
culpable for anyone, lay or clerical, than switching churches.
clergymen fundamentally modified
remained
Fewer of the
their creeds.
Religious mobility of course does not necessarily imply intellectual
Two-thirds of the men, and only
activity.
a quarter of the
women, were
was the most attractive denomination to the women, and not to the men. Without impugning the sincerity of either group, several points can be made. Both Episcopalianism and Unitarianism were distinctly upper class, but Episcopalianism, due to its English associaUnitarians; Episcopalianism
tion
and
relative antiquity,
probably had the edge
in prestige.
Moreover,
Unitarianism could and often did require a complicated commitment to certain demanding, contrast, with
its
if
limited,
forms of
self-scrutiny. Episcopalianism, in
de-emphasis on preaching and
its
emphasis on ceremony,
could offer a haven to those more able to display than to examine themselves.'*^
made
The
bifurcation
I
have already noted
certain kinds of self-scrutiny painful,
anyone involved achievement
Emma
is
in
the process of
as essential as
Willard, and Lydia
if
in
not impossible. Moreover, for
upward
achievement
the feminine self-definition
mobility, advertisement of
itself.
Sigoumey converted
Women
in religious affluence a respite
Sarah Hale,
to Episcopalianism in part
to demonstrate that they had attained status and to insure
sought
like
from the very
its
possession; they
real if
unexamined
struggles they had fought, not a continuation of them.
Such women were perhaps reserving their combative energies for what they deemed more strategic arenas. The women were more assertive and
and Mothers
Ministers
more independent than the
95
Whatever
ministers in their careers.
they tended to adjust their personal
lives to the
their claims,
needs of their work, rather
than the reverse. In contrast to the ministers, only a bare majority (seventeen
women in the sample married,'*^ and half had children. Several of those who did marry, like Ann Stephens or Elizabeth Oakes Smith, married men engaged in literary work who were helpful in promoting their own efforts. Others, like Margaret Fuller, "Fanny Forrester" of thirty) of the
(Emily Chubbuck, 1817-53), Elizabeth Phelps, and Harriet Farley, took
husbands relatively
late in life, after
the bulk of their important
work was
A number, like Fanny Fern and Sarah Hale, did not begin their writing
done.
careers until they
were widowed. Most of those who were unmarried sup-
ported themselves financially, and the majority of those with husbands (nine
more
out of seventeen) were
successful than their spouses and,
by most
effectual tests, acted as the heads of their households.
The women made more major geographic Stowe had
England
as her
little
their husbands:
Har-
choice about her repeated moves in Ohio and
New
husband sought to improve
fortunes. Yet those
than did the ministers.
were simply following
In part, one could argue, they riet
shifts
who were
his
pedagogical and clerical
make their own choice, Gary, Fanny Fern, and Margaret free to
like
Sarah
Hale,
Fanny
tively
sought out the urban centers of culture where they could market their
Forrester, Alice
talents to best advantage.
Twenty-four of the
tions in addition to writing; six
had engaged
teaching and/or editorial work. Those
had
thirty
in
manual
who worked
Fuller, ac-
tried other
labor,
occupa-
twenty-one
in
with their hands did so
from necessity; and teaching was one of the few respectable forms of employment available to women. Their editorial activity perhaps possesses a deeper significance. One must remember here that editorship, a common and traditional prerogative
novelty for
among members
women. To be an
editor
is
of the ministerial group, was a
at least to try to get
hold of the reins
of power, to acquire the means to push one type of literature over another. It
is,
in a sense, a
benefit.
way
to control the actual literary
Sarah Hale, Lydia Huntley Sigoumey, and
had a hand periodicals
market for one's
Ann
Stephens (1810-86)
some of the most popular, if hardly the most prestigious, and annuals of the day and filled them with work by themselves in
and by other writers (usually female) pursuing similar
The simple selection of a literary for these
own
career meant something very different
women than did the choice of a
their ministerial counterparts.
Of
course
question whether or not outspoken
lines.
clerical it
and
literary profession for
was an open and often-debated
women
such as Margaret Fuller and
Lydia Maria Child were "unsexing" themselves by publishing their controversial
opinions on public
directly imaginative
work
affairs in
the newspapers of the day. Yet even the
slated for
magazine and book publication which
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
96
occupied the vast majority of the its
women in my sample was enough to brand
producers as both aggressive and competitive.
Louisa Little
May
was no accident
It
Alcott (1832-88), drawing the characters of the
Women, made
Jo, the rebellious
tomboy who
Women
slang, the writer of the family.
March
that
girls in
liked to whistle and talk
writers in the early and mid-
tomboys poaching on male preserves. Henry James, observing the dominance women writers exercised over the field of fiction in the 1880s, was well aware that a revolution had taken place; fifty years before, feminine authors had been few and frequently chal-
nineteenth century were in a sense
lenged. "^^
I
women
have already said that both
and ministers had special
reasons for being attracted to a literary career, yet
such a career gave the women, as the privileges that professional a
it
life
it is
nonetheless true that
did not the ministers, a
first
glimpse of
could bestow: an independent income,
group of friends outside the family
circle,
and
self-suflicient creative
beyond the procreation of children. Before the Civil War, authorship was the only profession open, no matter how grudgingly and fearfully, activity
to
women other than the infinitely world was the
literary If
less
conspicuous business of teaching; the
logical arena for the display of feminine ambition.
feminine motivation for a literary career was by definition more
same
assertive than clerical aspiration in the
mance.
The
irresistible;
minister's
work,
as
I
have
area, so
said,
was
was feminine perfor-
influential rather than
the woman's, while often treated with critical seriousness, was
some very real sense, commanded the audience they had marked as their own; Catharine Beecher's Domestic Economy was the classic in its rather new genre. Over half the women produced near best-sellers or best-sellers. It is worth remembering that the sales of all the works by Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman in the 1850s did not equal the sales of one of the more popular domestic novels.'*® Stowe modestly hoped to get a new dress out of the proceeds of
decidedly popular. All of these
women,
in
Uncle Tom; despite a bad copyright situation and a disadvantageous publishing arrangement, she netted thousands of dollars, a mansion in the Northeast,
and an orange plantation literary
in Florida.
forms available to them:
says, sketches,
even poetry and
The
tracts, fiction.
Norton, Park, and Edward Beecher,'*^
all
ministers had a certain range of
"systems" of divinity, sermons,
With
es-
the exception of Bushnell,
the clergymen under consideration
avoided the most challenging genre at their disposal, the serious theological treatise.
The women had some variety
of choice too, although a rather
more
limited one: they could write tracts, sketches, poetry, and fiction. Their selections tended to be rine
more adventurous than the men's.
Beecher or Lydia Maria Child actually overstepped feminine bounda-
by writing reasonably sophisticated political and treatises.^® Beecher in particular was undoubtedly as ries
Women like Cathareligious polemical skillful a religious
Ministers
97
and Mothers
any of the ministers except Bushnell, Park, and her brother Edward. The majority of the women interested in fiction wrote primarily novels rather than short stories; and they were usually able to sustain their casuist as
level of
achievement, such as
number
was, through a
it
of exceedingly fat
The women, in sum, aimed at the biggest rewards possibly availthem; the men at the surest. The women took the more active, the
volumes.^ ^ able to
ministers the
more
passive part.
The Feminine Congregation
The
similarities
and
dissimilarities
between
ministerial
and feminine roles
were exposed and exaggerated by the potent fact that the two groups perforce kept company: the nineteenth-century minister moved in a world
women. He preached mainly to women; he administered what sacraments he performed largely for women; he worked not only for them but with them, in mission and charity work of all kinds. His dependency was, moreof
over, a relatively
new
one. Certain ecclesiastical changes had occurred in the
seventeenth century which foreshadowed later trends: the minister had gradually taken over the once-civil services of marrying and burying his parishioners; ^^ the old style of
women on a
another, gave
domestic iconography
way
church
men on one
seating,
to family pews.
in the minister's
set
of benches,
Both developments suggested
congregation, an involvement on
which anticipated his later custodianship over essentially feminine concerns. It was not, however, until the end of the eighteenth century, with the weakening of the establishment system and the development of the voluntary societies, that the liberal minister began fully to experience his deeper reliance on an audience which was his part
with private and familial
affairs
increasingly active, assertive, and feminine.
Female "influence," whether he liked
power was
it
or not, was the minister's chief
model of action with complex relevance to his own performance because it was his prime channel of communication. The Unitarian prodigy Joseph Buckminster reminded his feminine hearers "how little" the minister could do without their aid.^^ Reverend Daniel Wise
support; maternal
put the matter in a
a
way both
flattering to the
of ministerial fears: the pulpit alone
is
feminine ego and expressive
not sufficient to accomplish the
immense task of social conservatism he saw as its duty. "There is," he announced thunderously, a "POWER BEHIND THE SCHOOLROOM AND THE CHURCH which is capable of neutralizing the effects of both: maternal
influence."^'*
Harriet
dramatically but a good deal
Martineau stated the situation equally
more
baldly;
no one
listened to
American
ministers, she claimed in her celebrated study of
New World society, except
"women and
only
superstitious men."^^ After
all,
if
those
women who
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
98
appeared
at
Sunday
services
and weeknight prayer meetings, America's
chosen delegates to the Protestant Church, carried back the Christian message to their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers,
would the
ministerial
voice reach the ear of the masculine forces which dominated American
American businessmen supported churches in large part because they thought they were protecting the social order in doing so, but social order is a complex concept. As everyone increasingly realized, feminine
society.
demands had much
The
to
church, like
do with the uses of masculine income. the faith it was meant to embody, was apparently
a
feminine preserve. There was a shared consensus
among
century clergymen, voiced most vehemently by the
liberal ministry, that the
Protestant congregations of America
mid-nineteenth-
were becoming increasingly and
pre-
ponderately feminine. In 1833, Sebastian Streeter, an early and fervent Universalist,
could say with every evidence of stating a commonplace that
composed of
"Christian churches are
much
so that in certain quarters
Frederic
Dan Huntington
post at Unitarian
many
it
a great
disproportion of females"
had become
Three decades
a joke.^®
Church congregation, composed vert to Episcopalianism,
wrote of Unitarianism
[or the
communicants]
chiefly of females
a lean
is
and aged men."^^ Another con-
Reverend William Gage,
in 1859, explained,
at this
in their churches.^^
that "in
minority of the
in the
semi-expose he
"The church was almost without
male members."^® Even the Episcopalians, as one of their historians evinced concern
later,
(1819-1904), shortly before deserting his pastoral
Harvard for an Episcopalian rectorship, admitted
cases, the
—so
tells us,
women draw women
time over the "alarming" preponderance of
Henry Ward Beecher, whose
ability to
was to become too widely known, seemed to find nothing depressing or unusual in the fact that his first church in Laurenceburg, Indiana, consisted of nineteen women and one man. Howard Allen Bridgeman, a liberal Congregationalist, writing for the
Andover Review
cal question of the
day succinctly: "Have
quipping that "the
women
men
Modem century saw
his gosp>el
a
posed the
ecclesiasti-
Religion for Men?" After
naturally gravitate to the prayer-meeting, and
as naturally to the penitentiary,"
dismay that
we
in 1890,
he expressed
in
more
serious vein his
appeared "limited by sex distinctions."®^
historians have often accepted the view®^ that the nineteenth a
numerical
shift
from
a
male-dominated to
a
female-dominated
Protestant Church, but the conclusive demographic and statistical
work
which would substantiate it has not yet been done. What evidence we have in contemporary evaluations by earlier clergymen as to the sexual composition of their church membership points in the opposite direction. Let me cite several typical examples. In the late seventeenth century. Cotton Mather noted as a truism that more women than men were church members, and that they
were more active members to boot.®^ In the mid-eighteenth cen-
Ministers
and Mothers
Samuel Hopkins had only one or two men
tury,
gation.^^
Ezra
Newport
at the
minister of the
Stiles,
rival
99 in his rather
scanty congre-
Congregational Church in
time and later president of Yale University, had more
communicants but not many more men, proportionately speaking: fifty-six of his seventy members were women, although only the men here as elsewhere were allowed to vote on ecclesiastical matters.®^ Samuel Mather, a Congregational divine of the same period, had 110
liberal
women
in his
Boston congregation.®^ In other words,
we have
ent evidence becomes available,
until
men and 246
more and
differ-
reason to assume that the nine-
teenth-century liberal ministers moaning over their largely feminine flocks
much about their own anxieties as about any actual statistical developments. What is clear is that they felt increasingly dominated by their women members who had in the proliferating "societies" new arenas of activity available to them in the church; the
as a signal
and new
disaster are telling us as
drawn to their feminine congregation, and an issue of power or of attraction which was decidedly present became confused with an issue of numerical change which may or may not ministers also perhaps felt increasingly
have been
valid.
The bonds parishioners
of nineteenth-century liberal clergymen with their female
were apt to be
important to remember
close ones
which formed
to the
New
lives.
Earlier generations of
same type of
suasion.
held. It
is
number of nonhomebound little boys.
Ministers often exalted the maternal impulse because
own
and
point that a significant
at this
evangelical ministers had been delicate, even sickly,
in their
early,
it
had been
a
key force
clergymen had surely been subject
John Smalley of Connecticut,
a pupil of the
Light divine Joseph Bellamy, recorded that the two most profound
religious experiences of his
and watching
his
youth were hearing George Whitfield preach
mother pray.®® The
fact remains,
however, that eight-
eenth-century preachers did not normally stress these experiences.
may have felt, and acknowledged, themselves in
its
maternal example, but they did not define
terms, as their successors
Horace Bushnell
They
were most decidedly
attributed his choice of the ministry,
to do.
which he
later
described eloquently as the decision that he "should finally be," to maternal
Henry Bacon and Henry Soule (1815-52), Universalist pastors who worked on The Universalist and Ladies' Repository in the 1840s, claimed
guidance.®^
that their ministerial vocations
dore Cuyler (1822-1909), literary stamp, told the
before he
made
a
more potent than
words apparently had
Theo-
in
York Presbyterian divine of a liberal and his autobiography that "God made mothers
"There
is
a ministry that
ours," he elaborated; "it
the crib and impresses the
influence.®®
New
world
ministers."
were dictated by maternal
first
is
is
older and deeper and
the ministry that presides over
gospel influence on the enfant soul." His
a personal application, for his
own mother had a great
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
100
impact on
his religious
He eventually
development.
put a memorial
window
Brooklyn church depicting Hannah and Samuel and dedicated to
in his
mother. According to Cuyler,
when he was
his
attending Princeton Seminary,
on one occasion asked those students who had praying mothers nearly all the hundred and fifty young men present leaped to their
a professor
to
rise;
feet.««
In innumerable cases contemporaries stressed that a given minister had
not only been influenced by his mother, but had inherited almost exclusively her temperament and her looks; they almost imply that his father had no
Ephraim Peabody,
share in his conception or formation.
man who in the
died of consumption at fifty in 1857, received from his mother,
words of
sensibility
a Unitarian clergy-
and
.
his friend .
.
Reverend Bartol,
his "exquisitely delicate
nervous
of spirit. "^° Dr. R. S. Storrs, eulogizing
inward composure
Edwards A. Park at his funeral in 1900, explained that although Park's father was also a minister, he did not really resemble him; Park drew his character, and his greatness, chiefly from his "gentle and dignified" mother, who was "not fond of theological debate [but] ... a lover of poetry."^ Such claims and descriptions are too often repeated in memoirs and commemorative ^
sermons on
liberal
clergymen to be ignored.
It
seems highly
likely that, in
when religion was more and more the province of women, many of the young men drawn to the church were seen to be deeply attached and even similar to the women they knew best, namely their mothers.
a period
Moreover, class
American
apt to count
as
an adult the
liberal minister, unlike the
average middle-
work was women. Some
professional man, through the very nature of his
among
his closest friends a significant
commentators on the
clerical scene
found
in
number
of
such enforced and perhaps
courted proximity to female parishioners the source of the proliferating ministerial sex scandals 1870s. In
which would
fill
the popular press in the 1860s and
1837 Harriet Martineau had been distressed by "the evil" she
witnessed in America "of
women
being driven back upon religion as a
resource against vacuity; and of there being a professional class to administer it."^^
The
English writer Frances Trollope, whose racy book on American
"domestic manners" insulted the young republic
1832, gave a highly
in
colored but probably not altogether inaccurate vignette of clerical-feminine relations:
from the clergy only that the women of America receive that sort of attention which is so dearly valued by every female heart throughout the world. With the priests of America the women hold that degree of influential importance which in the countries of Europe is allowed It is
them throughout this
all
orders and ranks of society
.
.
.
and
in return for
they seem to give their hearts and souls into their keeping.
I
never
— Ministers
and Mothers
101
saw or read of any country where religion had the women or a slighter hold upon the men.^^
so strong a hold
upon
A few decades later, Henry Ward Beecher, dropping in to read his novel-inprogress Norwood to the charming Libby Tilton in her husband's absence,
was planting the seeds for one of the biggest scandals of the 1870s, but he was only doing what many a less prominent and more innocent minister of the day must have done: he was, after all, a professional talker, inevitably seeking the most available
sors
not the best-trained ear.
if
one guesses that Beecher's
It is difficult
to be sure, but
found
male parishioners,
their
than those of Beecher and his
clerical predeces-
no more numerous, more accessible contemporaries; and perhaps the message of if
was more relevant to masculine concerns. Samuel Hopremembered for his friendships with the two other great American
the earlier pastors kins, best
Edwards and Joseph Bellamy, led a female Newport whose members were among his dearest parishion-
theologians of his day, Jonathan
prayer circle in ers.
He even wrote the biography
of great admiration.^'* Yet
women
of one of them, Susan Anthony, in a
much as he needed and
in the hostile situation
spirit
valued the support of such
he faced in Newport, he was not emotionally
dependent on them.
A
generation
larly interested in
woman
later,
Joseph Emerson, an orthodox clergyman particu-
female education, found the stimulation of an admiring
indispensable for his best thinking, writing, and conversing. His
self-pitying
and didactic
letters to his various sensitive
but short-lived wives
are unappealing examples of the parasitic interaction between ministerial
and feminine egos. Writing be his
first
that, after It
whom
a luxury to
enjoy alone.
I
her
most ardently wished
two sentimental females with
whom I might read,
might admire the pious, the melting effusions of an angelic His need to set himself up as a model of taste, piety, and sensibility I
before an appropriately enthralled female spectator his
tells
reading Mrs. Steele's hymns, he was in a "melancholy transport.
for the presence of one or
soul."
then his pupil, destined to
wife (and to die shortly thereafter of consumption), he
seemed almost too great
with
in 1802 to the girl,
pedagogy
insightful
is
so intense as to
suspect. Capable of inspiring the affection
women
like
make
and respect of
Mary Lyon and Zilpah Grant, he seems
nonetheless
correspondence to be perpetually posing before a mirror. After the death of his first wife in 1804, he wrote a (female) friend: "today I think my in his
happiness has exceeded everything that
The
bell
is
now
I
have ever before experienced.
tolling for the funeral of
before was a knell so pleasing."^^
my
It is difficult
departed Nancy.
— Never
not to find in Joseph Emer-
son's tenacious claim to constant feminine attention a vanity willing to
tyrannize a presumed inferior rather than compete with an equal.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
102
Several decades
sympathy. As
later,
a divinity student at
awkward
female friends; his
womanly
Sylvester Judd felt the same craving for
Harvard, he wrote voluminous
posturing
missing in Emerson's effusions.
He
letters to
often touched by a real pathos
is
confides to one correspondent in 1839,
Mount Auburn
after rhapsodizing over the pleasures of a meditative stroll in
cemetery:
There
is
but
little
of the genuine emotion in our
[sex].
The habits of men
are too commercial and restrained, too bustling and noisy, too ambitious
and
repellent.
.
.
.
Women
are the bonds of society.
mountains, bold, icy, moveless, that
Judd is hinting and shouldered
powers
in
that he
criticizing.
is
.
Men
are like
the winds and worship the
not suited for male society; that he, insignificant
by men
aside
in the
female company.
when
thy": only
by the sex
.
but frown an eternal defiance at each other.^®
stars,
his
woo
.
He
He
marketplace, can only swell and expand is
very
much
asking for "tea and sympa-
removed will he be an object worth wants the warm fostering of home, the intimacy bestowed the fear of criticism
trained, as
one of
is
their self-styled
mentors urged, to admire, never
to envy.^^
Even Theodore Parker (1810-60), the militant reformer, drew steady sustenance from a close group of female admirers.^® William Ellery Channing found more than sustenance in the intense devotion of gifted women like Eliza
Cabot, Dorothea Dix, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, or Elizabeth
Peabody: some of
his best
sermons came from their conversation and
Peabody survived her mentor
to write the fascinating
if
Reminiscences of Reverend William Ellery Channing in 1877.
with
relish the story of
very senile old
ladies.
letters.
sentimentalized
There she
tells
Channing's relations with two slightly insane and
Possessed by a paranoid fear of poisoning, they
would
Peabody clearly intends her vignette as a parable: otherworldly and saintly, Channing automatically inspired trust in these women excluded from the larger world and hostile to it. But the story could work in reverse, for Channing was dependent for stimulation and support on the very same feminine forces so dependent on him. take food only at Channing's hands."^^
Significantly,
when Channing underwent
burned, as he later recalled
it,
"to
conversion
at
age fifteen and
do something worthy of
[his]
great
women; he knew that world, and that if they would
thoughts," he turned his mind to the conversion of
women "were
the powers that ruled the
bestow their favor on the right cause only and never be diverted
would be
One
.
.
.
triumph
sure."®°
could argue that the minister's "congregation" should be defined
more broadly than
I
am
doing here. Indeed,
I
have suggested that ministers,
Ministers
like
a
women, turned
and Mothers
103
to the press in part to reach a larger audience, to find
wider congregation. Yet the readers that both groups found awaiting their
productions were middle-class women.
no accident that the burgeoning libraries which catered to the new mass reading market began under clerical auspices, only to pass in certain real respects into feminine hands.® ^ One historian of American libraries lists It is
a
new
interest in history
among
causes for their development in the Jack-
sonian period. This in turn he attributes to the fact that landers
now
who would
have gone into the ministry a generation
many
turning to historical and literary pursuits.®^ Yet
New
Eng-
earlier
were
young
of the move-
ment's most active promoters were not clergymen manque, but liberal of the cloth.
The
select
Athenaeum
discreet coalition of business bot, a Unitarian minister,
New
borough, in
a
New
library of Boston
and ministerial investors.®^
by a In 1833 Abiel Abestablished
founded the pioneering public library
Hampshire; Abbot was prominent
England over the next two
much more modest
was
decades.®"*
in the library
Women,
men
in Peter-
movement
in contrast,
played
At the turn of the nineteenth Mary Sprague and Kezia Butler in Boston,®^ whose
role in initiating libraries.
century, milliners like
was almost exclusively feminine, sometimes rented out books. Later, women associated informally to buy and share popular fiction.®^ By the end of the nineteenth century, however, several women's organizations campaigned actively for the establishment of free libraries; library managers noted that a good percentage of their customers were female, as were many clientele
of their employees.®^
Women's omnipresence in the libraries was but one sign of their new cultural power. As early as mid-century, it was clear to a perceptive ob-
who it was that ruled the literary world: "It is the women who read. It is the women who are the tribunal of any question aside from politics or business. It is the women who give or withhold a literary reputation. It is the women who regulate the style of living. ... It is the women who exercise the ultimate control over the
server like the fashionable writer Nathaniel Willis
Press."®®
Joseph Emerson, wishing for a feminine companion to share with
him the sentimental pleasures of poetry, and Henry Ward Beecher, reading his novel aloud to his devoted young parishioner, Libby Tilton, were dramatizing the simple fact that the liberal minister wrote, as he
talked and acted, largely for
Imitation
The
clergy faced a difficult situation. Middle-class churchgoing and
women
ministers;
women.
and Rivalry: Pulpit Envy
liberal
reading
preached and
had genuine control, no matter
and some of them, moreover, were
how
limited,
at least partly
over their
aware of
their
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
104
power. Catharine Esther Beecher warned the ministry
woman
"designed that
by her
own
"it is
independent powers
all
that
is
common
As "the
revealed by God."
(Calvinist) "theological theories ... as
moral sense and
inevitably
is
seemingly opposing the
sense of mankind."®^ In effect, Beecher
is
caution-
ing the clergy to heed the wishes of their most important constituents. threatening, even possessive attitude ters figure
prominently
in
is
nineteenth-century novels by
women; moreover, accounted
is
feminine property. His housekeeping, his selection of
a wife, his
as surely as if
a
member
of their
own
and historians took an increasingly proprietary
Few
phy.
ladies in the eighteenth
The
choice of
The
was
minister
Women
families.^°
single,
writers
interest in ministerial biogra-
century presumed their capacities equal
to the task of narrating a clergyman's
century did.
clearly
concerns of the neighborhood women, married and
he were
Her
hardly atypical. Ministerial charac-
within the terms of a given story, the clerical figure
a cravat, are the
had
designed that she should be qualified
heaven-appointed educator of infancy and childhood," she
opposed to the
God
1857 that
should have the leading power as the educator of
mind," and, as a natural corollary, to gain
in
thousands
life;
their material.^
in
the nineteenth
^
authors of such memoirs explain their
own
temerity precisely by
the stress they place on the diminishing prestige surrounding the ministerial
Samuel Hopkins, an impressive though by no means
office.
preacher, used to
with
make one
a
skillful
of his youngest female hearers sob on a
Sunday
fear, because, as the little girl said, "I
the pulpit. "^^
Her
look up and think
I
see
God
in
was not unusual. Catharine
reverence, while extreme,
Maria Sedgwick, writing of her early reactions to Dr. Stephen West, the
orthodox minister records she had
clergyman then ized he
felt
her girlhood home, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, "the painful
inspired."
.
.
.
awe
But she outgrew
.
.
.
this,
which the
New
England
she adds, because she real-
had the "most tender and gentle heart" that ever beat beneath
exterior."^^ self.
in
He
This was
a
is
not, in other words, so very different
comparison which could function
in
"stem
a
from her feminine
two
directions:
if
the
was like a woman, why shouldn't the woman be like a minister? Sarah Edgarton Mayo, known to her friends as the "Angel of the Rose'' (the Universalist gift annual she edited), once wrote a friend: "I sometimes wish I were a man and a minister."^'* A similar desire was evident elsewhere in the feminine subculture of which Mayo was a minor representative. Most of the genteel periodicals for ladies which covered the coffee
minister
tables of the period espoused the cause of female education.
tors protested consistently, as
we have
seen, the current emphasis
"gilded cheat" of accomplishments and advocated a
riculum. ever,
The
Their contribu-
on the
more rigorous
elevated educational aspirations these writers evinced,
were perhaps
less interesting
cur-
how-
to their readers than the rationale they
Ministers
and Mothers
105
presented for such ambitions: American girls should be well educated because they were themselves to be the teachers of America. of pedagogue,
by
filled
a female, as
And
the office
one writer for the Ladies Repository '
explained, might well accomplish "the regeneration of mankind. "^^ Catha-
Beecher
rine Esther
training of
in
her lifelong crusade to get adequate funds for the
women teachers was wont
to address her appeals for
money and
support to the Protestant ministry. This was only reasonable to her mind since she
by
saw women teachers
"religious faith,"^^
engaged
young
and consequently as ministerial
ladies at Litchfield,
With the help of
allies if
not ministerial
Miss Sarah Pierce's famous
like
her early preceptor,®^ as
mathematics and moral philosophy.
in the 1820s.
She eventually
tried
at
without
Mary Lyon's
success to hire the evangelical but ladylike Zilpah Grant,
co-worker
inspired
paternal advice Beecher conducted several quite successful
Hartford Seminary
revivals at her
in
and was,
interested in saving souls as in teaching
work and
in "missionary"
Beecher herself had been educated
substitutes.
school for
as
Ipswich Seminary, specifically to quicken the religious
life
of
her school.^®
her
Mary Lyon's legendary famous Mount Holyoke
revivals, first at
Ipswich
in the 1820s,
then at
College in the 1830s, represent the extreme in
the feminine fusion of clerical and pedagogical roles. Lyon, a devout Baptist,
was convinced
that
all
the ministers in the land could do nothing without
the aid of "self-denying female teachers" (234).®^ Indifferent to financial profit for herself and intent
measured her success
from the
on salvation for her
first
students, she
in exclusively evangelical terms. In 1827,
reviewing a
school year in which a revival had begun only to leave the majority of her pupils untouched, she wrote: "I have a pleasant school, but one thing
wanting and when I
feel that the
vital,
think of that,
frown of God
for despondency.
uncouth,
I
The
rests
my
heart
on me"
is
Amidst all my blessings, She seldom had such cause
sad.
(53).
self-educated daughter of a
genuine, she yearned to rescue
is
New
England farmer,
young women from what she
"empty gentility" (245) of middle-class feminine life. If a student was unhappy, Lyon was wont to tell her that she was so only because she had failed that day to have "large desires for the conversion of the world" (89). Lyon's own desires were as large as her extraordinarily generous soul, and when she founded Mount Holyoke in 1836, she conducted it, in her called the
words, "on the principles of our missionary operations"
lyoke sent out and financed hundreds of presidency.
Lyon
women
(188).
Mount Ho-
missionaries during Lyon's
^°°
herself
became
a
beacon and an inspiration to
women
all
across
the United States. Sarah Hale of course championed her in polite editorials for the Lady
worker and
'j
Magazine and
writer,
later for
was to report
later
Godey X and Lucy Larcom, the mill-
on the admiration Lyon had evoked
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
106
among
the Lowell factory
a ministerial following.
told a student sagely
girls.
^®^
Not
inappropriately,
Lyon also
attracted
The famous Dr. Alexander of Princeton Seminary that "Mary Lyon had the right idea."^®^ Edward
Hitchcock, a distinguished geologist and the president of Williams College,
wrote
a
biography of Lyon whose tone was one of frank envy for her
evangelical achievements.
cock viewed
An
example of "moral sublimity"
her, she possessed a
power
a "practiced mesmerist" (446). Indeed,
Lyon, published
in 1852, as a
(471), as
Hitch-
preacher comparable to that of
as a
Hitchcock intended
his
Memoir of
guide and a prod to ministerial ambition:
"Why
should even ministers be ashamed," he inquires, "to learn wisdom on a
from a woman, especially from one so eminent for wisdom and piety and whose experience in revivals was so extensive?
subject so important
.
Who
does not
feel desirous,"
he adds, "of catching
at least a
.
portion of her
falling mantle?" (483-4).
Few were
destined, however, to
wear
that mantle.
She was one of the
power came precisely because she succeeded just where so many wished to shine. Thousands of nineteenth-century American women contributed what would amount to enormous sums to the missionary effort. ^°^ In such legendary figures as Mary Lyon or Ann Judson, a much-loved missionary to Burma, extraordinary personalities of her day, but her inspirational
the
women who
stayed at
sanctification of their
them. Educators
like
their occupation
was
hard
in the
home found
own domestic
a projection, amplification,
duties as well as a vicarious release
and
from
Catharine Beecher might promise housewives that to
"form immortal
minds,"^®'* but
multitudinous press of ordinary
life
it
must have been
to feel the vocation behind
the labor. Feminine missionaries actively, manifestly, and prominently en-
gaged
in
saving souls from terrible ignorance dramatized and vindicated the
housewives' importance.
Lyon and Judson
lived adventurously, but their
appeal was that they apparently did so by realizing, not rejecting, their
feminine
role.
Judson used her knowledge of Burmese to write
a
catechism
for children; Lyon, a skillful housekeep>er, regularly converted her help and invested domestic lore, required lure of religious discipline.
nine self-sacrifice. Such ters.
knowledge
at
Mount Holyoke, with
Both achieved masculine
women were
very
visibility
the
through femi-
much housewives become
minis-
^^^
Popular
fiction for
women depicted
and feminine functions implicit
in
the same assimilation of ministerial
women's educational and missionary
work. There were countless sentimental
tales
of maidens
efl^ortlessly
and
unsusp)ectingly performing ministerial feats in the natural course of their
domestic duties;
young
girl
just
doing what came naturally as
a
capable and devout
apparently involved saving souls as a kind of unintended
al-
though by no means unwished-for byproduct. Adeline D. T. Whitney
Ministers
and Mothers
107
(1824-1906), a friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe^s and an established author
of books for in
girls,
painted a classic vignette of the glories of girlish ministry
With an imploring glance and
The Gayworthys (1865).
request,
young Sarah Gair persuades an
noble-hearted
tally
sailor,
Once
ill-used,
sweetly spoken
a
embittered, but fundamen-
Ned Blackmere, to attend church for the first time
sermon preached on the doctrine of limited election by the ominously named Reverend Scarsley confusing and repellent. After the service, Sarah takes him outside the church to the more congenial churchyard where they wander among the ancient tombin
twenty
years.
there, he finds the
By
stones and she shyly but surely disagrees with her minister. that election really ular
means that "everybody"
and death, and
life,
"elected
—to
their
own
partic-
she converts Blackmere to a truly religious
all,"^®^
of mind in which Sarah's benign
state
is
explaining
God
and Sarah's innocent
self pleas-
antly contend as suitable objects of worship.
The
was not always
fantasized feminine assumption of clerical office
so
easy nor so unconscious. There was an entire sub-genre of historical fiction
which focused on
The
a conflict
between the Puritan fathers and
sympathy of her readers by
harsh seventeenth-century penalties for ^^^ liefs.
In
heroine
is
Naomi
a beautiful
Her American
careless Indians to
movingly on
fill
—
in
ered to test and
in colonial is
Massachuconstantly
doe slaughtered
a lovely
out her picture of feminine enslavement. Although "receptive" and lacks a "powerful imagina-
other words, she
outtalk a conclave of
be-
Eliza B. Lee, the
one where the feminine sex
is
we are told that Naomi is merely tion" (252)^°®
sister,
and persecuted young Quaker milieu
suflFering
humane nineteenth-century
by Joseph Buckminster's
(1848)
victimized: Lee even stops to focus
by
girl.
fathers attempt to stamp out opposition to their rigid creed; the inno-
cent and saintly heroine engrosses the
setts.
young
a
New
condemn
is
thoroughly feminine
—she manages to
England's most learned ministers specially gath-
her.
Her
real sin,
her dismissal of Calvinism, which she terms
Lee informs "little less
us,
is
not so
much
than blasphemies and
curses" (415), as her disavowal of pastoral guidance; she "dared to think for herself."
Her
church"
(413).
final
statement avows, "I must live by
She does
so, gets
away with her
life,
my
faith,
and her
not that of
my
lover, a convert
to her theology.
Outside the historical genre, other feminine novelists on occasion depicted a frank and even bitter contest between minister and heroine for spiritual leadership in a given Lily,
community. The
classic
example
is
Bertha and
published in 1854 by Elizabeth Oakes Smith. Smith, author of the
poem "The
Sinless Child" so
admired by Poe, had disavowed Puritan
theology with "a sense of horror"
was good." Her
religious heritage
Universalism, but the die was cast
at six
and claimed to be
sinless herself: "I
was mixed, including both Calvinism and when Smith chose the Unitarian Reverend
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
108
Edward Payson
over the fiery orthodox
his "ideal sweetness"
Nichols of Portland with
of the same city.
Her choice
of a liberal pastor was the
first
which was to remove her from clerical control altogether. In 1877, after an unhappy marriage and a distinguished career as a writer, feminist, and public speaker, she became the pastor of an Independent step in a career
congregation
own
clerical
Bertha
is
in Canastota,
New
anticipated her
eminence. a brilliant, beautiful,
woman who gradually town of Beach Glen. The
and radical young
takes over the role of religious leader in the
youthful
more than
York.^®^ Bertha
little
liberal minister officially established there,
appropriately
named
Earnest, initially resents her superior spiritual gifts. "Bertha should preach,"
he notes
in his journal (55),^^°
outdoors, drawing far larger
him
to envy: she talks to
when she does, crowds than he can command. He confesses
"as
but he
if I
is
a little disconcerted
were
a stupid
boy"
(66)
and makes him
by her untutored triumphs that "half the learning stowed away in my brain was so much useless lumber" (199). Professional training is no substitute for feminine instinct and sensitivity, both of which Bertha has in abundance. This incipient rivalry is nipped in the bud by Earnest's total capitulation: he marries Bertha, revolutionizes his church according to painfully aware
his wife's principles,
man" of
(325),
and grows,
while she becomes,
womanhood"
(332-3). Sarah
in Bertha's
words, "a lovely, inspired child-
in his eyes, like Christ in
her "new revelation
Hale once expressed her conviction that "to
bring about the true Christian civilization, which only can improve the
men must become more
women, and the women more like angels."^ In Smith's novel, the woman has indeed become more like an angel it is Bertha, remember, who gives off that faint glow from her fingertips and the man has become more like a woman. What Hale neglected to say but what Smith makes clear is that in the process the man will apparently lose power while the woman gains it. Bertha is the condition of our
sex,
the
like
^^
— —
minister. Earnest the parishioner.
The in its
fictional
form
as in
threat literary
its
takeover of clerical powers by content.
women
The
women was
sheer fact of the novel
offered to ministerial
itself
hegemony. In the
as significant
was one more 1680s, fiction
and romance constituted only about three percent of the reading matter of
were theological. ^^^ In 1793, Thaddeus M. Harris, a liberal minister and Harvard librarian, published a Selected Catalogue of Some of the Most Esteemed Publications in the English Language Proper to Form a Social Library and recommended only thirty-four Americans; half of the works
titles in
theology out of 227.
in circulation
He endorsed thirty
books of poetry and drama,
eleven of fiction, forty of history and biography. ^^^ Harris' modest claims for theology's circulation
dence Social Library
were probably
in 1753 reveals that
optimistic; a study of the Provi-
even then theology was among the
Ministers
Tyler
least-read subjects.^ ^* Royall
and Mothers
109
The Algerian Captive shows his hero
in
returning to Boston in 1795 after a long absence to discover that fiction and
"books of mere amusement" have captured the attention of all classes: his countrymen have forsaken "the sober sermons and practical pieties of their
gay
fathers for the
novelist."^ ^^ Educational
teenth-century library
way
and splendid impieties of the traveller and the
stories
and
clerical leaders
movement because
were drawn to the early nine-
the libraries apparently offered a
of replacing unsavory books in public favor with wholesome ones.^^®
Yet from their inception,
it
was clear that
libraries
tended to circulate a good
Harper Brothers firm between 1820 and 1830 suggest that theology formed the least signifi-
deal
more
fiction than theology. Tentative figures for the
cant category of their published books.^^^
Moreover, feminine religious
work
fiction
was competing with
in f righteningly direct
ways.
Many
strictly theological
of the ladies
who
and
p)enned
the best-sellers of the day saw themselves in quasi-clerical terms. Susan
Warner claimed
that she
wrote The Wide Wide World "on her knees"; Harriet
Beecher Stowfe told the world that
What
"God wrote"
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
minister could ask for better inspiration? Sarah Edgarton
^^^
Mayo was
by her writing "the same amount of good to one individual that I have received from a single sermon."^ ^® William EUery Channing, noting the advent and proliferation of female novel^^® He was ists, described them as "evangelist[s]," "teacher[s] of nations."
quite frank in her wish to accomplish
perfectly aware that their purpose
perhaps superior:
"Woman,
if
she
was
may
and their
similar to his,
not speak in the church,
from the printing room, and her touching expositions of
tactics
may
speak
religion, not
learned in theological institutions but in the schools of affection, of sorrow,
of experience, of domestic charge, sometimes
more
surely than the minister's homilies."^^^
make
A
way
their
to the heart
writer for the Christian
Examiner frankly labeled Catharine Maria Sedgwick's didactic novels
"ser-
James Freeman Clarke, considering Bushnell's Vicarious Sacrifice in the same periodical in 1866, warned his readers that enormously popular novels like those of Susan Warner which propagate "the crudest forms of mon[s]."^^^
the doctrine of the atonement" ^^^ must be taken seriously,
if
to the preservation of genuine religious doctrine. Elizabeth
only as menaces
Oakes Smith was
preaching through her heroine Bertha in a double sense.
Imitation
and Rivalry: Pulpit Paranoia
The clergymen's answer to gations
was not
resentment and facts of their
the complex challenge of their feminine congre-
so dissimilar to poor Earnest's. Ministers vacillated flattery, yet
between
both responses underscored the inescapable
dependency on feminine attention and
their
tendency to
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
110
assimilate feminine models.
feminine virtues crescendoed
clerical claims for
One clergyman,
heresy.
At the one extreme,
writing in 1854 on
content with asserting that the
woman
likened
at
"The
realm of fancy,
in the
times dangerously near
Woman
Question," not
"womanly element predominated"
in Christ,
very specifically to the Messiah: "She must open the long
disused page of the beatitudes
among
us,
for
manly energy
rots
among
its
husks, having dismissed reproving meekness and poverty of spirit. Let
woman offer them an asylum; Redeemer."^^'*
let
her
rise
Nor was the Deity safe from such
nell in the late 1860s
found
it
his breast
"even as
mother."^^^
Henry Ward Beecher, who,
mother the
rationale
that a mother's love
comparison. Horace Bush-
perfectly natural to speak of falling back "into
God's arms," to be pressed to
To
and take the beautiful shape of the
and center for
like all his siblings,
a feminized theology, told his hearers
"a revelation of the love of God."^^®
is
identify the female with
God
and the Savior made
for the touchy clerical ego to associate her in rash
with the minister
bosom of its made his dead
a child in the
as well. "If
man
is
the warrior,
moments
woman
is
possible even
it
of enthusiasm
the priestess," one
Edwards A. Park began his seminal and controversial sermon on "The Theology of the Intellect and the Theology of the Feelings" in 1850 by a tribute to the superiority of maternal to paternal instruction as a guide to pastoral ministrations. ^^^ By a natural analogy, the family, the special congregation of the woman, was viewed by Unitarian writer exclaimed in 1858.
clerical eulogizers as
comparable to the church. Daniel Wise,
clergyman and author,
tells a little
tious female readers of his
Christ,
He
Young Lady
likens the
find
me
Counsellor (1852).
embarrassment,
by
A minister visiting
in the
middle of her
his heartfelt ejaculation: "Let
so doing!" Wise, in elaborating his lesson,
"moral importance" of her "humble task" to that of "the missions
of Gabriel to the ancient prophets."
At the other extreme, cal
's
interrupts her apologies
when he comes,
Connecticut
parable for the benefit of the conscien-
a lady parishioner catches her, to her
housework.
a
in the
^^®
realm of
fact, ministers
blocked the practi-
implementation of those feminine virtues they lauded so energetically
print. Ministers
opposed the outright and by definition unholy demands for
political equality
bitterly feared
in
posed by the women's rights movement, ^^® but they also
and fought feminine assumption of conspicuously Christian
was a form of territorial imperative springing from too cramped common space. Ministers suspected and
tasks. Clerical hostility
an uneasy sense of rightly
a
—
—that women had more chance of capturing the church than the
Senate; and they reserved their fiercest possibility.
thorities
Of
course
women
were agreed on
that.
enjoins the Christian virtues so
resistance for such a
powers of
—
could not be ministers
all
ecclesiastical au-
Horace Bushnell, in the letter in which he vehemently on his daughter, reminds her that
1
and Mothers
Ministers
1 1
her very piety should forbid her to be either a soldier or a minister: a
conjunction of taboos flattering to their promulgator. For a long while
it
women could not even be missionaries, if ministers were to decide the issue. Women, who were eventually to be absolutely indispensable to the missionary eflPort, won the right to enter, then to organize, mission appeared that
work over repeated and widespread
clerical objection.
^^°
Other shared feminine-ministerial concerns give ample evidence of the ambivalence of the minister's reactions to the pressures toward feminization he increasingly experienced. Sunday had long been the minister's special day. Increasingly, as the century progressed,
and
his right to
did not remain undisputed.
it
seemed to be
it
it
only day,
The day when by custom and
sometimes by statute ministers were asked to perform and decreed to do nothing,
his
was the ordained time for
a
all
other adults
momentary and
perhaps token redressing of the balance between the competitive and contemplative forces of American culture. Various groups in the ministry
fought
at diflPerent times in the first sixty years
to keep this claim
on
They
their society's attention.
commerce, the interference of the
tions of
of the nineteenth century
mails.
protested the profana-
But they had another
competitor: the churchgoing American matron. Sunday also symbolized
her spot in the sun, her
moment
for possible magical transformation
neglected Cinderella to courted princess.
The Sabbath came
from
to be heralded
Sunday was the one day of the week the American male was supposed not only to go to church but to stay
as a sort of
weekly Mother's Day. After
all,
home. Sarah Hale described the Sabbath as the very cornerstone of the ble imperium of rest at
home
womanly
persuasion:
opportunities these days of
present to the wife and mother [she exults]
are then brought under the sweet
power of
"What
gravitation,
.
.
.
invisi-
!
The whole
family
feminine influence which, like the
works unseen but
irresistibly
over the hearts and
consciences of men."^^^ Catharine Maria Sedgwick, in her widely read fictionalized tracts
on the Christian family of the
1830s, chose
always to
emphasize the domestic rather than the ecclesiastical side of Sabbath worship. It
is
maternal
the instructive books perused by thoughtful children resting on laps,
the devout conversation and prayer with which parents and
oflPspring refresh
and edify each other, not the sermons delivered
which make Sunday
The opening and
a sacred
day
in
proliferation of
Sedgwick's
stories.
in
church,
^^^
Sunday Schools dramatized the minis-
and feminine struggle for possession of sacred territory. Sabbath Schools, begun in England in the later eighteenth century as a means of
terial
educating, and controlling, lower-class children, spread rapidly in America in the early nineteenth century. In
1817-18 the Sunday School Union had
forty-three schools and 5,970 pupils; a scant six years later,
it
could boast 723
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
112
From
Union was funded largely by businessmen, but the most active promoters and organizers were ministers and women. In 1804, a number of women from different denominations formed the Union Society in Philadelphia to educate poor girls; the Society, with twenty-six female members, incorporated in 1808. Isabella Graham, a devout Presbyterian, organized the Female Union for the Promotion of Sabbath Schools in New York in 1816; her daughter, Joanna Bethune, was to carry on her work. The feminine groups in New York and Philadelphia worked closely with ministers and other interested men, but their co-operaindeed it underscored their heightened tive effort in no way obviated
schools and 49,619 pupils.
its
inception, the
—
power.
The
experience of organizing and administering funds and people
intrinsic to the
running of any of the female voluntary societies was a heady
and educational novelty for the in
—
women
involved;
other people's eyes and in their own.
however, offered
it
raised their
importance
The Sunday School movement,
women special opportunities. Women constituted the bulk
of teachers; as the
Sunday School system gradually came
and upper-class children and assumed
its
modem
to include middle-
function as an indispens-
able institution of the Protestant Church, feminine pedagogical control had
genuine competitive thrust. ^^^ Children
no matter how
restlessly,
who had once
through the regular adult
receive their earliest religious instruction
from
a
been required to
might
now
rather than
from
service,
woman
sit,
Some clergymen
objected to the dilution of doctrine inevitable
in this catering to the childish
mind; none protested the deleterious conjunc-
the minister.
tion of feminine instruction with intellectual pabulum.
sented feminine encroachment on achusetts, the local minister
ing to establish a their
and
his
clerical
frankly re-
power. In Medway, Mass-
deacons fought
Sunday School: "These women
opponents claimed.
Many
a
women's group
agitat-
will be in the pulpit next,"
^^'^
Yet ministers by and large tolerated, even welcomed, the Sunday Schools.
The
schools did not of course confer on
to the pulpit; indeed, they
somewhat
aware, as
different
The
still
business of writing and publishing
be
was
and more serious matter. Liberal ministers were very
we have seen,
gations. Here, as
automatic entree
brought more people into what could
defined as ministerial territory. a
women
were angling for their congreeverywhere, women complimented and frightened ministhat feminine writers
by imitating them. The fluid situation of the press stood, however, in marked contrast to the still relatively hierarchical structure of the church. Few of the controls which blocked feminine mobility in the church existed ters
on the
literary scene: the minister
could prevent direct in-person feminine
access to his adult congregation, but his parishioners?
They might
feminine rivals the remaining
how
listen to six.
could he dictate the reading of
him one day
a
week, and read
his
.
Ministers
The
liberal minister
volvement
and Mothers
113
tended increasingly to depict his deepening
in literary activity as
in-
an effort to define and control resources
He
both necessary and potentially dangerous.
justified his course,
when he
did, in
terms of defensive maneuvers. In 1865, one Unitarian minister frankly
urged
his
brethren to
make
their
sermons
as wide-ranging, engaging,
polished as possible: otherwise "the most intelligent and earnest
women
will
go to
and culture." ^^^
literature instead of to
The
liberal
church for
and
men and
inspiration, guidance,
clergyman was hardly unaware that by engag-
ing on the enemy's territory, he inevitably ran the risk of contamination or
Hawes, an old-style Congregationalist, argued against literary preaching, and he couched his complaint in a telling image of transvestism: "The sword of the spirit [is] ... so muffled up capture. Bushnell's rival in Hartford, Joel
no longer to show what it is."^^® Such a blunt image was unlikely to turn up in a liberal minister's prose, but the idea behind it was hardly foreign to him. Henry Ware, Jr., warned
and decked out with flowers and ribbons
that a literary
which
in
effeminacy.
life
turn
could lead to "the
would
produce
as
careless indulgence
"self-indulgence
.
.
.
of the imagination'''' voluptuousness .
.
"^^^
Clerical critical response to feminine literary production
was
predict-
Andrew Peabody, a rank Mrs. Hemans over
ably mixed; poetry was one thing, fiction another.
Harvard Unitarian, could sincerely Homer because the latter neglected "heart sorrow" and seemed ignorant of
well-liked
"sublime tranquillity."^^®
Andrews Norton, an important Unitarian
critic
and polemicist, praising the same poet, complained that Milton lacked the "pure religious sentiment" and showed repel our
human sympathy."
It is
God
through "colossal forms that
precisely Milton's self-conscious greatness
which antagonizes Norton. He claims that Milton is in a sense disqualified from true eminence because he did not understand "domestic life, that life in which now almost all our joys or sorrows are centered," ^^^ that life which is Mrs. Hemans' chosen theme. Peabody's and Norton's absurd judgment that Hemans is greater than Homer and Milton is understandable; they were defending themselves. For they too, as ministers, were pledged in some sense to similar nurturing values; equally important, they too could write domestic
poetry. Norton's learned controversial tracts
than his saccharine verse, but the point
make
better reading today
that he considered both suitable
is
displays of his clerical and intellectual eminence.
The
rise
of the novel was roughly coincidental with the commercializa-
tion of the press; unlike poetry, the novel
form, and one which their use.
Yet the
many clergymen long
liberals
were
significantly
hardly more prolific in writing
minded
peers;
was
its possibilities
it)
a relatively
new and
secular
considered inappropriate for
more
tolerant of fiction (though
than their evangelical and dogmatically
came too
tantalizingly near providing an an-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
114
swer to their
own
needs for
it
When
to be ignored or uncriticized.
Samuel
Miller of Princeton's Presbyterian Theological Seminary expressed his wish that he could ban novels,
Henry Ware,
defended the genre, even arguing that
it
of Harvard Divinity School
Sr.,
could be permissible and beneficial
for ministers to read fiction. Liberal clerical commentators were fully cogni-
women read and wrote,^"*® and they were equally aware that the fiction women preferred was the sentimental tale or romance. ^*^ They saw the significance of the new form precisely in its ability to interest, to attract easily. The novel was the key emblem of the advantages zant of
how much
fiction
and abuses inherent
reviewer praising Bushnell's
in "influence." In 1859, a
The Natural and the Supernatural called
time" and added tellingly:
"its
it
strong current, as though
surface of a novel, swept us through
it
could be reached best by
in 1845,
stories: "fiction
dreamed
of:
no
the
is
A
novel
in a
laudatory no-
recognized that the very young the
thing [the
first
learns to love."^'*^ Fiction creates a kind of birthright as the non-evangelicals
we were on
suggests a credo of leisure.
William Peabody, reviewing Fredericka Bremer's novels North American Review
the
the crooks in a day."^'*^
all
persuades without argument, without labor:
tice for the
work of
"the chief theological
struggle,
young mind]
church of
its
own such
no conversion experience
are necessary.
For the same fiction
was
were dangerous. If feminine for religious faith, what was to become
reasons, of course, novels
to induce or substitute
of the church, of dogma? Clerical critics incessantly compared the effect of fiction to that of alcohol
and tobacco. ^'*'* William Peabody warned
his
son
mind like drinking to the body: it intoxicates and destroys the power of the mind for any strong and useful exercise."^'*^ It was a standard complaint that fiction allowed the reader to be "passive"; as Peabody pointed out in his review of Fredericka
against excessive indulgence in novels: "It
is
to the
Bremer's
is
like a traveler
novels,^'*® the
asleep in a snowdrift.
entranced reader
gradually falling
An anonymous reviewer of "New Books of Piety"
for
the Christian Examiner in 1863 elaborates brilliantly on Peabody's thought.
"Novel-reading," he explains, involves "the cultivation of feelings"; "all the organs
again,
a single set
of
seem to be on the point of becoming rudimental
under the tyrannical development of
a single inner sense."
Novel-
reading thus produces "hypocrisy and shameful insensibility of the actual
world. "^'*^ In tones strikingly similar to those of present-day critics of television, these tic,
spokesmen are struggling to formulate and define the
regressive state of the
had put the "that so
clerical
few people
member
of the
modem
apprehension succinctly: think.
it is
rapt, autis-
mass audience. Peabody because of novel-reading
''^^^
We have already seen the stress placed on memory and the insignificant value attached to indep)endent observation in
girls'
education.
Emma
Wil-
Ministers
lard's talented sister,
lady on a ship
would
and Mothers
Almira Phelps, also
would
fall
try to find out
115
a teacher,
complained that
a
young
into a romantic revery while her male counterpart
how
was making an implicit one knows the world only by memory,
the boat worked. Phelps
critique of female instruction:
if
only by rote so to speak, the only possible imaginative exercise available fantasy, the excursion into the unreal.
A
^'^^
reviewer for the Christian Exam-
iner in 1839 castigated "female novelists" for
biography. "^^^
Another
critic in
is
overdoing "introspective auto-
few years earlier had "the adventure of some hero or the
the same journal a
referred offhandedly but significantly to
who naturally predominated by women for women, did not act
sentiment of some heroine."^^^ "Heroines,"
over "heroes"
in a fiction
written largely
in
1830 articulated his
Dewey
Kappa oration delivered claustrophobic conviction that American letters fos-
or observe: xhty felt. Orville
in a Phi
Beta
tered a hothouse rather than a schoolroom atmosphere. Novel-reading pursuit of idle ladies and of result.
American
literature
men who is
is
becoming "effeminate"
are fast
the as a
no longer "public" but "private": Dewey
sensed in feminine fiction the personalism of the liberal clergyman carried to
extreme
its
limits.
Novels are "luxuries"
—not "substantial food";^^^
—
times
literature
tion rather than of productivity.
Dewey
word Dewey repeats several has become a form of consumpa
understood that
the special property of Susan Warner's Ellen
The Clerical Dilemma: The Recourse
The
was
to be
Montgomery.
History
to
contradictions in the clerical response to the feminine presence and
challenge are as obvious as they are explicable. in a vicious
paradox.
concerns; refusing
it
hardly guaranteed
one hand, to praise feminine
upon
The
ministers
were caught
The women were their principal supporters. Accepting
feminine help meant in part prolonging their
look
fiction
new and
virtues, or books,
clerical prerogatives as their rights.
own
exile
from masculine
different adherents.
was
On
to encourage
On the
women
to
the other, since ministers
drawn ever more closely to feminine models, to exalt womanhood and its efforts was to enhance themselves and their own claims to were
in fact
authority.
For most of the clergymen involved there could be no
resolution to this profound difliculty, although a shall see,
attempted to find one.
The
number
real
of them, as
we
them to adopt obviated the problem of
simplest attitude for
about their feminized position, one which
in part
was what one might call historical. On the vexed issue of fiction, many non-evangelical clergymen acknowledged that novels were here to
evaluation,
stay,
with or without ministerial approval. Austin Phelps began reading
novels late in
life
one department
"as a sedative"; he soon [of literature], but
is
concluded that
fast
becoming
the
fiction "is not
only
department over-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
116
shadowing
all
the rest."^^^
On
the closely related question of the essentially
feminine nature of Christianity larly historical
Examiner
in
overview.
One
itself,
the minister occasionally took a simi-
Unitarian clergyman writing for the Christian
1858 announced that while "the ancient world was emphatically
masculine," "Christianity [had] proclaimed the Gospel of the 'Ever Feminine' "
and showed "the utter nothingness of masculine
William Ware,
self-sufficiency."^^*
a distinguished historical novelist as well as a less distin-
guished Unitarian pastor, amplified and complicated this analysis in his
romance Zenobia, published
in
The Roman
1836 and destined for long popularity.
story recounts the conflict in the third century between the warlike
emperor Aurelian and the ambitious and proud mistress of the eastern king-
dom
More
of Palmyra.
important, the book represents Ware's carefully
researched, rather timid, yet deeply felt imaginative projection of a preChristian civilization. This sexuality sets the ideal.
of beauty; the finest
they do
lutes. In
is
world
a
in
which
a
capacious and unpolarized
The noblest men are fighters,
women
lead armies,
philosophers, and lovers
and handle weapons
one of the most fascinating scenes
in the
as skillfully as
book, Zenobia,
her daughter Julia, and her closest friend Fausta play at a sport which involves shooting a spear through a ring so that
beyond.
One woman
after another accomplishes this feat with nearly per-
fect success while the narrator
Freud to
Ware
realize that
is
Manlius applauds.
wings for
of the
new
its
faith to his
its
tone,
breathes toward
which
no knowledge of
takes
is
waiting like a character
cue. Manlius, soon to be a neophyte, interprets the nature
Roman
not "weak or eff^eminate." suavity of
It
exalting the powerful attractions of a pro-
foundly bisexual culture. Christianity, however, in the
ground
lands on the
it
all
.
.
of
.
It
friends. Christianity is
characterized by
the humanity of
human
kind,
.
.
.
its
to the aspiring spirit of
Palmyra
"feminine" although
"its gentleness,
doctrines,
the high rank
are particularly those of women. "^^^
is
it
.
.
.
.
.
.
the
the deep love
it
assigns to the virtues
Of necessity,
it
will be
as surely as to the militarism that
opposed is
Rome.
two successors to Zenobia Ware enough, more on the persecutions of the
Aurelian (1838) and Julian (1841), the
wrote, concentrate, interestingly
Christian converts than on their eventual triumph. Ware's hesitation about
the
modern feminized
society
is
which will succeed the heroic pagan the point at which he focuses and stages his
religious culture
apparent not only
in
form he chooses for it; the scholarly romance, first widely popularized by Sir Walter Scott, was the most "masculine" of the fictional forms, yet it was indisputably fiction. Ware wants it both ways, if he wants
story, but in the
it
at all.
Lurking behind Ware's books and the pronouncement of the Christian Examiner reviewer is an attempt to find in historical necessity an escape from the
dilemma of the
clerical profession.
The modem
historian,
with the easy
Ministers
advantage of hindsight, can see the
and Mothers line
117
of thought which contemporary
were barely beginning to enunciate. Beneath the conjuncof femininity and Christianity lies a probably unacknowledged assump-
clerical writers
tion
tion that the
modem
some sense would belong to the woman; and the minister who accommodates and imitates her. In-
hence, hopefully, to
age
in
deed, whether or not clerical observers fully an's
place
in
the
emerging
industrial
knew
order
it,
the middle-class
was
assured;
if
wom-
neither
autonomous nor respected, she would be, at the least, its most carefully watched, skillfully programmed, and rewarded victim. In espousing feminine values, the minister could become a middle-man of history, a participant, or a puppet with his feminine peers in the rather cowardly new world of consumer culture.
The
no matter what its validity, no matter how fully it exculpates the woman and the woman-bound minister and releases them from the impossible task of self- judgment, leaves two historical rationale,
where will the process of feminiAnd whose interests does it ultimately
absolutely critical questions unanswered: zation,
serve?
and
fictionalization, stop?
PART
TWO
v^.^^i'^O'^^.^;^
The
Sentimentalization
Creed and Culture
4
THE LOSS OF THEOLOGY From Dogma
to
Fiction
Atonement: The Descent of God Certainly the forces of sentimentalism liberal Protestants,
centered
itself
and
in
would
alter the doctrinal beliefs of
New
dramatic ways.
England Calvinism had long
on the concept of the Atonement. Let
me
outline briefly this
doctrine so crucial to the northern mind and imagination.
will use as
my
True Religion Delineated by Joseph Bellamy, a follower, in
locus classicus,
some sense
I
a popularizer, of
Jonathan Edwards. Bellamy published
logical masterpiece in 1750, with
guish true religion from false."^
Edwards'
The more
New
England Calvinists disapproved of
tially
Grotian theory represented the
explicit endorsement, to "distin"liberal" or "old light"
it
first
his theo-
from the
start;
branch of
Bellamy's essen-
skirmish in a long battle in which
the Calvinists were to try, not altogether successfully, to fight the increasingly powerful liberals with liberal weapons.^ Yet whatever
viewed from
a
mid-eighteenth-century
tract represented the last
strict Calvinist
its
concessions
viewpoint, Bellamy's
major formulation, or reformulation, of the older
Atonement to prove itself acceptable and eflfective for large numbers of American Protestants. If we can trust Harriet Beecher Stowe, and she is speaking here on matters she had every reason to know well, True Religion Delineated was one of the most popular non-fictional books in New idea of the
England
in the eighteenth
lamy's treatise even today rhetoric.
is
and early nineteenth centuries.^ to be caught
up in
its
To
read Bel-
trenchant logic and superb
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
122
Bellamy's
but that
man
is
premise
first
is
who
differently
There you have
Yet
it.
Man
Adam, he
or
is
full
of
is
he
the author of evil
an apparent contradiction
is
evil.
is
dealing with "plain fact."
God
could of course have
had he so chosen. Therefore, he did not so choose.
how
willed? Bellamy's answers ful.
There
feels confident
omnipotent, and the world
done things
God
quite simply, that
totally responsible for sin.
here, but not to Bellamy,
God
is,
man
can
grow
less
be punished for
God
sin that
has
though nonetheless power-
direct here,
God.
argues, had an "infinite obligation" to love
Therefore, the slightest deviation from obedience was deserving of "infinite"
punishment. In
ence would do sin."
As it
is,
Bellamy explains, "a whole eternity of perfect obedi-
fact, just
nothing towards making the
from being obedient, man
far
is
amends for the smallest
least
infinitely
depraved, with a heart
longing to destroy his creator: indeed he cannot will good. Nathaniel
Em-
would acknowledge what many of his colleagues evaded or worked out by complex theories of differing kinds of
mons with "ability":'*
merciless candor
God
not given him.^
man
requires something of
God
Red Sea
—but
God
asks the impossible. Bellamy pointed out that
capable of willing sin to bring about good heart so that the
obedience) that he has
(virtue,
Hebrews might
man can
leave
only will
—thus he hardened
Egypt while
ruler
its
sake of
evil for the
Pharaoh's
drowned
evil,
is
in
the
and hence
is
culpable.
In the main, however, Bellamy avoids such rationalizations of God's
behavior as in themselves impious.
man if
only because
it is
a plain
thence conclude that
though
we
every
at all:
stresses bluntly
man
is
cannot understand
willing to admit that
much
judge man, not to be judged
God
matter of fact that it
and repeatedly that
has deserved eternal damnation
God wants it that way. God is to
by him: "when
may
God
has no claims on
He
does such
a thing,
most certainly right for him to do
how
it is"
what "would be
(154). In fact,
infinitely
Bellamy
is
we
so, al-
perfectly
wicked for the highest angel
becoming to God" (19). God, in other words, is absolutely entitled to commit what humanity calls crimes and account them benevolence; mankind must abide by his values. "O, but for God to damn a whole world for one sin!" Bellamy imagines his reader exclaiming, and then reproves him: "But stay; does not this arise from mean in heaven,"
thoughts of It
God
less
man, to do,
is
"infinitely
and high thoughts of yourself?"
cannot be too
much
stressed
from the human perspective
that
how
(156).
supremely other Bellamy's
God
William Ellery Channing would espouse
so passionately in his seminal 1819 address at Jared Sparks's ordination, is
utterly lawless. His motive
is
his mirror.
a play
God
is
is
is;
indeed love, but
a narcissist, creating a
—so that he can have the starring
for a characterization that will run the
role.
it is
world
And
self-love.
as
The
God
universe
an actor might write
he wants a big part, calling
gamut of emotional
possibilities.
He
^
The Loss of Theology
1
has written the story of man's damnation and salvation because
and exercise
reveal
"He .
.
will excite
man
will be so
it
all?"
will fully
Bellamy inquires.
and so
his perfections to the life (44).
Regenerate
magnetized by the spectacle of God's glory that he will bit part in
the cosmic drama.
to explain, be willing to be
Emmons
rejoice, as
he get by
most perfect and exact image of himself"
happily consent to play any
Hopkins was
will
and display every one of
will exhibit a
.
"What
his gifts.
it
23
damned
if
God
He will, as Samuel so wills
it;
he will
liked to emphasize, in seeing once-cherished friends
by a justly incensed deity. What can be the meaning of Atonement, the part of mercy,
and
relatives tossed into hell-fire
of eternal exhibitionism? Bellamy makes
ritual
under no obligation to give
son to
his
he compelled to forgive man's sacrificed not to take
away
God's clemency, but to
on
onic, puts
sin,
sins
suflFer
it
crystal clear that
in
such
God was
for man's misdemeanors; nor
is
because Christ has died. Christ was
but to display God's dislike of
stress his punitiveness.
it:
show
not to
Bellamy's God, ever
histri-
temper tantrum controlled only by
a sort of spectacular
a
his
divine and innate didactic purpose: he reveals his hatred of his creatures, not his love of
out his
them
own
action, for,
man
if
He in no way
now
responds to man's needs; he
laws of self-expression. Yet there
by
The
is
is
following
another element
in this
God is making it possible for himself to forgive
Christ's death,
he should choose to do
(269-70).
can
(267).
so.
Christ in dying satisfied God's "honor"
Savior died, in other words, to pacify the Lord's pride.
feel justified in saving, if
he so chooses,
men from
God
the damnation
Atonement has changed neither man nor God nor the basic relations between them. On the one hand, it seems a mere facilitating maneuver, a face-saving operation; on
they
richly and infinitely deserve.^ Curiously, the
still
the other, order.
A
its
token quality
is
radical turnabout in
a
testimony to the eternal rightness of God's
God's attitude would have indicated
a
need
would have hinted at imperfections; for a being so tremendous, action must be merely symbolic, merely display. The Atonement represents only a different expression on the unchangeable divine countefor alteration,
nance;
God
is
God
and man
is
man
This doctrine of the Atonement it
as
clearly it
still,
is
in
despite Christ.
many ways
once possessed immense imaginative and
undoubtedly
is, it
a horrifying one.
intellectual appeal.
Yet
Unfair
operated as a model of majesty; crushing, humiliating
may appear and often was, it could be a source, almost uniquely so even among Western religions, of energy. It provided its adherent, no matter how as
it
it
belittled him,
with
cording to popular
a
supreme and commanding object of worship. Ac-
lore, a
black
man who had
long attended Bellamy's
church was asked after the retirement of that powerful and eloquent preacher
how
he liked his successor; the parishioner found the newer
satisfactory, but not so exciting or stimulating as
man
Bellamy had been. Bellamy
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
124
"made God
so great
—SO GREAT," he explained.® The terror and the
thrill
of obeying, partially identifying with, even being punished by such a
mighty being must have been enormous. Furthermore, Bellamy's claim that he was presenting the "plain facts" was a potent one: Calvinism, resting on
stem ideas of the Atonement, squarely faced the presence of evil, of sin, of injustice in life. In the Calvinist view, things are inevitably one way and not another. Consequences are to be respected. All men suffer from Adam's its
sin as surely as a child
The
"New
fire is
burned.
Atonement which gradually came
idea of the
wardsean or
singed by the
Divinity" theory
among
to replace the Ed-
liberal Protestant ministers
and
theologians in the early and mid-nineteenth century represented a shift from this basically paternal (or gubernatorial)
mentally maternal and affective one. sin in his sacrifice
and authoritarian view to
God
is
a
funda-
no longer expressing hatred of
of his son but love of man; he ceases to govern by the direct
sway by the influence of example. In ways, the change was, and is, obviously a welcome one. Yet the
imposition of his will and begins to certain
difliculty for
modem
thinkers in the newer, "softer" theory
is
not that
it
opposes the older, male-dominated concept of the Atonement, but rather that
its
opposition
incomplete and
is
finally unimaginative; patriarchy
is
denied, but truly matriarchal values are not espoused. Strength, as essential to genuinely feminine as to genuinely masculine social and intellectual structures,
is
absent; weakness
itself,
no matter how unintentionally,
is
finally
extolled.
This
doctrine of the Atonement was already under
shift in the
various forms in the eighteenth century within the liberal Calvinist clergy, but
it
way
in
wing of the
surfaced dramatically and decisively in the next
century with the Universalist attack on the Atonement
in
1807 by Hosea
Ballou (1771-1852), the Unitarian assault begun by Channing in 1819 and
consummated by Noah Worcester (1758-1837) tionalist redefinition
in 1830,
of the doctrine under the skillful
Bushnell in 1866. In a sense
all
and the Congrega-
command
of Horace
of these thinkers were playing variations on
the same theme. Ballou was well aware that Channing was echoing him; the Christian
Examiner welcomed Bushnell's work
as Unitarian in spirit,
and
queried whether the Hartford theologian had read (and failed to acknowl-
The
by these thinkers of an increasingly liberalized and sentimentalized Atonement was immensely significant if only because it symbolized the deeper and deeper penetration and accep-
edge) Worcester.
successive adoption
tance of formerly denounced heresy into the citadels of orthodoxy. Ballou's seminal and simply titled Treatise on the Atonement in a
was written
vigorous and trenchant style that Bellamy would have understood even
while he would have abhorred the doctrines the book contained. Ballou begins by saying that sin
is
only the result of "the imperfect knowledge
men
The Loss of Theology
have of moral good." Since words, If sin
must be
finite, sin itself
were
even by
Because
(18).
author of
sin,
Here Ballou
human
but he
is
it
would be by is its
punishment; there
"it is
much
God
sin.
own
no
God
final
the
is
intended for [man's] good"
(36).
The brothers' treach-
redemption, thus providing
final
used in Universalist annals, of the beneficent conse-
nowhere, according to Ballou, requires more of
creatures than they can perform, for his aim
modation to men, the working out of
mocks
ble to them. Ballou
is
as the fate of a large
race. Ballou, like Bellamy, argues that
so only because
(15).^
definition uncheckable,
gives the story of Joseph and his brothers.
an example, to be
incomplete, in other
Bellamy had argued
Bellamy envisioned
as
ery led to Joseph's elevation and their
quences of
itself
is
infinite as
so
finite,
it is
and complete damnation such portion of the
not
finite,
Ballou points out,
infinite,
God
knowledge
this
125
is
not self-assertion but accom-
their salvation in terms comprehensi-
God
the very idea that
preserve or to add to his glory, for such a wish
God would
already eternal and immutable.
his
could want either to
would imply
never punish
that
men
it is
not
eternally
because endless torment by definition cannot heal or reclaim them; and their
growth is his preoccupation. The Atonement had what meaning
spiritual
it
did in Bellamy's scheme precisely
because man, through his inability to appease God's honor or his wrath,
way
needed, although he in no
moved god
this rationale;
deserved, Christ's sacrifice. Ballou has re-
he even ridicules the self-involved nature of Bellamy's
whom he imagines as a creditor finally, and ludicrously, paying the debt
to himself
which he
insists
must be paid and which man the debtor cannot
pay. Ballou's translation of a divine
—which he then uses
as
privileged, absolutely
non-human
much
in
an unimpeachable
tribute a disposition to the (88).
He
any divine action: started
always
is it
the
from the premise
own
precisely
from
"It
is
is
test
into
gone; he
is
feels
way that
it
a fair
a parent it
is
human analogue
its
of truth
—
is
typical.
God's
to be judged very
profane," Ballou explains, "to at-
Almighty which we can
a father treats his son, Ballou It is
status
mortal and moral terms.
ourselves"
dilemma here
justly
condemn
in
and pertinent question to ask about
would
treat a child?
obvious that
God
While Bellamy
does not treat
man
as
assumes the reverse.
this implied familial affection that Ballou
draws
his
explanation of the Atonement, which he illustrates repeatedly and
by the parable of the prodigal son. God does not need to be reconciled to man, for his love because divine has been unchanging; it is
tellingly
rather it
man who
as part of
is
to be reconciled to his maker. Ballou
Adam's
sin that
him; he projected his
own
is
careful to explain
he (wrongly) thought the Lord was angry with evil passions
onto God.
The
undeniable fact
remains that God, far from feeling any need for appeasement,
man, winning him by
a display of affection
is
wooing
and conciliation. Furthermore,
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
126
God,
any good parent, loves
like
happiness of
all
his children equally (178);
all
of them; he will save them
lamy's notion that
man could
Ballou utterly rejects Bel-
all.
God's glory
as to
feeling, trifling in Bellamy's
pow-
so far forget himself in
rejoice in anyone's damnation, for
human
he wants the
erfully logical system, has
become the supreme value
Ballou "had rather," by his
own emphatic
in Ballou's
scheme.
confession, "be possessed of that
sympathy which causes [one man] to feel for another, than to enjoy an unsocial pleasure in
Man
2i
frosty heaven of misanthropy!" (182).
has displaced
God on
though relegated to the wings, sacrifices free will,
though
center stage in Ballou's vision, but God,
is still
God,
still
authoritative. Ballou gladly
were not always willof God's sovereignty. Man,
his Universalist followers
some vestige according to Ballou's plan, has no more choice about being saved than he did under the Calvinist dispensation about being damned. When we come ing to join him, in order to retain
Noah
to
Worcester's
Wrath, the changed has undergone since
tract,
title it
The Atoning
indicates the further
left
A
Sacrifice,
Display of Love Not of
metamorphosis the doctrine
Ballou's hands.
Worcester, unlike Bellamy or Ballou, was no controversialist. in
leader
the pacifist movement, an editor of the Christian Examiner and dedicated
from
to eradicating the spirit of sectarian strife
guished, in the
words of
a
contemporary, for
was
pages, he
its
his "dignity
distin-
and sweetness,"
"almost feminine gentleness," and his capacity for "gratitude"; he began
his
every blessing by placing his hand on
his heart
and invoking the Lord with
heartfelt emphasis as "Indulgent Parent!"^® In The ter,
Ballou, basically rests his
like
familial analogies: "to every Christir^n
Ballou, he views the
God"
(12).
But
Atonement
his interest
who knows by
as "the
is
experience the feelings
made," he explains
means of
no longer
is
Atoning Sacrifice Worces-
argument on anthropomorphic and
of a tender father, the following appeal
in
A
in a
(6).^^
Like
effecting changes in us not
sovereign God, or in
God
at
except as he manifests himself in a "submissive, meek and forgiving"
all
The Atonement has become for Worcester, the self-styled "Philo made from love to enemies and on the Pacificus," "a pacific measure
Christ.
.
.
.
good with
gospel principle of overcoming
evil"
(3).
Ballou had wanted to
minimize, even ignore, sufl^ering precisely because he saw for
sin,
God would
and he did not believe
punish
Worcester transforms the very nature of suffering this life,
This
is
in
.
.
punishment
with undue severity.
itself:
it is
often, even in
.
suffer for the guilty" (113-14).
the rationale for the suffering of the victim: the innocent civilian
Worcester's pacifist propaganda, massacred or mutilated
war for which he or she has no in
as
not "of the nature of punishment" but the result of "well-doing,"
for the "virtuous frequently
depicted
sin
it
in a
responsibility; the guiltless wife dramatized
the temperance literature of the day, chained to an alcoholic brute; and
127
The Loss of Theology
now Christ himself, winning both God and man by the patience and forbearance he exhibits
in his ordeal.
Bronson Alcott,
a brilliant
if
erratic transcen-
dental educator and philosopher, refused to discipline his pupils in the
The only use of the rod he condoned was in the hands of his students. The punishment he inflicted for an infraction of rules, in
accepted way. guilty
other words, was to force the off^ender to hit him, the teacher. According
produced deep, lasting remorse because the boys were forced to display and feel their own brutality; they saw the consequences of their misdemeanor in the pain it literally and to Alcott's daughter, Louisa, this treatment
and conceriied instructor. Alcott was giving
figuratively caused their loving his students a lesson in the
meaning of the Atonement
as
Worcester under-
was martyring himself to express and exorcise the sinfulness of his charges. ^^ God is no longer acting out his own drama, but man's. Bellamy's God was a commander and a logician; Worcester's Savior stood
is
it;
he, like Christ,
creature of feeling, passive rather than active, invoking not displaying.
a
Bushnell's contribution to this evolving reinterpretation of the Atone-
ment was
ous" for Worcester's "atoning" parasitic
is
and indirect quality he finds
heavily God's love of man;
A
.
.
.
God
"vicari-
highly indicative of the increasingly
the same as Worcester's but his stress
for him,
His substitute of the word
entitled The Vicarious Sacrifice.
in
God's
action. Bushnell's theory
different.
is
is
He emphasizes even more
"clings" to his creature, "feeling afflicted
encountering gladly any
loss
or suffering for his sake" (280).^^
reviewer for the Christian Examiner pinpointed the newest and most
radical
development Bushnell had
initiated.
"The purpose of the
incarnation
was not to meet man's need but God's," Bushnell's critic summarizes his argument. "God could not reach man; therefore he 'broke into the world' to get at his last offspring. He came to acquire with man a character, and thus to secure the influence of character," or what Bushnell calls "moral
God has ceased to be an "abstract He is not just consenting to act out
power." ^'^ With the incarnation, lence" and
become
a "person."
passions, as in Worcester's vision;
Bushnell's concept
is
is
as neither his predecessors
Eight years after the publication of The Vicarious
wrote Forgiveness and Law Grounded in
man's
expropriating them.
more complex than I am suggesting
and provided for God's glory did.
he
excel-
here.^^
nor
his followers
Sacrifice,
Principles Interpreted by
He felt
Bushnell
Human Analo-
was designed to correct what he had come to see as the over-liberal, too anthropomorphic bias of the first treatise. In the later treatise, Bushnell stressed that the Atonement was necessary not just to win man but to pacify God.^^ Yet Bushnell was not as influential in
gies
which, as
its title
suggests,
his revision as in his first presentation.
And
a real sense abdicated. Bushnell's deity, like his totally public existence, has
yearned
in his earlier
some
for,
work,
God
has in
celebrity dissatisfied with
and found,
a private life. It
is
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
128
the fantasy, often not without rationale or vaHdity, of the
weak
that the
up the pre-eminence which their inferiors would be forever incapable of wresting from them because they suddenly
strong will spontaneously give
feel its emptiness.
It
is
double compliment to the
a fantasy offering a
dreamer, honoring his enforced passivity, vindicating the validity of his
God has justified his creatures in Bushnell's scenario simply by envying them. He has found it lonely to be God up there with all that power and no love. He prefers earth to heaven, feeling to logic. portion even while bettering
it.
Bushnell repeatedly stresses Christ's "sensibility," his "sympathy"; he points
out that the Savior's suffering can be "nothing strange" to us because witness
God
it
daily in the responses of a
mother to her
child.
^^ It is
not
we
just that
wants to become man; he wants to become woman.
we are back with Sarah Hale who wished men to become more like women and women to become more like angels. Not surprisingly. Hale evolved a theological doctrine of the Fall in which woman was cast In a sense
in the role
of Bushnellian Savior. Hale presented her theory, an attempt to
translate the
drama of the Atonement
Woman's Record
crowning and
made
in
into sexual terms, as the preface to her
1852. Asserting that
human
created
best part of creation, she explains that
was not made
aflfections
woman last woman was
which the words
"for man," but not in the sense in
stood: "She
God
as the
indeed
are usually under-
to gratify his sensual desires but to refine his
and elevate
his
moral
Endowed with
feelings.
superior
beauty of person and a correspondent delicacy of mind, her soul was to
him where he was deficient, namely in his spiritual nature." To complete the parallel between Eve and Atoning Christ, the effect of original sin (for which Hale assigns Adam almost total responsibility) is inextricably to entangle woman with the fate of her inferior, man. She is to suffer vicari-
*help'
ously for his
proximity
sins,
and to try to work out through the "influence" her new
at least assures
her the "salvation [of]
.
.
.
the race."^®
Hale was not only anticipating Bushnell, but formulating the
essential
woman did
not need
drama of contemporary feminine to be tied to a drunkard to suffer
fiction. In its pages, a
a Christlike
martyrdom. Mara Lincoln of
Stowe's The Pearl ofOrr's Island acts out Bushnellian and Halean concepts of the Atonement. She converts the novel's black sheep, the rather brutish
though attractive Moses Fennell; but she accomplishes
him
as
this
not by marrying
he wants her to do, but by dying. Always ethereal
"delicate" in body, shortly after her
in
engagement Mara goes
mind and
first
into a
decline and eventually into a lengthy sequence of edifying deathbed scenes.
Like
all
the dying heroines in the popular fiction of the day,
a reproach
her demise.
Mara
offers
both
and an inspiration to the masculine mourners gathered to watch
Mara
when Moses is away on a long trip completely won his heart. As a boy, he had been brutally
sickens, symbolically,
and she has not yet
— The Loss of Theology indifferent to her feelings.
more
He
sensitivity.
As a young man
1
with her, he revealed
in love
regarded her religious
man:
in his
view, someone
this obsolete belief
woman) ought
(a
whose value
chance that the market
is
little
faith, utterly crucial to her,
woman
half-contemptuously, as a suitable possession for a a
but irrelevant to
to spend her time treasuring
currently next to nothing, on the
will alter. In a sense,
29
Moses prized Mara
because he could dismiss her. Mara worried even before her
off-
precisely
illness that
she
should not unite her purer nature with his coarser one, but her "sympathy," like Christ's,
way, her But she
made the link between heavenly and
illness
the result. Sinless herself, she
is
tacitly lures
strength;
last,
she
is
and devotion (and
is
suffering for his offenses.
even while she accuses him. In her weakness
indeed
role for the first time.
earthly beings; in a curious
She
Death has put her on center stage
first.
is
her
in a lead
finally able to reveal fully the beauties of faith
is
herself) in
what becomes
a tantalizing display; for like a
smart salesman, she
is
snapping shut her case and walking out the door
when her customer
is
ready to pull out his wallet. Moses, newly and power-
fully
convinced of Mara's value,
is
just
destined to a lifetime role as a faithful
and unsatisfied devotee. Yet Mara has done nothing spectacular, nothing dramatic. Her death, her
like
quiet, gradual, graceful. In The Vicarious Sacrifice, Bushnell
life, is
says of Christ's triumphs that they did not conne ter";
the Savior earned "no
title
from "the heat of encoun-
of honor such as the world's great
achieved." Indeed, Bushnell reminds us, until Christ ing
more than
to beautifully
and exactly
men have
was thirty, he did "noth-
fulfill his duties."^^
How
like the
Mara the Lord sounds! Both of them operate in whatever historical time is suggested by the atmosphere of home, not in a continuum of destiny determined by the events of the forum or the field. In Little Foxes (1866), Stowe encouraged the housewife to see herself as engaged gently conscientious
but crucial process of daily
in a small-time
domestic
trials as
rejoice in
them
.
.
.
[she]
is
her haircloth, her ashes, her scourges
—smile and be
quiet, silent, patient
a victorious saint."^° In "Living to
"look
self-sacrifice, to
God
—accept
at
her
them
and loving under them. in
Small Things" (1839),
Bushnell had urged his readers in similar fashion not to be misled by love of fame to overlook "influence," "at
but gradually all-pervasive.
"descends to an
He
first
directs
infinite detail." If
God
.
.
.
them
not
felt
because
.
.
to the example of
.
noiseless,"
God, who
merely attended to the thunder and
forgot the dew, "his works would be only crude and disjointed machines."^ ^
Again
in
an important sermon of 1846 called "Unconscious Influence," after
defining the nature of influence
—by
a
"law of social contagion
overrun the boundaries of our personality, its
all-important role in family
men
"dislike to be
swayed by
life
we flow together"
.
.
.
we
—and stressing
and child-rearing, Bushnell points out that
direct,
voluntary influence.
They
are jealous
"
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
130
of such control, and are therefore best approached by conduct and feeling,
and the authority of simple worth which seems to make no purposed onset." This, he adds,
The
was precisely
method. ^^
Christ's
special realm for ministers as for
overlooked but indispensable they were believers
women was
little,
by an obvious compensatory
detail;
adage that "a stitch
in the
that of the
time saves nine,"
in
They were
the tale about the finger in the dike.
the
process, tellers
of
pledged, professionally, to
on the unconscious. Sarah Edgarton Mayo, explaining her predilection for what her contemporaries called the
the insignificant and
its
crucial effect
"beautiful" rather than the "sublime," exclaimed: "I love
things the world
up of
all
parts.
little
butterfly, a bee
over.
A
There
scenes and
beauty
a sublimity in space but
is
made
is
of flowers, a singing brook, a bud, a
tree, a knoll
—are not these
little
a picture?
I
love things near/'^^ Sylvester
Judd was describing the same predilection when he remarked, "Nature, like art, seems to require a border in order to be finished." Judd preferred a view
woods
to the
too avoided the big. Both
Mayo
of a distant mountain framed and contained by neighboring
broad and open view from
a summit.^'*
He
and Judd promise and ask for protection, permanent residence amid objects that will neither threaten nor dwarf.
they
make
it
They anthropomorphize
their world,
own
accessible; they translate foreign texts into their
language;
they give and ask for the flattery of imitation. Their commitment to the the near,
little,
terian
is
one with their commitment to
Atonement by
a Bushnellian or
Worces-
"influence."
The new Bushnellian Christ, meeting men on mortal terrain, shaping himself to human needs, oflFering himself as a model not as a governor, is very much Mayo's and Judd's representative. He has become a being who tactoverwhelm those whose favor he courts; he wisely prefers power of infiltration than to test his capacity for onslaught.
fully refuses to
to prove his
Newly "little
sensitized
and feminized
ones," the liberal Jesus too
unconscious; he too
Like
in
is
adept
a character in a story,
Christ
is
at
very
is
image, defined as a lover of
abilities to
is
the world's
interested in discovering
and tapping the
which can
pass unnoticed.
the small gains
much
in fact like
connotative, even derivative; he must
precisely because he
all
dependent for
Stowe's Mara, Bushnell's
suflFer
his reality,
rather than
command
not on his "readers'
perceive objective truth, but on their capacities for subjective
impression and reaction.^^
Conversion and Church Membership:
The
From
Testing to Playing
personalized, feminized, literary Bushnellian view of the
was, as
posed
we
have seen,
a tranquil
a non-crisis-oriented one,
and
theory of religious development
in
it
Atonement
implied and presup-
man
as well as in
God.
1.
The Loss of Theology
3
1
some persons were saved, others were not, and momentous and hopefully visible one. God's ways were
In the older Calvinist scheme,
was a both unknowable and
exact;
was
why
the difference
although the
left,
momentously, one person was taken, another
of
might not be
it
clear.
There was an immense
incentive for thought-filled precision in this creed with
scientific, in
imperious and
as
it
was, Calvinism was empirical, even
the special objectivity
it
fostered and
Atonement. Repressive
legalistic
its
faithful believers. If
God
had few
man, the good minister owed
soft spots in his
demanded in its most heart, little sympathy for
to his flock to be equally harsh, equally
it
and equally determinate. The only antidote for divine wrath
factual,
at a
clergyman's disposal was ministerial wrath; the only immunity to punish-
ment was
in its anticipation.
a confidence,
were
which
at least fully
The
at times
armed,
Calvinism could give to those
believed
merged unpleasantly with arrogance,
it
that they
not invulnerable.
if
greatest figures of
who
New
England Calvinism showed an
ability to
which was to become legendary. Samuel Hopkins was noted for the kindly meant cruelty with which he discouraged
examine and judge religious
states
who
even dying parishioners
he believed to be entertaining
In 1755 called to the deathbed of a
woman
"full
ing she had saving discoveries of Christ," he
her
.
tion.
.
.
that she
was deceived;
She was confident, but
concludes:
by
it
of joy and comfort suppos-
was
satisfied
"upon examining
was only the workings of her imagina-
told her
I
hope."
my
fears."
With
resigned insight he
"How exposed to the delusions of the devil are ignorant p>ersons!
especially those lively
that
a "false
whose understanding
is
Emmons
a fever."^® Nathaniel
shattered and their imagination
brought the same
of investigation to the consideration of his son Erastus,
He had found
relentless spirit
who
died in 1820.
was promising there, and with the more than Roman rigor, the spare severity which ever characterized him, he told his congregation so in the funeral sermon he preached on the occasion:
He
little
that
lived stupid, thoughtless
the very sight of death.
.
.
.
and secure
in sin, until
he was brought to
But whether he did ever heartily renounce
God for his supreme portion cannot be known own view he had become reconciled to God.
the world and choose in this world. In his
more than possible that like others on hopes upon a sandy foundation. 27 But
the
it is
.
a sick-bed,
Emmons, like most of his persuasion, expected the human soul to be marked and momentous; no easy
he built
.
his
Lord's workings in assurances of inner
peace, whether given on a deathbed or elsewhere, could satisfy him.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the more theologically conservative and revivalistically oriented denominations kept the earlier Calvinist empha-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
132
sis
on
a
pronounced, even
revivals themselves
Lyman His own
violent, often
sudden conversion experience;
were of course premised on the
reality of
such an experi-
ence.
Beecher's attitude toward conversion was typically evangel-
ical.
religious awakening, as he
remembered
it
in later years,
was
quick and powerful, possessing obvious and conscious parallels to Paul's
epiphany on the road to Damascus. At the age of twenty, Beecher was deeply struck by a remark of
his
mother's on a passing drunkard
once been "under conviction" but had since
who had
lost all religious inclinations.
from these words, only, after she left the room I felt a sudden impulse to pray. ... I was not in the habit of prayer. I rose to pray, and had not spoken five words before I was under as deep conviction as ever I was in my life. The sinking of the shaft was There was no perceptible
instantaneous.
or shall
in
revived,
I
effect
understood the law and
the day of judgment.
and
I
I
my
believe the
heart as well as
do now
commandment came,
died, quick as a flash of lightning.
Beecher remained faithful throughout
I
sin
28
his career to his
own
conversion
experience as a model. In 1829, he wrote a friend testifying to his belief in "instantaneous" as opposed to "gradual" conversion;^^ and he was always willing to analyze and defend the "conviction" he had thus received.
Beecher's awakening was implicitly a testimony to God's
own
as to Beecher's
importance, a tribute to divine ability to intervene
massively and decisively at a given instant in an individual's
most famous children belonged to and none of them were the
start,
power as well
able,
Beecher urged
a
life.
Beecher's
very different generation theologically,
or willing, to achieve a similar experience.
his sons
in at the strait gate; certainly
and daughters to "agonize,
agonize''' to
From enter
he himself agonized over them and regularly
subjected their hearts to a scrutiny almost as piercing as Emmons'. ^° Bee-
work was deeply alloyed by the realization that none of his own family were "safe." Edward stalled almost endlessly and never knew a full saving experience. Catharine was unable to undergo cher's happiness in his revival
conversion at
by her father
all
in
despite a barrage of letters written to her (and published)
the 1820s;^^ Harriet defied most of the rules of Edwardsean
theology by coming into her father's study
at a
very tender age
full
of happy
confidence that the Lord had simply taken her to be his own; she
no
boy was puzzled and pressured constantly by demands he could
anguish, only infinite calm and joy.
troubled by the whole process,
Henry Ward
felt
as a
neither meet nor dispute. Significantly, the Beecher children, with the possible exception of Catharine,^^ did not
want
their father as the engineer of their conversion or their
intercessor at the throne; they longed rather to see their mother,
Roxana
The Loss of Theology
Foote Beecher,
in that role.
perplexity,
wrote
longing for
God
Ward was
Henry Ward,
significantly: "I
barely three
when
his
3 3
explaining his childhood religious
wanted to be
lamb bleating longs for
as a
1
a Christian.
went about
I
mother's udder."^^
its
mother died of consumption
Henry but
in 1816,
even then, according to family legend, he made an effort to run away to
"Ma"
in
"heaven," and he talked of her his whole
her mother's role in family
had more influence ing to
Harriet, in explaining
wrote that "her memory and example
later
molding her family,
in
good than the
life,
life.
living presence of
in deterring
many
from
evil
and
excit-
mothers." She represented for
her children a "blessed" figure, a "saint in heaven." Harriet recalled vividly
waking from
praying thankfully to the scene, there life
hear her father
a virulent, nearly fatal fever as a child to
is
his
now
dear wife
with the Lord. As Harriet paints
Roxana Beecher has saved her daughter's she stood "as a sacred shield" between her
a clear sense that
by her holy mediation,
just as
sons "and the temptations of youth. "^'^
It is
worth remembering
bom, dedicated
Beecher, Roxana's youngest
Atonement, The Redeemer and
the
that Charles
work on the mother, whom, as he said,
his Bushnellian
Redeemed, to his
next to his Savior he most hoped to meet at the Resurrection.
Roxana Beecher has both
and representative significance. By
special
all
accounts an extraordinarily gifted and intelligent woman, reserved, quiet, evincing fine breeding and even elegant manners, with
keen interest marriage, first
or
Lyman,
fresh
Emmons,
Indeed, in the early days of their courtship and
faith.
from
ministerial assignment
a
came from an Episcopalian family and never
in science, she
changed her
essentially
and
artistic tastes
his theological training
on Long
and preparing for
Island, kept trying to test, a la
the soundness of his fiancee's religious hope.
his
Hopkins
He was essentially
anxious because she confessed to none of the negative aspects of the traditional conversion experience: she did not
horrid as even to curse
God
acknowledge
"a disposition so
to his face," such as Bellamy had posited; she
did not seem to love God's glory "disinterestedly" without reference to the
good he had done
her.
Roxana summarized her
to her future husband, in a letter written to
become
in
many ways
a
to serve as the basis of their
and her opposition
belief,
on September
own
.
.
can
I
help loving
feelings:
God
because
an object of God's mercy and goodness,
what would be
my
feelings.
He I
if I
do love Him, how can
is
good
to
me? Were
Imagination never yet placed
it
not
I
cannot have any conception
situation not to experience the goodness of
and
Drawing on non-human God
declaration of independence.
by the simple evidence of her own
.
which was
key document of her children's experience and
her Episcopalian and her feminine heritage, she dismisses a
How
1798,
1,
God
but be because
in
me
some way or
He
is
in a
other,
good, and to
me
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
134
Do
good? ... In
not God's children love
Him
my
mind, and, as
it
loved them?
first
mercy and goodness are were, swallow up his other at-
contemplating the character of God,
most present to
He
because his
tributes.
Almost
sixty years later, her
husband touchingly and characteristically en-
dorsed this letter "Roxana beloved
There
is little
still
this
Dec.
1854,
5,
Lyman
Beecher."^^
evidence to show that Roxana's epistle changed his thinking,
however, although
his children
sometimes liked to think
so.
Roxana Foote, anticipating Ballou and Bushnell in her stress on the primacy of God's love, on the Deity's intent to win her by giving her what she needs and wants,
is
obviating the necessity of a painful or sudden conver-
There is nothing disagreeable or difficult for her to contemplate, only God's love. There is nothing disagreeable or difficult, or new, for her to do; God has been continuously sustaining her by his affection and
sion experience.
The
gradually bringing her closer and closer to him.
Beecher advocated was
and immediate one
a violent
religious
awakening
essentially because
assumed the confrontation of two enemies, God's grace and man's nature, and the absolute conquest of the latter
by the former.
Man
it
sinful
being
is
assimilated into something not-Jike-him; violation as well as regeneration
is
at
work. Roxana's implied view of conversion, which was to be Bushnell's,
is
not that of a battle between
assimilation of all
two
similar
two
antagonists, but an evolving mutual
unequal beings. Edward, Henry, and Charles
if
concluded by adopting Roxana's view while
their father's
officially staying
church (despite repeated protests and
within
efforts at expulsion
on
the part of that often bewildered and antagonized church); Harriet and
Catharine espoused their mother's testimony and her denomination.
More and more religious thinkers and activists of the generation succeeding Lyman Beecher's sidestepped or redefined the traditional conversion experience. Even Edwards A. Park, who would show strong revivalist proclivities
become ing;
and
a
a minister
decided admiration for Finney,
decided to
at eighteen
although he had experienced no special religious awaken-
he tested himself, and
felt that
he not only believed but loved the Biblical
doctrines and that this was sufficient. ^^ Austin Phelps passed a sensitive
— boyhood
to say
morbid
rather
stem Congregational
tion to attend funerals
converted for
the grip of "religious despair." His father, a
in
minister, forced the
and look
at the corpses.
in the traditional Calvinist
boy for his moral edificaAt twelve he was almost
way: he "longed for
some sublime and revolutionary change of heart."
his earlier agonies pathetic lian belief in
religious
—not
and totally unnecessary.
''nurture''
domestic model: "The family
is
.
.
.
[and] waited
In later years he
He
adopted
a
found
Bushnel-
and "unconscious growth" based on
the nursery of
[faith],
and the Church
is
a
but
The Loss of Theology
1
3 5
the family on an extended scale." Phelps even speculated that he might have
been far happier had he been raised an Episcopalian.^^ Orville Dewey, also reared a Calvinist, repudiated his early training with equal vehemence: he
came
to feel that "Infidelity"
found
his
youthful conversion regrettable:
should be an event It is
their
was more defensible than Calvinism. Dewey
in
any human
"it is
lamentable that
life."^®
significant that both Phelps
and
Dewey
orthodox parents had treated them
intensely protested the
as children.
The
went to church with his or her family twice on Sunday to so constructed that few adults and certainly no children it
and to
ever
it
way
Calvinist child
sit
in a
pew
often
—
— could see out of
listen to long, detailed,
often highly abstract sermons written by
adults for adults. Perhaps he or she
was allowed
to play with the strings of
mother's purse, to look through the prayerbook, or at best to eat some treat specially
The
brought along to reward or pacify younger members of the family.
was an often uncomfortable hostage from another moral state, an impressed and ignorant recruit. In the eighteenth century most New England Calvinist churches had demanded of their full members baptism (and that often at a fairly advanced age when the subject would prechild as such
sumably be able to understand the meaning of the
act)
and
a
public
testimony of conversion. ^^ In the nineteenth century, an innovative evangelical like
Lyman Beecher might
sisted flatly:
"Baptism
repudiate infant damnation but he
still in-
infancy does not constitute adult membership in
in
the visible church." Beecher deplored the Unitarian "attempt ... to con-
found the scriptural distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate."'^
Prerequisites for church participation
were squarely based on the con-
viction of innate depravity and an expectation of the significance of
maturity; Calvinists assumed that a struggle was to be fought by the Chris-
which would require a certain amount of time, awareness, and skill. God could pour his grace out on a mere child the legendary conversion of four-year-old Phoebe Bartlett under the ministration of Jonathan Edwards was evidence of the fact but he was unlikely to do so. The paradox of Calvinism was its absolute stress on God's sovereignty with its equally firm emphasis on human preparedness. The Lord app)eared to the ten virgins because he so desired, not because they were waiting (or not waiting) for him. But woe to them whose lamps were not ready to shed light on his coming!'*^ At its best, Calvinism represented a complex set of values which fostered both achievement and humility; it demanded that its adherents be
tian
—
—
both children and adults. If
one believed, however, with the
liberals that the soul
world already prepared, already converted, sion into a
came
into the
why delay or complicate admis-
church society which could only benefit by the presence of
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
136
young Christians? Channing liked to praise "the mild beauty of children": God would not, he believed, do anything so "repulsive and unamiable" as to damn them, as Calvinists had once held he did, or give them souls deserving of damnation.'*^ Horace Bushnell found no opinion "more essentially than that which regards the Holy Spirit as having no agency monstrous in the immature souls of children who are growing up helpless and unconscious into the perils of time."'*^ Bushnell did not deny the presence of evil .
in children,
.
.
but he denied
its
dominance, and
in
doing
God
repudiated the essential presupposition of Calvinism: that
mands something of man In Bushnell's view,
that
it is
it is
in
precisely
to and capable of conscious control is
when
the individual
—namely,
in
never to
never to disturb the infant soul, which,
like the
toward
is
childhood
is
points unerringly and instinctively
rightly de-
some way impossible for man
most assimilable to God. The great point
ity,
Channing,
so, he, like
jar
to do.
amenable
least
—that he or she
the child's sensibil-
needle of a compass,
maker. Children are to be
its
encouraged, even imitated, not broken. Bushnell wanted early baptism and, like Sylvester
Judd, he wished the baptized infants then to
grow up
Chris-
communion, the standard test of adult profession.'*'* Piety was to be the result of
tians in the church, free to partake in
membership, without any special "habit," not of effort.'*^ In this
way, ministers could gain adherents without
recourse to revivals, and very uncritical adherents at that. extension of the idea that
from
it,
adults
By
a logical
God would accommodate himself to man, and gain
were to please children for the
profit of their
churches and
Atonement acted on the unconscious, not the conscious, nature of men, ministers emulating him should logically address
their souls. If Christ in the
themselves to toddlers as well as grown-ups; they too should practice the techniques of maternal "influence" as formulated by
women
like
Sigoumey
and Hale.
The permeation Follen saw in a vision
Church by children, which Charles one Sunday afternoon, was a statement of fact as well
of the Protestant
as a fantasized ideal. Liberal ministers increasingly
dren under their pastoral care. Sylvester Judd,
wooed in his
the souls of chil-
"Account" of
his
conversion to Unitarianism, explained that his intellectual perplexities were solved, or rather obviated,
Sermon on the Mount: had
a
wicked
"
'I
by
a little girl's intuitive
Heaven with God if I He later wanted to make his
should not be happy
heart,' " the child told Judd.'*®
Augusta, Maine, parish into an extended family. ioners, especially the
younger ones,
were indeed part of
his hearthside circle,
understanding of the
in
He
as regularly
wrote to absent parish-
and familiarly
as if
they
always signing himself "Your
affectionate friend and pastor";'*^ he arranged special excursions and treats
Judd was sincere, but he was setting trend; love of children would become almost a profes-
for the children in his congregation.'*®
and anticipating
a
The Loss of Theology
requirement for the ministry.
sional
The
1
3
7
provision later in the century for
rooms and secular amusements within the church was part of an effort to assimilate the church to the home and the playground. The old Calvinist way of church induction presupposed a struggle for maturity that implied distancing from the mother and conflict with the father, and drew on an implicit and anticipatory analogy with Oedipal recreation
development.
assumed, and expected, pain: not the passive suffering of
It
deprivation and martyrdom, but the active distress of assault and achieve-
The most
ment.
obvious metaphor for the newly opened church as Bushnell
and Judd conceived and tried to implement it, however, was that of a mother with her offspring, obviating their faults, smoothing their path never let-
—
ting
them
go.
Domestic
novelists, like liberal ministers, reveled in depictions
of infantile piety gently and easily coasting from the nursery into the safe
harbor of the church. Susan Warner, in a fascinating Daisy Plains (1885), which documents her
shows two small
membership in
girls,
at the
one white, the other
precocious age of ten.
Warner, has been
own
late
novel entitled
theological liberalization,
church
a black servant, seeking
The father of the family, as always
every sense, but the mother has nurtured
a failure in
the children gently and incessantly in trust of Jesus as well as in reliance on the Bible. Symbolically, they go to examination at the hands of a
of initially skeptical and hostile clergymen straight
number
from mother's arms.
After their simple and heartfelt answers to the tricky questions of their increasingly impressed interlocutors have demonstrated that
understand that true theology embrace."*^
when he
is
Mother and church
little girls
best
but loving feeling, they return to her proud are one.
Judd summed up the
liberal ideal
described the conversion experience, ideally unconscious, as a
return, a "go[ing] home."^°
Liberal theology and literature increasingly
downplayed the impor-
tance of pain and effort in the conversion process. In the liberal view, self -torment
and
self-denial
were flawed not because they were bad
selves but because they could not really achieve their
Two
1
I and
own
in
them-
goals. In
Chapter
My
Wife and
talked about
Eva van Arsdel of Harriet Beecher Stowe's
We and Our
Neighbors as the representative of the
new
impractical
Ameran emblem
heroine increasingly popular in the fiction of mid-nineteenth-century ica.
Herself self-consciously childlike, not to say childish, Eva
is
of play, of leisure, of carefree gaiety, and a symbol of the increasing trust
Stowe,
ments
common with her culture, was putting on these qualities as instrufor the new Bushnellian kind of regeneration. Eva has nothing that in
she has to do; her time
is
essentially recreational,
making friends and saving
souls.
Among
and she passes her days by
her special flock
is
a colleague
of
her husband's, a sensitive and conscientious journalist called Bolton who,
because of a single bout of youthful intemperance, in adulthood
still
consid-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
138
ers himself
an alcoholic. In true Calvinist fashion, he judges himself "lost"
marry the woman he loves although she is spending her life pining for him. Eva firmly counters his opinion as "morbid," and engineers his wedding to the girl of his dreams. A sense of sin and the stringent self-discipline it recommends represent false, if sincere, heroism: Bolton is not only happier, but more securely protected against his special failing, with a loving and beloved wife by his side. Again, the daughter of Eva's Irish cook Mary falls, through little fault of her own, into a life of prostitution. and
unfit to
While her mother's denunciation and reproaches only upset and anger Maggie, while the stark costume and silent piety of the sisters of an Episcopalian order with
whom
she stays for a while
sive finery, vivacious talkativeness,
Eva poses no of
all
who
awakens no
threats,
will play
Exponents of
with
this
and
awe but
distance her, Eva's inexpen-
afl^ectionate
fears, raises
ways
lure her to Christ.
no defenses; she makes children
her.
new
belief in play
and of
its
importance
in
the
conversion experience ranged from the religious hedonist to the theologian.
Henry Ward Beecher, who
asserted that to be a Christian
was "to be the
happiest person in the world," told Yale students in 1872 that he "studiously
refused to entertain anxieties." In the partial physicalization of respectable
Protestantism which was his most interesting achievement, Beecher, finding it
best to put Calvin aside, redefined the "elect" as the healthy; he said,
and
demonstrated, that such would have "an insatiable love of play."^^ Beecher loved to watch fine horses; he collected old books and rare gems. Like other
prophets of the mind-cure movement,^^ he sensed that mid- and
late-
nineteenth-century Protestant America wanted religion to provide an antidote to
work
liberation
and
well as for
as well as a
spur to
fulfillment, a
rhomme
toil.
He made religion an agent of personal
means of
spirituel:
self-expression for
rhomme
sensuel as
he revealed religion as a facilitator of
leisure.
Henry Ware, Jr., had already tried to grapple with the problem of "How to Spend Holy Time" and had toyed fascinatedly with the possibilities
of leisure implicit in the Unitarian emphasis on what Channing called
"self-culture";^^
it
took Beecher to say that spending time was
In Beecher's novel Norwood, Dr.
Wentworth,
a
itself
holy.
shrewd, humane, and
aes-
thetic-minded physician, acts as his spokesman. At one point Frank Edel, a
broken-hearted rejected lover, decides to turn from art to preaching to express his new-found conviction of
Dr. Wentworth, however, the older
Wentworth
life's
tragic nature;
when he
man advises him to stick
consults
to painting. Dr.
points out that the Christian artist preaches, and to a far larger
dodge "pain" hovering tantalizingly between the
congregation than the minister, but his
real
and
is
"self-denial."
Beecher
idea that suflFering
is
at this
the easy
point
way and
message for Edel
is:
the proposition that the easy
way
is
The Loss of Theology
Whatever
the best one.
1
however, he wants
his rationale,
his characters
comfortable with themselves, self-acceptant, self-loving, ample. Norwood unmistakably
book, composed of
a tedious
and discursive
talk.
Beecher claims
little
action and
at the start that the
tellingly calls his "leisurely narrative"
colored romance; he asks that they pursue
it
The
novel
words, a (Beecherian) religious experience, an exercise
ist
much
much rambling
pace of what he doesn't
meditatively, reflectively, over
a period of time, to taste, to relish, to savor.^'*
culture
is
want his they might some highly
readers to devour the novel feverishly in a sitting as
Horace Bushnell, who brought
He
intentional.
is
39
in
is
to be, in other
consumer
pleasure.
to the rationalization of a post-Calvinist
of the intellectual responsibility and massiveness of the Calvin-
theological tradition, published a study on
Work and Play
in
1
864.
He
begins by saying that his primary example and his motive for the investigation
was the
and kitten playing on the floor together."
sight of "his children
The unconscious and spontaneous ways tion,
although by no means
of children are his starting inspira-
stopping point.
his
He
considers their play
"muscular," and goes on to a consideration of the "hard struggle of [adult]
work" which can peak
into a realm of "inspired liberty
beauty." His conclusion
is
complete only is
it
"we are to conceive that
man, that which
state of
fulfills its
that
sublime instinct
is
his
and spontaneous
the highest and most
nature endeavors after and in which
the state of play.
To say that a man labors
to say that he fails."^^ Bushnell here anticipates Beecher
explain,
"Whoever
admired Beecher's barbaric,
and
his
thinks without thinking vitality
own
is
who would
in fact a genius."^®
Bushnell
but found him theologically primitive, not to say
thinking
preacher's.
Both are advocating
ment, both
call
is
a
much more complex
than the Brooklyn
post-romantic theory of organic develop-
for the "whole man." Both urge, in intelligent opposition to
the old Calvinist ethos, the resourcefulness of trust: to play
is
to offer
testimony to the possibility of safety. Yet Beecher wants to obviate the necessity of
work
altogether; Bushnell
mastery, harmony;
work
his
urging instead that
its final
end
losing consciousness of itself as eflPort passes
determination into delight.
ment for
is
He
is
in actuality
engaged
in a
complex
is
from
restate-
modernizing society of the ancient Calvinist dilemma over the
between the use of "means" and the passive awaiting of God's arbitrary grace. Bushnell hypothetically establishes a streamlined process by which neither is lost but one becomes the other; it is a message of renewal, relation
and
arrival,
which
in
no way ignores the necessity of the passage.
He
summed up his ideal of faith, and hinted at all his diflPerences with Beecher, when he said, "Abiding in Christ is to abide; it is not to bask. "^^ Nonetheless, his emphasis is on joy not pain, play not work, leisure not eflfort. The unkindest cut history gives to human achievement is that the effects of our
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
140
actions are often so as their
much
simpler than the intentions behind them; different
aims were, Bushnell and Beecher finally
moved Americans
in similar
directions.
Bushnell habitually delivered sermons whose length and argumentative density humiliated his
little
daughter, well aware of the predilections of his
Hartford congregation; he continued to publish even denser
though
his
sermons sold
better.
Nonetheless
successful attempt as a religious thinker as
an element into theological thought.
was
He
treatises, al-
most fascinating and most
his
his effort to
once
introduce leisure
said that "if
my
had
I
life
—
would not do I would not push,"^® and, like Beecher, although at an incomparably more profound level, he tried to teach theology the art of relaxation. Having undergone a prolonged period of religious anxiety and uncertainty in early manhood, he later used to lead over again, there
is
one thing
I
to advise others involved in a similar ordeal:
Never be time.
in a
Time
is
hurry to believe; never try to conquer doubts against
one of the grand elements
in
thought
you cannot open a doubt today, keep afraid to keep it whole years.^^ If
In his
A
most
bit like a
difficult theological
them
work, he urges
to-morrow; do not be
til
his readers to take
it
easy.
guide leading a group of amateurs on an arduous expedition, he
promises his readers there asks
it
motion.
as truly as in
is
"nothing too abstruse or difficult"
in
what he
open ranges of
to understand; they are proceeding "along
thought," rapidly bearing "a considerable continent already
.
.
.
behind us";®°
they can stretch, they can breathe. Territorial imagery occurs as naturally in Bushnell's
prose as physical metaphors appear in Beecher's
more heated
periods.
Bushnell believed that "forgiveness
is
man's deepest need and highest
achievement":®^ the forgiveness he has in mind
Eva van Arsdel urges on Bolton conversion experience
is
in
My
Wife and I
like that
which Stowe's
— self-forgiveness. Man's
no longer an acceptance of
acceptance of himself, and Bushnell understood ness,
is
God
so
much
as
an
this as a function of happi-
of nurture, and of process. Ministers of an older day like Johathan
Edwards, or even latter-day
Lyman
revivalists like Charles
Grandison Finney and
Beecher, stressed the inexorable press, the immediate need of conver-
was now, the decision was now, time was running out, which was to be your destination, heaven or hell? Tomorrow you may wake up, Edwards intoned in his correct precise voice, his eye fixed habitually and
sion: the crisis
calmly on the back of the room, is
arguing that time
is
on your
in hell. Bushnell, like
side.
Time
is
Henry Ward Beecher,
no longer God's, days and years
marshaled toward the relentless revelation of the divine
moments running
will,
but man's
freely into space, like a stream pooling into a lake.
Expan-
The Loss of Theology
flow
sion, cultivation, strain.
Nathaniel
141
the mortal task, not contraction, discipline, and
is
Emmons,
innovator despite (he claimed be-
a theological
cause of) the strictness of his creed, was under genuine pressure as he dryly
pursued truth: thinking for him was a matter of finding clues to planned by someone
ratiocination
else;
divine labyrinth. Thinking for the liant
was
much
a string leading in
less
a vast design
and out of the
scholarly although
more
bril-
Bushnell was to be inspiration, play, creativity. Austin Phelps, percep-
understood that for Bushnell "work was
tive as always,
discovery'';
"a seer, not a reasoner,"^^
and he could ignore predecessors with
disdain. Self-expression for
Henry Ward Beecher had become
ture; for
Horace Bushnell
it
was
a fine
posture, ges-
but both posited as
insight, vision;
he was
tfie
goal
of religious experience and development, assimilation, ease. In downplaying the Calvinist over-emphasis on effort with
its
reification of pain,
Beecher and
Bushnell tended also to downplay the inevitable role agony plays in experience. Trust
and define
objects.
its
rationale for
not a good in
is
itself; it
human
must take account of obstacles
Both Beecher and Bushnell helped to create the
Eva von Arsdel and her calculated
oblivion, anticipatory of the
consumer's amnesia.
and
Anti-Intellectualism
The new view
the Theology
of Feeling
of God's plan and man's part
in
it,
with
stress
its
on the
emotions, the unconscious, and the resources of leisure and literature, un-
doubtedly fostered
in
the clergy an anti-intellectualism
to have troubling effects
have seen that
many
which came
on the profession and on the broader
ministers, in the midst of their
in
time
culture.^^
most extravagant
We
state-
ments about the "feminine" nature of Christianity or the Christlike role of
women,
insisted
upon female
unfitness, indeed incapacity, for the trials
and
Woman Suffrage: The Reform Against Nature (1869), that men and women could not be more "unlike" if
duties of the ministry. In
Bushnell, after saying
they were two different species, explains that the male ing forcefully
from
ing "grace." Bushnell then goes
law it."
in
on to proclaim the superiority of woman,
terms of the Atonement: she "goes above the
it,
and overtops
it
in
giving by submission to
Clearly feeling that he has implicitly raised an obvious question, he
answers tion
in
doing everything for
the "law," thunder-
female the "gospel," subject to law but bring-
Sinai, the
couching her pre-eminence
is
is
it
by saying
that
women
are not to be ministers because "ministra-
one thing, and the question of administration
another."^'*
Women lack
the brains necessary for executive action. Feminine sentimentality, igno-
rance of the world, lack of scholarship, precisely those qualities which
women more Christian —and which were named ale of the liberal ministerial role
This apparent contradiction
is
made
increasingly in any ration-
— were, paradoxically, held against them.
eloquent.
Even while
liberal ministers sabo-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
142
taged their intellectual heritage, they wished to hold on to that in
women
and
feminization lay
in
its
it,
and they feared
most formidable antagonist.
Women did not attempt to undermine clerical scholarship: made
housekeepers, they provided the labor which
as
wives and
church
possible; as
it
members, they constituted the audience which received
its
fruits in
prayers, and discourses; as intelligent and sensitive individuals,
sermons,
many
of them
exerted an important and constructive influence over the thinking of their
husbands and
ministerial
we
friends. Yet, as
have seen, disbelief
in
female
capacity for scholarship and real intellectual or artistic achievement was
American culture. The clergy, anxious to preserve their claim to distinction from those they imitated, fostered such skepticism; its effects on women and on their attitude toward religion were largely and predictably negative. The gravest irony of the ministers' position was precisely that in defending themselves they armed their enemy. widespread
The clerically
in
two most talented Beecher sisters to the pervasive, endorsed misogyny of their society were representative, if ex-
reactions of the
treme. Both
women were unusually
well versed and interested in Protestant
theology; both played a major role in vitiating
its
intellectual content.
My
Wife
sister Ida.
Eva,
options were painfully limited. In Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel
and as
I
/,
the frivolous Eva van Arsdel
have noted,
is
is
set against
a pretty little coquette.
her older
She reads
little
men who have
Their
besides magazines
more than she. Her "study" boasts few books and is decorated to give the illusion of what Eva calls "my Italy"; the room sports copies of works by Bushnell's favorite painter. Era Angelico.^^ At one point Eva explains her Anglican faith with a superficiality which fascinates and horrifies: " 'I long for the dear old prayers of my church, where my poor naughty little heart has learned the
and
likes to get
her "ideas" by talking to
way and can go on with Arsdel, in contrast, tan; she fixes
is
full
consent without stopping
room
Scholarly, bright, hard-working, Ida
'
"®^ Ida
van
in is
an old
New
England farmhouse.
determined to be
a
doctor and
a
more admirable of the two sisters, yet much drops her from consideration in We and Our Neighbors, My Wife and I. Stowe chooses to focus her attention, with
lifelong spinster.
the sequel to
to think.
doctrinally free-thinking, but temperamentally a Puri-
her study up like a
Stowe pretty
read
She
is
clearly the
whatever ambivalence, on the feminine opponent rather than on the feminist upholder of the
New
society had given her
England way. One can hardly
little
incentive or
hope
fault her; Stowe's
in plotting Ida's future. Ida
was
the rare exception, not the rule, and unlike her equally improbable, saintly
Stowe
fictional predecessors, Ida's appeal to readers
was
and a person was far too sociologically
— indeed, almost punitively so
alert
limited.
as a novelist
—to waste her time on sheer highmindedness. Harriet's
own
sister,
Catharine, at
first
glance seems closer to Ida than
The Loss of Theology
143
Eva. Easily the intellectual equal of her most brilliant brother, Edward,
Catharine Beecher was capable of producing theological tracts which published anonymously with no hint of the sex of their author)
won
(if
the
some of America's ablest divines. As a young woman, however, while her brothers went to Yale or Amherst, she stayed at home. Her adult life was spent in an ever-sanguine, ever-frustrated search to raise the funds necessary to endow a woman's college, staffed by women and designed to satisfy her biased yet high standards. Beecher was too restless ever to become truly bitter, but her heart burned at times when she contemplated the magnificent financial resources of Harvard and Yale and respect and response of
thought of her
own
multiple failed educational endeavors. Despite her tem-
peramental self-righteousness and excitability, her claim that she could have
more money seems a fair one: a good portion of her frantic over-activity was an effort to substitute human ingenuity for economic backing. Beecher suffered from hysteria and occasional paralytic afflictions. One hardly needs recourse to psychoanalysis to sense that she was suppressing a massive hatred of the male world which had denied her her succeeded
if
she had only had
colleges, denied her, in a very real sense, her
mind.
All Catharine Beecher's antagonism surfaced in an extraordinary
published in 1850 entitled Truth Stranger Than Fiction. This to be a defense of Delia
Bacon
Hartford Female Seminary,
a
At
(181 1-59), formerly Catharine's student at the
and writer somewhat
later a talented lecturer
Yale graduate, a minister, and a
herself. In 1847,
her.
work purported
of Margaret Fuller. Bacon had been engaged to Alexander Mac-
in the line
Whorter,
book
MacWhorter had
this time, Delia's
man
significantly
younger than
rather humiliatingly refused to
brother Leonard, a distinguished
preacher and a Yale professor of divinity, had brought
marry
New Haven
MacWhorter to
trial
for breach of faith before the local Connecticut convocation, and had lost
the case. Both
MacWhorter and Bacon
not sparked solely by Delia Bacon's plight.
between the older
ministers,
many
whose interest was The contest was in reality one
enlisted backers
of them colleagues or pupils of
Lyman
Beecher's closest friend, Nathaniel Taylor, and the younger clergymen, led
by Bacon; the former were professors and theologians, the chiefly less learned
men from
latter
were
the county parishes.®^
Catharine Beecher contributed
two lawyers and
then wrote her indignant account of
it.
She was
fully
herself to the
trial,
aware that the
and
conflict
was between what Edwards A. Park would call "the theologian" and "the pastor" (194, 235, 29 3 ),®® and her book was assertively dedicated to the "Parochial Clergy" of America. She knew that she was attacking not just, melodramatically emphasized, ''The grey hairs of my father's friend [Taylor]!" (294), but the Calvinist intellectual tradition and the elitist male as she
institution
most heavily endowed for
its
propagation
(12, 290-1).
Her
rally
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
144
MacWhorter had
cry was the sanctity of the domestic claims which
and which Yale University,
in
tive that the adverse decision
nant
CONSPIRACY!"
Bacon, to oppose such
exonerating him, had despised. She was posi-
could only have been the result of
2.
woman
with such
men is, and must be, the center of a
to her or to far as
one whose destiny
can be,
it
-malig-
a
but she was determined, as she told Leonard
(249),
''Such
it:
violated
is
calumny
a
affixed to her
perpetual warfare. There
now
united with hers,
till
is
no peace
wrong
this
by as
righted" (287). Unfortunately, to Delia Bacon's distress,
is
Beecher kept her word.
she did not alleviate Delia Bacon's situation, she
If
did express her rage and display her revengeful alliance with the forces of
The most
sentimental morality against those of theological scholarship. serious motive for her rage
is
one she omits from the book. Critics laughed
at the excesses
of Beecher's tirade, yet her anger was admirable.
she had
little
constructive advice to offer
passion.
She had been barred
all
her
life
The fact that
was the best justification of her from access to the training necessary
to fully solve the problems she exposed.
The
forces of anti-intellectualism Catharine Beecher invoked were des-
win the day
tined to
outburst, Bela Bates
intellect
elusive.
—and
By
.
.
.
after Beecher's
Edwards of Andover Seminary lamented
considered "an intellectual clergyman pious ministry
few years
in clerical ranks. In 1853, a
.
.
.
that people
deficient in piety and an eminently
deficient in intellect."®^ Clerical ability to unite piety with
thus to win wide respect
—came
to
seem more and more
1883 President Eliot of Harvard could say that the ministry had
declined greatly in the preceding forty years principally because educated
men no
longer found the "intellectual qualities" in the clergy which they
expected
in a guide.^°
increasingly
One
clear sign of the
youthful age of
dilemma of the ministry was the
men assuming
By
pastorates.
the
mid-
nineteenth century, especially in large towns, congregations tended to select
men
in their thirties,
of the church.^ In ^
1
often 859,
more youthful than the most
members of the Synod
influential
Reverend C. van Santvoord, president
Dutch Reformed Churches, complained: "churches of present times show so strong a proclivity toward calling young men in preference to teachers of riper experience and more solid attainments that a man
of the .
.
.
.
happening to be prematurely bald certain discomfiture"
...
a
.
may reckon on
almost
younger candidate.^^
In van
or gray,
when competing with
.
.
Santvoord's opinion, churches hoped thus to pay
.
.
little,
to get
men up with
the times, and to have "a fair countenance" to contemplate on Sunday
morning. Congregations were seeking
—namely
labor
in their ministers the ideal
of feminine
youth, good looks, and cheapness; they were insuring the
lack of lengthy training also characteristic of
women
employees.
Seminaries inevitably reflected congregational demands. Between 1850
and 1895 the number of Yale's graduates doubled, yet the proportion of
The Loss of Theology
145
who entered the ministry decreased by more than sixty percent. Of those who joined the clergy, fewer came from the best colleges; fewer came
those
from colleges at all.^^ Within the seminaries themselves, whether Harvard or Andover or Yale, there was a shift of emphasis in requirements for ministerial candidates which presupposed a change in theological outlook at least correspondent to the altered intellectual level of the young men applying to such schools. In 1726, the massively well-read Cotton Mather, writing his Manductio ad Ministerium (Directions for a Candidate of the Minissaid that
try),
he believed "learning" of a general kind the second most
important qualification for a clergyman after piety.
of
all this
should
erudition was clear to Mather; he stressed that
importance that
.
.
.
that
know Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Rhetoric, Logic, Mathematics, Astronomy, and Divinity. The purpose
a well-trained minister
Natural Philosophy,
He recommended
[the candidate] should be a
extolling the inquisitional
and controversial
good
skills
"it is
of the
last
"^"^
Mather was Hopkins and Emmons casuist.
possessed in such eminence: the ability to discriminate false
from
true,
and
defend the correct against the incorrect. Mather assumed that the truth was to be had,
with
if
Emmons and
difliculty, labor,
Hopkins,
and argumentation.
who trained hundreds of young ministers in the
days before seminaries opened, upheld Cotton Mather's standards.
They
themselves labored twelve hours daily at their desks; their impractical ab-
sent-mindedness about delight,
was
affairs
of this world, in which antiquarians would
cultivated, not innate.
Emmons
refused to
work
in his
garden
him from more urgent responsibilities. He believed that the duties God required of men were so many and so diverse that the true Christian would find no time for mere amusements; Emmons had no concept of leisure.^^ Little wonder if, according to popular lore, such men occasionally rode oflF on the wrong horse after service or even occasionally made themselves at home in the wrong house: they had more important things on their minds than such mundane distinctions. Reverends West, Whitridge, and Hopkins used to meet together regularly and talk theology for hours. On one occasion, just as night fell, Whitridge came out to see West to his horse. They fell again into theological debate and were absorbed until they thought they detected a fire in the east it was the rising sun.^^ Timothy Dwight, heir of Jonathan Edwards by lineal descent and by lest
it
distract
—
creed, as a tutor at Yale in the late eighteenth century pursued the ascetic
commitment
to learning
ited himself to
which had characterized
two mouthfuls of food
at
his predecessors.
He
lim-
dinner (usually potatoes), slept on
the floor, and studied heroically long hours. Probably partially as a result
of this regimen, he almost lost the use of his eyes. In later years, he was never able to
work
for prolonged periods of time.
He
professed to be thankful,
since he had been forced to the discovery that "real
knowledge" was only
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
146
to be
drawn from
ministers at Yale bears.^^ In the ical
a
life.
His style as a teacher and
was consequently very
words of
more popular and
that of his fore-
prevalent at that time in the pulpit, and introduced
instructive
Dwight's
partial loss of vision;
and New
York.
played to the
from
different
contemporary, Dwight "broke up the metaphys-
a
mode of discussion so
preacher training future
a
method of address."^® One can hardly it
led to the masterly Travels in
regret
New England
Dwight's shrewd practical powers of observation are
fullest in this lively narrative,
which
is
far superior
dis-
by almost
any criterion to his dull if solid four-volume treatise. Theology Explained and Defended. Dwight's changed course undeniably marks, however, an unwit-
New England Calvinist tradition. Increasingly after Dwight,
ting turn in the
ministers
The
were
pastors,
even writers, before they were theologians.
Andover Seminary illustrates the shift in American Protestantism away from dispute, doctrine, and scholarship. Founded in 1808 as a bastion against Harvard, which had recently capitulated to the theninsurgent Unitarian forces, Andover was intended to preserve and perpetuate the New Light Divinity of Edwards and Hopkins. All professors at the fate of
school swore opposition not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Papists,
"Mohametans," Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Socinians,
ans, Unitarians,
and Universalists; they renewed
oath
this
Sabelli-
in public
once
every five years. Students, conducted through a supremely rigorous course
which heavily emphasized oping controversial
and faculty,
skills,
Biblical exegesis, indisputably essential to devel-
were examined once
also in public.^®
a
year by trustees,
The clear assumption was that
visitors,
theological truth
was indeed a fortress, but one in constant need of defense. Moses Stuart, who taught at Andover, delivered his learned broadsides against the Unitarians in the earlier part of the century; other, more liberal scholars like Edwards A. Park and Calvin Stowe were to succeed him at the task of ingenious debate. Calvin Stowe reiterated emphatically in 1852 that "the right interpretation of Scripture" was the cornerstone of religion, but students did not always agree.
By
the 1870s students, abetted by the younger
demanded, and a
got, less Biblical exegesis in their
members of the
faculty,
middle years. Park, after
long and unsuccessful struggle against their demands which his
own
liber-
alism had unwittingly fostered, resigned in 1881; unable to appoint the
Hopkinsian scholar he had wished to see spend the next twenty years working on
Jonathan Edwards. cial
because
it
The
he was destined to
in his place,®®
a
never-assembled biography of
students' revolt against Biblical criticism
was cru-
revealed their endorsement of Orville Dewey's observation
that "the main, the almost exclusive object of the religious impression."®^
Maine was reputed
The
.
great revivalist preacher
.
.
modem
pulpit
Edward Payson
to believe that "doctrines should be like sugar in tea
is
of
The Loss of Theology
only tasted
in
the cup"®^
—and who needed
147
a full
year of close Biblical study
provide "flavor"? Even the Biblical criticism which Park and others
just to
had gone to Germany to study scholar
failed to take
George Noyes published
hold
in
America;
a despairing article in the Christian
iner entitled "Causes of the Decline of Interest in Critical
concluded that seminaries might
in 1847, the
fail
Exam-
Theology"; Noyes
for lack of public support.®^ Andover,
Harvard and Yale, survived, but the preoccupation of later generations of divinity students was increasingly to be either with themselves and the cult of self-nurture, or with the changing, conflict-laden world and the creed like
of the Social Gospel
—not with learned explication of the Holy Scriptures.
In 1850 Park himself had instigated the second major nineteenth-cen-
among
tury controversy role.
The
first
the liberal Protestant clergy over their intellectual
had occurred
when the transcendentalist Unitarians by Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, 1839
in
of Boston and Cambridge, led
more orthodox Unitarian brethren ably marshaled by Andrews Norton of Harvard Divinity School. Norton was a parishioner of Henry Ware, Sr., a Brahmin intellectual possessed of
and Orestes Brownson,
genuine
if
split
from
their
conventional acumen. His dedication to scholarship and reason
was extreme,
for, as a fervent social conservative, in these alone
around him.
potentially civilizing forces for the democratic chaos characteristic of the
very
ill
at ten,
his spirit that his son, Charles Eliot
It
was
Norton,
worried only that he would die and not be able to "edit
Norton was
father's works."®'* tivity
man and
he found
bitterly
opposed to transcendental subjec-
and the incipiently democratic notion,
as
he put
it,
"that the
mind
possessed a faculty of intuitively discerning the truths of religion."®^ Utterly distrustful of the
to see "religion
.
common people or even the less common people, he wished .
.
taken out of the hands of divines
.
.
.
and
its
exposition
become the study of philosophers as being the highest philosophy."®^ These philosophers were to possess "extensive learning." Norton's response to the implicit attack on the clergy's elite status was, as his transcendental opponents fully recognized, to become more elite, to assert the challenged claims ever more assertively. The historian Richard Hildreth, one of Norton's ablest critics, realized that Norton was essentially and defence
.
.
.
arguing that "religion consists
in
knowledge."®^
To
be
a religious leader, in
other words, was to be a professional and safely out of the range, of earshot, of the untrained. If there was a choice to be
popular appeal and intellectual pre-eminence, Norton
if
also out
made between
at least
had no
hesita-
tions.
The
was very diflPerent for Park, who was twenty-two years younger, considerably more brilliant, and infinitely more imaginative, although every bit as scholarly as Norton and equally concerned about the clergy's dwindling intellectual stature. Norton was slated to be a partisan. case
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
148
a self-believer, able to
defend and see only one side of
a historical conflict;
Park was destined by temperament and talent to an attempt to bridge the fissures
of his culture.
When
culty.
He
tolerated intellectual mediocrity with great
a student, after delivering a peculiarly spiritless
difli-
and dull
ser-
mon, asked Park what hymn would best accompany it, Park snapped back, with the acerbic irony which Puritan discipline fostered and could not always check,
"Now
I
Lay
Me Down
to Sleep." Driven abroad
by the
nervous prostration and insatiable curiosity which would dog him
all
his
Germany; the advanced he found there made him
days, he experienced a profound depression in Biblical scholarship
and the extensive
libraries
ashamed and afraid for provincial Andover. Like Cotton Mather, he firmly believed that a minister creation
—ought
a colleague
who
to
—who
know
filled,
to his mind, the greatest place in
everything.
exemplified the
He
intensely admired
Moses
martyrdom and the glory of
God's
Stuart,
a learned
clergy:
A
Christian scholar, contending with the infirmities of an emaciated
body, leaving
his sleepless
couch
that he
studies of an anxious day, and closing his
gain
some
may
discipline himself for the
volume
at
may
evening that he
intermittent sleep for the relief of his wearied frame
men
keeping aloof from the haunts of motives for winning them to a
life
may
that he
.
.
new
search out
of godliness.®^
Stuart had indeed kept "aloof," and Park could not finally accept this as a valid alternative for the
modem
minister. In his
memoirs of Hopkins
and Emmons, whose scholarship Park helped to make legendary, he dwells fascinatedly
on the
inability of either
achieved their impact elite:
in a
manner
man
to attract a broad audience.
traditional for a
member of an
by educating students who were able to spread
Both
intellectual
their doctrines as they
themselves were incapable of doing. Park was impressed by their ability to
adhere to and believe
in truth,
without the confirmation supplied by
fol-
throw into bolder relief the fine quality of their intellectual integrity. They had no need, no conception of a public in the modem sense. Yet at the same time it is clear that Park lowers: he perhaps exaggerates their isolation to
finds
such pristine and tenacious virtue
popularity.
He
in itself a
keeps stressing that both
men
guarantee of very limited put their beliefs harshly,
boldly; he hovers between an apology for such tactless and impolitic over-
what he believes to be the truth and apf)eal. Everywhere he implies that no latter-day minister could fully follow their relentless course. Park himself was a powerful revivalist preacher who was able to awe and thrill even Emily Dickinson,
statedness and an admission that a minister cannot say
a
superb scholar whose biographies and studies
still
stand; he solved the
149
The Loss of Theology clerical
by
problem of
his generation in his
own
life.
Yet he was always pressed
which tormented and inspired Matthew Arnold, to make the culture prevaiV'\ he was always searching for a way to democratize
that urge
"best
what he hardly recognized as his own achievement, always anxious to rationalize and make accessible a clerical creed and lifestyle which would permit both learning and popularity, or, in his terms, "intellect" and "feeling." His religious and intellectual ideal was in the best sense a bisexual one, and he wished
to be not an isolated ideal, but part of Christian practice.
it
finally in this aim, in the history
occurring
in
but his failure
is
one of the most interesting {phenomena
of nineteenth-century American theology
such
a quarter,
it
He failed
if
only because,
demonstrates that success was hardly possible
anywhere. Park knew that to engage men's minds
—but
is
—he
to enlist their hearts
said
numerous writings about the clergy he repeatedly sets up, or recognizes, a split between the two faculties. As so many of the ministers of his time were to do,®^ Park envisioned and longed for a theology in which virile energy was to be united with "refined sensibility."®® In a crucial address entitled "The Theology of the Intellect and the
so,
and demonstrated so
in his
Theology of the Feelings" delivered in 1850, he described the former as precise logical doctrines developed and supported by the reason, and the latter as the
form of
belief "suggested
by and adapted
well-trained heart"; in a telling illustration, he linked the
the second with a "mother."
Of
course,
to the first
some version of
with a "father,"
this distinction
been familiar to Christian theology since the church fathers; tion
and respective value Park gives the terms which
two
to argue that the
Park's ostensible purpose
is
to the Christian minister,
who must
without becoming womanish, and
all
have
is
wants of the
it is
the defini-
striking.
Although
are both indispensable
the sensibility of a
"all
had
woman
the perspicacity of a logician without
being merely logical," his opening remark stresses that the appeal to the heart and the imagination can be successful
have been addressed
in vain;
when
and throughout,
the reason and judgment
his special plea
is
for the
feelings.®^
was at once recognized as epoch-making and controversial, and few were unaware which "theology" had emerged the victor. A reviewer for the Christian Examiner applauded Park; obviously thinking Park's discourse
that he expressed
agreement with the Andover leader, he wrote:
free to confess that
prefer a
much
hymnbook and
as
we honor
logic
a heart."^^ Charles
and the
Hodge,
intellect,
"We
are
we would
a brilliant Presbyterian
theologian at Princeton Seminary and the self-chosen defender of or-
thodoxy,
in the
lengthy and stunning debate which ensued between Park
and himself, showed himself not only disapproving of Park, but more aware of the implications of Park's argument than Park himself. Ironically sound-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
150
ing a great deal like the deceased insisted that
no
one "theology" must be
Park so venerated,
true, the other false, or there
between them.
explicit or implicit contest
that Park, in
Emmons whom
He was
most un-Calvinist fashion, was refusing
Hodge
could be
doggedly conscious
to choose,
and
in
doing
what he does not believe." He was convinced that Park was finally, from no matter what motives, fostering sentimentality: allowing people to regret what they themselves have destroyed, to confuse fact with fiction. In his single most penetrating thrust, he accused Park of believing that the central tenets of the Protestant creed were "merely intense expressions" while Hodge knew them to be "true as docso,
"enabling a
man
to profess
—
trines."^^
Hodge argued
that Park
was not so much impressing
literature into the
service of religion as turning religion into literature: he believed that the
escape Park was trying to find for himself was that of language.
and Hopkins, by Park's
and interested
effects style; tor,
I
wrote
as
I
in
own
speaking of Emmons'
"^"^
men
capable of few linguistic
thought of
my
Jacob Ide, Emmons' nineteenth-century
edi-
fewer.
thought.
"perfectly naked. "^^
account, were
Emmons
Emmons
asserted: "I never
style, praised its "perspicacity"; his
Emmons was
a
man
thoughts were
absolutely sure that he had "ob-
upon all points which would admit of it,"^® and few, apparHe wanted his thoughts "naked" precisely because he knew
tained certainty ently, did not.
the thoughts were there and he wanted
them
in the spotlight.
attention to the words, in Hodge's opinion, because he
for the thoughts.
There
is
Park called
was substituting them
undeniable evidence for Hodge's interpretation.
Park said openly that the theology of the feelings provides "visible and tangible images" rather than "abstract thoughts," that
it
is
suited not to
controversy but to poetry;^^ and he continually implied that the Scriptures offer imaginative language not statements of fact, that the Bible text.
He came
perilously close to saying that religion
is
is
a literary
metaphor.
which perhaps shows the influence of Bushnell's Coleridgean treatment of language in God in Christ (1849), Park explains "that liberal doctrines of theology are too vast for complete expression by man, and our intensest words are but a distant approximation to that language which In a passage
forms the
new song
that the
redeemed
in
heaven sing."^® Park
is
acknowl-
edging the timeless truth that expression cannot match realization; he
is
also
more specific romantic notions of the inexactness and richness of language. Hodge charges that this is a credo more suitable for a poet than a minister. Hodge metaphorically pulls the rug out from under Park; he subscribing to
denies to Park the consolation of aesthetics, he asserts the ugliness and
primacy of dogma.
He accuses
Park, in several brilliant phrases, of "playing
with words," of performing "pirouettes" on words;^® Park leisured art of literature for laborious
commitment
is
substituting the
to truth.
It is
the same
1
The Loss of Theology issue
we have
God
does not assimilate to
easily or pleasantly or beautifully,
intense awareness that
Hodge insists:
comes with
genuine religious experience and
to
God
sobriety, struggle, pain, the
facts," are essential ingredients in the
calling.
indubitably had logic on his side; he was in the invincible posi-
meaning exactly what he
nent did not.
Hodge was
said
and being fully aware that
his
oppo-
incapable of seeing the sincerity and importance
of Park's effort to revitalize
Hodge
man nor man
and ratiocination not laced
realization
with emotion, the bareness of "plain
tion of
5
already seen in the changing concepts of the Atonement and
of the conversion process.
Hodge
1
dogma with
the creative forces of literature;
himself here and elsewhere seems to have issued a personal veto
against the imaginative
life.
Yet he saw correctly the drift of Park's thinking;
mind apprehended the potential over-personalism of Park's approach. The victory of exposure was Hodge's, but the Christian Examiner's allegiance to Park's more moving if less solid arguments was his essentially institutional
symbolic of the trend
Hodge
so tenaciously combated. Park had history
his side; the sentimental appeal,
integrity
own
and conviction
it
which he endowed with an
was seldom to display
again,
won
on
intellectual
the day. Park's
would de-emphasize the historical and scholarly work of Biblical exegesis in the Andover curriculum. In 1852, two years after Park's address on "The Theology of the Intellect
students
and of the Feelings," the
collect
and define
liberal Congregationalists, in a
form was formulated and
ratified.
effort to
was the first official Congre1646-48 at which the Cambridge Plat-
their forces, held a
gational gathering since the one in
new
Synod.
It
The concern
of the participants, unlike
was not with theology. They made plans to found the Congregational Library Association in Boston Bela Edwards and Park were particularly influential here and laid the groundwork for that of their long-ago predecessors,
—
—
the inception of the Congregational Quarterly.
A
National Council called in
1865 only further dramatized liberal discomfort with orthodox theology.
The
representatives vaguely endorsed "the faith and order of the apostolic
and primitive churches held by our fathers"; on
a special
and rather ironic
excursion to Plymouth Rock, however, they voted to delete the
word
"Cal-
vinism" from the traditional Congregational statement of self-definition.^®®
The
penultimate chapter in a book on the triumphs of Congregationalism
published in 1894 was entitled "Congregational Literature."^® ^ Hodge's cynical suspicion about Park's direction,
if
not his motivation, was more
than vindicated. Attention to the claims of the press and interest in a rather
were pre-empting commitment to the older New England theology for which Hodge claimed with justification to be a latter-day spokesman. Liberal Protestantism had moved one step nearer to the feminine subculture it both courted and feared.
nostalgic obf uscation of the past
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
152
and
Anti-Institutionalism: The Pastor
The
anti-intellectualism
the
which had begun
Sentimental Heroine
to pervade the non-evangeHcal
by mid-century inevitably affected his concept of the institution to which he belonged and of the role he was to play in it. J. H. Allen astutely remarked that the voluntary system had produced "spiritual-
minister's theology
ism [and] sentimentalism," but that
up an
building
institution.
""^^^
The
it
had
liberal
"and must always
failed
clergyman promoted,
He
ously, a personalized and de-professionalized church.
own
the special and established claims of his
The most
He
evaded
ambigu-
confidence in
denomination; he habitually
joined forces, or tried to, with Christians of recreational activities.
lost
if
fail in
all
worship and
beliefs in
ecclesiastical self-definition.
extraordinary and inspiring expounder of anti-institutional-
ism within the liberal ranks was Joseph
Tuckerman
(1778-1841).
Bom
of a
Boston patrician and mercantile family, from an early age Tuckerman was
known
for his blameless conduct, his intensely emotional nature, and his
"devotion to
.
.
literature." In
.
many ways Tuckerman, dominated,
as
he
himself said, by his "affections" rather than his "thoughts," was prototypical
of the
new
Channing explained: "His strength did not lie His heart was his great power."^®^ Tuckerman a concern for the urban poor shared by few of
liberal minister.
in abstract speculation
.
.
joined with his sensibility
.
his equally sensitive clerical a regular
contemporaries. Forced by
Unitarian pastorate in 1826, he founded the
ill
health to
much more
abandon
strenuous
"ministry at large," a small, interdenominational, and ad hoc band of "free" ministers, tackling
them
economic,
social,
and
spiritual
ills
wherever they found
whatever ways seemed most appropriate. Deeply troubled by the
in
fact that
by
his
count almost half of the
had no religious
affiliation at all,
1
3,320 Protestant families in Boston
Tuckerman lamented
the exclusiveness
which characterized the majority of urban Protestant churches. Pews could only be occupied by those who bought or rented them; the impoverished were consigned ignominiously to
special seats.
Churches were organized,
in
other words, to congratulate the rich rather than to save the poor.
Tuckerman became effort.
He
hated
official
increasingly suspicious of
nities voluntarily to care for their
state to play
own
was
workhouses and other necessary
wanted the
in penalizing facilities.
and he spoke to and for those
of a church, for those felt a
who had no
commu-
only part he would
towns
that failed to erect
The
who had no
local
The
deprived.
philanthropic style was personal service and care. party,"
organized religious
charity as fiercely as any proud pauper: a crusader
against centrally controlled state philanthropy, he
have allowed the
all
essence of Tuckerman's
He
claimed to be "of no
interest in being
members
who friend." He
interest in hearing a minister but
genuine need for what Tuckerman called
a "Christian
The Loss of Theology
1
53
wanted to enter the homes of the poor rather than to draw them into church. True reHgion for him was impossible without the "sympathy, interest, respect, love" which the poor so seldom received; the only church which mattered existed anyplace where these qualities were in operation. Tucker-
man underplayed
his clerical role;
the ministry, but he saw
he believed fervently
virtue precisely in
its
intrinsically unprofessional nature. "It
power to
office,"
he asserted.
^^'^
is
its
in
the sanctity of
self-disavowal, in
its
character only which gives any
In Tuckerman's eyes, the minister possessed
but one valid creed: that contained in his personal example.
even today to read Tuckerman's Ministry at Large with
It is difficult its stress
on
local control,
poverty, and intelligent,
writes.
its
its
relatively enlightened analysis of the causes of
eloquent language, and not feel
its
author's impassioned,
and crystalline concern and love for the people of
Tuckerman was some
however,
in
Beecher,
who
disinterest
his
clustered
showed the same
sort of saint,
more
in
if
a
whom
he
He was not alone, institutions. Henry Ward
minor one.
ecclesiastical
naturally with the sinners than with the saints,
anti-institutionalism
and anti-professionalism
later in the
century; but he substituted a manufactured intimacy for principled care.
Tuckerman disavowed
institutions
to
protect
the social
community,
broadly conceived; Beecher was an exemplar of the force of sheer personality,
and personality dedicated to the needs of an audience, not to the pur-
poses of a community.
Lyman
Beecher, every inch a "churchman," fought Atheists, Unitari-
Roman Catholics abandoning his own heresies) to
ans, Episcopalians,
(short of
and
to the death; he did everything
preserve the precarious unity of
the Congregational-Presbyterian "Evangelical Front"; his most famous son
appealed to Congregationalists and free-thinkers
alike.
Finding what close
among businessmen, journalists, and lawyers rather than among clergymen, Henry Ward Beecher advised candidates for the sacred friends he had
office to "avoid a professional
manner" and reminded them constantly
that
they were "men" before they were ministers. In the sometimes embarrassingly overt sexual language he habitually used to describe the successful minister's
hood" out over
more
like
—he was to "thrust," and "lunge" and "pour congregation — Beecher makes the clergyman
performance his
his
an exhibitionist than an ecclesiastical dignitary.
without a pulpit, standing almost within touch of
He
man-
sound
preached
his audience.
He
ad-
vocated that ministers not write out their sermons but speak extempore; he
was
after impression as
tirst
revival
under way
Henry Ward pulpit a
much in East
as truth.
Lyman
Hampton, had taken "hold without
characteristically
mittens";
wished metaphorically to extend from the
"warm and glowing palm bared
seduction, not compulsion.
Beecher, anxious to get his
to the touch."
He seldom talked
He was
intent
on
of the church; he almost never
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
154
spoke of doctrine except to debunk
To
it.
be a minister, to belong to a
church, was only to court definition and claustrophobia: preachers are
The
he warned; "a man's study should be everywhere."
partialists,"
"all
only
authority Beecher craved was that of omnivorousness; he wished to be as pervasive, and as intimate, as appetite.
Tuckerman and Beecher
^^^
two extremes of
represented the
anti-institutionalism developing in the liberal clergy
between 1820 and
and many of their colleagues ranged between them.
1875,
acquaintance said of Ezra
Stiles
new
the
An
admiring
Gannett, one of the most conscientious,
hard-working, earnest, and fervently Unitarian ministers of the early and mid-nineteenth century, that he was
among
the
sense of "ministerial brotherhood."^^® Gannett
ning
at
the Federal Street
Church
in
last
was
clergymen to have
a
associated with Chan-
Boston, and he was often troubled by
Channing's publicly stated dissatisfaction
at
being confined within one
creed, even the notoriously loose Unitarian one. "I belong to the Universal
Church," Channing proclaimed
The founder "from
in 1841;
"nothing
of American Unitarianism
hell."^^^
felt
shall separate
me from
it."
"the spirit of sectarianism" was
Charles Follen, a prophet of the ecumenical trend of the later
transcendental-Unitarian clergy, claimed with Channing to be a
member
of
the "universal church," sympathizing even with Jews and Catholics.^®® Ed-
win H. Chapin, one of the most popular preachers thought to be
a Universalist
only because
it
in
New
was impossible
York to
was what he
City,
tell
was.^°«
Such ministers
stressed the devotional
doctrinal or ecclesiastical, aspects of faith.
models and adherents.
Women
like
and
practical, rather than the
They were
not without feminine
Lydia Maria Child or Catharine Maria
Sedgwick repudiated sectarianism and partialism as fervently as Channing himself. Even as they proliferated their own associations, organizations, societies, and clubs, middle-class American women revealed a deep-seated and extreme distrust integral to their envy of the professions and institutions
which excluded them. Catharine Esther Beecher's crusade against Yale was only part of a larger campaign in which she had many sisterly assistants. ^^° Of these Dorothea Dix (1802-87) was perhaps the most talented and significant.
Dix was holic
and
bom
in
a fanatic
1802 to an ill-assorted couple; her father was an alco-
convert from Congregationalism to Methodism, her
mother an uneducated Dix spent
a
woman some eighteen
years older than her husband.
miserable childhood mainly with her grandmother,
likened to Medusa.^ ^^ She said in later years that she "never
whom
knew
she
child-
hood,"^ ^^ and her short career as a brilliant but excessively demanding and inflexible teacher
by
literary
proved her
right. Until
her late twenties, she was devoured
ambition of a conventional variety; she could write
a
confidante
The Loss of Theology
155
on one occasion about paying her "watery tribute to the genius of L. E. L.," a popular poetess.^ ^^ Dix turned out the usual volumes of Sunday School fiction
and sentimental poetry bearing predictable
Flora.
A
titles like
The Garland of
convert to Unitarianism, she took care of Channing's children in
the early 1830s and received
the benefits of his affection, discipline, and
all
With her consumptive tendency and her literary sensibility, she seemed in early womanhood, as a friend said, "an invalid, a very gentle and poetical and sentimental young lady."^^* In the mid- 18 30s she went abroad respect.
for her health, and returned in 1838, thirty-six years old, unmarried, un-
known, an unhappy, aimless, rather typical minor lady-litterateur. Then, by a near-accident, she saw the inside operations of a neighboring jail; the rage and conviction
this visit inspired in
prison, hospital,
her led to a highly motivated career of
and asylum reform which
lasted almost until the century's
close.
Dix was very much quell the
a "minister at large."
madmen, Dix was taking on
(at
the
Reading her Bible aloud to
least) a clerical role.
One
of her
biographers has noted perceptively that her Massachusetts memorial has
famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."^^^ Lydia Maria Child christened her a "God-appointed miscertain similarities to Edwards'
sionary to the insane."^ ^® Dix rebuked strangers, and presidents, with absolute self-confidence,
beings
who pine in cells and stalls and
of wailing suffering creatures."^
worked on an
Hope of the poor crazed The Revelation of hundreds
and proclaimed herself "the ^^
cages.
.
.
.
Like Tuckerman, moreover, Dix always
essentially individualized, maverick,
controlled, plan.
Whether consciously or
female "influence" to the tive, politically tactful,
hilt.
ad
hoc,
although tightly
not, she exploited the doctrine of
Beautiful, well-educated, socially conserva-
welcome
in
both North and South before and after
the war, she besieged state legislatures and important personages with impas-
sioned appeals that he
still
had seen
well within the limits of decorum.
in chapels
One admirer remarked
of asylums Dix had founded or visited portraits
of her placed and adored as one might expect an icon of the Virgin to be.
Dix grasped the potential force of the veneration accorded the lady
in place
of power: she could be unique, autonomous, the arbiter not the subject of
moral judgment, the holy opponent rather than the inmate of
man-made
institutions. It
in later life
tongue
was symbolic
that
on Dix's crusading
all
trips
merely abroad
she was actually to boast of her inability to speak a foreign
—and of her
ability to
accomplish exactly what she wanted anyway.
Dix's charge against the prisons, hospitals, and insane asylums of her
day
had many motives, the most important of which was the criminally inadequate conditions which prevailed
in
them.^^® Like Tuckerman, Dix, for
her occasional (and self-sustaining) posturing, had a sense of a wider nity
which never
left her;
it
was her
all
commu-
distinction that she pledged herself
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
156
never to forget those her society was determined to ignore. In a very real
chosen
sense, Dix's
asked
foe,
an asylum to inspect the superintendents'
at
no! doctor, tion."^ ^^
I
Once replied, "Oh
Hke Tuckerman's, was organization per suites,
she
se.
have never found any suffering among officers of an
During the
Civil
institu-
War, an older and more paranoid Dix, appointed
superintendent of nurses and determined to help soldiers since she could not
be one, revealed als.
new extremes of distrust for professionalism and
profession-
She required no nursing experience for her volunteers (though she did
demand that they be thirty or over and homely), and she calmly instructed them to obey her rather than the doctors for whom they were actually working. A one-woman vigilante squad, she refused to take off a single day during the whole course of the war; she attempted to cut off the doctors' liquor supply and to oversee, and correct, every branch of wartime medical
As an observer remarked, she could not work within any system,
practice.
"for she belonged to the class of comets."
^^°
words of one exasperated official, in a perpetual state of "breathless excitement." George Templeton Strong, a sanitary commissioner, seized on the absurd and hysterical Dix
irritated military authorities
by being,
in the
aspects of her over-concern:
She
is
disgusted with us because
rush off the instant she last
time
ment
we were
in
tells
we do
not leave everything else and
us of something that needs attention.
Washington she came upon us
to say that a
cow
sunstroke, and she took
in
in breathless excite-
the Smithsonian grounds was dying of
very
it
The
ill
we
that
did not adjourn instantly to
look after the case.^^^
Strong was annoyed standably crippled anxiety rose that
all
at that inability to establish
many
of Dix's sex.
What he
from her horror, here focused on
proportions that under-
failed to note
a petty
these professionally trained, wage-earning
that her
but symbolic
men might
be incompetent. After Dix had opened the door of her
was
first
detail,
quite simply
state-run
jail
and
seen the enormities of neglect and maltreatment there, she doubted. In a sense, she
enjoyed the doubts, because they implied that
ently not helped,
were even
disabled,
running the world, the burden lack of qualifications
became
fell
on
by
her,
if
appar-
their training for the task of
and her apparent (and feminine)
a positive asset for the task.
distorted, but oppressive sense of
men were
Yet the intense,
unending obligation which resulted from
her frightening conclusion that she was the only wakeful passenger on a ship
headed for certain wreck was It
may
at first glance
real too.^^^
seem strange or unexpected that Dix should have
turned from youthful aspirations to be a literary lady to adult ambitions to
The Loss of Theology
1
57
be the unassisted savior of her nation, but her progression was in reality a
young man fervently loved literature; he too found his mature identity in a less hyperbolic but no less maverick missionary endeavor. Dix had liked to read sentimental fiction, and a number of her admirers described her in terms which suggest the heroines of such stories. From Washington Horace Mann wrote his wife, the former Mary Peabody, that he was happy to be Dix's "lackey" and to fight in her cause:
Tuckerman too
natural one.
as a
he "loved to picture her," he continued enthusiastically, "entering alone realms of darkness where man did not dare to set his foot ... or witl\a hymn
upon her
lips
quieting the fiercest raging of madness." ^^^ Like Florence
Nightingale, the English "Lady of the
Lamp" who would
so resemble her
temperament and achievement, Dix translated readily into automatically charged conventional pictures and ideas. Dix enabled or inspired Mann to in
draw on the stereotypes of found
it
The
ideal
feminine virtue prevalent
natural to fictionalize her.
And
it is
heroine of sentimental literature
he
easy to see why.
typically, as
is
in his society;
amateur minister handily outdoing her established
we have
seen,
an
clerical competitors.
Whether she is outside the church or spiritually at its helm, she cannot be a mere parishioner, a mere party-member, a mere cog. The reader seldom learns her exact religious afliliation. Like Dix and Tuckerman, she works alone, as a one- woman unit.
of sentimental novels
I
I
cannot think of a single heroine
have read whose basic identity
philanthropic group. These heroines are in charitable missions, dispensing
cold
all,
it
is
tied
hundreds
up with
a
of course, incessantly engaged
warm stockings, and prayers, women who belong to do-good
jellies,
but they are always alone. In such stories, associations are usually villains;
is
in the
as
if
to join a benevolent society
abandon one's femininity. Rose Clark, the
sufl^ering
is
to
heroine of a novel by
Fanny Fern, meets harsh treatment at the hands of Mrs. Markham, a cold, grasping matron who runs the orphanage where she lives; Mrs. Markham cuts off Rose's hair, locks her in dark closets, even whips her.^^'* In most sentimental novels, however, institutions of any kind are not so
tacked as ignored.
Not
much
at-
infrequently, the heroine will engage in activities
which the historian-reader knows were the object of powerful reformminded organizations, but she will never, apparently, think of joining or mentioning them.^^^ Eva van Arsdel in Stowe's New York novels, for example, rescues prostitutes, redeems drunkards, returns lost animals, and provides an ex
officio
neighborhood community center, but never involves
herself in a purity campaign, a
or a settlement house. in a school is
temperance
drive, an anti-vivisection league,
We seldom learn of a fictional heroine's activities even
or in a store: like Tuckerman's, her chosen philanthropic arena
the home, whether
someone
else's
or her own. Furthermore, she never
attacks poverty or intemperance or prostitution as social
phenomena: that
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
158
would
in itself
presuppose
a
degree of abstraction which she would find
abhorrent and irrelevant. Her attempt,
like
Tuckerman's,
is
always to "im-
prove conditions to the greatest possible extent by improving character."^^®
And
own example
she offers the sight of her
The
differences
between the sentimental heroine or those
and imitated her and figures
Tuckerman and Dix
like
Tuckerman and Dix had an
important.
vivid purpose to
to inspire her beneficiaries.
which
literature
was
created
are obvious and
intellectually defined
subservient.
who
and morally
Tuckerman, throughout
book on his ministry at large, addresses his reader personally and speaks always to him "as an individual." He refuses to allow his audience to escape into its collective irresponsibility. Every truth, he feels, is by nature ad hominem; he wants to convey the privacy of intense conviction. The domestic novelist also personalized her readership; but she was as interested in his
manufacturing
a privatized
experience for her readers as in awakening their
was concerned with the isolation created by fantasy rather than the solitude imposed by moral commitment. Tuckerman was using consciences. She
literature as
communal
Dix used her tracts and
petitions, to re-establish essentially
was plying her trade to convey an illusion of community through the shared consumer pleasures available in a mass society. Tuckerman grew up decades before the vogue of the sentimental heroine was full-blown; Dix's girlhood barely coincided with the heroine's rise. At most, one could say that Tuckerman anticipated certain of her qualities, and that Dix borrowed her invulnerability in order to engage
values; the domestic novelist
Yet the conjunction, and progressive degra-
in crucial societal tasks.
dation, of minister, lady-reformer,
and sentimental heroine
is
unmistakable;
and the process of assimilation imperiled the passionate precision which alone can edge and validate antipathy to institutional and professional
life.
We can elaborate on this process of deterioration by looking at another aspect of the minister's professional self-image. In Truth Stranger Than Fiction,
Catharine Beecher had espoused her "parochial clergy," the ministers
or pastors, as part of her attack on the clerical scholars and theologians, and
with good reason: the pastor, senses a sister.
as
he was increasingly defined, was
Tuckerman had never been
in several
a particularly forceful
or schol-
arly minister, and he tended always to see himself as a pastor rather than a
preacher or a theologian. crucial ties"
one
The distinction became an even more frequent and
in liberal ranks. In
an interesting series of sermons on the "Du-
Edwards A. Park pointed to a bifurcation between the who is to "cherish learning as a mark of status"^^^ and "discrimi-
of the ministry,
theologian,
nate between the authority of the mass of believers and the authority of a
few leading minds,"^^® and the
pastor,
who
is if
anything to conceal what
scholarship he has and to attend and speak to the "domestic griefs" and "private joys" of his congregation.
^^^
Interestingly enough. Park
saw the
.
The Loss of Theology
theologian as a masculine figure
example, was "manly"
steal
his
59
key words for Moses Stuart, for
—while he viewed the pastor
and well nigh domestic
view of some to
—one of
1
as feminine: "so gentle
the pastor's vocation," Park explains, "as in the
is
away
his
manly energy." ^^°
Stuart, as Park well
belonged to an older generation of ministers. Nathaniel Emmons, uel Hopkins, in his effort to
keep himself free from temporal
knew,
like
cares,
Sam-
courted
ignorance not only of his
own
he made no pastoral
except in cases of emergency. Channing's colleague
Ezra
calls
who
Gannett,
Stiles
personal affairs but of his parishioners as well:
his father, a liberal minister, inaccessible,
"arm of love," once
at least
who
always needed to lean on an
work was his most in their own homes
son wrote, was convinced his pastoral
as his
important duty.
mother and found
idolized his fervently devout
He
called
on
his
numerous parishioners
and sometimes more. In
a year,
his view, the pastor's task, like
the woman's, lay in the home, and like hers,
it
was composed of
telling
minutiae, of ''particularsy^^^
Henry Ware,
Jr.,
was the Unitarian beau
ideal of a pastor in the first
half of the nineteenth century. Like Gannett, he idolized his
found
relations with his kind, but very reserved
Ware
later
and scholar
"My
ment:
analyzed the repressive effect Ware, at
Jr.,
it
prominent preacher
his
emotional develop-
father's dislike of ostentation in religion has,
made me
difficult for
silent
of
fear, [been]
.
.
backward to introduce it; has with warmth, much as I love it." Ware,
on the
me to speak
I
it
subject,
did not, however, like "very ardent and fervent devotional exercises,"
which he
felt
made
as tyrannical
demands on the
capacities as his father's intellectualized
on
strict father difficult.
Sr., a
Harvard Divinity School, had had on
injurious. It has
made
and
mother and
his
much
mental
resources. ^^^
a religion
He wanted
and restrained
style of
worship did
affection, not passion: his
was very
of gentleness. Never effusive, never intimate with anyone
outside the circle of his family and a abstractions of his creed into a
Unlike
individual's emotional
his father
who was
few chosen
new
friends,
he personalized the
clerical lifestyle.
a skilled controversialist able to quell the
doughtiest anti-Unitarian opponents. Ware,
Jr.,
dent; of a literary bent, he always lacked the
was hardly
a brilliant stu-
"thorough discipline of an
accomplished theologian." His object was never to display great "audition" nor even striking "talents"
in the pulpit.
Ware thought both
of these finally
hindrances to the minister's true task, his "private duties," the pastoral
visits
which he exerts the "most real religious influence" on the ''characters of men" by promoting "personal religion." The ministerial role as Ware conceived it, in contrast to Hopkins' or Emmons' view, was that of a nurse rather than a doctor, a mother rather than a father. Henry Ware's biographer and brother, John, describes a fascinating scene in which Henry's wife urges him to take on some single great work and cease dissipatand ministrations
in
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
160
ing his talents in scattered poems, sketches, sermons, and pastoral
calls.
Ware
gently rebukes his wife for such masculine sentiments, answering with the
standard feminine rationale for inconspicuous achievement: "I
do the
little
good
In 1829, the
that
I
can
in
any way that presents
itself."
am
glad to
^^^
professorship of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastoral Care
first
was created at Harvard Divinity School. Significantly it was specially earmarked for Henry Ware, Jr. In 1816, Ware had ministered to the smallest Unitarian society in Boston, and, although he had done extremely well there, it
was with the assumption of the Harvard post
He had
own.
been chosen precisely for
on pastoral work and personal to be, as he well
knew,
religion,
his purity
came
fully into his
of character, his emphasis
and he was expected
a great "influence" for
He
that he
in his
good not only on
new
role
his students
on a hill very much so that his light might shine before the world; his example was to permeate the clerical ranks. His appointment signalized Harvard's skillful attempt to assimilate and ratify the anti-institutionalism increasingly characterizing the liberal faith Harvard represented. By all accounts. Ware was successful in just the terms he but on other ministers.
was meant to
be.
He
had been
set
invited his students to tea, got to
know many
of
them
As one student
well,
encouraged them to engage
later
wrote, "he raised the standard of ministerial character." ^^'^ In 1831, he
On
in
philanthropic activities.
Formation of the Christian Character, his most significant work and a fitting manifesto and rationale for his new position. published
the
Ware wrote
his
wife
1831 that he
in
strongly people feel" about the book: in their eyes."^^^ In his tract,
He steers entirely
radically. if
clear of
gracious speed.
at a suitably
underplayed;
Ware
in discussing the
The
was surprised
"They speak
to
me
to learn
of
takes the usual Unitarian
dogma; he heads
it
"how
with tears
line,
but more
straight for sensibility,
institutional aspects of religious life are
"Means of Religious Improvement," Ware
gives only a third of his allotted space to the activities of attendance at
preaching and partaking addressed very
much
ened by the fact to those
who
desirous of
in
communion. The book
is
a
how-to manual
to the private individual. Intimacy of tone
that, as
Ware makes
clear
from the
start,
is
he speaks only
already agree with him; he writes "only for those
knowing themselves and
are bent
height-
upon forming
who
a religious
character." Conversion and controversy are irrelevant here; the issue necessity,
and pleasure, of further assimilation among those
are
who
is
the
already
resemble one another. In a loaded metaphor, one could say Ware's book signalizes the transition is
from family
ties to incest; intellectual
by definition impossible. Ware explains that
religion
is
discrimination
"a matter of per-
sonal application and experience," "a sentiment or affection of the heart," an affair
of meditating in "habitual thoughtfulness of mind" and performing
"simple and blameless tasks." Faith
is
entirely consonant with
human
nature:
The Loss of Theology
communion with another
the devout Christian walks "in
harmony, unity, ... to
tranquillity for him: "His
him heaven
is
already begun."
to use Bushnell's phrase,
become the advocate of
Ware
161
^^^
duty and
Like Henry
Ward
Beecher, Ware,
basking rather than abiding; the pastor has
is
self-love.
advises keeping a diary and undertaking daily self-scrutiny and
was an
self-investigation
Of
course such
integral part of the Puritan tradition, but the
different here: this
is
is
his inclination are one.
examination for the best "formation of Christian character."
phasis
sphere." All
is
a leisurely
em-
counting over of one's emotional
resources rather than a strict balancing of one's quotidian account with one's
Ware
maker.
is
also especially
concerned with Christian conversation,
a
which he claims preoccupied the Savior and his disciples. Again Ware's interest is divided between the value of self-control and the lure of self-display: "let your example of cheerful, innocent, blameless words exhibit the uprightness and purity of a mind controlled by habitual principle, and be a recommendation of the religion you profess," he tells his readers. Under the guise of a justified self-approval. Ware subtly offers the pleasures topic
Ware urges his followers not to ignore "the books" among which "God has graciously ordered that your
of the mirror: self-communion.
abundance of lot shall
be
cast."
He suggests at least an hour of reading a day, and, although
recommends getting a list of other books from a minister; he states his belief that "no work of truth and science, or of elegance and taste, which does not tend to corrupt
the Bible
is
of course to his mind the primary text for study, he
the morals or create a disrelish for serious thought, need be prohibited to a religious man."^^^
Ware's
ideal Christian, metaphorically
and
literally
speaking, reads rather than acts.
The
assiduous friend of various notable
Edgeworth and Joanna terateur; he
Ware was
Baillie,
women
writers such as Maria
himself a minor poet and
wrote about the beauties of nature,
village funerals,
lit-
and other
matters of the heart as aids and corollaries to the "formation of Christian character." Interestingly enough, he had provided in his popular tract,
which forms the apotheosis of rationale literature.
A New creed,
mission, an exact theological
and description for the behavior of the heroine of sentimental Jane Elton, the heroine of Catharine Maria Sedgwick's
England Tale is
his pastoral
(1822), written to
pious, grave,
and
Edward Erskine
reflective. is
is
not a believer.
orphan, living with an
modest, quiet, intelligent, affectionate,
Her less
purity than by the realization "that if
An
She breaks one engagement because her fiance
with unbelievers," but she seems be solitary"
novel,
defend and advertise the Unitarian
an anticipation of Ware's thinking.
uncongenial Calvinist aunt, she
first
text
might well be "Be ye not yoked
motivated by adherence to doctrinal
my most sacred pleasures and hopes must
she marries him. She firmly believes in the central tenet of the
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
162
—that God has our bosoms" — and she
wisdom implanted the principle of selffinally weds a like-minded Quaker.^^® The love in pleasures of self-contemplation as well as of congeniality are insured by their liberal
creed
"in his
similarity.
Sedgwick was
of Ware's; he read, admired, and even
a close friend
directed her writing, and their shared preoccupation able to their
common
faith
may
be
in part attribut-
and their personal intimacy. Yet
later fictional
knew Ware or shared his creed, conform as closely as Jane Elton to the dictates of On the Formation of the Christian Character. Fleda, the successor to Ellen Montgomery and the star of Susan Warner's second best-seller, Queechy (1852), inhabits a world very much like whose
heroines,
creators never
the narcissistic one envisaged in Ware's tract:
it
only to discipline and create moral character; sentimental heroine
her
may become
a Christian
world "a vale of soul-making,"
little
orphan, she
it
not
in
or for
if
itself
but
there only so that the
is
and make others
so.
Fleda finds
in a rather limited
living at the start of the story
is
exists
way.
An
with her very elderly and
"womanly sweetness" Montgomery, sets ofl^ on
venerable grandfather, Mr. Ringgan, notable for his
and impracticality.^^^ her travels. Fleda
moral side of
is
He
dies
and
she, like Ellen
serious, well-read, constantly looking
thoughtful, devotional. She has a
life,
twenty years older than herself called Mr. Carleton, Dinsmore's famous some,
brilliant,
sire.
At the
on the
spiritual
and
young guardian some
who
story's start, Carleton
is
anticipates Elsie
well-to-do, hand-
charming, but proud, defiant, even Byronic; he has not found
religious certainty, or Fleda.
Fleda
Ware,
efl^ects
is less
Carleton's regeneration with relative ease; Warner, like
The
interested in conversion than in congratulation.
proceed along
a
heavy and uninterrupted course of
common
pair then
improvement.
Their conversations, conforming precisely to Ware's injunctions, inch for-
ward
in a step-by-step process
niscent
of observation, testing, and displaying remi-
of the absolute earnestness of conversation
Catharine Sedgwick and Eliza Follen reported in the 1820s Unitarian circle of which
catechism
One
in
Ware was
a part: their discourse
which both teacher and pupil are
in the is
critical faculties
in
"How was
arm along
with
a
a typical
trivial to
the
only sharpening the
rig-
a city street:
pretty the curl of blue
said
is
mutual and self-esteem. They are walk-
idly unscrutinized pleasure of total
arm
Boston
a liberalized
could say they take turns playing pastor to each other. Here
profound, their supposedly acute
like
instructed, fostered, buoyed.
example of Fleda and Carleton moving inexorably from the
ing
women
that
smoke
is
from
that chimney," he said.
tone so carelessly easy, that Fleda's heart jumped.
.
It .
.
.
The Loss of Theology "I
know
she said eagerly
it,"
—
163
have often thought of
"I
it
—espe-
cially here in the city."
"Why
What
is it?
Fleda's eye gave
spoke. "Isn't
is it?"
one of
contrast?
it
—or
"What do you make "Isn't it," said
its
exploratory looks
at least
I
at his
.
before she
think that helps the effect here."
the contrast?," he asked quietly.
Fleda with another glance, "the contrast of some-
thing pure and free and upward-tending with what
"To how many people do you suppose had
.
.
it
is
below
it."
.
.
ever occurred that smoke
a character?," said he, smiling.
"You are laughing at me, Mr. Carleton? Perhaps I deserve it." "You do not think that," said he, with a look that forbade her to think it. "But I see you are of Lavater's mind, that everything has a physiognomy?" "I think
he was perfectly right," said Fleda. "Don't you, Mr. Carle-
ton?"
"To some very nice
sensibilities,
Thus basking even in
people, yes!
in
—But the expression
is
so subtle that only
with fine training, can hope to catch
such tepid rays, ever ascending, they reach and revel
the ether of religious observation, until Carleton can exclaim, "
much
it."
religion heightens the
throbbed an answer."^'*®
enjoyment of
Elitists
life'
"
'How very
—to which "Fleda's heart
of spiritual sensibility, they find
world food for their calmly voracious
intelligences.
The
life
in the
the
of the mind,
of which Fleda and Carleton clearly consider themselves devotees,
evidence
all
is
not in
pages of Queechy.
Henry Ware,
Jr.,
died in 1843, almost a decade before the publication
of Queechy; he was spared seeing the fruits of his tract. Yet just before his
death he was at
work on
On
a sequel to
the
Formation of
the Christian
what there was of it appeared posthumously in 1847. As the title suggests. Ware's later tract was intended, like Bushnell's second work on the Atonement, to correct the excesses of his Character entitled Progress of the Christian Life;
first
He stresses repeatedly that "the life of contemplation" is only produces "the life of action." He particularly compares "religious
statement.
valid
if it
affections" to "sentimental reading"; both, misused, can
"consume and waste
the sympathies" by "awakening the impulse" to action without "gratifying" it.
Ware's solutions to the threatened bifurcation between "sensibility" and
realization, at his
however, only reveal the diminution of the
command. He
finds the
most persuasive argument for the necessity of
action finally to be that ''action religious growth') action, in
intellectual resources
is
an
essential
other words,
is
and all-important means of
important chiefly because
it
can
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
164
save religious sensibility
from
its
own
excesses;
it
is
subordinate to the
"formation of the Christian character." Despite Ware's acknowledgment of a "certain
vagueness" which clouds the idea of "Christian progress," he
cannot clear
it
and prefers to
away; he stress
offers almost
only that
it
no
specific
must be
a
matter of "habit. "^'*^ Ware,
determined to construct the framework of a recourse to theology
—the
obsessively, avoids doctrine
second
—
precision utterly eludes him. Christian Life; Susan
Queechy.
is
examples of pious "action"
full Christian life
without
tract, like the first, absolutely,
like a
Ware
almost
carpenter working without his tools: did not live to finish Progress of the
Warner went on
to
produce numerous sequels to
THE ESCAPE FROM HISTORY The
Static
Imagination
Teachers Without Texts
work was to go against the increasingly anti-intellectual temper of the times; few liberal Protestant clergymen had the training, inclination, or courage for such an attempt. With notable exceptions, they were apologists, not preachers. Temperance men indeed, they diluted their doctrines to suit the taste of their listeners. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Protestant minister became the only professional other than the housewife who ceased overtly to command, much less monopolize, any special body of knowledge. His self-esteem depended more and more on the hope, even the genuine attempt, to be better, and less and less on the claim to have learned certain skills which would allow him to In truth, to publish serious theological
do better.
One
is
reminded of the housewife of today's
television ads.
She
is
presumably obsessed with putting the right detergent into the laundry; yet even kiss
if
her choice
is
effective, she expects
no more from her family than
or a compliment whose offhandedness stresses that
tion.
Her bold
sons and husbands and
less
sparkling clothes, are uninterested in the
Her family
is
it is
no act of recogni-
bold daughters, putting on their
why
of
it:
they simply
on the move, on the go, while "mom"
is
functions like scenery affecting the mind of the traveler.
with her family must appear accidental,
merged and dubious
expertise
is
if
a
fortuitous.
The
feel better.
stationary; she
Her
interaction
housewife's sub-
expressed only in the tip-off glance she
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN
166
C
L L
T
L
R E
exchanges with her equally weary and indispensable feminine audience. She is
"in the
know," but barred from the conceptualization of what she knows.
N4others and ministers with their undetected
.
.
Despite their secret supremacy, even despite the real service they
form and the
satisfaction they
openly to participate a
keeping their bustling
and congregations more decent than their bustling should permit
families .
skills
phenomenon. Whatever the
may
take in
causal relationship
between ideology and
clear that ideas play a crucial part in the
Dogma,
creates precision not because
but because
them
it
to take
can help
it.
We
and to think from
its
they have abandoned any right
process of change or fully to understand
in the
personal and social change.
it,
it
the
{per-
events,
it
as
it
is
comprehension and enactment of
commitment
to a certain set of ideas,
fosters the illusion of certainty
on
points,
all
subscribers to pick the right chance and nerve
induce people to alter partly by urging them to think,
a different persp>ective
than the one they normally adopt.
No one who wishes to effect change can cease to be an educator; no educator can do his work by starting exactly where assumptions. If he does so
his hearers are,
— and the majority of
nor with their
liberal Protestant ministers,
majority of American middle-class mothers and housewives, have
like the
increasingly done so in the
last
century
—
his
educative role has become part
of what the historian Daniel Boorstin terms a "pseudo-event":^ an event
designed and arranged so that people will notice
happening, though
it
will in fact
not take place:
which proves only the existence of in
other words, only that the
a j>erformer
embryo market
and believe
it
a trick
it
to be
of public relations
and an audience
— proves,
situation does indeed exist.
Such an educator provides, no matter how unwillingly, merely window-dressing for the forces which control his society. An ideology^ can represent a significant
mode
of resistance to economic determinism;
it
giving the vote, so to speak, to that part of oneself, no matter
which has withstood for whatever reasons the pressures
We
have already seen
theological thought
women
a
to conform.
an occasionally hostile lack of interest
inevitable
among educated and
in
literary Protestant
and what they had to gain from the demise of theology; unlike the
ministers, the
women
tion of Protestant
had never been involved
in the
formation or p>erpetua-
dogma. This does not mean, however, that they had
better substitute for
women
was
why
way of how small,
is
it
than did the ministers. Their effons to
a
make other
experts in "domestic science" u ere robbed of vitality by the intru-
sion of technology into the kitchen; mother-at-home hostess to male inventions. Their hopes to
was forced
make women
to play
into professional
mothers were diminished by the appvearance of (male) child psychologists and educational experts
who
guided rather than followed feminine practice.
Yet educated nineteenth-centurv American women,
like ministers,
wished
The Escape from History
to see themselves as missionaries
167
and teachers. The sincerity of the dismay
which they expressed as women and Christians when they contemplated a world irreligious and basically antagonistic to feminine concerns can hardly be questioned; who does not want in some way to change a society which denigrates her? Their choice to capitalize on the subversive, even subliminal aspects of their faith rather than to emphasize
strength as a sustaining
its
ideology for protest was logical and inescapable,^ but this of saying that they were in certain
ways doomed
is
another
to failure. If the
way
women
under discussion disavowed openly strident feminist methods, the goals they
worked for were feminist ones: better education, more opportunities, and more respect for their sex. The progress of women's rights in our culture, unlike other types of "progress," has always been strangely reversible, in part
because historical circumstances have always
made
impossible for signifi-
it
women to adopt an ideology appropriate to their position. As nineteenth-century women neglected Protestant dogma to point out the
cant numbers of
undeniable, yet often overlooked, nurturing values contained in their
gious heritage, so twentieth-century
reli-
women thus far have stressed emotional
"supportiveness" rather than the (usually Marxist) doctrines which else-
where tial
buttress
communal
thinking.*
Nurture and supportiveness are
values in any feminist-humanist vision, but they need
inform them
if
ing even to her
As
a
some structure to
they are to be achieved rather than espoused.
lady with her dislike of theorizing set an example
more overtly
essen-
The
Victorian
which has proved compell-
politicized descendants.
preacher of the gospel, the
liberal minister
was presumably com-
mitted to the hope of changing men; yet he renounced the right to educate his
congregation into his nominally chosen system of conceptualization.
Unlike
his predecessors,
he seldom delivered a
sermons on
series of
a selected
knotty theological problem such as the doctrine of election. His sermons
tended instead to be,
in
the broadest sense, occasional.
Henry Ware on "The Duty
random from his Works, of Improvement A New Year's Sermon" and "The Parallel Between the Jewish and Christian Passovers." Little wonder that the Protestant Church during this period magnified and proliferated religious "occasions" in ways that would have appalled its Puritan originators, who austerely disregarded preached, to take some examples at
—
even Christmas and Easter: the Victorian church, the intrusions of stasis into the realm of change,
extending the only valid license of Skills gain their authenticity
presumably entailed trist,
whose function
his client
is
knows what
its
multiplying holidays,
was simply honoring and
preachers.
from the recognition of unavoidable
in their acquisition. is
in
facts
A lawyer, a doctor, even a psychia-
closest to the minister's, asserts that his ability to help
largely independent of the
own psyche. The
worth of
passes for law, or medicine, or the
his
personality; he liberal minister
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
168
who abandoned
theology
as his predecessors
against him,
judges
fit
making
understood them: that
God
and
which they
the minister
"facts" of the Bible
God made
Men
are, in
in this
man, man sinned
older view live in a world not of their
momentous and
ultimate senses, not at home;
the only specialist in the knowledge they need to locate
is
Abandoning theology, the minister
themselves.
from the
had and has the right to assign any punishment he
for the offense.
in
lost his right to start
lost his expertise in
the realm
of what the psalmist called "God's thoughts"; he was inevitably forced to seek the lowest
common denominator
in the
minds of
his listeners:
some
loosely defined preoccupation with spiritual, social, and personal matters.
The sermons
of liberal Protestants inevitably became a bit like today's
— horoscopes "You want love month, but you may not of circumstances and lacking the your old friends" —designed to any will
find
this
it;
trust
set
fit
corrective bite provided by a sense of historicity.
The
which I write is perhaps more important is the
intellectual failure of
all
too apparent to need
what is failure of the majority of ministers and women involved to achieve genuine success, as opposed to popularity, in the forms with which they attempted to replace theology. Any contemporary chronicler of American historians acknowledges the numerical supremacy of clergymen and sometimes of women among the belaboring;
—
—
nineteenth-century authors of biographies and local histories, and then goes
on to dismiss their productions in a few pages. Any modem student of popular American fiction and belles lettres in the same period is forced to mention a host of names, usually those of women, occasionally those of
which are unfamiliar to the general reader. The clerical and feminine authors whose works are so largely forgotten today were caught in a double dilemma. A minister might initially reject a theological form (the treatise) as unpopular and uncongenial even though he felt guilty at his reluctance to undertake it. Unhappy and constricted within the secular or secularizing form he had chosen to alleviate his original anxiety, however, ministers,
he might well end by reminding his readers that religious
phy. lar
A
purpose that prompted him to embark
it
was only
his didactic
poetry or biogra-
at all into
female writer, putting suitably feminine piety into unsuitably popu-
and public modes, went through a similar cycle of
self-doubt
which
left her, f>erhaps
energy to the problems inherent
by
in
self-assertion
and
design, too preoccupied to devote her
her chosen vehicle and
all
too willing to
use her original religious intent largely as self-justification. Ministers and
women, unable
to
own up
fully to the
demands of
either their subject or
their form, subverted both.
The literature thus produced, whatever its actual merit, is important for the mass culture
it
helped to bring into being because of
complicated obsession with mediocrity. Authors feeling
its
a
fundamental and
confusion of pur-
The Escape from History
pose such as
I
have
described were by definition and by choice amateurs,
just
They could
not professionals.
to boast of achievement in a partially
hardly wish to
any usual
sense;
call attention to
they could hardly
genuine critique of the prominent and
the forgotten, and the
They were
169
common,
in
to
produce
a defense of the unskilled,
the mass-produced items of
of necessity interested
modem
life.
those multitudinous situations, events,
and persons which they could deceptively portray process of conspicuous historical change but
absorb and mute
fail
themselves,
as lying outside the
which served
in actuality to
it.
The Romantic Historians: History as Protestant Religion
Though
a nation of
theology. What,
swer
By
in
if
churchgoers, Americans were not concerned with
anything, did hold their intellectual attention?
varying forms until the eve of the Civil
1860 there were
1 1 1
War
seemed to be
The
an-
history.
active historical societies in the United States; 90 of
some "proceedings." And this in a country where there were only fifty-five towns with a population larger than fifteen thousand.^ Between 1800 and 1860, 90 of the 348 best-sellers in America, over onefourth, were either histories or books on historical topics; the seven most
these had published
influential periodicals of the
tents to historical subjects.
day devoted fully thirty percent of
By
1840, history
tary-school level; as early as 1790,
was widely taught
Noah Webster,
in his
their con-
at the
elemen-
popular textbook.
The Little Reader's Assistant, allotted half his space to historical material.
formal study of the past made
its
way
slowly but surely into high-school
and college curricula.^ Moreover, American fascination with history initially
stimulated and gained strength
The
at least
from the growing American absorp-
tion in fiction.
To
put
it
quite simply, history
itself
provided the most suitable subject
for literature in post-revolutionary America.
As English
fond of pointing out, there seemed to be a dearth of this
new
country.
Smith inquired
"Who
in 182
1.
critics
new
were
all
too
work in wit Sydney
literary
American book?" the British His query was snide but not jesting. Was there a lack reads an
of literary material, or motivation? Innumerable nationalist literary apologias
flowed from the pens of anxious defenders of American culture or protoculture in the early and mid-nineteenth century to quell such anxieties.
Their authors argued that American energy was necessarily
in large
measure
devoted to the development of a continent, not to the pursuit of the
arts.
Such arguments blossomed logically in the proclamation that America itself was the "greatest poem" and its exploitation hence an act of the imagination as of the body.^
America's material was clearly in
its
extraordinary and,
hopefully, providential history: "a city on a hill" had one obvious subject
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
170
—
and those
itself,
pared for
its
civilizations
which
paralleled,
threw into
or pre-
relief,
progress.
commonplace
how
American historians of the early and mid-nineteenth century were; the popular works of William Prescott on the Spanish conquest of the New World or the studies by Francis Parkman of the wilderness struggle between French and English were frankly formed on dramatic models and organized around carefully contrived flights of rhetorical eloquence. History was sometimes It
is
a
to
remark
"literary" the great
touted as a kind of antidote to fiction, exciting but not enervating.®
demand on
the historian, however, to write well, to be accessible, to provide
—
entertainment, to focus on character, to orchestrate events
remember
The
Sir
Walter Scott and the Waverly
in short, to
—never flagged. A
series
work of
writing for the Atlantic Monthly in 1859 urged frankly that a history should be as pleasurable for
critic
readers as the "airiest novel. "^ In his
its
young manhood, Prescott tried his hand at genteel light literature; Parkman, like John L. Motley, the historian of the Netherlands, produced a novel; even George Bancroft, the Jacksonian celebrator of Manifest Destiny, began by publishing a volume of poor Byronic verse. All four men saw themselves throughout their careers tor and rival of the
new
as practitioners of belles lettres. ^®
history
The quickened American major
was
less literature
The
real progeni-
than theology.
interest in history was, of course, part of a
which involved all of Western Europe, particularly simply, people began to believe that the most profound
intellectual shift
Germany. To put and meaningful uniquely
it
way
of viewing
in historical time;
German
thinkers with
historians studied clerical.
was not
as a series of events unfolding
man's growth, and his measurements of
other words, took on enormous seminal
was
life
new
whom
significance.^^
The
attitude of the
several of the best of the
American
necessarily or apparently anti-Christian or anti-
Indeed, their philosophy of history represented a complex transfor-
mation of Protestant dogma.
One
could almost say that the
German
romantic historian-philosophers were performing a complex intellectual eration
in
it,
by which they transplanted the heart of Protestant theology
body of secular G. W.
F.
into the
society.
Hegel, perhaps the most important philosopher of the nine-
teenth century, like
many
of his comp)etitors and followers, was as willing
to find in the dialectical historical patterns he elucidated
German
op>-
historian called "the loftiness
Ways of God"^^
what another great
and logic of the development
[of]
.
.
John Winthrop, the seventeenth-century governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had been to see the design of God in the sufl^ering of a band of colonists on the Massachusetts coast. It seems
the
as ever
obvious that the great dialectic of Calvinism^^ in
Christ
—was
in part responsible
—God versus Man reconciled
for the concept of historical progression
1
The Escape from History as thesis, antithesis,
7
1
and synthesis worked out by German philosophers
like
Hegel. Moreover, the combination of a sense of tragedy with millennial hope, a combination frequently attendant on dialectical thought, was com-
mon
to Hegelians and to Calvinists.
Hegel
stressed continually the waste of
history; he eloquently referred to history itself as a "slaughter-bench."^'*
mass of men,
in
The
Hegel's theory, do not further the great historical design,
who do advance it count less for their motives and aspirations
and even those
than for the effects they produce, effects often contrary to their intentions.
Winthrop,
like his Calvinist brethren,
understood historical waste too; Win-
throp's Deity also elected his instruments with a fair degree of arbitrariness to serve his purposes.
—
John Winthrop or Jonathan Edwards did not that the dialectic operates only in time; as a result, in apprehending whatever reality means, it is more essential in the Hegelian view to perceive the Yet Hegel believed
—
as
differences than the similarities
phy, committed to this
between
relativistic
historical epochs.
assumption, concerned
Hegelian philosoitself less
with the
discovery and meaning of the immutable laws of God's universe and more
with the definition of the ways by which
how
and
men
perceive or project such laws,
The German
these perceptions alter over time.
thinkers most
directly responsible for the inception of the intellectual presuppositions
with which
Goethe,
all
we
live
still
— Herder,
partly available in English
work with an attempt
their
ophy
as "its
by 1850^^
—characteristically began
to formulate the distinctions
the Christian-medieval, and the
cal,
Hegel, Schlegel, Fichte, Schiller, and
age comprehended
in
between the
modem periods.
thought." ^^
Hegel described philosPhilosophy was now chained
to history, not to theology. St. Augustine, the greatest of the early fathers, his
had believed,
as others did after
home.
St.
church
him, that the Christian should direct
thoughts toward the eternal "City of
earthly
classi-
God" and
ignore the flux of his
Augustine's nineteenth-century
German
successors,
equally fascinated with constructing a historical-theological world view, disagreed.
They saw
the fundamental philosophical task as the comprehen-
sion of the significance of
remember, interested
By
a
paradox
St.
change
—
a
phenomenon which, we do
Augustine relatively
little.
essential to Calvinism, history for the Calvinist
sented not only God's immortal plan, but mortal
life
meant
as
much
had repre-
experience; the end,
God's glory, was foreordained, but the means, whether furthered individual's salvation or damnation,
well to
as that end.
in a
given
Although
it
was not, according to the older Protestant view, in man's power to determine whether or not he personally was saved, his spiritual state was nonetheless justifiably
and rightly
of history which, in a like
way
his
most momentous concern. Hegel's was
unthinkable to Winthrop and those
a
view
who thought
him, discounted the state of a man's soul. Hegel started and ended with
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
172
what actually happened, the "accomplished end, and
result as operative
its
upon the actual world,"^^ as Winthrop could not. Even as he tried to save himself from entrapment in matter, in what he called "the madness of what has happened," by amplifying a teleological view of events, a "final aim [for which] these monstrous
means
to ends.
in
have been made,"^® Hegel subordinated
Winthrop could never have used the word
to his mind, served.
life has,
change
sacrifices
human
life
every
Hegel's perception of the relentlessness of
produced
in
him
a fascination
from any awareness of God's
separable
"sacrifices";
with force potentially
design. His conception of history
was inevitably both intellectual and elitist; finally, the only consolation for the sheer magnitude and waste of historical motion lay in philosophic perception of the patterns
it
formed. ^^
The young American approach thinkers
home know
who went
to
Germany
Hegel or Goethe made sure to
like
that they
scholars
expressly to
their friends
let
were dutifully sorting out the wheat from the
back chaff.
George Ticknor, the future professor of Romance Languages at Harvard, acknowledged that the Germans "are a people who at this moment have more mental activity than any other existing," that among them are the handful of intellectuals who define the issues of the day; but he was also convinced that they frequently misdirect and even "pervert" their enormous talents.^^ Goethe might be a genius, but George Bancroft, future author of the most popular history of the United States ever written, found him "dirty" and "bestial."^ Such New Englanders hoped to gain intellectually while keeping their religious commitment intact. This was of course not ^
possible,
nor probably desirable.
Of
the seven most important figures in the
development of post-Revolution American history
—George Ticknor, Ed-
George Bancroft, William Prescott, John Lothrop Motley, and Francis Parkman none were untouched by the new ward
Everett, Jared Sparks,
—
German
historiography and the transformation of theology integral to
Parkman were all and these four made
Everett, Sparks, Bancroft, and ministers or ministers themselves, against the ministry
and for the
a Unitarian minister,
after
set
came back from
on defeating
either the sons of a
conscious choice
historical profession. Bancroft, the son of
sojourn
his
prolonged struggle, on the career of
unconsciously
it.
his
own
a
in
Europ)e determined,
clergyman; yet he seemed
decision.
He wore
outlandishly
foppish velvet clothing; he dropped affected phrases like "our dear Pelican Christ"
from Cambridge
pulpits, to the
dismay of
the ministry. After a stint as a teacher, he
He soon
left
a full-time politician
and
his listeners.^^
became
made his name through orations on the American past, on Adams, Jefferson, Washington, the "Fathers" and their deeds. He too gave up a clerical career, and one which began far more brilliantly than Bancroft's. Hard-working, elohistorian.
Edward
Everett was not officially an historian, but he
The Escape from History
quent, capable of everything, as his student
except of finding a mission
in life,^^
173
Emerson
astutely recognized,
Everett took over Joseph Buckminster's
Unitarian pulpit at the tender age of twenty.
A
few years
later,
without
breaking openly with the ministry, he made, like Bancroft, a step sideways
toward the academy; he joined the faculty of Harvard College as a professor of Greek.
By
the age of twenty-six, he could write his sister about the
many
"natural disdain" he felt for
of the concerns of the ministry and
express scorn for the much-celebrated sermons of the prodigious and sainted
Buckminster: "their puerility of style and ness
.
.
.
.
.
.
aflPectation of literary correct-
[were] calculated to do the least good to those
who most
need
it."^"*
Four years later, in 1824, Everett was elected to Congress, and, like Bancroft, he abandoned the ministry altogether for politics, diplomacy, and history. Jared Sparks, the editor of the multi-volume American Biography,
no such formal
shift.
He
made
gradually redirected his energies from the duties
of a Unitarian minister (which he had transformed largely into editorial
work It
in
any
case)
toward those of a talented eulogizer of the American
was Parkman, the youngest and perhaps the
most defiantly chose history effeminacy of the
Parkman, was in
liberal
temperament, he
aided groups like
men."
He
what he considered the clergyman also named Francis
Channing; witty, gentle, ineffectual, melancholy
insisted
on observing fading
"The Society
apparently aroused
younger Parkman
who
as a protest against
church. His father, a
a disciple of
greatest of the group,
past.
for the Relief of little
clerical proprieties
Aged and
and
Indigent Clergy-
respect in his son. In later years, the
liked to recount a childhood scene
tions he clearly cherished. His father
whose
was talking with
hostile implica-
a sentimental femi-
boy sat unobtrusively sketching nearby. When asked politely to show the grown-ups his picture, he revealed a tableau in which three devils were carrying away a minister! The sketch was clearly Parkman's translation of the feminine-clerical dialogue on which he was eavesdropping. Throughout his life, he referred to ministers as "ver-
nine parishioner while the
little
,^1^ "25
min.
Not one of the new American
historians,
however, altogether disdained
the clerical-theological profession. All of them, whether consciously or
otherwise, expropriated and rescued a
its
most
vital traditions
for
Even those historians who had never considered the ministry profession embraced the career of historian with what at times seemed
their as a
own
number of
use.
appropriated
zeal. Prescott,
the son of a lawyer, and Motley, the descendant
underwent what can only be called conversion experiences. Prescott, wealthy and charming, was known among his acquaintances as an idler almost up to the moment when Ferdinand and Isabella was published in 1838. George Ticknor, in his biography of Preson the paternal
side of merchants,
cott. takes care to
show
his readers Prescott's
stem
self-control, to share
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
174
with them the examining journals, the reiterated resolves which nerved Prescott in his struggles to produce.^^ Motley as a a
more desperate
lute.
case than Prescott; he
young man represented
was considered
less
gay than
disso-
Reputedly beautiful after the Byronic fashion, he possessed the elegant
insouciance of a Bulwer-Lytton dandy. Motley had been well educated by
Bancroft himself
at his
pursued was chiefly
fiction.
Hill
When
he answered with
cial tastes,
am
Round
all
a tutor
Harvard the reading he
at
reproached him for such superfi-
the nonchalance of a determined
reading historically, and have
Taken
academy, but
come
to the novels of the 19th century.
lump, they are very hard reading. "^^ Further study
in a
prepared for but did not precipitate
his destiny.
By
Hope,
is
made and
plasticity
my
with
tellingly to confess: fickleness.
Germany
discipline he
The hero of his first novel, Morton V
"The ground work of my character was
was mortified by
I
in
1839, at twenty-five, he
knew, however, that the study of history offered him the apparently despised but secretly craved.
trifler: "I
.
.
.
my
ignorance and disgusted
former course of reading [largely poetry].
now
I
set
myself vio-
lently to the study of history."^®
Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic did not appear until 1856, but by the
mid- 1840s he had discovered the therapeutic value of the research involved
new
in the
history.
For
historiography prided
all its
itself
literary qualities, early nineteenth-century
chiefly
on
disavowal of impressionism,
its
obsession with the "facts," with the object, as the
von Ranke put in itself
it
Granada "Poetry
it
truly
in
is).^^
Prescott, reviewing
Leopold
extensive
Washington
Irving's Conquest
(as
of
happily of the factual impulse of recent history:
confined to her
Parkman did
historian
an immortal phrase, "wie es eigentlich gewesen war"
in 1829, writes [is]
German
its
own
work
in
sphere."^° Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, and
European and American
archives; like their
Calvinist predecessors, they solaced themselves with the belief that their
labor truth.
was putting them
in
touch with, and was even
Behind their commitment to research lay their
itself
equivalent
trust in
to,
work. "Be
occupied always," Prescott admonished himself;^ Sparks, whose career was ^
an exemplum of
efl^ort,
warned others
never purchase their devotees "a seat
Motley both spent
a
the resource of exhaustiveness.
ways to
treat
all
life plan.
France
in the
mental tasks
and dissipation"
will
temple of fame."^^ Prescott and first
major
studies.
what theology had offered
They tended
their fathers:
to conceive of their
Bancroft and Sparks meant
History
work
in
in their different
of American revolutionary history, Prescott to detail Span-
ish-American relations
Dutch impulse
in the
decade preparing their
offered these pioneering historians
terms of a massive
that "idleness
Motley to document the GermanicParkman to cover the struggle of England and
in their entirety,
to liberty,
New World from start to finish. They in the
same
spirit in
undertook their monu-
which Edwards and Hopkins dedicated
The Escape from History
175
their futures to the consolidation of their theological systems.
Research for the historian, as formerly for the theologian, could involve not
just labor
forest,
but martyrdom. Parkman's chosen subject, the American
and the fervency with which he pursued
one of the arduous missionary forays of
David Brainard. Parkman wrestled, Parkman's "enemy,"
as
he called
his experience of
earlier Calvinists like
it,
John
remind Eliot or
as did Prescott, against lifelong illness:
his disease,
was an incapacitating disorder
centered in the head; Prescott's was incipient blindness. But both
men battled
Hopkins or Emmons would have recognized and appreciated. Everett, Ticknor, Bancroft, Prescott, and Motley, during their student days and long after, habitually worked ten to fourteen hours daily, a regimen reminiscent of that which men like Hopkins and Edwards had imposed on themselves. Timothy Dwight and William Ellery Channing confessedly injured their health by their zealous over-commitment to the study of God's on
in a spirit
word; Parkman admitted that he had done "violence" to preparing for his career; Prescott
eye
if
knew he could
regain vision in at least one
he would stop the reading necessary to
seriously considered such an
The
abandonment of
his constitution in
his
work, but he never
his vocation.
transfer of energy formerly assigned to theological tasks into the
service of history
is
as
apparent
in the
most prominent nineteenth-century
work
as in the career patterns of the
historians.
With Hegel, they appropri-
from Protestant theology a notion of dialectical relationship and development which they used to understand the phenomenon of change; in every sense coming after Hegel, they became more interested in the fact of change than in the laws which tried to explain its purpose. At first glance, the underlying preoccupation of the romantic historians ated
appears to be not only a secular, but a political one:^^ the of liberty.
It is
rise
and spread
important to remember here that the beginning of
historical writing in the
modem
United States coincided with the winning of inde-
pendence and the consequent debate and controversy over the form of
new nation. The burst of historof the scramble among towns, states, sections, and
government appropriate for ical activity
was thus part
this
exemplary
parties for a controlling voice in
Judge Marshall's Federalist ence the election of 1810.
on
New
American
affairs.
Jefferson
Life of George Washington
A southern
was sure
was designed
that
to influ-
reviewer objected to Bancroft's stress
England; he was fully cognizant
that, if
northerners wrote the
would "become our masters."^'* American history was thus politicized and political from its inception; it naturally tended to stress the importance of politics, and of the special American brand of politics. George Bancroft, while always maintaining devoutly with Hegel that God nation's history, they
directs
human
progress, argued consistently that the religious "liberty" the
Pilgrims had sought was, intentionally or otherwise, the precursor for the
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
176 political
freedom of which
their nineteenth-century descendants boasted;
became
despite his lifelong love of Jonathan Edwards, he in
the ministers
among
his subjects
only
when
vividly interested
their aspirations
most
trans-
parently took on a directly political cast.^^ Motley, writing several decades after Bancroft
began to publish
his History,
found the meaning of the
struggle of Protestant Holland against Catholic Spain in the political
independence. Even Prescott, justifying the Conquistadors' con-
quest of Mexico, pointed the
Dutch quest for
moment the equally
up the despotic nature of Aztec
dictatorial
rule
—ignoring for
regime to be imposed by the Spaniards.^®
Yet the persistent theme of the romantic historians was not politics,
deep
as their
involvement was
in political affairs.
finally
They would each
have defined the term "freedom" differently to begin with: Bancroft was a Jacksonian democrat
who
considered himself "radical to the heart's core,"^^
while Parkman, Prescott, and Motley were
Parkman was
allegiance.
its
varying ways patrician
in their
clearly not as politically oriented as the others, yet
he was definitely of their school; focus, with
in
it is
as if in
Parkman's work the
rather spurious optimism, can be
dropped
political
as adventitious.
Whatever their very real flaws of attitude and judgment, romantic historians saw too deeply into the meaning of their country to concentrate on its democratic mission. Although they might not have been willing to say so, their common interest was less in liberty than in "the course of empire," the phenomena of discovery, expansion, struggle, conquest, and exploitation of which politics is but one reflection. Whether it was Cortez defeating the Aztec leader Montezuma, or La Salle planting the French flag in the American wilderness, the drama which fascinated them was that of imperialism. Their work is finally, in the broadest sense, not political but military history; they were profoundly if inconclusively involved in the study of violence. Jared Sparks, apparently the
determined to be
least
biased
member
of the group, the one most
compiling his popular twenty-five-volume Library
fair, in
of American Biography, which he intended as a kind of biographical history of America itself, notably stressed adventurers over saints. The vast prepon-
derance of
who
his Lives are
manifested above
devoted to explorers, all
soldiers,
and
politicians, those
energy.^®
Despite the fact that Sparks selected his biographers from every walk of (intellectual)
life
strikingly similar: son,
including the ministry, the portraits which emerge are
whether the subject
whether the writer
is
is
William Phipps or Alexander Wil-
the minister William Peabody or the scholar
on the problem of masculine ambition. Captain John Smith, whose "life and adventures" are given by the literary critic George Hillard in the second volume of the series, could serve as a prototype of those whose lives succeed his: he is one "among the adventurAlexander Everett, the focus
ous spirits
is
whom a restless love of enterprise called from the bosom of repose
The Escape from History in
England to new scenes and untried
perils in
177
our Western wilds"; he was
fortunate enough to "live in striving and eventful times" and to find in
America "an object attractive enough to keep his imagination perpetually kindled and vast enough to task all his powers."^^ Such words suggest that have such an object.
their author does not live in such times, does not
or Sparks, are warming their hands very self-consciously at
like Hillard,
they have not kindled. This
is
clearly the value of history to them:
their vicarious participation in the massive energies at it
work
it
Men fires
permits
in their society;
allows them imaginatively to invoke and to control the ungovernable
spirit
animating
Sparks used
which
enterprise
capitalist culture,
change
his role as historian to re-enact the
so fascinated him. Like his
research, he traveled thousands of miles
unseen manuscripts ... in
the
.
.
.
itself.
in
to friends in 1827
major peers a pioneer
fields
in archival
and examined innumerable hitherto-
the course of his work.
untrodden
drama of discovery and
He
himself "an explorer
felt
of American history.
"'^^
The
letters
he wrote
from Mt. Vernon, where he was going through the
Washington papers, read
a little like those of a general
engaged
in military
operations sending dispatches to his civilian contacts. Most of Sparks's stable
of writers for the American Biography series engaged in no such strenuous forays; yet they are consistently uninterested in those
resemble their
own
who
overtly most
scholarly selves; they dismiss "sedentary" pursuits with
They lust for the event, which they implicitly define as the moment of impact. The relatively short shrift given to clergymen in the American Biography is explained when Convers Francis, the biographer of consistent scorn.
John
Eliot, apostle to the Indians, passes rapidly
ministry in Roxbury: "There
clergyman
as such,
though
is
full
not of
much
toil,
concentrates rather on Eliot's missionary primarily interested in the fact that
it
is
over
Eliot's lengthy, settled
to be told; for the
not
of a
of events."'*^ Francis
full
work with
was
life
the Indians, and he
is
largely a failure. Christian piety
cannot integrate the natives into modernizing society.
To
convert the Indi-
ans as the Puritans originally intended to do, in Francis' narrative as later in
Parkman's, only hastens their demise; faith
all
by
itself is a
sign of passivity
and of approaching obsolescence.'*^ Sparks, Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, Parkman, and their followers were
writing what Nietzsche would
call
"monument"
history: the
tion and celebration of significant masculine achievement, pressive to these authors for
its
evanescence and
futility.
all
The
commemorathe more im-
vastness of the
topics and the periods they covered, as well as the organic theory of history as a process of conflicting
and resolving forces which they had appropriated
from the German school, made imperative an epic panorama and synthetic sweep from which by definition only the mightiest figures those, in
—
Hegelian terms, possessed of the
"spirit of the
age"
— could detach them-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
178
selves
and emerge with
marked by
The works
clarity.
of the romantic historians are
unending motion which both
a sense of
and
parallels
finally
contains the aspiring will of the chief protagonists.
Motley clearly enjoyed writing the "Historical Introduction" to Dutch Republic,
in
which he compressed
millennium into
a
him an
cant details; the necessity of condensation makes ical
at
hunter stalking the ages for
its
most
his
signifi-
aggressor, an histor-
His excitement gradually mounts;
his prey.
the close of the introduction, he switches into the present tense.
As he
prepares to usher in his story proper, the narrative, released, can dilate
momentarily. This beginning
Dutch Republic,
ley's
of
movement and
is
like that of Prescott's Fall
collection, force
and
portrait of the hero or villain, arrest involved in these
honors
is
his hero,
of Mexico,
rhythm of Motis
counterpoint
a
by the
periodically broken
whether Philip
moments of
overall
resistance: the spectacle of the ever-
turbulent masses, the ever-moving ages,
scious: the historian
The
not deceptive.
portraiture
no matter
The
of Spain or Cortez.
II
is
how
set
deliberate and self-con-
he
may abhor his princi-
from the flow of his narrative, just as Cortez or Philip fought to impress his nature upon his times. The sea metaphors Motley uses again and again are appropriate and telling beyond their obviby exempting him
ples,
ous relevance his
briefly
in a history of
Holland. In Motley's narratives, as
drown
fellow historians, the heroes inevitably
but they are allowed vivid and
full
The ployed
attempts to
it
—
those of
in the flood of the
account,
flashbacks before they do drown.
logic of the narrative suggests that their
process
in
energy
less
is
The
only than that of the
alter.
American
style the best of the nineteenth-century a highly rhetorical, oratorical,
grand style
—
historians
em-
same law
illustrates the
which governs the narrative form: exhibitionism struggling heroarrest the attention of an utterly mobile universe. Bancroft was
of motion ically to
known, even powers;
criticized, for the profusion
in revising his early
volumes, he
called "slaughtering adjectives.'"*^
man who produced
Yet
it
furious river raging below;
by the
felt
bound
was the
his descriptive
to engage in
what he
later writer Francis Park-
the most highly crafted "purple" prose; he spoke of
Hennepin's discovery of Niagara thus: as yet
and extravagance of
pettiness of
til
"On
at length, in
his left
sank the
cliffs,
the
primeval solitudes, unprofaned
man, the imperial cataract burst upon
his sight.'"**
which places a high value on conspicuousness and waste. What is prominently displayed is in the same moment thrown away. The eflfect of restlessness in Parkman, Motley, or Prescott is heightened by a profusion of metaphors whose occasional confusion seems the result of the quickening pace. Motley describes Philip the Fair, the father of Charles the Fifth, as "the bridge over which the house of Hapsburg passes to almost universal monarThis
is
a style
chy, but, in himself, nothing."*^
The
reader's half-realized impression that
.
The Escape from History
one cannot be both
a "bridge"
and a "nothing"
179
is
lost in
the tide; Philip
both precisely because even before the close of the sentence the invincibly progressing, has necessarily shifted.
what could be
called a stable
metaphor
Hegelian
is
constant and complex
grammar of
lip service
Motley can refer almost
dialectic.
his lack of interest in
situation. Characters, places, scenes
are subjected to a kind of transformational
There
p>ersp)ective,
Motley has not revealed any
incompetence here, but he has demonstrated
literary
is
events.
paid in these works to the
clinically in passing to the rules
human history the vivifying becomes afterwards the dissolving principle."'*^ The invincible impression held by the of historical change: "even as in
all
reader that these narratives are not altogether "dialectical" comes a questioning
of their authors' sincerity in
from using such phrases than from an
unavoidable awareness of attention directed sophic concern with the dialectical process
momentum. The
is
just barely
elsewhere: philo-
lost in fascination
with
becomes self-consciously absorbed
dialectic
less
its
sheer
in its
own
pace. Parkman, Motley, and Prescott are masters of the art of flashback anticipation,
Edward
and the obvious but rich ironies to be garnered by
Everett in an 1853 oration on
future by
Columbus
method.
"The Discovery of America,"
by the Spanish throne that
ing of the 1492 proclamation
this
and
speak-
lands found in
all
belong to Spain, notes ominously: "Thus was
will
America conquered before
was
it
discovered.""*^ Everett's perception here
—that appetite can to presume digestion before the fact of consumption —
of the fundamental law of imperialism, as of capitalism
be so strong as
is
recurring and controlling one in the historical Dialectical fate
is
tells far
Everett's friends.
present; the oppressor will die, the oppressed will rise, only
to oppress in turn. But the
process
work of
a
motion which accompanies and accomplishes this
more than the outcome.
Look, for example,
at the
Conspiracy ofPontiac (1851).
magnificent closing paragraphs of Parkman's
Parkman has
just
described the assassination of
the Indian leader after the defeat of his attempt to expel the English
from
the lands of his tribe:
Thus
basely perished this
champion of
a
ruined race. But could his
shade have revisited the scene of murder, his savage exulted in the vengeance which
overwhelmed the
would have
[Indian] abettors of
Whole tribes were rooted out to expiate it. over the grave Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement than flowed from
the crime.
of
spirit
.
.
.
the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus.
Neither a
mound nor
mausoleum,
tablet
a city has risen
marked the
.
.
burial-place of Pontiac.
above the forest hero; and the race
For
whom
he hated with such burning rancor trample with unceasing foot-steps over
his forgotten grave.*®
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
180
The
point here
of course the irony; one should note
is
how
thoroughly
in
Parkman the dialectical process has been detached from its benign Hegelian end. Even more important, however, is the aimlessness, the omnivorousness of the irony: Pontiac's death ironically leads to more Indian revolts; the Indians, however, by a further irony, destroy principally themselves rather than their white conquerors; by a ans'
last
and most wrenching irony, the
beloved forests have been replaced by
cities
which Parkman, no sympa-
thizer with the Indian cause, clearly dislikes almost as himself.
Tied to the inexorability of history
Indi-
much
as Pontiac
Hegelian sense, commit-
in the
which yields a vivid tableau but little explanation or Parkman has been forced to resort to ambiguity as in itself
ted to the fait accompli
moral resolution, artistically
and philosophically conclusive;
and limited
possibilities
multitude of unsatisfactory
in a
simultaneously presented, Parkman has discovered
a suitable ending. In the Conspiracy
of Pontiac, there has
winner but the ever-alert principle of irony, the
been no
finally
of change
spirit
itself.
The Antiquarians: History as Sentimentalism
The sive bias
effort
why
collective output of the romantic historians even with
its
oppres-
toward masculinity and force, constituted an undisputedly serious
toward American
self-realization.
There were important reasons
ante-bellum America was vitally receptive and suited to the Hegelian
and post-Hegelian outlook. As
we
have seen, the
new
history represented
the use and transformation of the structures of America's oldest intellectual tradition, Protestant theology, in the service of a
modernizing time- and
change-conscious culture. Furthermore, the belief
in
in
America,
ment,
made
a belief
progress so
common
based on enormous industrial and technological develop-
palatable and even necessary the idea, central to the historicism
which Hegelian thinking inevitably created, that events occur uniquely and irredeemably ist
in time.
optimism such
as
To
put
it
another way, only a high degree of material-
America habitually suggested could permit men to
without benefit of the notions of compensation inherent
in
older non-
a
civilization
Hegelian and cyclical theories of history.*^ America was
whose rapid and apparently promising development necessitated the I
intellectual,
at least partial
have suggested that the romantic
economic, and social
adoption of historicism.
historians, like so
many
of those
have come closest actually to dealing with our culture, were sorbed by the phenomena they attempted to analyze.
They
and contained
Prescott, Motley,
ences; history
was
therein. Yet,
it
is
who
in part ab-
held the mirror
to the fundamental impulse of their society; inevitably they themselves also reflected
live
were
important to remember that
and Parkman immediately commanded European audilargely responsible for
what share of
intellectual respect
The Escape from History
America evoked abroad before of
Hawthorne and
the
1850.^®
work of
As was
181
later the case
with the novels
the southwestern humorists, foreigners
America were even quicker than United States citizens to hear and Hsten to an authentic voice; they were alert to note when the ratio between propaganda and information shifted the critically essential degree. If the work of Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman is imperialist, at interested in
times repellently
so,
nonetheless represents a significant clue to a critique
it
of a society which was ans, as
we have
itself
absorbed
in conquest.
seen, intermittently sensed
And the romantic
histori-
and expressed the corrosive and
seeping ambiguity of American success, although they could present no alternative to the cult of progress.
Others did
try, if in vain, to find
can historians were widely admired their
work continued
to appear
an alternative. in their
own
significant
four major Ameri-
time and since. Although
and to be read throughout the
the nineteenth century, the historical writing of
most
The
outcome had passed
its
which
their
later half
work was
of
the
peak by 1850. Indeed, the propor-
among best-sellers, the percentage of of the more popular magazines and re-
tion of histories or historical novels historical material in the contents
views, began to diminish in the 1840s.^^ Just as critical exegesis,
models were
also largely
German,
failed to take firm hold in the ante-bellum
period, romantic history enjoyed a rise and a fall during the
important historical work, itself until
more
like
major
and
less
same time;
Biblical criticism, did not re-establish
several decades after the Civil
technical,
whose
War, and then
in
more
scientific,
synthesized form.^^ This does not mean, however,
was not written in the United States between 1850 and 1875. Although fiction swept the American market as never before, histories and biographies continued to pour from the press. The period witnessed the rise of lyceums and libraries, many of them interested in the preservation of local history and monuments; the collection and publication of genealogies; and the founding of magazines like the New England Historical and Genealogical Register and the New Englander. ^^ What had happened was not even the temporary demise of history, but the temporary defeat of one wing of the emerging historical profession by another: the triumph of sentimental, local, that history
antiquarian, "social," and, loosely speaking, religious history, written mainly
by clergymen and women, over-romantic, national, prophetic, "political," and secular history produced principally by well-to-do amateurs.^'* The earliest historical research in America had been done at the local level, if only because, as I have remarked, towns and states and sections were initially interested in history as a means of self-inflation and self-advertisement which could justify their claim to a bigger piece of the new national pie. In
ica
other words, the historical impulse in early nineteenth-century Amer-
was
as natural to those
who felt
unjustly neglected as to those necessarily
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
182
The men and women who
involved in the problem of conspicuousness.
wrote
local, antiquarian,
or biographical history at this time were fascinated
by the meaning of obscurity. The cliche they most frequently used to describe their motive was the phrase "to rescue from oblivion." They did not claim the
who
filled
title
of historian but referred modestly to themselves as those
"the humble office of a compiler."
They were
anxious to find
which have escaped the notice of historians" and "the smaller matters of individual experience" which more pretentious historical narrative "in its stately march could not step aside to notice."^^ These chroniclers discovered their mission in redeeming what was discounted as "those minor points
.
.
.
waste by imperialist Hegelian history, and
many ways
in
their effort
was
potentially admirable and farsighted.
The under ters
majority of what
clerical
and
will call the "antiquarian" efforts
and feminine auspices reveal
women
to their present.
Englander
I
that their society
was
a justified anxiety
among
urged
New
in
minisit
was
the
New
as indifferent to their past as
One writer, speaking on "Ministerial Biography"
in 1854,
England towns to discover and publish the
history of their former ministers and churches. ple of neglect:
which were
He
"There are large portions of the
anxiously cites an examstate [Conn.] in
which
nothing has been done to rescue from oblivion the memories of the early ministers."^^ Clerical cial it
commentators could be perfectly frank about the
spe-
importance of the past for them. Whatever the past actually might
can function
in
emblem
the present as an
be,
of changelessness and thus
provide a corrective to a society obsessed with change. As one rather florid
commentator wrote
We
in 1859:
idealize the past,
set oflF in
and
recall
it
in
the placid moonlight of romance,
the form of imagination, and seen through the haze of soften-
ing regrets and holy tears.
Its
domain, so sweetly peaceful, whence most
of the evil has been eliminated and where
all
the good has been touched
with consecration, contrasts with the turmoil and haste of the present. ^^ Ministers wanted to dwell on the past, but the past which concerned
them was hardly the one presented by contemporary romantic historians. They were often uninterested, occasionally hostile, before the supposedly heroic exploits of the colonial and revolutionary periods. Sylvester Judd lost his position as chaplain to the
Maine
when he felt compelled to Noah Worcester, despite his
legislature
preach against the American Revolution.^®
strong Federalist reverence for Washington, also found the Revolution mor-
Penn was the only one of America's early heroes he praised unstintingly. In 1815, Worcester straightforwardly, if heretically, disavowed those archetypal American models of masculine endeavor, the Puri-
ally disturbing;
The Escape from History
tan Fathers: he found .
.
.
brave
in battle,
them
but
.
Horace Bushnell took
.
.
"a class of
183
men assuming the most hostile attitude
[always] in a state of alarm, anxiety or hostility."^®
a similar
view of
his theological progenitors. In his
by Michelangelo. They are imposing and inhuman: "they took hold of the iron pillars that held up the theological heavens, and climbed and heaved in huge surges of might and kept their gross faculties in exercise. They looked upon the throne, they depiction, they resemble titanic figures in a fresco
.
heard the thunder
roll."
.
.
They provided
a
"grand massive character" for
which God now means to add the needed "softer shades of feeling."^® Edwards A. Park was never able to love Jonathan Edwards, although he devoted the last decades of his life to a memoir of his famous ancestor. Park venerated Edwards, but he wished Edwards had been able to be "something more of a brother and somewhat less of a champion."^ "Champion" suggests an overpowering figure, a combatant, and a winner. Devalued by his culture, the mid-nineteenth-century liberal clergyAmerican
religion, to
^
man evaded
rather than courted comparison with his weighty predecessors.
Equally important, he insisted that current historiography, in ignoring
conspicuous experience
like his
own, was perverting
its
less
task of record keep-
ing and record evaluation.
The
was aware of the slight place his profession was accorded by contemporary historians. Park noted that "the name of a pastor is seldom mentioned by an historian."^^ William Ellery Channing remarked that history "has not a place even in its margin for the minister and the schoolmistress."^^ We have seen what short shrift Jared Sparks gave clergy-
men
liberal minister
in his Library
which spurred his
his
of American Biography. It was perhaps Sparks's neglect friend Reverend William Sprague of Albany to compile
massive nine-volume Annals of the American Pulpit between 1857 and
The
1869.
titles
of the
two
series are significantly inappropriate; Sparks's
"Biographies" or "Lives" usually present studies of an entire place and pe-
while Sprague's Annals are actually a compilation of short biographical
riod,
sketches which supply the reader with
little
historical
background. Sprague
can omit the background because of the growing disassociation between the mission of the minister and conventional historical action or importance.
The
minister
was increasingly seen
as belonging to
what Horace Bushnell
eloquently called the "dead history" of "oblivion"; "dead history" consists of those deeds and people which live on in their unrecognized influence rather than in the articulated memories of their fellows.
"Do
the vegetable
growths repine or sicken," Bushnell asks, "because they cannot remember the growths of the previous centuries? Is it not enough that the very soil that
them is fertilized by the waste of so many generations moldering in it?"®'* Edwards A. Park explained, with some point, that "the real unwritten history of the race is not, in the main, made up of war and of diplomatic
feeds
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
184
manoeuvres, but of those domestic griefs which the pastor assuages and of those private joys which he hallows."®^
The
implicit assimilation of clerical
the rubric "domestic" and "private"
too
with
felt
dle-class
justice that their story
women were by
izing present or
One
striking
is
was both
and understandable. "real"
Women
and "unwritten." Mid-
definition less responsible for America's industrial-
They had had democratic work of
heroic past than their secular male peers.
more than
their share,
settlement.
its
and feminine "history" here under
their share
some
felt,
of the
feminist historian, writing for the radical reform periodical
The Lily in 1853, quipped angrily that she was tired of hearing of the hardships the Pilgrim Fathers had endured: the Pilgrim Mothers had suffered
all
the same
trials
— plus the Pilgrim Fathers!
than their share, however, in the
elitist
Women had
had
less
business of law-making and constitu-
work has always been
tion-comp>osing. Feminine
®®
ahistorical
by the
defini-
tion of male historians: raising children and keeping house have customarily
been viewed as timeless routines capable of only minor variations. In a
country
like
America whose
self-conscious crises, the exclusion of
culture
is
particularly acute.
irrecoverable past; hence
it
process which interweaves busts of
we even
all
our great
on
historical identity rests
women from
a short series
the historical
it
inexorably with social
leaders, original copies of all
women
of the
American history does not reach back into an nowhere takes on in retrospect the aspect of life.
We
have marble
our important documents;
have photographs which cover a third of our entire span.
public records;
life
of
seldom figure
in
them,
much
can history by any comparative basis afforded
keep
keep them. Ameri-
less
in the
Men
Western world
is
an
extraordinarily recorded affair and hence an extraordinarily masculine affair.
In America, history has functioned as a kind of literacy test
women
automatically
Women who with
Yorker and
fail.
undertook the writing of history
a revisionist aim,
which
whether acknowledged or
at
mid-century did so
not. Elizabeth Ellet, a
New
a poet, dedicated her considerable skills to the reinterpretation
of the American past. She was well aware that there existed an "abundance of materials for the [masculine] history of action" and
little
for the (feminine)
history of "feeling,"®^ yet she determined to redress the balance. In her most
important work. The Women of the American Revolution, published in three volumes between 1848 and 1850, Ellet tried to turn her readers from their
preoccupation with the Revolution's "leading to a concern with the founding mothers,
and shed
light
the founding fathers,
provided "the nurture
in
the
which afterwards kindled on the world."®® When women wrote historical
domestic sanctuary of that love of into a flame
who
spirits,"
civil liberty
novels, they did so to express discreetly veiled hostility to the very history
they were apparently extolling.
I
have already discussed works
like Eliza B.
The Escape from History
Lee's
Naomi
185
as protests against the ministry, but they were,
perhaps more
importantly, protests against a pecuHar definition of American history. mission of the heroine in these novels
him paradoxically from the
rescues
to a domestic tale.
Naomi and
is
The
from history: she novel, which she transmutes
to free the hero
historical
her loyal lover eventually desert the Puritan
and the Puritan community which persecutes those belonging to their
faith
Quaker
persuasion: they
marry and go
precisely and appropriately
when we
off into a sylvan idyll.
The book
pass out of the prison of male chroni-
domain of unrecorded feminine grace and family
cles into the
course, a convention of the novel that
ends
life. It is,
closes with a dismissal of
it
where they
its
of
charac-
no longer be subjected to the readers' scrutiny, but this convention has double force in a book like Naomi. The author does not so much drop the historical lifeline as cut it. Her characters have gone into a realm where history cannot follow them. ters into their private lives
Catharine Sedgwick's historical
from America's male
protests
will
work
critics,
is
who
equally ambivalent. Occasional
woman
felt a
could not deal
adequately with history or government, apparently found an echo
in
Sedg-
wick's understandably confused conscience.^^ In Hope Leslie (1827), a ro-
mance
set in
New
seventeenth-century
England, Sedgwick's high-spirited
heroine represents benign feminine anarchy wreaking charming havoc with official records.
As she
peers, frees witches,
history; she
is
past. In later
defies the
stem
edicts of
Governor Winthrop and
Hope
and defends Indians,
tion,
with an avowal that she has omitted any itself
woman."^® She
on the grounds that she
tastefully substitutes for
several rather dull love
nobility of character.
who
of the
is
his-
about the American Revolu-
She prefaces The Linwoods
patriot
solidities
books, Sedgwick evaded rather than subverted American
tory.
Revolution
Leslie suggests counter-
an ex post facto protest against the masculine (1835), a novel
his
real consideration of the
but a "weak and unskilled
such analysis the delineation of
few fervent panegyrics on Washington's Only the heroine, Isabella Linwood, an impetuous
aflPairs
and
a
continually regrets she
is
not a
man and
thus able to defend her
country, suggests Sedgwick's frustration at her sex-determined exile from her
own
material.
alized domestic
By
the later 1830s, Sedgwick had turned to thinly fiction-
manuals and religious
even from subversive history, was
Unable
as a
woman
treat the past, she
and
trials
tracts.
Her
apostasy from history,
little
noted but immensely significant.
to find a perspective
from which she could adequately
turned her very real talents to a depiction of the pleasures
involved in running the
modem household, and she took
her large
Works like Sedgwick's Home (1835) and Live represent in embryo form the romance of domestic
feminine following with her.
and Let Live (1837) management which would become the staple fare of the profoundly historical women's magazines of the twentieth century.
anti-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
186
riet
women authors which succeeded Sedgwick's, the only major figure who could be said to
In the generation of
Har-
Beecher Stowe
have
devoted her
is
finest talents to the historical novel. It
seems hardly accidental
vogue and success of female authors in what Fred Lewis Pattee has called "the feminine fifties" coincided with the end of the dominance of historical fiction. The chosen noms de plume of several of the most important
that the great
of these authors suggest their anti-historical bias in guise:
tion
"Fanny
Forrester,"
its least
"Fanny Fern," "Grace Greenwood"
"Minnie Myrtle," "Lily Larkspur," and, somewhat
Such names,
flirting
femininity, they define
it
Even while they
as superfluous;
self-baptism, feminine authors
tory.
—not to men-
"Jenny June."
coyly with suggestions of vegetative process, are deco-
rative advertisements of luxury items.
effusions:
later,
constructive
flatter
they are purely
become characters
the authors'
fictional.
in their
own
By such
sentimental
hothouse products, they are self-announced refugees from
his-
"^^
Literary
women
and
liberal ministers joined in their
antipathy to the
which obsessed the romantic historians. Many of them and their commitment to peace was clearly motivated by
military subjects
were
pacifists,
their dislike of "masculine" history as well as
by
their hatred of violence.
Pacifism was most prominent and viable in the period between 1815 and 1850, after the partial national disillusion with the catastrophe of the
War
of 1812 and before the heated and belligerent sectionalism which preceded the Civil War. Pacifism, unlike temperance, never had the oflicial support
was launched in 1809 by a layman, David Low Dodge.^^ Yet from its inception, the American Peace Society numbered a very high percentage of clergymen among its members and many women among its supporters. One of the movement's historians estimates that a third of its initial supporters were in the ministry;^^ another scholar stresses that in 1828 the peace societies drew more adherents from the ministry, and especially the Unitarian clergy, than from any other profession.^'* By 1852, when the movement was in definite decline, it was a clerical concern limited to New England: of its 307 life members, 168 lived in Massachusetts and 93 were clergymen. ^^ Women were always active and eager in the pacifist cause. Where we have records for any given peace society, they reveal a significant feminine presence; at Portsmouth in 1826, the group included 18 men and 17 women. ^® Women were more likely, however, to evince their concern by less direct and conspicuous means. They could urge their minister to join the American Peace Society or to preach at least once a year on the subject of pacifism, and many did so. Most of the ladies' magazines of the day were avowedly and almost automatically in favor of non-belligerence. In the Ladies' Magazine of 1836, Sarah Hale had of the major Protestant churches;
it
The Escape from History
187
applauded the formation of the "Boston Ladies' Peace Society. "^^ The Ladies' Wreath:
A
Mrs.
T. Martyn, opened with
S.
Magazine Devoted
to Literature,
War'V^ The Ladies' Alhum on "The Evils of War."^^ of
a spirited attack against the
also editorialized indignantly
Protestant ministers, unlike Protestant
edged and respected role
Industry and Religion, edited by
in the
"Tendencies
and frequently
women, had taken an acknowl-
American Revolution.®® Thirty-six years
after the struggle for independence,
however,
Noah
Worcester, a Unitarian
become the peace movement, denounced mili-
minister, himself a veteran of the Revolution but destined to single
most important figure
in the early
tary glory in his one-man pacifist organ The Friend of Peace as absolutely un-Christian, not to say unclerical; he exclaimed that a fighting minister "at this
day would be regarded
as a
madmanP' Worcester was frank from the
of his anti-war career on his alignment with feminine principles.
start
He
outspokenly sought the support of women, promising any future feminine adherents:
"By
thirty years of faithful
and united exertion on the part of the
females of Christendom, war might lose
all its
fascinating charms, and be
regarded by the next generation with more abhorrence than the people of
today look on the gladitorial combats of Rome."®^
The view Worcester took and dramatized was the minute and
essentially
of
war
in his attacks
domestic one that television
represented the apotheosis of social history
on
it
— whose advent
—enables us to hold today; he
which besieged towns become groups of families and soldiers become men, husbands, and fathers. For him there was no such thing as military history; there was only the outrage of humanitarian values. Under the nom de plume of "Philo Pacificus," Worcester described "The Horrors of Napoleon's Campaign in Russia" in 1815. He felt that the reader is only "diverted" from the true issue by the customary "encomiums on the bravery of fighting men and the glories of victory." The point about war for Worcester lay in civilian consequences rather than in was
skillful at the close-up picture in
military actions.
He directs us characteristically
not to the battlefield but to
where the greatest and least deserved suffering is taking place: "On one side was an old man just expiring. On the other, an enfant whose feeble cries, the mother, worn down with grief, was endeavoring to hush."®^
the sidelines,
His concern
who
is
with the innocent victims, the women, children, and elderly
can only be martyrs
in the
masculine arenas of conflict and aggression.
In 1816, Worcester's friend and admirer William Ellery
Channing voiced
his
protest against the exaltation of the "hero," with his "love of excitement," his "passion for superiority, for
fectly conscious of
what
his
triumph, for power." Channing was per-
demand,
of Napoleon's Russian siege, implied
like
Worcester's ex post facto reporting
—
new
a
history. "Let the records of
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
188
past ages be explored,"
Channing urged, "to rescue from
wasteful conqueror
but
in
.
.
.
.
.
.
oblivion, not the
the benefactors to the human-race" engaged
philanthropy rather than destruction.®^
Those women who join shared
many
joined peace societies or urged their ministers to
of Worcester's preoccupations.
tary into social history; they too
were concerned
They
family and feminine
life.
An anonymous
with the actions than
less
with the effects of war, and particularly with those
too deflected mili-
which touched the Ladies' Album
efl^ects
lady pacifist in
explained that "the female portions of society are the greater sufferers in
war. Theirs
is
a
domestic
life.
.
.
.
War
breaks up the domestic
the husband, the father, the brother and the lover
home to the field of carnage."®'* One of the most popular novels Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a novel
circle. It calls
from the endearments of
of the Civil War, The Gates Ajar by
which reached and touched thousands of
female readers, never recorded a battle scene or presented a soldier.
The
—
was with "the women the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted women; they whom war trampled down, without a choice or protest."®^ Phelps's story focused on Mary Cabot, a young and insignificant girl in a small Massachusetts town who is overwhelmed by grief at the loss of an idolized brother in combat. Mary finally accepts the war author's concern, in her words,
and
all its
dreadful consequences only by denying
its reality.
Following an
obvious process of compensation, she ignores earthly existence to focus on a
heavenly land where family
peace, a world of
felicity
is
women and womanly
exaggerated into eternity. Domestic cares,
is
seen to be the abiding order,
not the aggressive and senseless militarism of men. For Phelps as for Worcester,
heaven, like history
their tastes
Clerical
The
itself, is a
civilian affair, a
matter of individuals and
and needs.
and Feminine Biography: From History
biographies
women
and ministers wrote
to
Biology
in increasing
numbers about
themselves and each other over the middle decades of the nineteenth century mark the consolidation of the clerical-feminine history, or flight from history. In 1839, Jared Sparks formulated a definition of the different types
of biography current
in his culture.
The
first
kind
is
the "historical biogra-
phy which admits of copious selections from letters and other original papers"; the second is the "memoir" whose method is "more rambling and relating more to aflfairs of a private nature."®^ Almost all of Sparks's American biographies are entitled "Lives" and belong to the vast majority of the clerical
first
category;®^ the
and feminine biographies under consideration
here are self-styled "Memoirs."
189
The Escape from History
The
antiquarians were attempting to create both a social and a re-
Christianized history; they certainly avoided the arrogance inherent in the
grand view of Hegelian intellectual history, and
this
is
much
very
to their
The pacifist impulse I just described here is a profoundly sympathetic one. From the antiquarian perspective as from the traditional Protestant viewpoint, every life serves. The number of books written on relatively credit.
obscure people, usually ministers or literary women, century
in the
enormous. Theoretically, they are valuable
is
mid-nineteenth
unused
just as
televi-
sion footage could be useful to our descendants: they offer a quotidian
record. Partial anticipators of the Braudelian and Eriksonian fnethods,®® the clerical
and feminine biographers sought to convey what could be called the
psychological topography of their era. Yet one cannot help feeling that this is
neither their main purpose nor their principal achievement.
manage
To
begin
convey no genuine information at all. It seems a general rule in the development of social history that the excision of conceptualization can go only so far before significant detail whose importance ironically is the raison d'etre of social history and the with, a
number of
these narratives
to
—
titular
reason for the exclusion of theory
over, there
is
little
clerical accounts.
confront
—
also begins to disappear.
development of any kind operating
The primary impulse
man with God
the feminine-
in
of the antiquarians
as the Calvinists did,
man's internal growth as more recent, what
More-
neither to
is
nor to explore the laws of
we might term
anti-patriarchal
psychologists and anthropologists have done; they wished rather to protect
from competition, whether emanating from men, God, or the movement of time itself. Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman were always concerned with the individual, but they refused to sever him from their subjects
the context of historical change
The
oism.
panorama;
historical
subjects.
antiquarians, like it
which both created and overcame
Sprague
usually excluded the
in his Annals,
could only serve to dwarf their
They bestowed
a curious
his her-
less
enterprising
immunity from history on those they
commemorated. I
wish to be as precise as possible here. There
distinction
between an
interested, respectful
is
an enormous and
acceptance of the
full
condition and a glorification of the death of the critical instinct
acknowledging human limitations and celebrating them. This ence merely between good and bad social history. impulse, the second
is
finally a
The
is
vital
human
— between
not a differ-
first is a
religious
commercial one, and eventually involves the
preparation of the individual for the role of consumer. For the consumer is
by definition the man with no
interest in theorizing, the person possessed
of only the haziest powers of discernment. as a genre, first,
There are notable exceptions, but
one must say that the clerical-feminine biographies represent the
although hardly the
last,
use of the biographical
form
as calculatedly
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
190
therapeutic indulgence in the experience of ordinary
As such they marked
human
personaHty.®^
break in the tradition of ministerial
a significant
biography. In
1
796,
Samuel Hopkins wrote an account of one of
parishioners, a fervidly prayerful
hardly the
first
or the
and to himself.^® later,
women
last
most devout
Susanna Anthony.
called
He was
minister to memorialize feminine devotion to
was more
It
woman
his
however, when, almost
striking,
began to preserve
clerical lives for posterity.
a
God,
century
We have already
seen that Elizabeth Peabody published her Reminiscences of William Ellery
Channing in 1880. Sylvester Judd's confidence in feminine ability to appreciate was not ill-placed: one of his best correspondents, his cousin Arethusa Hall, gave his story to the world in a most sympathetic memoir published in 1853. Interchanged letters and intimate conversations were only a prelude to a more prominent exchange in which clerical and feminine sensibilities interacted for posterity.
Women
like
Hall or Peabody were indeed the
caretakers they had been chosen to be. Popular sermonizers loved to dwell
on the picture of the Three Marys at
Christ's
Tomb, and
the deceased liberal
minister usually had his feminine grave-watchers and believers also. "Let the
poor, the widows, and the orphan write [the minister's] epitaph," one clergy-
man exhorted
the
in
New
Englander
Beginning approximately
graphy underwent
a
decided
in 1845;®^
in the 1840s, the shift.
and sometimes they
did.
authorship of clerical bio-
The most prominent
ministers of the
eighteenth century were usually memorialized by their brethren, their
Hopkins wrote the life of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards A. Park did biographies of Hopkins and his intellectual peers,
whether contemporary or
ablest heir, Nathaniel cially if
later.
Emmons. The nineteenth-century clergyman,
he belonged to
a liberal
group, was apt to have
pher: not only Channing and Judd, but
Horace
a
feminine biogra-
Bushnell, Orville
Austin Phelps, Charles Follen, Joseph Buckminster, and Frederic
come
espe-
Dewey,
Dan Hunt-
mind as genuinely prominent clercical figures whose lives were written by feminine friends and relatives. Of my sample group of
ington
to
thirty ministers, twenty-one had at least
about them
in the
one
full-scale
biography written
generation after their death. Fifty percent of these were
by women. Not surprisingly the biographies of ministers from feminine hands were somewhat different in nature from their predecessors. In a novel appropriately entitled Papa's writer and Utopian thinker,
Own Girl (1874), Marie Howland, a feminist summed up the credo of the new feminine
biographers with more frankness than most of them would have relished:
Women are beginning to see the folly of allowing their "Lords" to write the biographies of great men, and are gradually taking the task themselves.
When
they do their
full
upon
share of this work, there will be
The Escape from History
found
in history
many
pigmies that would have swelled to colossi under
the pens of their
own
moral forces
be judged by the
will
191
sex; for their
claims to the honor of greatness as
way they
treat
women, specially and
generally.
A man may be great in a particular sense, if he is nothing but
a military
or political leader
man
a
if
.
.
.
but he can never be great integrally as
he lacks tenderness, justice or faith
in
Men who
humanity.
are
very tender as lovers, and deeply sensitive to the influence of women, usually have the reputation
—a word never found
among
in the
brutal
men
of being "hen-pecked"
vocabulary of refined people.®^
Domestic setting and domestic motivation dominate the memoirs writ-
by the daughters, wives, and friends of Unitarian and Congregational clergymen. These men are presented, naturally, as they are viewed from a feminine perspective: they appear primarily as fathers and husbands. Elizaten
—
beth Stuart Phelps emphasized her father's emotional and more particularly his
family
from
Orville
his family letters
Eliza, in
Dewey's daughter quotes much more extensively
than from his theological works. Charles Pollen's wife
an exceptionally fine memoir, pays ample tribute to her husband's
pioneering his
life.
education and theology, but she stresses above
eflPorts in
all else
kindness and consideration to family and friends. Earlier ministers, and their biographers,
mestic needs as predominant.
had not emphasized their do-
Thomas Shepard's moving
account, penned in
seventeenth-century Massachusetts, of the loss of his wife through childbed fever
was intended
tions,
not to display his
to instruct the reader
own
Jr.,
seemed in his
of earthly rela-
By
was noted
the turn of
(or created)
between
and private selves by their biographers. Jonathan Edwards,
who
for example,
the pulpit,
fallibility
capacities for familial feeling.
the eighteenth century, however, a split ministers' public
on the
could be "irresistibly impressive and even terrible" in
was "mild and
a herald "sent
affectionate" at home.^^ Stephen
West
down to denounce God's wrath upon a
in
church
guilty world";
family his manners were as "bland as those of a refined and lovely
woman."^'* There
is
a hint
West was,
sional one, that
somehow unable
here that the true self
is
the private non-profes-
Catharine Maria Sedgwick liked to imply,
as
to display his winning pastoral qualities once
delivering a sermon. Later ministers, according to their
own
on
his feet
testimony as
from their domestic aff^ections, which they counted all-important. Women were allowed, indeed encouraged, to confess that to love and be loved was their well as that of their biographers,
most important mission apparently
felt
in life,
even the
"it
professional inspiration
start of their religious faith.
equally eager to admit that
being, to love," and his daughter further:
drew
was
in
family
life
"it is
was ready
Bushnell
the strongest want of
my
to domesticate his statement
that he shone brightest."®^ Sylvester
Judd
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
192
never forget that
my
nature
"Though
the same hearthside creed:
testified to
is
I
am
I
a^man, a lover, a husband.
deep, strong, pervasive.
me
to
It is
am a minister ... I can The sentimental part of
almost religion."^®
Ministers were granted, and they courted, other traits which they else-
where recognized
as peculiarly
parasitic relationship
terms.
I
wrote
in
women and
between
commemorating
habit of
feminine and domestic. Nothing reveals the ministers better than their mutual
commemorators, and
their
in strikingly similar
an earlier chapter about the modesty, the ostensible lack
of ambition, clergymen and ladies increasingly claimed for themselves and those they admired. Eliza FoUen, Elizabeth Phelps, and
Cheney
all
stressed the humility, the self-effacement, of
Mary Bushnell the men whose
we remember, began his statement: "My figure in this
biographies they were writing. Bushnell himself,
autobiography with the modest
world has not been
great. ...
president of any society.
.
.
.
of the world's business and in
my
I
have almost never been
Take it is
inaccurate
if
the report of
naught.
separate and merely personal
.
.
I
have
or vice-
doings on the platform
filled
no place
at
But
all.
.
.
have had a greater'epic trans-
life, I
.
my
a president
acted than was ever written or could be."®^
Bushnell
is
here paying himself not simply the same compliment his
daughter gives him but the favorite tribute
clerical
biographers offered their
feminine subjects. Reverend Daniel D. Addison, a liberal clergyman, opened
memoir of Lucy Larcom with the standard obeisance to her apparent insignificance: "Her life was one of thought, not of action. In their outward movement, her days flowed on very smoothly. She had no remarkable adventures; but she had a constant succession of mental vicissitudes, which are often more dramatic and real than the outward events of even a varied life."^® Henry Bacon's biography of "Charlotte" follows a similar pattern. his
Bacon, a Universalist pastor and editor-in-chief of The Universalist and Ladies' Repository, first
recognized Charlotte's fictional and poetic gifts while
she was working at fifteen at a bindery in Boston.
undoubted force and five.
Bacon
Our
talent,
A
working-class
girl
of
Charlotte Fillebrown died in 1845 aged twenty-
begins:
record here
is
of a pure hearted and heroic
woman;
—not heroic
because of any wonderful exhibition of female intrepidity but because of a sustaining and persistent energy, that
came, not refusing to do could not be done. in history,
and to
little in
the
way
The truest heroism
made
the best of
life as it
of culture because a great deal
which seldom finds a place proclaim which the trumpet of fame is too brazen.
She had "no very striking
qualities
world"; she "lived to love."^^
.
.
.
is
[to]
that
command
the attention of the
The Escape from History
This
193
tribute, like Bushnell's evaluation of his place in the world,
not represent quite the Christian humility of Jonathan Edwards,
worm
who
does
could
low before God. It suggests rather the complex art of apology in which abasement and exaltation intertwine. The self is not being humiliated as it is in Edwards' journals: the account himself
public self
one
—
tion,
is
—
a
in the case of Bushnell,
phies
lie
infinitely
Larcom, and Jerauld
a very interesting
effaced in order to bring forth the private self for attention, celebra-
and caressing.
which
and wish to
is
It is
distressing.
lies
the over-emphasis, not the emphasis, on the personal
The
fascination of the ministerial and feminine biogra-
precisely in their intensely and consciously privatized
mood. One
might argue that their insistence on the obscurity of their subjects
is
a
necessary part of their calculated secretiveness: only in learning about those
who
no reason to believe their private lives will be a public concern can the reader respond most fully as a voyeur; only if the subject is someone ostensibly no better than herself can the reader's voyeurism function as an introduction to her own sensibility and as a narcissistic theoretically have
enmeshment
in herself.
The aim
of these memoirs
is
to establish an atmos-
phere of intimacy so strong as to replace historical awareness with what
seems almost biological consciousness; the biographer's obsessive subject's capacities for suffering
stress
on
his
and for sympathy with the world of process
draws the reader into the innermost sanctums of personality. Bushnell's
life,
as his
daughter described
it
and
as
he probably actually
was a Christian struggle with pain. He fought consumption for years before the end: lying awake during sleepless nights coughing, he would rise the next day and work at a book or some task; almost dying on a mountainclimbing expedition, he barely recovered, not to go home but to get up and lived
it,
reach the summit; existing finally with one lung, he began a theological
on "Inspiration" only months before
treatise
his
death
draw,
just to
as
he
from it." His own bodily weakness made him preoccupied with "forgiveness," which he described as "man's deepest need
wrote, "a
little
sense of being
and highest achievement. "^°® Austin Phelps, according to
dured
a lonely
his
daugher, en-
and miserable childhood. As an adult, he patiently suffered
from the neuralgia and insomnia which many of his colleagues and blamed on a weak will rather than a flawed constitution; he felt
tortures critics
forced to a great "sacrifice," as he described early in his career, while tending
it,
two wives
in
abandoning pastoral work;
in fatal illnesses,
he became a
compassionate and loving nurse. Naturally Phelps brooded increasingly on the meaning of the act of intercession, on the special abilities granted to the disabled. Charles Pollen, as his wife
world which she found child,
memorialized him to
a "crucifixion" for herself,
never "sympathetic with boys." Later
in
fulfill a
was
duty to the
a timid
and
frail
America, he spent himself for
Harvard students only to be defrauded and turned away by the university
194
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
authorities.
He
prepared
and delivered them conscien-
brilliant lectures
labored for an often-indifferent congregation whose
mands
He
and enthusiastically to an audience of two or three persons.
tiously
final
unreasonable de-
resulted in his untimely death in a shipwreck. Follen learned the
lessons of "disinterestedness," the value of "devotional feelings"
and "tender-
ness."^°^
Pollen's role, like Bushnell's or Phelps's,
the pious
Ames,
a
woman
contemporary
in
is
and biography. Mary Clemmer
fiction
memoir of her friend, the minor poet Alice Gary (1820-71), in 1874. A^ for Eliza of writing was painful for Ames: "Every line coming
noted journalist and writer, published
genuinely talented
if
Follen, the very task
the immolated one assigned
a
from memory has deepened the wound of irreparable
she begins.
loss,"
Describing Gary's deprived childhood, her early disappointment rich but secluded
with
life filled
illness,
and unachieved
self-doubt,
her intense but mournful love of her
tions,
own
in love,
her
aspira-
sex and her indignation at
what Gary "as a woman could be, and was, to another."^®^ Although Gary courted death by prolonged periods of toil in overheated rooms, when it came in 1871, she fought it. Gary
their
wrongs,
Ames
reveals, as she intended,
longed perhaps for a fuller
life
than she had ever had, for a fuller release of
her unmistakable though stunted creativity; but fierce reluctance a kind of feminine
summer
in a
Ames makes
Gethsemane. She
of her
dying
stresses that,
hot city, Gary missed the countryside where she had been
and bred. In her
last
hours,
Gary was happy, according
to
in his
memoir of
in
bom
Ames, only when
hearing those portions of the Gospel which recount Ghrist's love of
Henry Bacon,
final
Gharlotte, takes a similar
women.
line.
"Five
years have passed," he begins, "and on the anniversary of Gharlotte's death
we
begin this memorial.
August day sounds as
if
[is]
The heavy
of this
oppressive; but the sunlight penetrates the clouds."
Bacon
Gharlotte has become a saint:
signs. In telling
and the sultry
air
rains are falling,
God marks
her day with special
of Gharlotte's death. Bacon, like Ames, stresses her "longing
to get into the country, to smell the green trees
and the fresh
sorrow, and her extreme and significant attachment to a passage
by
F.
W.
P.
Greenwood
called "Ghrist
justification but the logic of the
Our Fellow
martyrdom he
is
air,"
in a
Sufferer."
her
sermon
With no
bestowing on Gharlotte,
Bacon hypothesizes her special fondness for passages like this: "loving him and comforted by his sympathy when I weep and fear, I am better prepared to follow and imitate him when he submits, endures and triumphs." Like Ghrist, Gharlotte did not "wrestle with her Maker, as though she was .
.
.
wronged by suffering"; she consented to her pain.^°^ These accounts vary greatly in style and value. The Bushnell and Follen biographies are broad and
phy does no
justice
still
even to
its
indispensable studies.
The
rather slight subject. Yet
Gharlotte biogra-
all
these narratives
The Escape from History
imply that their protagonists are performing ment; and that this
them
ritual assimilates
195
a ritual of (Bushnellian)
to a natural
Atone-
world whose law of
development and decay usurps the prerogatives of time. The preoccupation in all six
memoirs, the references to the country and the
in the narratives
about Charlotte and Gary, the intrusion of the pain
with suffering
weather
experienced by the authors in the Follen, Gary, and Gharlotte books, highlight a
common
tendency
to ministerial-feminine biographies of the period,
although hardly equally present
in all of
them: an avoidance of the promi-
nent use of dates and a replacement of these by what could be called the
—
organic markers
birth, conversion, marriage, aging,
and death. These markers are the lowest
all,
illness
denominators of human
weaker of these volumes, the average life cycle is treated here of greater historical importance than any extraordinary achievement; the In the
life.
as
common
and above
phenomena of biology age. Historicity
is
are applauded as comprising the history of the aver-
dissolved in atmosphere; a potentially cyclical pattern
dislodges a linear one. "Masculine" attempts at domination and demarcation give
way
and absorption. The active
to "feminine" abilities for assimilation
force of public example
is
lost in
the persuasive rites of protection and
dependency established by the nurturing power of memory. Biography merged with something close to a vegetation myth.
The clergyman by
literary
is
described in the reminiscences penned
women and liberal ministers, increasingly resembled a benign and
patriarchal god, at this
himself, as he
is
home and
at
one with
^^'^ a natural setting.
Nowhere
is
transformation clearer than in the treatment of the very old minister,
the survivor
from the grimmer days of
successors and his feminine admirers.
A
Galvinist theology, test case
for the
by
new
his
younger
sensibility, the
"patriarch," as he
was
we
today, was softened and subsumed into the organic rites
of
use the
word
called in a spirit almost antithetical to the
one
in
which
life.
Edwards A. Park in his memoirs of Emmons (1861) and Hopkins (1852) continuously makes both sound like very aged men. In a sense, this is understandable: Hopkins and Emmons lived to extremely advanced ages; both were in youth as in maturity sober and serious individuals; Park drew many of his impressions of Emmons from his meetings with him at the very end of his long life. There can be little doubt, however, that Park wants to picture his predecessors primarily in old age; that age is in his memoirs part of their very essence rather than a temporal condition. fragile, in Park's delineation, as old
mons, Park includes
Emmons
More Merciful after another
who
by another
his elderly congregation.
to Their
figures are as
manuscripts. In his biography of
a vignette, relayed
preaching to
The
Enemies Than
God
Is
Em-
minister, of the later
"Men Are saw one old man
His theme was
to His": "I
had grown gray under the patriarch's ministrations,
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
196
bending forward
gazing with eagerness to catch every teacher. ... an old it
man who
word
their seats
from the
that fell
lips
of their
is
a ministerial
dream:
a like-minded
(mascu-
congregation compelled by the sheer force of truth as presented by
line)
God's aged.
envoy. Yet the point here
clerical
They
are striking
mementos of
is
that the aged are addressing the
past virtue, but they are also fossilized,
weakened, sentimentalized. The emotions they arouse
in us are
more impor-
tant than the emotions they feel; they have been deflected precisely their
and
held his manuscript before his face, and read
low monotone."^®^ This
in a
from
in breathless silence, rising at length
through
gray hairs and silvered piety from subjects to objects.
Hosea
Ballou, the
most important figure
ism, also sufl^ered a mysterious
American Universal-
in early
change of character
in the
hands of
his
memorialists. Ballou, despite his conviction that "holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected," his love of nature, his sometimes maudlin
hymns,
his distrust of learning,
ministry,
was no
sentimentalist.
and
his faith in
He found
an essentially untrained
the ministry a "spiritual warfare,"
and conducted himself accordingly, attacking
Calvinists, Unitarians, and,
when provoked, fellow Universalists, with vigor and acumen. Like Hopkins and Emmons, he lived to a ripe old age, and long before his death he was being hailed as a "patriarch." He wore his white hair long, and, according to his son,
had
a
"remarkably venerable appearance";
tion," his feelings
his face
was a "benedic-
were "tender."^®^ Caroline M. Sawyer, the wife of
Universalist pastor, and herself a leading figure in the
little
a
literary coterie
which put out the genteel publications of her denomination. The Ladies' Repository and The Rose of Sharon, wrote a poem after hearing Ballou pray in 1843, a
decade before
"The Pleader
at the
his
death at the age of eighty-one. She entitled
Throne": Ballou
is
a mediator,
another occasion, Mrs. Sawyer described
on
in
not a commander.
prose Ballou's memorable
it
On
eflPect
his audience:
No-one who was present then and there can ever forget the impression made by the saintly white-haired old man as he arose in the pulpit, looked slowly around upon the vast congregation, most of whom saw him for the first and last time there, and then meekly but fervently breathed out the tenderest prayer that ever reached the ear of the good father.
There
^«^
is
something very unsubstantial about the figure of Ballou here:
he breathes rather than speaks, he ing into the realm of in
is
memory which
1852, his colleague
seen for the is
his
first
and
last
time
— vanish-
only kingdom. At Ballou's funeral
and successor. Reverend Alonzo A. Miner,
also a
contributor to The Ladies' Repository and The Rose of Sharon, extolled him
"
The Escape from History
197
again and again as "our venerable patriarch," "our venerable father," "our father in Israel." According to Miner, Ballou's great contribution to liberal
on the "paternal spirit" of God; he "effected a very general redemption from that state of orphanage to which so large a part of the world felt itself doomed."^®® There is little in Miner's eulogy to
theology had been
his stress
remind the hearers that Ballou was ever young, generous
spirit,
humane and
that, despite his
he was almost always aggressive. Ballou has been canonized
frozen in a benediction.
He dwindles
in the reader's
imagination
even as he accrues significance. Sawyer and Miner look on him
like depart-
in old age,
which gets smaller and smaller, and Hopkins and Emmons, is becoming a relic,
ing travelers gazing back on a figure
then
is
view. Ballou, like
lost to
precious, talismanic, culturally crucial
Let figure in
me
—but obsolete.
more about the connotations around the "patriarch" the contemporary subculture which was claiming these ministerial
figures for
say a
its
little
patron
The
saints.
patriarch appears again and again in the
sentimental literature of the ante-bellum period; he
always, in every re-
father. ^^^
spect, the opposite of the so-called Victorian
goumey did
is
Lydia Huntley
Si-
the classic sentimental studies of false and true male dominance,
one entitled "The Father," the other "The Patriarch," and both published in
"The Father" opens closes it. The last word is
The Young Lady's Offering in 1847. Symbolically
1862 collection of
tales,
"The Father" in character, will.
He
chaste,
is
but
"The Patriarch"
spends his
life
in disposition, rigid
and proud
classic
female hand on
male brow, she provides a needed antidote to
unspecified but highly successful activities in the world. Ostensibly, he
commanding one
in the relationship;
reading, he gloats over her like that
I
he
can create
wings.
his
is
the
he stays up whole nights planning her
Pygmalion over Galatea:
should gaze on the work of
he inquires.^ ^®
in
increasing his fortune and educating his delicate,
and adored daughter. Occasionally laying the
his classically fevered
his.
and driving businessman, Byronic
a brilliant, cultured,
tempestuous and excitable
the
my own
"
'Was
it
strange
hands with ineffable delight?'
It is
the male committing the ultimate heresy: he imagines
life.
Sigoumey has chastisement
The daughter
waiting, however, in the
dies unexpectedly; the father goes
through an agony
of grief, until, positively rigid with hysteria, unable to sleep or to weep, he
throws himself on her grave and even
tries,
apparently, to
exhume
her.
on her burial mound, he cries, and Sigoumey can forgive him. For he weeps that he has lost a woman, that he is not a woman able to create Finally,
life,
and, in weeping, he
is
mention of the "mother" the "father"
when he
like a
in the tale;
in place
her place
is
has
made no
empty, waiting to receive
resigns his rule.
Sigoumey's "patriarch" worship
woman. Curiously, Sigoumey
is
a
dummy
of the deposed father.
figure set
He
is
up
for compensating
the ancestor comfortably
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
198
Stowed away
in
the rocking chair, the male softened by the kindly touch
of time. His reign
not to his
is
a tribute to the sensitivity
own powers
connotative.
heads
is
The
what Sigoumey
civilization, its
by
rules
no force but
his
example and by
"influence," he
is
essen-
community which he "hermetically sealed." This spot is "swamp-
small self-suflicient rural calls
encircled'V^^ iconographically,
from
He
of direct exertion.
their regard for tradition; possessing tially
and receptivity of his subjects,
it
suggests very feminine territory. Cut off
occupants do nothing but hold primitively simple and
pious outdoor religious services and venerate their elders. At school, they learn only the three
and
totally self-involved
There
no story here; in this timeless world, there can be no dialectic, no progress of any
Rs and the
Bible.
is
kind, nothing but ceremonious repetition. Progress
masculinity; a feminine ripeness
is all
Appropriately, the narrator-observer chapel for the
little
smacks of excitement, of
Sigoumey, or the is
a minister,
who
patriarch, desires.
helps establish a
society and attends the patriarch's funeral at the sketch's
close.
Of course I
Mrs. Sigoumey
might point out that
her fictional work.^^^
is
not here writing history or biography, yet
it is
almost impossible to separate her historical from
It is
not unfair to see Mrs. Sigoumey's "father" and
"patriarch" as roughly analogous to the subjects of romantic "biography"
and the ministerial-feminine "memoir." Sigoumey's "father,"
like the
Pilgrim
Fathers, the founding fathers, and the heroes of Hegelian history, stands for
energy, enterprise, nature. father,
virility, direction, hybris; his sin is
to try to change
Taut with unreleased grief, tearing futilely at the closed earth, the until he acknowledges the as Sigoumey describes him, is sterile
—
limits of his authority.
Sigoumey's "patriarch,"
minister of the memoir.
He
is less
in contrast, suggests the
aged
the impregnator than the pregnant; he
suggests the precondition for futility. Absolutely not a leader, he belongs to his
community only because he embodies
and aspirations. he
eties,
is
Fit representative of clerical
the ultimate, almost parodic
consensus and conformist thought. sesses
is,
shared and
its
feelings
and feminine hopes and anxi-
emblem
The
common
of "influence," of totally
only authority he seeks and pos-
figuratively speaking, biological. His corpse goes into the earth
from which the community's sustenance
will
come.
We are back with Bushnell's rationale for the "history of oblivion": "Do the vegetable growths repine or sicken because they cannot
growths of previous centuries?
Is it
not enough that the very
remember the soil that
feeds
by the waste of so many generations moldering in it?" Bushnell's Hegelian interest in organic imagery does not conceal his un-
them
is
fertilized
Hegelian philosophic emphasis.
The "waste" so essential
to Hegelian notions
of historicity has not simply been redeemed; waste, as the reject of time and
change, has been elevated
in
importance above the forces which define and
The Escape from History
throw
it
off.
The
intimate atmosphere of the
private act of hoarding
which
is
their essential
199
memoirs
is
attendant upon the
dynamic. The genuine lessons
would teach cannot obfuscate the enormously tenacious importance they placed on personal possession, broadly of compassion the antiquarians
On
defined.
Worcester's
memoirs devoted
battlefields, in
Elizabeth Phelps's heaven, in the
to Austin Phelps, Alice Gary,
and
others, nothing can
happen, because there are no events, only objects and emotions increasingly
merge together
—on
display.
There can be
— which
violation or preser-
vation of order, but not genuine change. In their well-founded fear of historicity, the
feminine and clerical historians substituted space for time as
human experience. As is the case with modem attention to groupings rather than progressions. They
the fundamental dimension of telecasters,
they paid
were interested
in the relationship
owns, with what
in
family,
home,
severing,
job,
of the individual with what he or she
an almost biological sense belongs to her or him, whether or even the sense of
self.
In their vision, the forging,
and re-creating of such attachments substituted for the
the Hegelians.
dialectic of
6
THE DOMESTICATION OF DEATH The Posthumous Congregation
The Fascination with Death and Mourning
To
say that the memoirs of
death
is
women
and clergymen were concerned with
an understatement; to a degree that requires special consideration,
they were exercises
in necrophilia.
They
revealed as
much
of the art of the
mortician or the gravestone-cutter as of the craft of the biographer. Con-
temporaries on occasion described the memorialists' efforts in strikingly literal
funereal terms.
nals of the
The
Unitarian George
American Pulpit
in
1857, called
Ellis,
reviewing Sprague's An-
Sprague
was
particularly
who
contributed
two volumes had
died by the
carving the gravestone of his ministerial predecessors.
moved by
a "sepulchral artist" Ellis
the fact that at least eighty of the ministers
biographical information to Sprague's
time of publication;
six
first
of these contributors were between the ages of
ninety and one hundred. Ellis described the letters various clergymen wrote in tribute to
deceased colleagues as "the
dewy
flowers and the green grass
growing over graves where tears have been freshly shed."^ Nothing shows more clearly the underlying motive of the memoirs than the fact that a moving death rather than a stirring life provided the suitable qualification for treatment. Children, veritable infants,
conventional subject not
Agnes Adams and
"little
may
in this
word
just
became
a
of poetry but of full-scale biography. Tots like
Georgie" Cuyler, the respective protagonists
(if
one
connection) of Agnes and the Key of Her Little Coffin (1857) and The Empty Crib (1873), were notable, understandably, less for use the
The Domestication of Death
201
which were usually short, than for their deaths which were often protracted. Even in the memoirs devoted to adults, life gains its interest chiefly as a prelude to death. The reader is reminded from the outset that
their lives
the memorialized
A
is
going to die
— perhaps young, certainly
well.
comes to mind, but none is more striking than the biography of the Reverend William Peabody written shortly after his death in 1847 by his brother Oliver. Peabody was a fervent Christian, an opponent of "controversial divinity,"^ a defender of the Sabbath, and a pioneer in the host of examples
cemetery and Sunday School movements.
who
talent
view,
A
literary
man
of
real, if
minor,
contributed to the Christian Examiner, the North American Re-
and The Token, he published rather gentle pieces on autumn and death.
His best poem began with characteristic euphemistic melancholy: "Behold the western evening light!/
It
melts in deepening gloom;/ So calmly Chris-
away/ Descending to the tomb."^ From the start, Oliver Peabody depicts William as one too good to live, the kind of pale, serious, sickly, pious little child that wise old women were always clucking prophetically over tians sink
in the
domestic novels of the day. William survived childhood, however, to
marry an extremely devout woman whose resolve to give .
.
.
[her] soul to a private intercourse
her husband.^
When
she had been called
worthy of
power of
God" had an immense impact on
first
so that he might learn through
her. Cherishing his grief, life
he liked to
sorrow to be more
by moonlight near her
sit
were further attenuated when
suddenly only four months after
ter died
the
she died at an early age in 1843, he told himself that
grave. His links with this
At
with
"all
his eldest
daugh-
his wife.
Peabody biography an extraordinary thing happens. A new and anonymous writer explains, "the pen fell from the hands" of Oliver Peabody just as he approached his brother's moving deathbed scene. As William might have said, Oliver had "calmly sunk away." The consumptive Oliver had originally been a lawyer; he found himself unsuited, however, to enforced contact with a quarreling and litigious world and this point in the
.
turned to the ministry in middle
was apparently the only Oliver his
felt that, in
own
life;
logical
.
.
the step from the ministry to the grave
one
at this point in his spiritual history.
writing his brother's story, "he was carving the letters on
gravestone."^ Oliver's successor, the second biographer, luckily
survives his task, describes William's saintly and gentle death, and includes a
memoir of Oliver for good measure. A memoir like this is not only a biography;
called
contemporary consolation
literature.
it is
a part of
what can be
This enormously popular genre
included obituary poems and memoirs, mourners' manuals, prayer guidebooks, hymns, and books about heaven. Such writings inflated the importance of dying and the dead by every possible means; they sponsored elaborate
methods of
burial and
commemoration, communication with the
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
202
next world, and microscopic viewings of a sentimentalized afterlife. Their
authorship was typically, although not exclusively, clerical or feminine.
many and
causes for the widespread success of consolatory literature were
complex. At
this point,
what
demand
clear about the readers'
is
The
is
largely
negative: consolation literature probably does not reflect an actual increase in the
death rate of children or adults, although
it
may
point to changing
More can perhaps be ventured about
expectations about mortality.®
the
author's motivation. I
have already
women
said that
and glamorize their
and ministers,
were engaged
position,
an effort to rationalize
in
in
subordinating historical
progress to biological process. Barred by external taboos and internal anxieties
from elaboration on the overtly
birth,
the
they concentrated on
moments
celerated. efl^ort
failed than in those at
to anthropologize historical inquiry: as Mrs.
the sacred
which
it
in
ac-
glorification of death oflFered the final crucial strategy in the
suggests, forgotten lives are is
and death: they were more interested
which crude energy
at
The
illness
sexual acts of impregnation and child-
emblem
remembered by mother of the overlooked.
in the cult
that the ornate statuary
Sigoumey's "Patriarch" earth. It is
The tombstone
hardly accidental
which increasingly decorated Victorian graves has
some resemblance to enlarged victory trophies; symbolized and congratulated by stone angels, the dead were not losers but winners. Midnineteenth-century cemeteries were the paradoxical progenitors of a later generation's halls of fame. The clerical-feminine commitment to stress and exaggerate the value of those apparently wasted and insignificant "ordinary" lives
which
reached
patriotic history
and industrial development too often neglected
logical culmination in an imaginative reinterpretation of the
its
doctrine of the "resurrection" of the dead.
proved to be the could establish a tive
new
democracy
egalitarian
significant,
if
balance of
of
If
the dead could
power
American
the insignificant could be live,
ministers and
in the free-for-all, intensely
culture.
Like
politicians
women
competi-
engineering
triumphs by stumping fresh territory, drumming up
new
votes,
and even inventing voters, they multiplied the numbers and enhanced the resources of their supporters. the victory
was
theirs.
And
Some might
see the election as rigged, but
they were hardly the
drama of popular American culture
last
participants in the
partially to invent the public they
captured.
Lydia H. Sigoumey, countless obituary poems,
in
one of the more striking among her almost
"Twas But
a Babe," rhetorically
upbraided an
unspecified urban male passerby, apparently absort)ed in his commercial
profit-mongering and
indiflPerent to a sad funeral
procession wending
its
way behind a little coflin to the local graveyard. "Poise Ye, in the rigid scales/ Of Calculation, the fond bosom's wealth?" she inquired bitterly.
The Domestication of Death
Sigoumey's implicit point
203
mourning should the claims of home and
that the private rituals of
is
outweigh the public demands of business, that church should count for more than the imperatives of the marketplace. Her initial tone of indignation suggests her awareness that, in plain fact, most competitive middle-class American
men
did not share her priorities.
When
Mrs. Sigoumey turns, however, to detailing the imagined grief of the bereaved parents, she notes with particular approval and sympathy the "mute" father with his grief-worn and "pallid brow."
By
the poem's close, revital-
by imaginary contact with such domestic scenes and sentiments, Mrs. Sigoumey is preaching with full ministerial confidence to a more general audience, all "who mourn" a "vacant cradle."^ The pattern of Mrs. Sigoumey's little poem is characteristic of most of ized
the consolation literature of the period: an explicitly or implicitly hostile protest against the competitive, aggressive, non-familial society; a chastened
reminder that everyone will be forced sooner or
one (or by ations;
and
his or her
own
death) to turn
later
by the death of a loved
from public
to private consider-
where the needed comfort
a tactful hint as to
at
such hours can
modem undertaker. Her poem is and you will." "if you should need my services
be found. Mrs. Sigoumey anticipates the
way of leaving her card: The world of consolation
a
.
literature
is
a
.
.
domestic and personal one, a place
where the minister and the mother become
at last the
only genuine author-
ities.
who wrote
Elizabeth Prentiss,
the best-selling Stepping Heavenward
(1869), a classic of nineteenth-century consolation literature,
interesting
and revealing definition of the function of "a
position she herself occupied. nity, "to feel the right to at once,
and
join
them
There was an
pastor's wife," a
obligation, or rather an opportu-
sympathize with those
in their
once gave an
who mourn,
prayers and tears." She continued:
be pleasant to spend one's whole time
among sufl^erers, and
them would
to fly to "It
to keep testifying
them what Christ can and will become to them, if they will only let him."® Clearly such moments gave unusual power not only to Christ's word but to those who conveyed it the minister himself, or his wife. His literary efforts were often veiled reminders of the last hour and of his own crucial role in it. We have seen that Hopkins was never more the teacher than at the bedsides of dying parishioners; the liberal pastor, in contrast, was the comforter, winning entrance which at other times was denied to him. Intercessor between God and man, heaven and earth, he was the supplicant, the "pleader at the throne," as Caroline Sawyer described Ballou. His power came from to
—
the fact that at such a
—
moment
supplication
is
the only possible
mode
of
The clergyman's chance, like the woman's, was now coincidental weakest moment of his parishioners. No longer confident that he
expression.
with the
could meet his congregation
at their strongest
or impress
its
ablest represen-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
204
—the men of courtrooms— the minister
tatives
intellect
women and his
and talent
increasingly
sensitized
mourner was
The
domestic drama.
counting-houses, and
back upon an inner parish of
fell
men who had been reduced
those
who were
congregation consisted of those
The
in their stores,
to playing the
woman's
role;
feeling rather than thinking.
clearly of vital
and new significance
in this
authors of mourning manuals directed their books
toward the actually and recently bereaved parent, husband, or wife seeking reassurance. Private, particular grief, in other words, starting point
and
raison d'etre.
Of
was
their declared
course the ordeal of the Christian survi-
vor forced to realize that he has "idolized" a loved one taken from him by a
God was
chastening
traditional in
New
England
The
religious writing.
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, had no real cult of mourning literature.
The
Shepard,
a
prominent seventeenth-century divine, devoted only an eloquent
page and
a half to the loss of his
was seen
human. His condition was hardly considered one of particular fascination in the same way, for example, that the state of a sinner on the eve of "conviction" might be. Thomas griever
as culpable,
if
adored wife, and he concluded
his
account
"Thus god hath visited & scourged me for my sins & sought to weene me from this woorld, but I have ever found it a difficult thing to profit even but a little by the sorest & sharpest afflictions."^ Anne Bradstreet, writing in 1665 on the death of a grandchild, explained the irrelevance of what later generations would with
call
a characteristic stroke
mourning: "Blest babe,
of partial self-condemnation:
why
should
days so soon were terminate,/ Sith thou
I
once bewail thy
art settled in
fate,/
Or sigh thy
an everlasting
state."^^
In sharp contrast, the bereaved nineteenth-century authors of tributes like
The Empty Crib: The Memorial of Little Georgie and Agnes and the Key of
Her
Little Coffin quite
frankly assumed, and apparently got, the engrossed
attention of significant portions of their society for their emotional and
New
York clergyman who wrote The Empty Crib, received thousands of more than sympathetic letters from kindred mourners. Cuyler appended some of these epistles in The Empty Crib. I will quote from one to give the flavor of all: moral
state.
Reverend Theodore Cuyler, the prominent
—
My
dear
you
will see there "a flower"
Sadie,
Sir,
aged
5
If
it
ever
yrs; Lillie,
scarlet fever! [Cuyler's
times
may
heartfelt
on
aged
3
your way to
visit
Allegheny Cemetery,
three "little graves." ''Anna,
yrs;"
all
aged
died within six days, and
"Georgie" died of scarlet fever
also.] It
7 yrs; all
of
some-
own affliction to hear of one still greater reason why I, a perfect stranger, venture to
reconcile us to our
elsewhere; and this trespass
falls in
upon you
is
in
sympathy.
^^
the
your sore bereavement, and
to
tell
you of
my
The Domestication of Death
no escaping the
There
is
in the
way Shepard and
gence.
Mourning
The
and
nor
a
not being used here as discipHne,
Bradstreet used
but as therapeutic self-indul-
it,
seems to be doing the work formerly expected of
bereaved
positions, at least of
a minister
is
intended clearly to foster spiritual development, but
is still
a curious exhibitionism
self-scrutiny.
sense that grief
205
be the gainers
shall
concern. Even
its
mother, he
is
if
if
the
not of the world's goods
mourner
a possible stand-in for
an experience of powerlessness which unites them
mourner losses
is
by
so lavishly granted
his authors
figure
them: grieving all.
The
entails
attention the
compensates him for more
perhaps than he has consciously suffered.
In these annals of grief, the deceased, like the mourner, if
neither
is
unacknowledged
aflinities
with the author.
The dying
shows
striking
or dead child
is
most conspicuous exemplar of the new turn to the old prophecy, "the shall
be
ways
their maternal
and ministerial biographers, many of
was
like to
last
"Agnes" and "Georgie" were supposedly guides to their adult
first."
supervisors in
it
the
that
must have been both suggestive and
flattering to
whom knew
be treated, even to function, as children
in a
well what
world of unheed-
ing adults. Furthermore, these small household saints, according to their
biographers, usually chose their mother or their minister as their model. Little James,
an early deceased son of the Universalist minister Sylvester
Cobb, was memorialized by ing to her account, he
was
a
his
mother Eunice Hale Cobb
clergyman
he disliked "to mingle with the boys
and vulgar language."
He
in
embryo. As
[at school], so as
Accord-
in 1852.
a very
young
child,
to hear their profane
advised "respect of the aged" and once rebuked
man who referred to his father as "the old gentleman." He loved the Bible, took communion at age seven, and was wont to argue with fellow passengers
a
on boats and father,
trains against the use of tobacco. If
he adored
his
mother. During his
he emulated
last sickness,
his ministerial
he expressed
his
wish
"we could die with our arms around each other's neck."^^ The dying infant was made supremely to flatter his feminine and clerical biograto her that
phers: he shared their weakness while he dignified and extended their authority.
tics.
The process of extension often took on nearly supernatural characterisThe special quality of a biography like Oliver Peabody's memoir of his
brother
lies in
listening to a
seemed to
the rather sepulchral sense
posthumous
his loving
voice.
it
gives the readers that they are
During William Peabody's
last
months, he
congregation to be increasingly "standing on the
confines of the eternal world, as one ready to be offered; permitted just
before entering
its
gate to point out to those he loved, with the failing
accents of a dying voice, the
way
to reach
its
played daringly on the enticing boundaries between the
Peabody brothers apparently
Sigoumey and death where
blessedness."^^ Mrs. life
lingered. In her poetry she
was
apt, as
an
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
206
everyday matter, to overlook the apparently living
between the
and the dead female. She pictures one deceased maiden lying "In calm
Wounded
endurance, like the smitten lamb,/ girl
trivial distinction
dead, or merely stricken?
trays the
in
flowery
pastures."^'* Is the
Even Mrs. Sigoumey's narrative posture
same fascinated confusion. Her only attempt
Lucy
at a novel,
Howard's Journal, the story of a Christian housewife's progress
be-
in piety
and
woman presented to the world by her rather guiltily surviving spouse. Lucy Howard speaks from beyond the grave. As luck would have it, Mrs. Sigoumey's own autobiography.
family
life,
purports to be the diary of a dead
of Life, which she began in the early 1860s, was almost complete she died in 1865. The book, finished by other hands, has some of the
Letters
when
same otherworld posthumous authority which she granted Lucy Howard's infinitely less interesting account.
Mrs. Sigoumey's
last
recorded words were the benignly all-inclusive
ones, "I love everybody." ^^
A
few decades
before, Mrs.
Sigoumey had
published a sentimentalized biographical sketch entitled Margaret and Henrietta (1835).
phrase on her of such a
According to her account, Margaret had died with the same lips.^^
last line,
Could Mrs. Sigoumey have mentally noted the appeal
stored
it
up, and finally re-enacted a deathbed scene
she had in part invented?
Sigoumey was prone marriage
in
her
late
Long before
she uttered her
last
which
words, Mrs.
to usurp the authority of the dead. Prior to her
twenties she had been a distinguished schoolteacher in
Hartford. In later years, she liked to keep up with her former pupils through
annual spring picnic-processions in the
were
woods near Hartford. These
clearly extraordinarily important to Mrs.
rituals
Sigoumey's psyche: she
maintained them for decades, graciously including pupils' children as well as pupils.
She wrote
a regular
account of them
penned that she never published
—
entitled
—perhaps the only thing she
"A Record
of
My School. "^^ The
attraction of the reunions for their organizer seems obvious: here she could
play out the funereal fantasy she had developed in her poetry, her novel, and finally in
her memoir.
The
girls, later
to be middle-aged
women, marched
to the sylvan spot ceremoniously dressed in white, flanked
of handicapped children from Hartford's deaf and interest of Mrs. Sigoumey's).
Once
ate in picnic fashion (though Mrs.
such healthy and gross
activity),
by processions
dumb asylum
(a
special
arrived at the "glade," they presumably
Sigoumey and
characteristically
listened to their
downplays
former preceptor's
yearly talk. Mrs. Sigoumey's focus was always the same: she dwelt lovingly
on whomever of the
original
group had passed away during the preceding
That death at a young age from consumption or childbirth complications was frequent among Mrs. Sigoumey's pupils can hardly be denied by anyone who looks over the statistics which she, a sentimental Madame La Farge, accumulated in her "Record"; that Mrs. Sigoumey was doing more year.
The Domestication of Death
than recording obvious and tragic facts
is
101
equally clear to anyone reading
through the actual obituary sermons she delivered on the
lost
"floweret" of
the year.
Even more as
one
however,
is
Mrs. Sigoumey's penchant for talking
who has herself barely escaped the perils of death. At the first presumably
in 1822, less
striking,
in
her usual
plump and ruddy good
urges her listeners to go on meeting annually even
addresses
you should be
silent,
if
health, she nonethe-
"the voice that
now
the lip that has uttered prayers for your
welfare should be sealed in the dust of death." In 1823, she that since they last
reunion
met she has been
sick, has
been
tells
"(at least in
her hearers
thought) on
the confines of the abode of spirits," and has brought back solemn
wisdom. Mrs. Sigoumey has assumed
a clerical role;
words of
more important,
she has
become her own medium. The Fox sisters did not begin their table-rappings in upstate New York until 1848, but Mrs. Sigoumey had in several senses anticipated them.^® She was straining for the authority conferred on the Peabodys, the power granted by the privilege of extraterrestrial communication. Several of the little saints whose early deaths drew so many sympathetic tears showed extrasensory abilities similar to Mrs. Sigoumey's. It was not just a matter of the conventional lips,
the
last
little
upward, the smile on the once-rosy
finger pointing
gasped "Mother" or "Jesus."
A
enjoyed extended communications with the dancing of his
in anticipation of his
own
speedy
medium, and
spirit
like
saw various deceased members messages back to the living. He was
arrival,
family, and relayed their
quite literally a
James Cobb world: he watched angels
dying child
after his death he continued to appear to his
relatives.
Death, province of minister and mother, instead of marking the end of
power, had become specific senses
was
living to the dead,
its
source. Spiritualism in
a manifestation of a
most generalized and most
complex retransfer of force from the
from the apparently strong
on spiritualism and the
its
to the apparently weak.
afterlife like Elizabeth Ellet's
Books
Watching Spirits (1851),
Mrs. H. D. Williams' Voices from the Silent Land (1853), Daniel Eddy's Angel
Our Children in Heaven (1868), conveyed the clear impression that death widened rather than limited the ministerial and maternal sphere of influence. These sainted dead hovering around their old haunts, whether women, ministers, or pious children eternally firm in the virtues inculcated by their mothers and their pastors, were so many witnesses, even spies, for the church and the home. At work here Whispers (1855), and William Holcombe's
is
the compensation process
among exactly
I
spoke of
the living, declare them life,
earlier: if
among
you cannot make converts
the dead. Death must become, not
but a controlled extension of the feelings, and property rights,
of the living.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
208
The Rural Cemetery Movement Before the early nineteenth century, Americans buried their deceased local
the
churchyard.
The
relative
abandonment of the
absence of ostentation
in these
distinctions of wealth or birth
when
ably interested those buried there
dead were no longer concerned with
the
simple graves,
which had presum-
suggested forcibly that the
alive,
this
in
world.
By
the 1830s, a
new and
very different method of treating the dead, what would prove to be the
modem
method, began to find acceptance.^®
The
intramural churchyard
was replaced by the landscaped "garden" or "rural" cemetery, located away from the church on the outskirts of town or village. Developing awareness of the laws of hygiene in part motivated the shift from the old crowded churchyard to the spacious lawn cemetery; this awareness in no way accounts, however, for the new conspicuous elaboration which characterized the layout and development of the that the
new
cemeteries.
same groups who produced the consolation
promoted and extolled the
It is
hardly surprising
literature of the period
cemetery and the innovative modes of
rural
which accompanied it. The rural cemetery movement officially began in America in 1831 with the opening of Mt. Auburn, the first garden cemetery in the Western world except for Paris' Pere Lachaise. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Salem were among the many American cities quickly to follow Cambridge's lead. The pioneering Boston enterprise was burial
distinctly Unitarian,
Brahmin, sentimental, and
literary.
Among
the found-
were the Unitarian lawyer and writer Joseph Story, the antiquarian author and temperance reformer Lucius Sargent, the Unitarian ing fathers
clergyman and poet John Pierrepont, and the ex-Unitarian clergyman and prominent orator Edward Everett. At the consecration of the cemetery in
Henry Ware,
1831
The new,
Sr., led
the prayer and Judge Story gave the address.
planned, and picturesque rural cemeteries, unlike their
tramural predecessors, were dedicated to the idea that the dead,
"cared." Paths with pastoral names, gentle
still
newly popular graveside flowers
flattered the
and the
green slopes, and
presumed
docility of the
The severe tombstones of seventeenth-century New England with
deceased.
their stark reminders of the fact of death
—had
hourglass
thropomorphic
given
way
in
designs. Actual
—
a cross, a death's-head, or
the late eighteenth century to if
were
in
evidence by 1800.^°
graveyard guidebook ily plots in
produced
calls
new
an an-
crude portraits of the deceased appeared;
allegorical pictures of the Resurrection, tastefully trees,
rills,
living,
in-
By
adorned with willow
the 1840s, statues of what one popular
"weeping female figures"^ marked various fam^
Mt. Auburn: Mrs. Sigoumey had been immortalized and massin
Sigoumey decorated ornate her down/ A lovely jewel for his
marble. Lachrymose verse ^
gravestones. "In Jesus' arms
we
laid
la
The Domestication of Death
crown," were typical
lines inscribed
209
on the gravestone of
a
young
girl in
New Jersey; "asleep in Jesus" was a popular caption for children's tombs every where.^^ Reverend Cuyler, passing an afternoon at New York's Princeton,
Greenwood cemetery near the grave no means final adieu: "The air was
of his
"little
Georgie," bid his son a by
unnumbered
as silent as the
around me; and turning toward the sacred spot where
my
sleepers
precious dead was
bade him, as of old, 'Goodnight!' "
lying,
I
a vast
and exquisitely beautiful
Greenwood was to Cuyler "simply dormitory."^^ It is not so much that the dead
are alive as that they are altogether accessible to the living.
Developing funeral customs carefully fostered the same cemetery created. The dead person was reincarnated
euphemism for
made
ingly
a living one:
it
to resemble dolls.
as a
illusions the
kind of hideous
seems no accident that corpses were increas-
There was
a
growing de-emphasis on somber
mourning clothes and gloomy funerary practices. Sylvester Judd left directions for his own laying out: he was arranged for viewing "in apparent comfort upon
by
couch, as
According to
his side."
banished.^'*
his
The
if
in quiet natural
slumber.
A
winter rose lay
"gloominess and dread" were
his biographer,
deceased were to compliment and imitate their survivors
rather than threaten them. Elaborate and highly differentiated metal caskets
wooden ones in the early nineteenth century, although many protheir use. The metal casket, unlike its predecessor, insured that neither
replaced tested it
nor
The
contents would disintegrate or return to the earth for a long time.
its
new coffins were clearly intended to please the Nehemiah Adams began his account of Agnes and the Key
actual designs of the
taste of the living.
of Her
Little Coffin
in the
design of children's coffins.
angles.
.
nothing
.
.
They
by explaining that there had been
They no
a great
improvement
longer had "broken lines and
look like other things, and not like that which looks like
else, a coffin."
He added,
rather maladroitly,
"You would be
willing
any household article." There was nameplate inside the box, and a "lock and key"
to have such a shape for the depositing of
apparently a soft lining and a
had replaced the old "remorseless screws and screwdrivers."^®
While eighteenth-century American families generally prepared their deceased for burial at home in simple and straightforward ways, outside organizers began to proliferate in the early nineteenth century:
midwife or the undertaker.
livery-stable keeper or the sexton,
The
and
first
the
finally the professional
undertaker's art took a gigantic stride forward with the
practice of embalming, initiated during the Civil
spread until the twentieth century.
The new
War
though not wide-
funeral directors of the later
nineteenth century, with their double emphasis on business and sentimentality,
were the
heirs of the liberal ministers
to create the sensibility of mid-century.
and lady authors
By
who had
helped
the 1880s, there was a National
Funeral Directors' Association with a representative organ called Sunnyside
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
210
competed successfully with
(it
which
a rival periodical entitled Shadyside)
could issue touching and ludicrous statements to the press
like the fol-
lowing:
Funeral directors are members of an exalted, almost sacred calling.
The
Executive Committee believed that a cut
dal. ...
A
in prices
would be
Of
.
suici-
$1,000 prize was offered for the best appearing corpse after
A
was passed requesting the newspapers 26 porting the proceedings to refrain from flippancy. 60 days.
.
...
resolution
was the most
course, the "best appearing corpse"
in re-
lifelike one.
Nothing speaks more clearly to the transformation of death the rural cemeteries promulgated than their promotion as places of resort, well suited to holiday excursions.
They functioned
as a
Disney World for the mortuary
imagination of \'ictorian America. Sylvester Judd, in his days as a student at
Harvard Divinity School
Auburn was
tombstones. For him, Mt.
melancholy and a special
in the late 1830s,
delight. "^^ In 1859,
was fond of
a stroll
among
the
"that place of beauty and death, of
one young man from Connecticut made
pilgrimage to the spot. His reactions ranged from borrowed aes-
thetic piety to indigenous class-consciousness:
up
"What
a vast lot
of
money
Oh
what pleasure there is in walking among the dead. So say the people."^® By 1876, James Cabot Lowell could I
saw
piled
monuments.
in
.
.
.
write rather unkindly about his fellow Bostonians that their idea of proper hospitality automatically included a dinner with uncongenial
people and "a drive
man can do
in the
Hamlet went
in
and
ill-sorted
Mt. Auburn cemetery where you will see the worst
way
of disfiguring nature."^^
to the graveyard in a
mood
of alienation from his kind,
of philosophical despair; he resorted to the churchyard to confront some ultimate reality.
The
mid-nineteenth-century American went to the ceme-
tery rather in the spirit in
which
his
twentieth-century descendant goes to
upon the prospect of borrowed cemetery's camouflage of death was so entire that its
the movies: with the hopefulness attendant
emotions.
The
rural
purpose came paradoxically to seem the creation of the the vicarious edification and stimulation of the living.
tioned not like experience but like literature; sentimental reader's paradise. rine inscriptions oflicial
and
which
I
The Sunday
Visitor's
The cemetery
was
could peruse the saccha-
The
Picturesque Pocket
Guide Through Mt. Auburn was out by the less
than a decade old.
a detailed description
func-
in several senses a
unofficial literary guides to the various graveyards
cemetery was and
stroller
of death for
have already mentioned. Moreover, hundreds of
during the middle decades of the century.
and
it
illusion
It
appeared
Companion
late 1830s,
when
included Judge Story's address
of the most interesting
among
the
in toto
the monuments, and
The Domestication of Death
211
poem
closed with "Miscellanies," a collection of prose and
and graveyards; there were pieces by the sentimental
pieces
on death
litterateur Willis
G.
Hemans, and the gifted young Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1844, Caroline F. Ome, a very minor talent, helpfully published a book of poems entitled Sweet Auburn and Mt. Auburn with Other Poems. Of the six stories Mrs. Sigoumey included in The Young Lady's
Clarke, the famous English poet Mrs.
Offering in 1847, five close with graveyard scenes
and funeral processions.
The visitor to Mt. Auburn and other cemeteries was clearly under an inviting willow, or pause near an
The
artificial
intended to stop
pond, and read aloud.
funerary literature and the rural cemeteries themselves did not
present death merely as provocation for the sensibility of the living, ever; they advertised
it
in
curious
ways
as
how-
matter for actual appropriation
and acquisition. The topography of the cemeteries,
like the
language used
to describe them, suggested a Utopian preservation, literalization, and even objectification of a conservatively conceived past.^°
and the
women
site
They were
I
discussed in the
chapter.
last
in
biography. According to a
critic
One commenta-
common man with for the New Englander in
tor explained that graveyards provide the
emblem
promoted by
for the biologically oriented, cyclical history
and ministers which
the
his
only lesson
1831, the rural
cemetery demonstrated to observers that "in the mighty system of the universe, not a single step of the destroyer, to
some
Time, but and the
ulterior purpose of reproduction,
eternal."^ ^
The
is
made
subservient
circle of creation
is
originators and supporters of the rural cemeteries had in-
tended them to serve as negotiable sanctuaries from the present. analyzed their appeal: "The retirement they
afl^ord to
An advocate
surviving friends in
their visits to the graves of loved ones; the quiet precincts of the sacred place,
made
beautiful
by the embellishments of
of natural scenery, combine to
They become places dance with their name and dead.
make
artistic tillage
attractive
and the inspiration
and sacred the city of the
of respectful and reverent resort. "^^ In accorin contrast to the
replaced, the rural cemeteries
intramural churchyards they
were located out of town, away from the
urban bustle and noise: they were to be uncrowded, pre-industrial, privatized.
The
quiet atmosphere of the cemeteries
responsible for the development of Mt.
down
was
Auburn
strictly enforced.
in 1831, for
careful regulations about the planning and use of
trustees of the spot
example,
laid
grounds: the
had the right to remove "offensive and improper" monu-
ments; no "vehicles" were allowed but those ers of plots);
its
Those
owned by
"proprietors" (own-
no one was allowed within the gates on Sundays and holidays
except proprietors.^^ As such restrictions suggest, the sentimental impulse ostensibly responsible for the creation and policing of the rural cemeteries
was
in part a disguise
for an impulse of ownership like the one motivating
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
212
the
new
and feminine history. Nostalgia, here
ministerial
as elsewhere, func-
tioned as a spiritualized form of acquisition. Until the 1880s, proprietors
by the erection of iron railings. Cemeteries bristling with such jealous markers gave evidence of squatters' rights rather than of mourners' grief.^'* Francis and Theresa Pubszky, a foreign couple visiting
disfigured their plots
America
in 1853,
little befits a
objected to the custom in frank language: "Exclusiveness
cemetery; the idea of private property carried even into the
realm of the dead
.
.
.
has something unnaturally strange."^^
Observers were particularly fond of describing the rural cemeteries terms which likened them to that emblem of the the middle-class home.
possibilities of
One commentator on "The Law
Sentiment of Death" for the Christian Examiner
in
in
ownership,
of Burial and the
1836 expressed his belief
and rever-
that the graveyards could foster "the sentiment of retrospection
ence" and draw their visitors from "the busy competition" and "hurried
.
ambitious spirit" of the day.^^ This of course was also the language used
.
in
American home, also by definition preindustrial. In the words of a popular domestic manual by a Reverend Phillips, the home was the "heart's moral oasis"; like the cemetery, it was a "refuge" for the "bereaved and disappointed."^^ Another writer for the Christian Examiner made the comparison explicit: thoughts provoked by the cemetery "give a new aspect to all our social relations and confer upon our
the period to describe the ideal
homes
particularly,
where these
relations are the
most intimate,
a peculiar
sacredness."^® It
was no accident
that the
same architectural thinking underlay the
new proto-suburban domestic architecture and the new rural graveyards. The idea of the "picturesque" as formulated by Andrew Jackson Downing dominated both. A landscape gardener and an architect. Downing was also a man of letters and a close friend of polite literary men like George Curtis and Nathaniel
Willis;
he edited a magazine entitled Horticulture and wrote
several books. Socially conservative, of the genteel school in every sphere,
he attempted to
civilize,
moderate, and control the taste and homes of
America's business-minded middle
Downing wished
class;
as
one contemporary put
it,
"to infuse a spirit and a grace in forms otherwise admirable
only for their usefulness."^^ Downing's architectural theories rested on what life"
which
proto-suburban styles were meant to emulate or approximate,
in his
he called the "theory of association." In the "cultivated country his
words, "everything lends nature.
bestow
.
.
.
The
aid to
awaken the
finer sensibilities of
heart has there, always within reach, something on
its aflPections.
planted."
its
Downing's
ceived, to foster "a
We
begat a partiality for every copse that
style
was meant,
"memory," not ambition.
which
to
we have
as his friend Nathaniel Willis per-
most careful culture of home '^^
our
associations,'' to
This "theory of association"
is
strengthen
the familiar doc-
The Domestication of Death
213
which we have already seen used to rationalize and recoup feminine and ministerial powers. Architecture, whether in cemetery landscaping or suburban homes, became one of the ways in which the less
trine of "influence"
aggressive purported to correct the sensibility of their competitive society.
gentleman should, Downing took
from England, but in doing so he avoided the grandiose as inappropriate to a democratic country. He classified domestic homes and grounds under two head-
As
a
his artistic principles
by a gentle and flowing style, and the more abrupt and irregular one. The pic-
ings: the "beautiful," characterized
"picturesque," dominated by a
turesque, generally preferred by Americans, sion of
what German writers and scholars
called the "sublime."
By
was
in actuality a
at the
debased ver-
turn of the century had
they designated the wild and almost
this term,
anarchic elements of the natural and mortal landscape perceived and
as-
by the human mind only at great peril to itself. The excitement and challenge of the sublime was precisely what Downing chose to ignore.
similated
Unlike the productions of the "sublime," the "picturesque" landscape or building
is
between
Change
not an illustration of the laws of motion.
a torrent
in the
and
a
a rushing waterfall
rill,
"picturesque" world
is
The
and
merely decorative.
a
difference
is
that
babbling brook.
One
of Downing's
supporters and helpers explained that he wished to counteract the "restlessness and disposition to change
The
which
"picturesque" cottage-style
is
home was to be modest
groomed by
the surrounding land was
characteristic of our people."'*^
but delightful;
judicious planting into a carefully
The new cemeteries looked as such domiciles. The Picturesque Pocket
controlled mimicry of natural abundance.'*^ if
they were extended grounds for
Companion and
Visitor's
"unusual variety" of
Guide Through Mt. Auburn rightly points to the
trees,
the "beautifully undulating" surface, the "flowers
and ornamental shrubs," the carefully measured paths of Mt. Auburn evidence of "picturesque plot, like the
.
.
.
landscape gardening."'*^
The
rural
cemetery
proto-suburban home, gains significance solely through
owner's fond appreciation.
The cemetery
as
its
plots, like their descendants, the
enough variety to pay tribute to the fact of distinct ownership and to perpetuate the romance of individual reduplication of an utterly standard theme. The dead and their places of rest have become very much the property of the living. suburban homes, manifest
just
Prayers and Hymns: Exploration of Another World
The
act of acquisition did not stop with the graveyard.
During the middle
decades of the nineteenth century, America was busy taking over territory
on
its
boundaries.
The
studies of past conquests
were paradigms for current aggression.
A
by the romantic
historians
number of Americans, however.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
214
not apparently engaged or interested in these dramas of imperialism, were sighting and colonizing territory theoretically of infinitely greater impor-
tance than the Southwest: heaven
itself.
Consolation literature of
between 1820 and 1875 became preoccupied not
just
with the
all
forms
scenes and
last
earthly resting places of the dead but with their celestial destination and
Holcombe, the author of Our Children
doings. William
in
Heaven, expressed
the need of "some great spiritual telescope to bring [the dead] in all their beautiful reality," the
need of "a
authorized revelation of the
after death.'"*'*
than
at first
as Texas;
life
.
.
.
near to us
clear, consistent, philosophical
This was easier to provide
might be imagined. Heaven was apparently
as real, as concrete,
and heavenly prospects turned out to have many
affinities
with
domestic scenes. It is
possible and even appropriate to describe this spiritualist annexation
of heaven in the language of the
modem
tion literature dedicated to the definition
hymn-singing formed what other world.
The
we might
call
media.
The
sub-genre of consola-
and promulgation of praying and channels of communication to the
writers of consolation literature established contact with
modem
the next world through prayers and hymns; then, like reporters, they
television
purveyed news of the heavenly realm back to earthly audi-
The authors of such accounts had enormous authority, for who could question their reports? No matter how genuine the need and belief of its but propOiients, the new domestic heaven was unquestionably the earliest ences.
in
— some sense the most perfect "pseudo-event"
—
in
American
history: totally
fabricated, yet uncontestable.
Prayer manuals, which appeared
in ever-greater
numbers
at
mid-cen-
tury, taught thousands of Americans, in the phrase of a later mind-cure
expert, to "tune in with the infinite.'"*^
An
examination of the
motives of the authors of two of the most famous
Hour and Stepping Heavenward, may help this period.
gian, the
Typically, the earlier manual
second
As we saw
is
in
a
novel by
a
woman
lives
and
The
Still
among them.
to explain their proliferation in a treatise
is
and
a
by
a
man and
a theolo-
mother.
an earlier chapter, Austin Phelps had a close personal
acquaintance with sickness and death. According to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, her father was possessed of a "divine instinct to relieve suffering," and he
tended
a succession of
dying wives
He founded town. In his own
as well as his frail daughter.
the "Improvement Association" for the graveyard of his
view, he was a victim, early consigned by a conspiracy of ill-health and neurosis to the role of disestablished
man, Phelps's in
frail
among
constitution forced
him
the disestablished.'*®
As
a
young
to relinquish active pastoral duty
Boston; in middle age, he was seldom well enough to achieve the perfect
fulfillment of his teaching
which
his
conscience
and writing obligations
insisted.
He
wrote
at
Andover Seminary on
a self-pitying yet
genuine piece
The Domestication of Death
215
"The Premature Closing of a Life's Work" which begins: "Look around: you find the world full of those arrested, rebuffed, disappointed though willing oh, how willing! workers."^^ A number of Phelps's con-
entitled
—
—
temporaries apparently believed Phelps courted an invalid there are questions to ask about a
man who,
Certainly
state.
one wife
after nursing
in a fatal
marked as tubercular, and nurse her through the remaining eighteen months of her life. What is clear is that in Phelps's mind his suffering conferred on him a special status, even a special occupation. He liked to hope that, while he was illness,
would within a few years marry her sister,
clearly
excluded from the work of "busier manhood," he gained
not surprising that over the years Phelps developed a stronger and
ity." It is
stronger belief in the reality of the heavenly
life,
He was open about the meaning of prayer in a
and
and therapy for
usefulness to
life like his, as
life's
.
is
.
as a
relieved
by
it."*®
In 1860, a
The
God, intended to help others learn
command
act.''"^^
Still
This
few years Hour:
or,
how to pray. He frankly
admitted that prayer was finally for the passive, that conception, a state rather than an
means of
finished.
.
after the death of his second wife, Phelps published
"prayer has
solace for the
lost, as
"The value of prayer [is] work like mine is mainly
oppressive sense of useless living
Communion with
an anticipation
life-prisoners:
men whose
of prayer.
in the reality
of powers not yet gained, a compensation for powers sick
in "spiritual vital-
it
But he was
was
also
"in
its
highest
convinced that
of an immense reserve of yet undeveloped
re-
sources."^® In a later work, Phelps recounts a significant story about a sick
and solitary
woman who made
Again, like so
many
a career of
semi-spiritualists,
ogy, Phelps explains: "Her daily
dence between
this
praying for everyone she knew.
drawing on
life ... is a line
a pseudo-scientific anal-
of telegraphic correspon-
world and heaven."^ ^ Her greatest triumph came when
she prayed incessantly for a
young man she had never met but whose
accidental presence in a railroad car with her had revealed to her his
gious
crisis.
She learned
later that
he had converted within
the ministry. Prayer allowed those excluded
a
reli-
year and joined
from the challenges of human
history to participate in the miracles of divine providence.
was peculiarly impressed by the work of Elizabeth Prentiss. Prentiss' father, Edward Payson, a famous preacher in Portland, Maine, in the early nineteenth century, was himself noted for his In his later years, Phelps
spontaneous and heartfelt praying, what he called "a kind of devout poetry."^^
He died when
later fiercely resented
ished the
memory
Elizabeth was
still
a little girl of eight.
Although she
comparisons between herself and her father, she cher-
of him
all
her
life as a
"hero and a
saint."
Admitting that
by his "devotional habits," she traced her own real spiritual development from the childhood moment when she had inadvertently rushed in on him "prostrate upon his face completely
she had been particularly influenced
—
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
216
was constantly subject to ill-health, insomnia, and intense emotional conflict; she too was a creature of real talent, perhaps of genius. Unlike him, she had the full-time job of mother of a large family and knew the frustration consequent upon repressing very genuine lost in
prayer." Like her father, Prentiss
and powerful
artistic
and ministerial impulses
until nearly the
end of her
life.
In the 1850s, Prentiss lost a daughter and a son, and she sought comfort in
books
The Folded Lamb, The Broken Bird, and
like Light on Little Graves,
Christian Consolation. Increasingly, Prentiss
and
like
Austin Phelps,
in prayer.
never stopping to think, as she
found her
outlet, like her father
She prayed incessantly on every subject,
said, "if
such and such
a
matter [was]
suffi-
words to her husband, which she would have her
ciently great for his [God's] notice." Prentiss' last
shortly before she left for the Bible-reading at
were
final collapse,
prayer for me.
'
is
as surely a
slow and emphasized injunction: " 'Vou pray
one-little-
"^^
most popular novel, the partly autobiographical Stepping
Prentiss'
Heavenward,
a
a
book which Phelps read repeatedly with great admiration,
prayer manual as The
Prentiss later explained,
"was
Still
word
Hour. "Every
a prayer."
A
of that book,"
admirer described
clerical
impact: "It was one of those books which sorrowing, Mary-like to each other,
and which lured many
of her care-cumbered
life
to
ponder the new lesson of
story concerns an over-burdened doctor's wife,
women read
Martha from the
a bustling
whose
fretting
rest in toil."^'*
piety
is
its
The
by her
tested
husband's insensitivity, her in-laws' selfishness, and the agonizing death of
genuine force comes from Prentiss' clear perception
one of her children.
Its
that the housewife's
work
satisfying
is
never finished, and hence never fully successful,
—or rewarded. Katy
one practical or
Elliott masters
lem only to have another crop up; the
moment
static
familial prob-
of achievement, the
by definition impossible. Prentiss depicts the middle-class mother's life as one of harassment whose rewards are genuine but obscured. The motto of Stepping Heavenward can be well-earned narcissistic pause for applause
summed up
in the
without ceasing.'
"
words of the
heroine's mother: "
Prayer provides
self-involvement no matter
is
how
at
minimum
lofty;
but
it
is
'Go on praying
— pray
a little leisure, time off for
more. Significantly, Katy
does not learn the true meaning of prayer and closeness to Christ until she is
cut off
from
all
household work by
a painful
seven-year
illness
which, the
reader assumes, terminates in her death. Needless to say, her family does not fully appreciate her until she
abandons her
status as semi-skilled wife
and
mother for the spiritual superiority of sainthood. Katy's last utterance, which closes the book, is, appropriately, a prayer expressing her thankfulGod's grace.^^
ness for It is
stanzaic
important that Katy's
form of the hymn. As
I
final
prayer
have already
is
also a
said,
poem couched
in
the
Elizabeth Prentiss' father,
The Domestication of Death
217
^
Edward Payson, had believed that prayer was "devout poetry." Prentiss loved hymns so much that at one time she felt herself in danger of preferring overcame this excessive predilection, but the passion for hymns remained. During Prentiss' lifetime, American churchgoers came increasingly to identify prayers, poetry, and hymns. There are several points to be noted about the hymns which proliferated and
them even
to the Bible. Discipline
were welcomed their relative
American homes and churches during this period: first, novelty as an important part of American Protestant worship; in
second, their largely non-evangelical and feminine authorship; and liberalized theology, poeticized form,
last,
their
and growing obsession with heavenly
life.^«
In Puritan days, congregations chanted closely
from the
psalms. Indeed, respect for the sacred
system of rhyme apparently necessitated prehensibility.
New
The Bay Psalm
England for nearly
Twenty-third Psalm is,/
Want
"hymns" which were drawn
Book,
first
a century,
word and
crude
a
a certain disrespect for easy
com-
published in 1640 and standard in
rendered the opening
lines
of the
"The Lord to me a shepheard Richard Mather, a member of one of New
in rather literal fashion:
therefore shall not
I."
England's most illustrious clerical families, in the Psalm Book's Preface:
"God's
altar
needs not our polishing." Another representative of the same
family. Cotton Mather,
his
own
translation of the psalms,
more of Art"^^ not inappropriate, and watched with interthe changes that took place in hymnology during the late seventeenth
thought "a est
who had done
little
and early eighteenth centuries.
The
great event for English
appearance of Isaac Watts's in 1715,
works destined
Watts used only the
hymnology during
Hymns
to dominate
in
1707 and his
was the Divine and Moral Songs this period
hymn-writing for nearly two centuries.
suitable portions of psalms for his
occasion loosely paraphrased those. His predecessors had
hymns and on
felt
committed to
every scrap of God's word; his successors were on occasion to desert Holy
Writ altogether for secular sources. Watts, an English Anglican who tended toward proto-Unitarianism, was perfectly aware of the transformation he
was encouraging: he admitted into the
God,
common
affairs
down the royal author men were to sing about
that he had "brought
of the Christian
life." If
must be in terms and tunes they understood, and enjoyed. Initial approval of Watts was cautious in the colonies. The first American edition it
appeared
in
Boston
in 1739;
Philadelphia issued one in 1742,
New
York
in
Cotton Mather was very enthusiastic about Watts's hymns, but thought them suitable for private rather than public services.^® Indeed, it is 1752.
crucial for understanding the role of
Protestant
Church
to
remember
hymns
that they
were
in the
changing American
originally conceived as best
adapted for domestic and familial rather than communal and ecclesiastical
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
218 uses. It
was only when the church
terms that
hymns could be
had been redefined
itself
central to their
forms of worship.
in
domestic
A conservative
Congregationalist like Joel Hawes, BushnelFs rival in Hartford,
bowed
to
new fashion with extreme and open reluctance. After a hymn had been sung, Hawes customarily announced with some acerbity that divine service would now recommence.^^ the
Watts became the standard authority, but successors and imitators.
He
had demonstrated,
his
very example inspired
as the
Wesley brothers
also
human
en-
did in the mid-eighteenth century, that hymn-writing was a
deavor, a
form of
necticut put out
literature, of authorship.
The
Congregationalists of Con-
The Hartford Selection in 1799;
Timothy Dwight,
the
Congregationalist "Pope" of Connecticut, published his very popular selec-
drawn from Watts and
tions in 1807, mainly
his school.
With the end of
church establishment and the spread of denominational rivalry can Protestant modus vivendi, every sect had Ballou's Universalist
fact remains,
tury, certain sects
hymns
in the
own hymnbook. Even Adin
and Songs
however, that from the
were
clearly
Northeast.
be conservative
Ameri-
and communal followers had their special collection,
entitled The Hopedale Collection of Hymns
The
its
as the
The
dominant
start
in the
(1845).
of the nineteenth cen-
writing and publishing of
Episcopalians, for obvious reasons, tended to
in their choices.
The
Presbyterians,
who
retained a clearer
many of their rival hymns. The Baptists devel-
emphasis on the sermon and the spoken word than Protestant sects, were not particularly fruitful in
oped
was in
a
compelling brand of emotional folk-song hymn, but
its
popularity
largely in the South and Southwest. All historians of the subject
agreement that the Unitarians, aided and abetted by
alists
liberal
seem
Congregation-
and what Theodore Cuyler called "godly women" writers,^^ produced
more popular hymns of high
quality than any other sect.®^
and 1865, the Unitarians published
Ware, editors
Jr.,
and authors;
in
1855
hymnbooks. Henry Greenwood were among the
fifteen separate
W. P. Henry Ward Beecher
William Peabody, and
F.
Between 1830
helped to put together
The Plymouth Collection, probably the most important
hymnbook
of the
mid-century period. More and more Protestants were singing more and
more hymns written by Unitarians, like-minded Congregationalists, and women. The special trademarks of these hymns were their literary quality and their tendency to stress the more cheerful asp>ects of Protestant theology. Changing funerary practices were intended to rob death of its proverbial sting; hymnology facilitated the process by ignoring hell and highlighting heaven.
Hymns were
increasingly viewed as performing a very different func-
sermon they might accompany. Austin Phelps, who helped to write the single most important treatise on hymnology in America
tion
from
that of the
The Domestication of Death
219
nineteenth century, explained to his readers that the subject of a
in the
sermon
is
not necessarily appropriate to a hymn.
express "the heart of the church."
As
Hymns,
in his opinion,
such, they should not have "an excess
of the analytic element," they should be well-written, tasteful, beautiful.
Their purpose
is
to inspire, uplift,
"tonic to the worshipper."^^ tual.
Hymns were not,
hymns
Phelps was using
and cheer: they are to act
to further
in
as a kind of
other words, to be intellec-
and define that
split
between the
"theology of the intellect" and the "theology of the feelings" which his
Edwards A. Park, had enunciated.
colleague at Andover, If
Phelps found
all
conceptualizing foreign to a proper and successful
hymn, he held one brand of speculation uniquely inappropriate: that which deals with hell or damnation. Reminding his readers that "the Scriptures inculcate a faith which worketh by love," he urged that "comminatory" or threatening
hymns should be very
rare.^^ Earlier
hymnologists had hardly
agreed. In 1758, Samuel Davies, the president of Princeton, had penned a
hymn
containing these grim lines on the fate of the damned: "In vain for
mercy now they cry;/ In lakes of liquid fire they lie."®'* Phelps was able to quote numerous lines from Watts which he pronounced unfit for a "Christian hymn": lines about "Eternal plagues and heavy chains,/ Tormenting racks and fiery coals," or lines entailing enforced confessions on the part of the singer that
Twas I
I
I
that shed the sacred blood;
nailed
him
to the tree;
God, the mockery!
crucified the Christ of I
joined
Calmly overriding the examples of Dante and Milton, Phelps explained that
do not belong to poetry"; no Christian could theme" or "clutch at details of modes and instru-
"actual and tangible horrors ''revel in
song on such
a
ments of torture."®^ Phelps wrote that "sacred song instinctively looks heavenward." Phelps also
noted that "hymns on heaven are innumerable,"^® and
a
study of dozens
hymnbooks of the period confirms his opinion. In 1818, Congregationalist William Tappan wrote a popular hymn called "Heaven, A Place of Rest" whose title might well have served for hundreds of the popular hymns which succeeded it. The kindest remark an admirer could apparently make about a hymn-composer was the one Dr. Charles S. Robinson made about Thomas Hastings: "His poems breathe the very air of of the most popular
heaven!" Reverend Cuyler praised William Muhlenberg, an Episcopalian rector
who wrote the
well-loved
"heavenlymindedness." In "Like
hymn
Would Not Live Always," for his Noah's Weary Dove," Muhlenberg exhorts "I
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
220 his soul (the
dove) to
fly
through "the open door" into "the ark of God."
Fanny Crosby, the bUnd poet who wrote hymns for Moody and Sankey later in the century, emoted joyously in 1858:
We
we
are going,
To
a
are going
home beyond
the skies,
Where the fields are robed in beauty. And the sunlight never dies. 67
The
subject of such
hymns
not simply heaven, but
is
its
accessibility.
The "home" of which Crosby writes was to be taken in a rather literal sense by many of her contemporaries. In The Still Hour, Austin Phelps explained that "an astronomer does not turn his telescope to the skies with a
reasonable hope of penetrating those distant heavens than the
mind of God by
lifting
up
my
analogy suggests again the pseudo-scientific
have of reaching
I
Throne of Grace. "^®
heart at the
Phelps's
of assurance which the
spirit
writers of consolation literature brought to the subject of heaven.
what
as
we might
follow on television the lunar expeditions of our
Americans mourning
astronauts, mid-nineteenth-century
encouraged to follow
what they
their journey to
ate for breakfast,
books of the
who
heaven
they met,
in
more
their
minutest
how they
Some-
modem
dead were
detail; to inquire
The
lived.
consolatory
promised them that such facts were part
afterlife increasingly
of available knowledge. In the 1880s, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, carrying her father's
analogy to
and Between styles,
its
logical extreme,
the Gates,
which
set
produced two novels. Beyond the Gates
forth the eating habits, occupations,
and methods of child care and courtship current
life-
heaven. She even
in
described with some care an oratorio Beethoven had just composed for a celestial audience.
The
only inquiry she could not answer was the natural
one "touching the means" by which her deceased narrator,
was "enabled which,
to give this record to the living earth."
as she says in the last line of
That
a
is
male physician,
the only "secret"
Between the Gates, she decides to
let
"remain such."^^
Heaven Our Home: The Colonization of the
The
Afterlife
debate over the afterlife to which the consolation literature made such
an interesting contribution had
a
complex history
in
American and Eu-
ropean thought. Medieval Christians had shown an intense
interest in the
next world, an interest which created a special, popular, and long-enduring literary genre, the
monastic vision. ^° Yet built into
notion that heaven
itself
was
finally
forbidden to
after the Reformation, Christian thinkers
was the During and
this tradition
human
eyes.
and believers showed an increasing
The Domestication of Death
111
preoccupation with the doctrine of the millennium, that period of
a
thou-
sand years before the Last Judgment in which Christ and his saints would rule
on earth/ Millennial speculation was particularly intense ^
many could
not help associating the birth of this
general and religious possibilities of regeneration.
new
in
America:
more Jonathan Edwards was
not alone in hoping that America might be the chosen
nation with
site
of the millennial
rule.
Before the Civil War, American Christians tended to be millenarians, although they
two deeply opposed camps: premillenarians, usually educated and more evangelical sects, who believed that
split into
members of the less Christ would come to
earth suddenly, even unexpectedly, at the start of the
millennium to supervise
would not appear
its
unfolding; postmillenarians
until the
who
held that Christ
end of the thousand-year period, leaving men to
more gradual and less dramatic fashion. ^^ convocation of clergymen from more traditional groups
guess and execute his wishes in a In 1878, a special
met
in
Chicago to uphold premillennial views. Strikingly, those responsible
and those attending were almost entirely of the evangelical ans,
sects: Presbyteri-
noted for their orthodoxy here as elsewhere, dominated. There were
few Episcopalians, few Congregationalists, and no Unitarians.^^ Unitarian thought on the subject is typified by F. W. P. Greenwood, who, several decades
earlier,
Judgment Day
had dismissed the millennium altogether and referred to the as "figurative,"
emblematic only of Christ's "coming
in
our
hearts."^^
The proponents of premillennianism could be very astute about analyzGeorge Duf!ield, 1842 treatise on the "Second
ing the thinking and motives of their postmillennial foes. a Presbyterian minister
and
hymn
writer, in his
Coming of Jesus Christ" notes that every postmillennial organizer of missionary work hopes "to see his church assume ascendant influence and lead the way to the millennium."^^ In 1840, Reverend J. W. Brooks, fighting those
who
disregard the millennium because they cannot see the "practical
use" of the doctrine, reminds
them
that utility
is
ultimately irrelevant:
do not recognize the chief and all-important feature of the ders—that it is not the word of man, but "THE
"Men
Bible," he thun-
WORD OF GODr^
Nathaniel West,
who
attended the Premillennial Conference, also lamented
"the mistaken system of spiritualizing and guage."^^
It is
dependent
lan-
Edwards A. Park once again: is man on God, or God on man? Is God's word dogma or litera-
Charles
finally
accommodating Bible
Hodge
versus
ture?
Yet the differences between pre- and postmillenarians were not as
as great
they seemed. Both groups had increasingly confused the millennial period
and
doing so had sacrificed the Augustinian
with the heavenly
afterlife,
and Puritan
on the importance of the Last Judgment and the com-
stress
in
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
222
manding
role an autocratic
and even alien Diety played
both groups increasingly shared transfigured,
in it.^®
Furthermore,
conviction that this earth, purified and
a
would be the locus of the millennium. Henry
F. Hill,
writing
on "the world to come," staunchly attacks the postmillenarians. He reminds his readers that the world is still full of evil and will require drain 1853
matic, and divine, aid to achieve millennial status; he warns that even ministers
may
believes,
be mistaken, and that "the Preaching of Peace
and claims most ministers
and beautified, but retaining
its
willing to admit that
it is
his
faculties of the
ble love of
mind
home
orthodox
enacted totally
in
stress
human
of our millennial
on God's
heart
.
.
.
around the homestead sacred and endearing
will,
in
he
is still
man's terms.
to promise his readers: "the
are not to perish with this mortal
planted in tae
site
man's sphere and
was careful
Hill, for all his premillennial zeal,
Yet he
beJieve, that the earth "purified indeed
materialism" will be the
and heavenly existences. Despite
a snare."
[is]
.
life
.
.
.
the indescriba-
rendering even .
.
trivial
things
will not only live but in-
crease in the resurrection state."^®
were not clearly separated, this world and the next were inevitably more and more closely, if unintentionally, assimilated to one another. The millennial debate became part of a larger discussion over the nature of heaven: kingdom or home? American ministers If millennial
and heavenly
lives
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had given relatively
When they
little
atten-
was hardly in terms to attract the carnal heart. Nathaniel Emmons had remarked in one of his grimmer sermons: "The truth is there is nothing which God requires men tion to the subject.
to
do
in this life in
be willing to be
spoke of the next
order to go to heaven that
in heaven. "®°
Emmons
is
life, it
harder to be done, than to
attributed this aversion to
men
because he looked upon the next world as the Lord's possession, and as such a landscape inevitably foreign to mortal eyes.
There were men and women in the
to uphold at least a portion of this view
northeastern United States at mid-century, but they were in the clear
George Cheever, a popular and reformminded Congregationalist minister of New York City, in his book The Powers of the World to Come (1853) stressed the "glory" of the afterlife. Putting the Judgment in central place in his celestial picture, he visualizes
minority, and confused at best.
the regenerate souls passing eternity in the active worship and praise of in the
most traditional theocentric way. Yet, despite
God's omnipotence, Cheever
human domestic
needs.
He
still
tries to
all his
God
highlighting of
reconcile divine glory with very
promises his readers that heaven
incomprehensible universality of omnipresence merely, but
"is
not the dim
a place for
our
now, and with as intimate a home circle, as the dearest fireside on this earth can have, nay incomparably more intimate and personal and definitely local in our Father's House in Heaven."
abode, as determinate as place
is
for us
The Domestication of Death
Heaven
to reunite families;
is
it
223
who
even offers nurseries for children
die
before their parents.®^
Among non-evangelical tic
groups, the out-and-out supporters of a domes-
heaven were dominant. Andrew Peabody,
Wares, Charles Pollen, William E. a
few, believed that heavenly
constituted, that
it
offered
W.
Greenwood, the Channing, and Austin Phelps, to name just the
life satisfied
homes
F.
P.
human
restored, families regathered,
and friends
became common in 1850s a few daring
reunited.®^ Intimate speculation about heavenly scenes
the consolation literature of the period.®^ In the later souls
heart as presently
began to write novels about heaven.®* Given the tradition of the novel,
to write a novel about anything
was
in a sense to
domesticate
it,
to bring
from the church congregation to the family circle. No one was better aware of this than Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who took heaven as her fictional specialty, to the delight of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the scorn of Mark Twain. ®^ Phelps's best-seller The Gates Ajar was published in 1868; two other books on the same subject followed it in the 1880s but she was able to claim, rightly, that her views were still what they had been in it
1868
when
she was only twenty-four.
Phelps was the descendant, not
just
of Austin Phelps and Moses Stuart,
but of ten generations of Congregational ministers and deacons.®^ She would
undoubtedly have been girlhood, while her
a minister
if
such
two brothers played
preaching. Self-consciously
literary
a
path had been open to her.®^ In
at
plain,
mock-sermons, she turned to reform-minded, over-earnest,
nearly an invalid from neuralgia and insomnia, she did not marry until forty-four, and the world laughed, for her husband Herbert
Ward was
more drawn to her literary success than her personal charms. The marriage was not happy. In The Gates Ajar, Phelps quotes from a Scottish divine who speculated that "Heaven may be a place for those who failed on earth."®® Though Phelps
seventeen years her junior, an aspiring writer clearly
was hardly
a failure
— her
books sold well throughout her
life
—she
had
missed not just love, but fulfillment. Seldom likable, always a sentimental
by her need of esteem. She came
writer, often a sloppy one, her formidable talents sapped self-justification, she received little real personal
increasingly
if
comprehensibly to see herself
she wrote in a clear in
any
real sense to
mood
or critical
as a vehicle of suffering. In
of self-revelation about the point
be profitable: "there comes a limit
best that Fate could offer could not atone for the
Believing that love[:]
.
.
.
trust
certain bitter If
earth
word.
is
God
.
.
.
when
beyond which the
has chosen to impose on his creatures "the
animus that he has pledged them
an orphanage, heaven surely must be
all
889
pain ceases
worst she had
under apparent desertion,"®^ Phelps
1
inflicted."
final test
also stressed
with
of a
the redress in his power.
home
in
every sense of the
—
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
224
No
one was more committed to the denial of death
as a separate state
than Phelps. In 1885 she published an extraordinary volume entitled Songs
of the Silent World,
filled
with reassuring poems supposedly written by dead
people to their living and grieving relatives. expresses Phelps's credo in the best
There
A One
imaginary trusting survivor
of the book:
no vacant chair. The loving meet group unbroken smitten, who knows how?
is
—
sitteth silent only, in his usual seat;
We Death
is
gave him once that freedom.
mood
a
By which Death
is life's
The Gates Ajar
is
of
life. It is
life's
Why
not now?
.
.
no whim
Giver mocks
a
broken
heart.
Him,
reticence. Still audible to
The hushed
it
poem
An
happy, speaketh on, apart. ^°
voice,
posited on this hopeful, literal-minded assurance, and
constitutes the apotheosis of the consolation literature of the day.
The
book appropriately focuses on the conflict among the would-be consolers of Mary, a New England girl who has lost her adored brother in the Civil War. On one side, there is Dr. Bland, the local Calvinist minister, who preaches of regenerate
a
cold and abstract heaven as " 'an eternal
" 'shall
study the character of God.'
"^^
On
state' "
where the
the other
is
Mary's
Aunt Winifred who believes in a thoroughly concrete and domestic heaven where dead soldiers will chat with President Lincoln and culturally starved young girls will have pianos to play. Heaven, in Winifred's view, is a consolation prize.
Mary aunt
in
herself
is
an easy convert to this view. After long talks with her
the local graveyard, she
is
reconciled to the loss of her brother
precisely because she realizes that she has not lost
him
confusion of heavenly and earthly spheres which
Winifred's credo,
comes to believe her brother a
is
watching
is
adopting the
Mary
her, waiting for her. It only takes
domestic tragedy to bring Dr. Bland, following the
Winifred's camp.
at all:
rest of the
town, into
When his wife bums to death, he craves comfort, and only
Winifred's belief can supply
it.
Winifred, like her author,
is
not
satisfied,
however, with the control of the souls of her townsmen; she wants the souls of her readers as well. All the logic of The Gates Ajar, as of the consolation literature of
which
going to end up,
if
it
is
you
the culmination, suggests to the reader:
you
are
are well-behaved and lucky, in a domestic realm of
women, and ministers (i.e., angels), so why not begin to believe in them now? Phelps has at her disposal a bid for power which, if ignored, could become a threat of revenge. children,
.
The Domestication of Death
Phelps's bid
225
formidable, however; the bribe she offers her readers
is
is
the enormous, intimate domestic detail of her heaven. Reading the
somewhat nue.
It is
like
window-shopping outside the
book is on Fifth Ave-
fanciest stores
the confidently precise information about the rewards of celestial
which makes this book and its successors such extraordinary documents of American religious and cultural history. Aunt Winifred predicts with assurance that her hair will no longer be gray "in heaven," that heaven will look (at least to her) like Kansas, the state she loves best. She teaches her little girl Faith to talk confidently to her dead father and to expect that God will life
give her everything she wants, even her favorite cookies, in heaven. Phelps's sequels to
The Gates Ajar prove Winifred's staggering assurances to be
modest understatements. The narrator of Beyond the Gates finds herself (after her death) in a lovely semi-rural graciously suburban landscape.
new
angel escorts her to her
We
which
house,
in
is
A
kindly
every sense a home:
stopped before a small and quiet house built of curiously inlaid
woods.
...
So exquisite was the carving and the coloring that on
scale the effect
might have interfered with the
a larger
solidity of the building,
but so modest were the proportions of this charming house that dignity was only enhanced by
—not
there were flowers
sunning himself up on the
and stood, uncertain,
met me
its
delicacy.
It
was shielded by
too many; birds, and steps.
.
I
.
.
.
at the threshold.
.
.
I
"much
as beautiful objects
strolled across the little lawn,
The dog
arose as
I
of the familiar furniture of a modest
which are strange to
bourgeois phrase, to have
Earlier in this chapter
ists
annexing
a totally
.
noticed a fine dog
came
up, and
home"
as well
her.
Her deceased
I
"
'somebody to come home
compared the authors of consolation
campaigning for new votes
new
who has He is glad,
father,
long been living there and waiting for her, comes to meet her.
to politicians
.
cordially.
Inside, she finds
in a tellingly
trees
its
in fresh territories
to.'
"^^
literature
and to imperial-
continents. But the sentimentalists, invading as they did
imaginary land, had
in
one sense an
politicians or imperialists usually do.
They
easier time of
it
than either
did not have to win over or
new supporters were just like themselves, their new country was home. They had no obstacles to overcome, and their subdue
a hostile populace; their
imaginary kingdom reflected that is its
fact:
law. Therein lay the source of
its
ownership, not acquisition or
effort,
widespread appeal to Victorian and
post-V^ictorian America. Phelps, like the other authors of consolation literature,
had an immense
interest in visualizing the afterlife as being scaled to
domestic and pastoral proportions, as a place where she would dominate
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
226
rather than be dominated. In doing so, she less
documented the enticingly
effort-
and inevitable pre-eminence of the average. She dilated heavenly time,
she blew
up
that anticipated
moment whose meaning
she could legislate; an
was fascinated by the inertia of the prolonged close-up. The anthropomorphizing instinct can go no further, for the next world is here known with an intimacy which only posses-
early practitioner of the art of soap opera, she
sion
can
bestow.
materialism. in
Beyond
Spiritualism
The unknown
the Gates
is
paradoxically
the
suggest no break with
its
earthly counterpart, but rather
which an imperma-
of Phelps's heaven
—en-
good works, keeping up with earthly news, redecorating
their
nent object becomes permanent. in
of
objects and possibilities of the "modest" house
the mysterious glorification inherent in the process by
gaged
fagade
logical
homes, falling
in love,
The occupants
and gratifying their various
—
tastes
live in a celestial
retirement village; they constitute a consecrated leisure society. fully contrived
world created
world of the dead
in
isolate,
competitive society,
in actuality
and protect what would become the most
ritual of that society: the
chaos of productivity
insure the pleasures of consumption.
care-
heaven, as in the rural cemetery, a
in protest against the larger
served to transfer,
The
is
essential
eliminated in order to
7 1—=.^'^_j'
THE PERIODICAL PRESS Arena for
Hostility
The Uses of Confusion I
have been describing
some malignity:
a cultural situation
influential
with their society,
of enormous tension and even
groups working apparently
in actuality at cross- purposes
at cross- purposes
with themselves, perpetuat-
Of course simply human experience.
ing a complicated series of deceptions and self-deceptions. to describe this pattern
is
to exaggerate
it
and to distort
Close-range biographical studies of figures like Sarah Hale, Lydia Sigour-
Henry Ware, Horace Bushnell, or Edwards A. Park not only great differences among them but a common mun-
ney, Catharine Beecher,
would dane
reveal
reality.
Yet
this
is
only to say that individuals of any class or group have
experiences whose meaning
group but
is
is
not exhausted by an analysis of their class or
rather determined
by broader human
possibilities
and
limita-
Whatever their individual motivation, the collective impulse of these people was toward self-flattery, self-aggrandizement, and an irritation occa-
tions.
sionally almost homicidal in intensity.
As
is
so frequently the case with the
ministers and
women
intense energies nents. Indeed, capitalist
it
order
in
members of
subcultures, the
question did not in actuality expend their most
combating those they officially designated as their oppois a measure of the strength of the emerging industrialistin the
Northeast that
its
clerical
and feminine
critics
were
systematically and half-willingly confused; they adjusted to a chronic state
of confusion and were rewarded for this adjustment. scious progenitors, as
I
have suggested, of
modem
They were
the uncon-
American mass
culture,
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
228
which comics routinely insult their audiences and themselves, jockeys toss out wisecracks whose casualness partly hides, partly en-
a culture in
disk
hances their sadistic tone, popular interviewers investigate their subjects
with a curiosity that intentionally borders on malice, advertisers downgrade their rivals in order to precipitate
popular patronage.
cratic interest in competition, in "sport,"
Our
so-called
culturally engaged
is
demo-
by the specta-
which serves the purpose of obfuscation rather than of challenge or criticism. For there is only one real issue between the cle of
submerged
hostilities
combatants, whether reviewer and reviewed or disk jockey and
hit singer:
which of them will engross more of the public's attention. The clergymen and ladies in question were engaged in just such mock-
When we
encounters with each other.
look at the imaginative writings,
which they wrote and admired,
especially the popular journalistic works,
we find in them a testament of sexual tension, of covertly stated hatred of women by men and the reverse. There was, and is, need of discussion and conflict on the subject of the relations of men and women in our society, but the clergymen and women were ofl^ering neither. Rivals for the new mass audience increasingly addicted to popular magazine
fare,
they were
expressing the diversionary anger of groups antagonized by competition for
which neither
gains
one another; even aged
its
as
fully respected.
They both
imitated and undermined
they consolidated their shared hegemony, they dam-
integrity and viability. In the end, they
conducted no exploration
of the genuine differences, whether imposed or innate, between masculinity
number of them genuinely wished to do so. They and played with stereotypic sex distinctions somewhat in the spirit
and femininity, although exploited in
which
a
modem advertisers attempt
to differentiate their products: to gain
the competitive edge. In their work, implicit sexual dislike provides provocation, innuendo, titillation, not analysis.
one really wants to win.
It
No
mood
of clerical-
distinctly incestuous; subject
and object,
seems no accident that the
feminine literary production
is
public and private, are indistinguishable. closed system of competition to incest as a topic or a
mood
two do not become
is
one wins, no one can win, no
that
one, they
Its
dynamic
is
generated by a
which no judges are allowed. The point of it
has a conspicuously disappearing subject:
become
less
than one; they emblematize
confusion, not union.
Ministers I
and Magazines: Divided Aims
discussed in Chapter
Three how threatened the
liberal minister felt
by the
competition feminine writers of domestic fiction posed to his religious
hegemony. Nowhere were in the
his fears
more formidable and more
justified
than
sphere of periodical publication. Nathaniel Willis shrewdly analyzed
.
229
The Periodical Press
the well-nigh dictatorial
power
middle-class
women
exerted over their cul-
ture as the result of their role as "the real constituency" of
Given the
literature.^
tastes of the
were compelled to promote or popular magazine form to respond,
periodical
and ministers
criticize the publication of
—
fiction in
women
female audience
shared, they
all
other words, to literature
in
most transparently mass-commercial incarnation. In the burgeoning if perilous world of popular magazines and month-
in its
lies,
women's
periodicals had taken an early and easy lead. Godey V
by
Book, seconded all
masculine
rivals.
its
imitators
As
Graham V and
Peterson 's
and supported by the Adamses, the Nortons, and other never drew more than
thies,
few thousand
a
many
of the same feminine readers
decades before the Civil War.^ Godey
in the
known and economic
New
England wor-
patrons. Equally distinguished
Family magazines, however, which
religious periodicals did not fare better.
attracted
long outdistanced
when Godey was in decline, it claimed 110,000. The North American Review, edited
late as 1860,
150,000 subscribers to Harper's
V,
Lady V
who
V,
liked Godey
Graham V, and
V,
proliferated
Peterson V
were
feared for a telling combination of lachrymose fare and hard
astuteness: they led the
way
of
in the signing
articles,
copyright, and the cultivation of advertising on a large scale
ments which were to underpin the financing of
later
Predictably, several of the prosperous periodicals
—
the use of
all
develop-
American magazines.^
managed by men
imitated,
with varying degrees of guilt and anxiety, the themes and style of their
At times they looked like rather small minnows swimming whale. Fashion plates a la Godey V in the wide wake of the matronly Godey appeared in surprising places. Even Harper's Monthly Magazine, which began in 1850, had a few fashion plates tucked at the back of each issue for feminine
rivals.
!f
good measure.
Many
clerical
deeply troubled alist
journal, the
commentators purported to
at this state
New
of
affairs.
The
be,
and probably were,
originators of the Congregation-
Englander, derided the male editors and co-editors of
such periodicals as Godey V and Graham
who
V,
"so far as they are men,
.
.
have given up their manly appetites and devoted themselves to the amuse-
ment of our
citizen ladies.'"*
Other
ministerial critics expressed discontent
with the very prevalence of periodical writing. In 1847, a reviewer for the Christian
Examiner panned Alderhook,
"Fanny Forrester." trusts
ever,
is
is
He
deplores her "flowery sentimental" style, which he
not "attractive to the sober-minded."
that
"Fanny
Forrester's" tales
typical contributions to the
Home
of magazine stories by
a collection
were
What
bothers him most, how-
originally
magazine publications,
coy light-hearted pages of Nathaniel
Journal; as such, they should hopefully have been,
literary
worth,
at least safely
ephemeral.
He bemoans the
if
Willis'
not of solid
countless readers
— he compares them to "locusts"— who support such periodicals; once again
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
230
he has recourse to the "sober-minded" periodical Hterature."
which
will take
perused
... is
its
who "mourn"
the "invention of
To collect feeble pieces like Chubbuck's into a volume on
substantial place
an additional
evil,"
library shelves,
"among books
to be
subjecting the public to "a double deluge."
We "must set up what dikes and breakwaters we can," he concludes grimly.^ The
dikes erected
by
liberal
clergymen against the flood
tides of femi-
The
nine sentimental periodical literature were often disturbingly flimsy.
Most liberal ministers were extremely hesitant to publish novels; and a volume of sermons, no matter how literary and sentimental,^ could not command the same market as a work of fiction. Appealing periodical fare, however, was theoretically within their sphere. From the start of the magazine business in America, religious journals and papers had numerically dominated the periodical market.^ By one historian's count, there were ten religious journals in 1800, eight hundred and fifty in 1840.® At mid-century, religious periodicals still outnumbered ladies' magazines, although none of them were as successful as the best of their feminine rivals.® reasons are obvious.
Their editors and contributors could vindicate themselves by the claim that they were providing a corrective to the secular feminine journals; like
modem they tion
preachers
felt all
who
skillfully
employ
television to spread their message,
compelled to make use of the powerful means of mass communica-
too available to their opponents. Yet the historian examining these
eral clerical publications discovers a
marked
conflicted progression
if
from and
intellectual, religious, belletristic material to popularized, sentimental,
fiction-oriented writing,
and
a tone of
mounting confusion and
lib-
hostility in
the face of a public which can apparently be neither entirely ignored nor won.
The
takeover of Harvard by the Unitarian forces
the nineteenth century
marked
a crucial
in
the early years of
and enduring coalition between
Cambridge belles lettres, scholarship, and liberal theology. This coalition gave both Harvard and Unitarianism their special character and produced several of the
most distinguished ante-bellum
{periodicals in
America. In
Buckminster and
1803, the fastidious Unitarian prodigy Joseph
a
group of
like-minded cohorts began to publish the Monthly Anthology, which theoretically
emanated from witty and elegant dinner-club conversation
approved English fashion. The club
founded
in 1803, consisted largely
were not
ministerial in
sense.
who frowned on
most
Anthology Society,
of liberal-minded ministers, but
any traditional
Congregational clergyman ter's
in question, the
in the
its
also
aims
Buckminster, the son of
novel-reading, was, by his
a
sis-
account, ever "fond of reading romances, but rarely indulged himself
in so pleasant a pastime."^®
His private journal
testifies,
however, that while
he was ignorant of Aristotle, Bacon, and Newton, he was devoted to the
works of the celebrated Mrs.
Radcliff^e.^^
The
periodical
which he founded
a
The Periodical Press
231
was unsuccessful financially, going through five publishers in its eight brief years of life and never attracting more than a few hundred subscribers failure which seems appropriate in light of the repeated professions of dislike for commercial America made by its contributors. Buckminster and his friends John S. J. Gardner and Samuel Cooper Thacher hoped to find in "the delight and charm of literature ... a refuge from the tumults and
—
contentions of active
life."
The
ignored theology, a subject,
much
in
journal, devoutly literary, for the
most part
Buckminster's urbane opinion, "upon which
of our genius and learning has been always employed, and not seldom
wasted."^^
The
was of course the Christian Examiner, which ran under Unitarian and Harvard auspices from 1813 to 1869. Originally a strongly sectarian organ, under the aegis of editors like Noah Worcester, Henry Ware, Jr., and William Ware, it gradually became more neutral theologically, and more oriented toward belles lettres. In the Anthology's most impressive successor
1850s, articles
on the decline of the
liberal
clergy jostle uneasily but
cantly with half-grudging reviews of popular
works of domestic
signifi-
fiction.
By
was decidedly literary and secular: volume seventy-three for 1862 includes seven articles on religious subjects, four on moral and political issues, twelve on literary matters. This balance, or imbalance, is typical. The Christian Examiner's demise came from many causes, not the least of which, one suspects, was the increasing competition of the Atlantic Monthly, begun in 1857 under the avowedly secular management of Boston's loosely Unitarian Brahmins Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell. That such was the Christian Examiner's successful rival speaks volumes for its changed and confused purpose. Unlike its predecessor, the Monthly Anthology, the Christian Examiner had to combat not simply the business forces of American society, but the commercialization of the culture itself. The Examiner's move to the more competitive atmosphere of New York in 1866 only hastened its demise. the 1860s,
From
its
closing decade, the journal
the earliest days of magazine publication ministers had con-
numbers to secular magazines and even to ladies' magazines;^^ on occasion, they edited them. Theodore Cuyler sent in pieces to Godey Lady Book while a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, with no apparent sense of contradiction.^'* The popular gift tokens of the period, themselves the lightest cream of sentimental magazine fare, oflFered a meeting ground for ministerial and feminine pens. Sarah Edgarton Mayo solicited poems and sketches for the Universalist token Rose of Sharon ^^ not only from sister scribblers like Broughton, Case, Scott, and Fillebrown but from
tributed in large
's
's
ministers of her denomination like pin,
Henry Bacon, Henry
and Thomas Whittemore. Sarah Hale began her
Soule, E.
H. Cha-
editorial career
when
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
232
Reverend John L. Blake, an Episcopalian clergyman of the Comhill High School for Young Ladies and
come
invited her to
Ladies'
who was the
principal
a Godey V contributor,
to Boston in 1827 and edit a ladies' magazine; ^^ the
Magazine began under
tion in feminine journals
clerical auspices.
was but
it
From
ministerial participa-
and control of
a step to the creation
religious journals clearly designed to tap,
and educate, the public which read
the magazines tailored for female and family consumption.
The New
Englander came out under Connecticut and Congregational
Horace Bushnell was among the notables involved in its founding. Like the Christian Examiner, it was to be a prestigious religious and critical journal, eschewing any creative contributions, but it from 1843
auspices
to 1892.
was a much more confident,
aggressive,
and militant organ than
its
Unitarian
Open war was soon declared on "the fashionable monthlies" and "our literature." One early reviewer was happy to name his enemies: Godey V,
model. lady
Graham
V,
The Lady V Companion, Miss
Leslie's
Magazine.
He
explained: they
contain no good literature, nothing to "provoke thought," no "rational information," only "foppery and nonsense" donated by "third rate" authors
adept
salesmanship rather than
at
suggests, intended to past.
One
of
its first
remind issues
its
making."^® 1850s.
a
The New
readers of their
Englander, as
more
substantial
its
and
title
virile
contained a eulogy of tough-minded Nathaniel
Emmons; apparently he was proper business as
art.^^
especially to be praised for "adhering to his
preacher and not turning aside to the business of book-
The campaign
against
cheap periodical
fiction
continued
in the
A lengthy article on "The Editorial Profession" demanded that maga-
zine editors receive rigorous and extensive scholarly training covering the
natural sciences, ature, "tact,"
modem
languages, philosophy, history, theology, and
and possess the virtues of and
a
"versatility," "alertness," "natural energy,"
"high tone of moral philosophy"; ^^ the
editor sounds
more
like the
liter-
New
Englander' s ideal
highly educated saintly minister of Cotton
Mather's Manductio Ministerium than a mere journalist.
Yet by the
mid-fifties, the
New Englander was devoting increasing space
from feminine pens: Vara, Ida May, and The Lamplighter, for example, were allotted, although clearly begrudged, attention. By the late 1850s, the New Englander' s principal contributors were more and more uncertain about the boundaries between its religious and literary inter-
to criticism of novels
ests; this
uncertainty erupted
in
an irate 1859 review of Holmes's Autocrat
of the Breakfast Table, then running in the new Atlantic Monthly. Holmes's critic of course disliked the "spirit of indifl^erence or levity" to religion
which
in
Congregationalist eyes marked Holmes's essays.
objected, however, to the Atlantic Monthly's printing any as
Holmes's decidedly did, with religious matters.
He
most strongly
work which
The New
dealt,
Englander
re-
viewer argued that once Holmes turned to religious material, he should have
233
The Periodical Press
published in a religious periodical
—
After this
like the Christian Examiner.
Unitarian journal, the critic explained that
sly slap at the lax standards of the
the Atlantic Monthly should deal with "Literature, Art, and Politics" but not
with
religion.^*' It is a
could assert
its
mark of
right to
its
failure of
comment on
purpose that the
New
Englander
secular literature while denying the
corresponding privilege of religious discussion to an avowedly secular magazine.
Other
liberal religious periodicals
realm of feminine completely.
The
made more
direct forays into the
only to compromise their original aims more
fiction,
began under the editorship of Reverend Sebas-
Universalist
volume displayed the usual run of pro-Univer-
tian Streeter in 1833. Its first
more general moralizing essays. By late 1833, the journal had changed hands. Streeter was succeeded by two other Universalist ministers, Daniel Smith of Boston and Matthew Smith, later to be theological articles and
salist
a vociferous
and despised
The periodical November 2, 1833,
traitor to the Universalist cause.
had also changed name and direction.
An
editorial of
announced that from henceforth the Universalist would be called the Universalist and Ladies' Repository and devoted to the causes of literature and of
women — a
telling conjunction.^^
women whose
make them
should of
all
were perfectly frank about broaden their power base, to reach
editors
made to
the fact that the switch had been the Protestant
The
kindly feminine natures (the editors claimed)
easy converts to the charitable doctrine of the salvation
way
men;^^ and the editors were well aware that the
was to
readers
offer stories.
The
to attract lady
Universalist indeed provides a telling case
study of the need of the various Protestant sects to supply their female adherents with suitable reading. But the matter was not a simple one. Thirty years after
by
inception the magazine was
its
a relatively
salists,
low number of
principally
women.
come more or
less
alive,
although supported
subscribers. Its contributors
Its editors,
contents almost purely fiction;
still
it
however, were
now
even sported fashion
indistinguishable
from the secular
were Univer-
also
women,
plates.^^ It
ladies'
its
had be-
magazines of
the day.
The Christian Parlor Magazine, which a group of Congregational clergymen began in 1844, provides an even more striking example of the attempt by the like
religious press to
compete with the women's magazines. Evangelicals
Lyman Beecher and
Sigoumey
So did Timothy Shay Arthur, destined for fame as temperance novels like Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and
lent her aid.
the author of lurid
Woman
the Abbott brothers donated their efforts; Mrs.
to the Rescue.
apparently of
its
own
Yet the periodical lasted only ten years,
ambiguousness of intention.
It set
a victim
out to be didactic:
moralizing travelogues, pious and non-sectarian accounts of eminent Christians,
popularizations of Biblical stories accompanied by illustrations,
all
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
234
underlined
mission of instruction. Various writers inveighed against
its
fiction, especially in the early
religious novels
numbers, although
a
few cautious reviews of
were included. The proprietors and contributors could not
bypass fiction altogether, but they limited themselves almost exclusively to tales
designed to precipitate the religious sensibility: these turned out to be
To
almost entirely stories of death and the graveyard.
take the issues of
1^46-7 as an example, one finds nine stories about dying maidens and their resting places, five sketches of pious females, five reminiscences of an ideal-
by negative example, and one temperance tale. Most of the poetry for the same years is devoted to death or heaven. There are articles on specific graveyards, Mt. Auburn and Greenwood among them, with maladroit titles like "Wonders of a Buried World." ized past, four cautionary pieces preaching
Several of the tales begin quite literally with a tombstone: descriptive pan of a cemetery ("our graveyard
is
the narrative voice spells out the inscription on
some
and
we
are
oflF
"Henry and
A
into the touching life of
first
we have
a lovely spot," etc.);
a
then
particular gravestone,
"Mary Wilson" or
the sad story of
Louise."^'*
monument apparently marks
sepulchral
of religion and
art.
Neither
restricted to allow either
is
the allowable meeting place
trespassing, but the
any creative mobility or
for those accustomed to the
common ground is too scope. The result, even
monotony of the average
gift
magazine, must have been stupefying.
The
tian Parlor Magazine's eflfort to use
feminine material
clerical interests
is
book or
ladies'
self-defeat involved in the Chrisin the service
of
which provided entitled "The Good
ludicrously apparent in the engraving
the frontispiece for the June 1846 issue.
The
picture
is
which presumably indicates that the subject is Christ, an identification the accompanying poem makes explicit; but the picture itself unmistakably shows a small girl with a crook, resembling nothing so much as Little Bo Peep. The Christian Parlor Magazine has achieved a kind of Shepherd," a
title
apotheosis of clerical-feminine confusion;
it
has objectified the feminine
heresy, and traveled farther into the realms of unreality than Godey V or
Graham
V ever
cared to go.
Masculine Sentimentalism and the Problems of Dependency
damned Herman Melville and R. W. Emerson, both of whom they associated with German romanticism, and praised Washington Irving, Henry W. Longfellow, Nathaniel Willis, the early Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Ik Marvel," and George Curtis, all It is
striking that reviews in clerical periodicals
some sense followers of the English authors Laurence Sterne and Charles Lamb. When ministers like Henry Ware, Jr., and Orville Dewey turned to
in
belles lettres,
they wrote whimsical,
light, epistolary
sketches a
la
Lamb and
235
The Periodical Press Irving, not
romances
Henry Ware, Jr.'s sketch "The Village Irving's "The Pride of the Village," although
a la Melville.
Funeral" owes everything to
Ware's heroine, unlike Orville
Dewey
carried
Irving's,
on
is
merely deceased, not sexually abused. ^^
a highly self-conscious literary
correspondence
with his good friend, the novelist and minister William Ware; he could
mimic Sterne ("Here's another new day, William; and I wish I were a new man") and jest pointedly, "I have none of the Lamb-ent light which plays around your pen."^^ Such members of the liberal clergy were acknowledging and fostering an important split in American letters, in some ways comparable to the one I have already noted in American theology and historiography. They were drawn as critics and writers not to the few serious non-commercial writers, romantics like Melville^^ dealing with religious issues in sophisticated narratives which commanded little public attention,
but rather to the essentially secular sentimental authors of the genteel
Irvingesque school,
who wrote
for the magazines and sold well with the
predominantly feminine American reading public. In
a sense, the "intellect"
was once more undervalued for the sake of the "feelings." Ministerial commentators of course had their reservations about the price their most cherished secular authors had paid for their popularity. A reviewer for the Christian Examiner in 1844 worried uneasily that Willis, despite his manifold gifts,
was lacking
of sentiment."^® Longfellow, press, a
was accused by one
"Goody two-shoes kind
in the style
who
"manliness of thought and dignity
in
usually received raves in the religious
critic in a religious
of literature
.
.
.
magazine
in 1848 of
producing
slipshod, sentimental stories told
of the nursery, beginning in nothing and ending in nothing. "^^
was perhaps the highly ambivalent preoccupation of the male sentimentalists with feminine taste, even their partial feminization, which made them so interesting to liberal ministerial observers. In many ways secular Yet
it
counterparts of the liberal ministers, the male sentimentalists played a crucial role in
social
making the
and sexual
periodical literary scene a testing
ground for covert
hostilities.
Washington Irving summed up the American author's dilemma: "Unqualified for business in a nation where everyone is busy; devoted to literature where literary leisure is confounded with idleness, the man of letters is
almost an insulated being, with few to understand,
less
to value, and
scarcely any to encourage his pursuits."^® Like the minister, the writer essentially "disestablished," but unlike him,
place in
American
society.
Rough
was
he had never had an "established"
political alliances like the
one between
poet-journalist Philip Freneau and the Jeffersonian party at the turn of the
nineteenth century were the only approximations early American letters
had to offer to the complex, evolved between
men
if
which had Europe since the
inadequate, system of patronage
of wealth and
men
of literature in
THE FEMINIZATION OF
236 early
M
A
E R
I
C A N. C U L T U R E
Middle Ages. Matters were not entirely improved by the commerciali-
which began
zation of literature
eighteenth century and was
in the late
full-blown by the middle of the nineteenth. Nathaniel Willis, running the
popular
Home Monthly
Payson
Willis, eventually
in the 1840s
in the
as
country for writers."
He
claimed that he had tried "to find
employment for dozens of starving writers in Monthly perforce paid
its
his sister Sara
"Fanny Fern" but then just beginning away from New York, the "most overstocked
famous
her literary career, to stay
market
and 1850s, cautioned
vain,"
and added that the Home
contributors nothing.^ ^ Willis himself, however,
made a financial success out of writing as few other males did in his day. The reason may be detected in his realistic description of himself and his peers, no matter how creative their enterprises, as journalists "trying to make a living by being foremost in riding on a coming turn of the tide." In his view, literary
men wrote
for the "middle class" and were middle class.^^
Unlike Nathaniel Hawthorne,
who complained
low
bitterly about the
tastes
of the feminine reading public, Willis and his popular sentimental brethren set
themselves to please the
ladies.
But to acknowledge, even to court, such
dependency was not always to find it palatable. The best-known sentimental male writers in ante-bellum America were the magazine writers Washington Irving, Nathaniel Willis, Donald Mitch-
—
ell
(known
as "Ik Marvel"),
and George Curtis. They revealed
a personal
and
exception of Curtis,
With the they had stem fathers of orthodox persuasion who made
them
and unproductive; they claimed to be following their
professional profile strikingly similar to that of the liberal clergy. ^^
feel belittled
mothers
in
showed an if
adopting
a
sunnier creed. ^"^ All four suffered from
indecisiveness about their careers
ill
health^^ and
which betrayed the
fact that,
they had in theory rejected their fathers' ways, in practice they found
difficult to
discover meaningful alternatives.
They
it
chronically postponed
adulthood. Irving tried law, the family business, travel abroad. Apparently destined to be an author, he
let
ten years elapse between the successful
publication of Knickerbocker's History of
New
York and the appearance of
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon. Curtis experimented with utopianism, putting in a stint at Brook Farm, then traveled abroad, and gradually began to
produce sketches.^® Willis seemed
a pretentious
foppish idler to others as
he followed the footsteps and mimicked the ways of the beau monde
York and Europe. He had, however,
in
New
happy conviction, proved right in the gossipy pages of the fashionable papers he would edit, that his social advancement was synonymous with his literary career.^^ Mitchell found resolution on a life work acutely difficult. Like Irving, he tried law, without a
enthusiasm. His friends began to worry; he himself exclaimed in 1845 with self-pitying despair: "All the
alone without
it!
world intent upon their peculiar
When, when
will
it
be otherwise?"^®
business.
I
237
The Periodical Press
All four
became men of
letters
with
real
importance
in their society:
Irving was also an ambassador and an historian, Curtis an active reformer;
and Curtis edited several of the most
Willis, Mitchell,
New
in
York. Yet their writing displays everywhere their fear of paternal
condemnation. as his
influential periodicals
The male sentimentalist showed
much
as
guilt
feminine counterpart, perhaps because he believed
society believed
it,
about writing
knew
his
Women
au-
or
it,
to be increasingly a feminine occupation.
thors were anxious because their literary activity questioned the convention that only fast
men
should write; they nonetheless
becoming an
rivals.
knew
that the convention
which served merely to save face for
illusion
their
was
male
In an important story Irving included in his Tales ofa Traveller (1824),
the "hero," Buckthorn, confesses with a mixture of shame and bravado to poetic aspirations
—"that
is
to say
prone to play the vagabond." that poetry
true
is
I
have always been an
He is disinherited by
renounces "the
his father
sin of authorship."^^
Willis, Mitchell,
on
a
important
'^^
Ir-
This contiguity of travel and writing was
expressed the fact that these authors built their professions
form of evasion
occupation a
it
first
and Curtis were travel sketches modeled on
ving's ever-popular Sketchbook.
not accidental;
all
he fittingly repents and
later regains his legacy,
All four writers discovered their calling in travel: the
works of
on the grounds
employment, the bane of
"a cursed, sneaking housekeeping
manhood"; when he
fellow and
idle
itself.
—of
their country, of their
They made
own
identity,
and of their
of apparently aimless wandering a vocation,
vocation which perforce always retained amateur rank.
They emphasized
the casualness of their journeys, the haphazardness of their impressions, the
uncollated quality of their notes. take themselves seriously.
They
plicitly for a special status, that
only because he
is
They escaped
censure because they did not
confessed to indolence.
They
pleaded im-
of perpetual child, of the observer licensed
incapable of participation.
They dodged
and could be surprised and elusive
in the face of success:
considered amateurs, even
not
idlers,
achievement,
they wished to be
men working hard
to achieve their
literary goals. Willis early created a brilliant persona, the "Idle
epicure and a dandy
who
in the
summer
"eats
.
.
.
Man," an
with an amber handled
fork to keep his palm cool."*^ Mitchell's most long-lived contribution to
American
letters
Harper's. Curtis, lished his
ogues
own
was appropriately the Editor's "Easy Chair" column
who
took over
this
department
in 1855,
appropriate literary persona, the idler
like Lotus-Eating:
A Summer
Book (1852).
We
liberal clergy's
disavowal of their
est disclaimers
of professional status and motivation.
The
—the
oflicial roles,
of the
in
had already estab-
who
narrated travel-
are reminded of the
women
writers'
mod-
form these authors took from European and English sources and which was destined to become the magazine form par sketch
literary
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
238 excellence
few
—ideally expressed their anxieties about their
pretensions;
it is
humble, self-deprecatory.
Rag-Bag: these were some of the
The
era."
sketch
is
by
the assumption that
"ephem-
definition short; part of the convention behind
was produced
it
at a sitting,
has
The
Pencillings, Fun-Jottings,
Willis gave to his collected
titles
commercial periodical publication,
mately dispensable. is
The sketch
it is
even carelessly, that the
was everything, the writing nothing. Perfectly adapted
feeling or thinking to
status.
It
concerns
it
makes no claim
to
last; it is ulti-
with the small, the "picturesque."*^
itself
the literary analogue to the architectural style
promulgators would
its
choose for their semi-rural, semi-suburban homes.'*^ Irving acknowledged
was not
the start of the Sketchbook that he
mood, the sketch
is
entitled
unmistakably personal and subjective.
narrator
Its
much power.
man who
a portly
when
the narrator sees only the
none of the
posterior of the stout gentleman as he gets into a coach to leave; narrator's questions are answered.
The Lockean
the intellectual underpinning of the sketch as
eenth century in England
in
it
empiricism which formed
developed during the eight-
the hands of Sterne, Goldsmith, and
highlights the narrator's impotence in narration: he
The
trapped
in himself, a prisoner
Lamb
apparently as helpless
is
tone of apology so essential to the career and art of the male
women, was its
not,
adopted by ministers and
however, a simple one. Their form, the magazine sketch,
apparent timidity,
is
mood and shrewdly com-
self-indulgent in
mercial in purpose. Like any potentially mass-produced object, pretension as art makes
more appealing
it
be read casually, then forgotten.
from ers,
guilt.
Its
as
its
lack of
an article of consumption;
it
can
very insignificance frees the consumer
Again, the personae of the male sentimentalists are teases,
loiter-
given to disappearing around comers, gently dodging shadows of their
own
making,
a sign
men with
a vanishing act.
Their evaporation complex seems
—
partially
of self-effacement
as,
indeed,
it
is;
it
is
also a covert
self-congratulatory manifesto of irresponsibility. Their docility in
here
of his perceptions.
sentimentalists, like the attitude of humility
despite
In a piece
occupies an English inn with him.'**
sketch closes abruptly and comically
as a child,
is
"The Stout Gentleman," the narrator becomes more and
more curious about
The
at
interested in the "sublime." In
never omniscient; that would be to grant him too
by Irving
It
the midst of their humility
lies a
cant, as assimilable to feminine tastes as they
be suspected of carrying poison.
chance to be
all
seem on
as kindly, as insignififirst
glance.
dangerous weapons
They submit
at close range, intimate
book, Willis in Pencillings by the
deceptive;
hidden animus against the forces which
humble them. The gentlemanly narrators are not quite they publicly disarm themselves of
is
and
in
as if
order not to
partly in order to gain the
with the enemy. Irving
Way, Mitchell
It is
in Reveries
in
The Sketch-
of a Bachelor, and
239
The Periodical Press
Curtis in Prue and I
(all
works
originally serialized in the periodical press)
inherited and enhanced a male persona, overtly emasculated and covertly
whose ambiguities reflected their own aspirations and conflicts. Irving's GeoflFrey Crayon is a bachelor; his existence is built on explicit and implicit envy of the domestic state, yet he never seriously seeks to alter vengeful,
it.
Mitchell's "Bachelor" too
has
hostile run-ins
little
him away
as
he weaves
dreams of matrimony;
with
vigorous housekeeper,
his
his idle fancies
by the
who
is
a tactful
almost sweeps
fireplace. Curtis' narrator
is
Prue and I
is
happily married, and the ordering of characters in the symbolic. Prue
however, he
ironically,
and devoted wife, but
we
title
never forget that she
could have married an extraordinarily successful businessman by the side of
whom
the narrator seems in every
and thinks, and
loves,
way
She dams, and cooks,
insignificant.
while her spouse meanders. Yet the point
is
that Prue's
husband, like Mitchell's and Irving's bachelors, does meander: the book largely the record of his fantasies about other younger, richer,
women.
beautiful
No
matter that he and the Bachelors
oflicially
is
and more belong to
the domestic domain; in their secretive dreams they are wide rangers and
even furtive opponents of the regime of which they appear the most secure they are vampires of
and abject subjects. "Paul
Pry[s],"'*^
own and
especially
vitality of their
charming
girl in
lacking
equipped to tap that of others. At one
point, Mitchell's Bachelor pictures himself a
sensibility,
conducting an
Europe and writing of
idle flirtation
his inconclusive
with
amours to
his
The cousin, who worships him, is occupied in tending a dying parent and not far from the grave herself. He returns, having wooed but not wed the European girl, to discover the American one is dead. She lovely cousin at home.
has
packet of forgiving
left a
letters filled
foreign peccadilloes caused. Again,
with evidence of the
when he
suflPering his
imagines himself married,
it is
only to linger fondly over his fictional wife's demise from consumption:
now
"and it
the hand that touches yours," he inquires almost salaciously,
"is
no thinner, no whiter than yesterday?'"*®
The
maiden about tory.
He
between the sentimental narrator and the diseased
relationship
whom
he fantasizes
are his inspiration. still
caused
extremely complex and richly revela-
courts identification with her because her feminine resources are
precisely the ones he needs.
while
is
Her emotional
He comes as near as he
savoring the
titillation
susceptibility, her subjectivity
can to the
suflPering of the
female
involved in identifying with the male
who
Her weakness and isolation are in a sense his own and thus he both and rejects her. The sentimental author was dependent on female
it.
exploits
suflPering for his material just as
livelihood, but he resented
he was dependent on female readers for
and subtly
tried to reverse this subjugation.'*^
his
The
women in his pages exist only to give the narrator, otherwise idle and useless, something to do: they provide him with
a vocation.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
240
Like that of Irving's Sketchbook, the world of Reveries and Prue and I is
virtually depopulated:
its
creatures are those of the narrator's fancy.
The
members of some family in which generations of inbreeding have weakened the stock almost unbearably; they have listened only to each other for too long. Their models were from the characters are pale and derivative like
they are faint with nostalgia for their predecessors
start literary ones;
pages of Addison, Steele, Sterne, and Goldsmith. Literature and
works
are never forced in these
into rivalry with
invisibility,
people.'"*®
am
any wife be
perse,
is
in fact. Mitchell's
The
a subtle
ized
power
in
fancy than
Bachelor inquires point-
prettier than an after dinner fancy, idle
and yet
vivid,
sentimental narrator's ever-present consciousness
reminder that he
is
any moment
at
dis-
the dictator as well as the servant of his
feminine readers' imaginative needs. thor's
Miss Amelia more
but dreaming, and dreaming dreams he can
is
no competi-
the guest who, for the small price of
He is sure that he enjoys a certain
can paint for you?'"*^ that he
is
creations
drinks only the best wines and talks only to the most agreeable
any of her actual male escorts do edly: "can
There
the
husband explains the peculiar ad-
tion to the narrator's imagination. Prue's
vantages of his position: "I
life.
its
in
He
never forgets that he has the au-
— which becomes all-important when
literature
is
commercial-
—of withholding; he can interfere with the reader's range and rate of
consumption.
The were to
who
clerical critics
enjoyed such magazine sketches
find in the 1870s an infinitely less
in
the 1850s
welcome and more spectacular
example of the same veiled masculine exploitation of genteel femininity
own
their
ranks. In 1869,
the crucial documents of at
once explain
Henry Ward Beecher published Norwood, one of its
period, although a perusal of
significance.^^ It
its
in
was
as
commercial
it
as
today might not
any of
Curtis' or
Mitchell's productions and designed for a similar audience. Beecher revealed little
of the anxiety which had troubled his clerical predecessors undertaking
fictional
work.
He
wrote Norwood for
a
huge sum of money paid him by
the enterprising editor Robert Bonner. Bonner serialized the novel in his
widely circulated weekly, the
work
New
York Ledger. Norwood was a magazine
replete with village scenes and a conventional love interest.
figure in the story
was not
a minister
but a doctor, one Dr. Wentworth,
confused Christianity with Darwinism and duty with spending oneself^ ^ very tale its
aroused
much
little
in
the style of his author.
controversy;
it
The main
The book
who
money on
sold well, but
its
was rather the circumstances surrounding
writing which produced high conflict. In characteristic fashion, Beecher
acted out the drama of ambivalence his secular and clerical colleagues preferred to confine to print; perhaps only Beecher
know
was shrewd enough
to
no amount of overtness could break the stranglehold commercial literary stereotypes held on experience. Perversely, that,
by the
late
1860s,
The Periodical Press
Beecher was as well protected from
was from
241
Mitchell's Bachelor; his scandal
life as
start to finish a literary affair.
Beecher had
a
very specific audience in mind for his rambling work,
namely Libby Tilton, wife of Theodore Tilton, Beecher's in his various
closest associate
reform-minded religious enterprises. Beecher had
difliculty in
getting started on the project; he had never written a novel, and he did not
was his would not
altogether share Robert Bonner's interesting conviction that fiction
As he himself said, he needed "somebody and that would praise it, to give me the courage
natural metier.
.
.
.
that
go on." Libby,
be
critical,
in
her husband's words, was "sympathetic to a very rich degree."^^ Tilton
to
and Libby were not altogether congenial. Tilton explained
which he accused Beecher of committing adultery with had gradually come to disbelieve
in
at the trial in
his wife^^ that
he
the divinity of Christ, while Libby was
"almost an enthusiast"^* for the opposing view.
He mocked
physical petiteness, her penchant for saccharine devotional
her for her art.
Tilton's
fictional work,^^ reveal
him
to be a strong, vigorous, not altogether astute, rather self-righteous,
and
words
and
at the trial, as well as his journalistic
combative man.
He
prided himself on his moral purpose, on his principled
frankness; Beecher's apparent bonhomie originally seemed a his
own
complement
to
temperament. Libby Tilton was inclined to tears and melancholy;
she was recovering from the death of a child and drawing on her pastor's helpful
powers of consolation when Beecher "seduced"
her.
Attractive, charming, not particularly bright, emotionally unstable and
immature, Libby Tilton was
a
devotee of
literature, a
follower of the
gious press. Susan Anthony, the leader of the suflFrage friend of
Libby 's, described her generously
as "a
reli-
movement and
a
woman of wide reading and
A
few decades earlier Libby would have been an admirer of Mrs. Sigoumey; she read the novels of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth with avidity. Libby showed the squeamish fastidiousness inculcated
a fine literary taste."^^
by such ladylike mentors; despite
a serious flirtation
New
with the
York
women's movement, she was upset and disgusted by Victoria Woodhull, a flamboyant advocate of free love and a self-proclaimed candidate for the presidency. It should be noted that The Woodhull, as she was known, had her revenge on Libby and her lover; her public proclamation of the aflPair, made appropriately enough at a meeting of the American Association of Spiritualists,
forced Tilton, several years after the event, to bring
suit against
Beecher. Libby was of a different stamp; she emulated the exaggerated and
euphemistic rhetoric characteristic of Mrs. Sigoumey and her referred to Christ as instill in
"The Great Lover"
her
letters.
She
felt
and
She
tried to
her children a "reverence" for the clergy. She regretted greatly that
Tilton himself was not a minister "is
in
sisters.
the only virtue
I
possess."^^
— which, he commented characteristically,
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
242
According to her husband, Libby
initially felt
no
guilt
about her
affair
with Beecher. Her pastor had coyly called their relationship "nest hunting," a phrase
borrowed from
Libby 's peculiar
his novel-in-progress,
and an evasion to which only
could have lent any credibility. She
literary socialization
passed hours on her knees in prayer; she was, as
As
her up, "sentimental."^®
common
with Richardson's
whose
able notes
Clarissa.
Theodore aloud
admiration" for them.^® And,
view her
story, only
similar to hers.
let
in
She and her pastor exchanged innumer-
Henry Ward, who
to
me
She even read her rather
stress
it,
expressed "great
she was a reader. She began
relationship with Beecher differently, as Tilton tells the
illicit
when
had something
a prolific letter-writer she
indiscretion later haunted them.
histrionic letters to
to
Theodore Tilton summed
she read a novel
which presented
a character in a position
Libby was distressed and interested to discover that the
author clearly found such a situation to be cause for remorse, penitence, and final spiritual elevation.
Libby confessed to her husband
in part
because she
had found another role to play. This
is
not to
condemn
range the barrenness of her
her. It
only to scrutinize
is
at painfully close
Libby was reported to have com-
possibilities.
plained bitterly at one point during the protracted controversy around her private affairs: "I have always been treated as a nonentity
The
scandal hardly bettered her
lot.
—
a plaything.
"®°
Tilton forced accusations against
Beecher from her; Beecher demanded retractions; their various intermediaries
from her pen. Beecher had innocence depended on hers; initially, he re-
extracted other contradictory statements
begun by believing
that his
ferred to Libby tenderly as a pure "child." Later he realized he could clear
himself by
When,
damning
after the trial
truth of their love
and took to rebuking her "excessive
her,
was long
affair,
aflPection."®^
over, she published a plain statement of the
simply, as she said, with unconscious pathos, to
was too late. Her identity was already lost. Finally abandoned by both husband and lover, she died essentially of confusion, without a life, without a literary model to give her the illusion
satisfy
of
her "quickened conscience,"^^
it
life.
Beecher had an
easier time of
it.
He
had written
his
book, had read
chapter by chapter to an eager Libby in intimate tete-a-tHes held husband's absence,
just as
York City from Indiana
he had done everything since his arrival
in 1847: to
in
in
her
New
be seen, to be heard, to have an audience.
His success protected him. Plymouth Church, where Beecher served
was big
pew
it
as
There were men indifferent or disdainful toward Beecher personally who were eager to save such a profitable concern. As a writer, as a preacher, Beecher was indispensable; he was the central attraction at Plymouth Church. Libby was as fascinated as Beecher with the possibilities of exposure; with her pastor,
business;
rentals alone pulled in $60,000 a year.®^
243
The Periodical Press ill-placed confidences
he did, but she
knew
and
what
infinitely less well
to
do with
Don Juan
Machiavelli or probably a follower of hull's maliciously
courted attention as surely as
prolific letters, she
it.
Beecher was not
despite Victoria
Wood-
He
hopeful claims for his vast "physical amativeness."^'*
practiced a debased version of Whitman's trick of substituting love of
everyone for love of anyone. Unlike Libby, however, he could capitalize on his
confusion and maneuver through
it
with embarrassing
skill.
Beecher's occasional blubbering and frequent obfuscation at his
demonstrated
his ability to exploit his
own
amorphousness.
He
trial
claimed he
had not seduced Libby. Tilton accused him of "sexual intimacy"; he admitted to "improper advances."
What
was seduction anyway? But
in a sense
matter
how
you
close
If
Leslie
!f
who
The
trial itself
all,
Beecher's confusion was genuine, no
he seduced Libby, or was
your eyes, does anything
or act out a novel?
Americans
Had
manipulated.
kind of defense was that? What, after
really
it
just "nesting"?
happen? Did he read her
a novel,
supplied excitement for half a year to
read the papers or the magazines.
One commentator
all
for
Magazine noted enthusiastically that "we are reading the most mar-
vellous of
human
dramas; greater in plot, denouement and effect" than
Scarlet Letter or Eliot's Rotnola. ^^ Little
Hawthorne's
on
trial
by
a
he
justified his physical
He
increasingly talked in literary terms.
woman
friend as "a holy kiss as
wonder
spoke of
that Beecher
a kiss
sometimes have seen
given him
it
in poetry";^^
prowess (or what he confessed of
his physical
I
prowess) in terms reminiscent of the standard rationale of the polite lady-
"When you shall find a heart to rebuke you may rebuke me for misplaced confidence.
poets:
my
necessity.
the twining morning-glory, ... It
is
not
my
choice;
it is
*"
Here is the fascination of the fateful conjunction of Libby Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher avid over the pages of Norwood, duller drama by far than the one which unfolded during its reading. The minister-writer and 2i
the lady-reader have indeed found their
common
—
ground.
It is
their
mutual
which they must be utterly parasitic on each other and whose success depends on an entire exclusion of the forces of American society an exclusion brutally shattered by the protracted Beecher-Tilton trial. The trial called to the bar not so much Henry Ward Beecher and Libby Tilton as sentimental fiction itself. The characters of Mr. Beecher and Mrs. Tilton were on trial in a double sense; not just their lives but their roles were at issue. Although the jury was essentially unable to reach a verdict, Beecher's own church exonerated him. foray into fiction which
is
of such interest
a foray in
—
The
liberal minister
had shaped
his
female parishioners' tastes and fantasies,
then borrowed the powers they attributed to him. Beecher enacted the fantasy with
which the male
sentimentalists had flirted: exploiting the femi-
nine reader and then excluding her.
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
244
Feminine Sentimentalism: The Bitterness of Harriet Beecher Stowe
two could play as well as one. The women I have been considering were hardly unaware of the hostility emanating from their clerical and literary brethren, and they returned it with interest. Examples are plentiful, but none is more compelling than the one offered by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Among the most gifted women of her generation, Stowe fiercely defended her adored brother Henry Ward in his hour of need, but there can be no doubt that in a larger sense his cause was not altogether hers. During the years of Henry's affair, Stowe published two important novels My Wife and I (1871) and We and Our Neighbors (1874), to which I have referred in earlier chapters. Both appeared originally in the Christian Union, a weekly of which Henry Ward was editor, and they are Unmistakably,
this
was
game
a
that
very distinctly magazine writing as none of Stowe's earlier serialized novels were. Neither of them
is
up
to the level of her previous works, Uncle
Tom V
Town
Folks.
own
prob-
Cabin, The Minister's Wooing, The Pearl ofOrr's Island, and Old In their pages,
lems as a
woman,
commendable.
women
Stowe
at
If
is
coming
solving, or
a writer,
and
close to solving, her
a religious believer,
but her solutions are not
Henry Ward had unconsciously presented
the tableau of
men's mercy, Harriet triumphantly displayed the scene of
abject under feminine rule. She
managed
to analyze
and mock the
man
futilities
inherent in the position of the liberal minister and the male sentimentalist;
enormous scorn for masculinity itself. Harriet had more to lose than Henry did. Both brother and sister were in a real sense geniuses; while Henry's true calling, however, was commercial, Harriet's was ethical. To take her revenge on an unjust society, she abandoned a romantic, essentially historical style for a sentimental approach to which historical concerns were painfully peripheral. she recorded an
Harriet Beecher, like
all
on her
started her career riding
who made their mark, coat-tails. Lyman Beecher was
the Beecher children father's
always enthusiastic about "Hattie's"
gifts;
before she was ten, he pronounced
her a "genius" and only wished "she was a boy."®® Stowe repaid her father's
admiration by memorizing dozens of
hymns
as a small child
bona fide sermons at various points over her long
life.®^
We
and composing have seen
how
Stowe clung to her mother's memory, but it was, after all, a memory. She was five when her mother died. She was very much her father's daughter, if not his superior, and in ways for which one admires and likes her. Of Beecher's children, only she relished the vernacular as he did; she outdid her
comedy, and became the only major feminine humorist nineteenth-century America produced. She had Beecher's ear for dialect, his eye for realistic detail. ^^ With this relish for the actual Stowe father in her shrewd instinct for
combined,
like
her father,
a
genuine sense of the sublime.
Lyman and
Harriet
The Periodical Press
245
grasped the essential Calvinist truth which Melville understood so well: that sin itself
is
the sublime, and that only
its
enormity puts men on speaking
terms with God. In adolescence, Stowe emoted properly and passionately
over that archetype of the sublime, Niagara. In adulthood, on her
tour
first
of Europe, she promptly rejected the "effeminate" beauties of Raphael for the excesses of "all-powerful" Rubens.^ ^ In a spirit her father could have
understood, she exulted that Rubens' "triumphant, abounding
dragged her
"at his chariot wheels,"
and proceeded to articulate her rather
peculiar aesthetic demands: "Art has satisfied
quered and that
is
enough.
Stowe thought
had
life"
me
at last.
I
have been con-
"^^
Rubens caused her proved him "a She takes for granted here that great art is a form of onslaught. That was indeed the art of Calvinism, of Lyman Beecher and that "the very pain"
real living artist. "^^
—
Tom V Cabin. Stowe wrote her masterful anti-slavery novel in part to show up the faint-hearted American clergy of which Lyman Beecher was of Uncle
in this case a
conspicuous example, and she picked
to recognize. Uncle
novel, but because sion of
its
Tom V Cabin
it is
is
a
a great book, not because
a great revival
sermon, aimed directly
hearers. In subsequent years, in a series of
sometimes sentimental but always witty and ducted the most theology and
brilliant
a lifestyle ever
form they were sure
exploration of
less
its
at the
conver-
alert narratives
New
The
little
girl
as a
No one understood women; no one
decline; but Calvinism
the subject of Stowe's best work.
Stowe con-
England Calvinism
conceived by an American.
clearly the inevitability of
a great
sometimes rambling,
better Calvinism's repressive aspects, especially in relation to
saw more
is
it
was nonethe-
whose
father had
boy grew up to be a woman and an artist whose achievement was to beat daddy at his own game, and, more important, to realize far more fully than he the meaning of the religious vocabulary they both employed. Her tragedy was that, when she rejected this vocabulary, as, in the quest for self-expression incumbent on a temperament as creative as hers, she inevitably did, she found nothing fully adequate with which to replace it. Her failure is a revealing one. complimented her by wishing she were
a
Lord Byron's mistress, published her Recollections of Lord Byron; she whitewashed the English poet and damned his wife as censorious, cold, and vindictive. The Byrons had parted at Lady Byron's insistence a half century earlier; both of them were now dead; but interest in the old scandal still ran high and largely in Lord Byron's favor. Stowe, who had become Lady Byron's confidante in several revelatory sessions in England in the 1850s, rose at once to her friend's defense in Lady Byron Vindicated. She knew (from Lady Byron, she claimed) what later In 1869, the Countess Guiccioli, once
biographers have confirmed, that Byron never loved his wife and married to cover his love affair with his half-sister Augusta.
As Stowe saw
it.
Lady
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
246
Byron had had no choice but
to leave him,
and her subsequent silence had
been an act of compassionate nobility. In trying to destroy Lord Byron
Stowe was undermining a poet Byron had, moreover, long held immense
through her hysterical panegyric on
who had
fascinated her father;^'*
his wife,
personal significance for her.
Aaron Burr an apostate from
In her basically sympathetic portrayal of the very Byronic in
The Minister's Wooing (1859), Stowe had pictured him as
the Calvinist tradition of his famous ancestry, yet one
enmeshed ist
in essentially Calvinist
precisely because he
still
thought patterns. Her Burr
knows he
is
damned, and
is
paradoxically finally Calvin-
awareness
this
is
the source
of Stowe's concern. His self-disdain as well as his good breeding advertise
him
a gentleman,
narrative to
if
which he has been
erection of a simple
The
not a Christian.
story closes, at
some
cost to the
largely peripheral, with an account of the
monument on
Burr's neglected grave.
Stowe cannot
him out altogether from the circle of redemption. Her reading of the same character in Old Town Folks (1869), Ellery Davenport, is much harsher. This Byron-Burr figure is less a sinner than a cheater and a deceiver; he almost destroys the happiness of the gay and childlike heroine, Tina. At the end of this line of development, the Byron of Lady Byron Vindicated is a tormented voluptuary who commits incest because he "longed for the shut
new
stimulation of a is,
I
kind of vice."
He
do believe,' " he reportedly told
is still
a believer ("
*The worst of
Lady Byron)^^ but he no longer
it
en-
grosses Stowe's interest or compassion.
Stowe
is
identifying
less
with the Byronic hero than with the
woman
he inevitably wrongs; she has developed a sharper and more self-conscious sense of sisterhood. ^^ Yet the price a great deal
Stowe pays for
it is
about the sexual polarities of her culture.
fearful,
and reveals
To defame Byron was
not only to censure a traducer of her sex, but also to defame rebelliousness
and
its
—the "remorse" which Stowe rightly perceived
products
ration for Byron's obsessive creativity. His pain herself
had once
felt
was
as the inspi-
at least kin to that
she
before Rubens and defined as essential to Calvinism and
Byron was regarded by Lyman Beecher and by Stowe as the poet of the sublime. To praise Lady Byron, no matter how unfairly she was maligned, was to laud a denial of creativity and to extoll conformity. A reserved and dignified philanthropist. Lady Byron was an exemplar of Anglican benevolence, not of Puritan guilt. The writing of Lady Byron Vindicated was an important event for Stowe. The book antagonized thousands of readers; but more important, it advertised Stowe's new-felt freedom in the early and mid- 1870s. She was adopting the self-worship inculcated by sentimental feminine antinomianism which her extraordinary intelligence had prevented her from fully assuming all her insecure and chaotic life. She was beginning art.
to boast rather than analyze.
The Periodical Press Narcissistic rage
is
247
of Harriet Beecher Stowe's writings of
at the heart
My
the late 1860s and early 1870s. She wrote
We and Our
Wife and I and
Neighbors in part to regain the public she had alienated with Lady Byron Vindicated; yet these less
intense for
its
two novels
new
coyness. In neither of these
up her long-standing attempt rial
pulse with essentially the same hostility,
works has Stowe given
to supplant her father
authority; she has rather displaced
him
entirely
and obtain
by
his ministe-
tacitly redefining the
true sacerdotal office to exclude him. Stowe's earlier heroines had
— Mary Scudder
ministerial stand-ins
no
in The Minister's Wooing, for
all
been
example,
— but they had been recognizable ones. Like Mara, her successor The Pearl ofOrr's Mary palpa— bly wants— her fashion, Lyman Beecher "to save makes many more converts than Dr. Hopkins in
in
Island,
just like
and her whole
in his
souls,"
She
a church member, an assiduous and thoughtful reader of the Bible. Stowe's frivolous later heroines no longer need any resemblance to the usual ministerial pat-
tern to claim
life is a
They
sanctity.
its
They
secularized.
clear preparation for her mission.
are ministers
is
are completely unschooled and totally
who
are anti-ministers, prophets of the cul-
ture-bound family faith which was to dominate America's religious future. Harriet Beecher Stowe's
new credo
comes through the agency of the average "average" with a vengeance, for
woman
is
else
can Stowe demonstrate that any
man? Her creative impulse has narrowed perilscorn of any real accomplishment as, by definition, masculine,
better than any
ously near a
and rejection of the dant on
how
summed up thus: salvation woman. And her heroines are
could be
eflPort,
privatization,
and
sufi^ering she
knew were
atten-
it.
Stowe's disintegration as a writer
and her curious equally apparent.
is
evident in the
relish at the thinness, the
Not long
New
York
mediocrity of these stories
after publishing
My
Wife and
/,
it
was, lacked "jollitude."
is
Stowe, with
astonishing condescension, could remark to her great contemporary Eliot that Middlemarch, fine as
novels;
With
a
George note of
breezy reproach, Stowe informs the English author that she writes on "so high a plane!
self-abnegation.""^^ Stowe's failure of insight
It is all
almost deliberate; she could not be making
it
clearer that her
own
"self-abnegation," and great achievement, are triumphantly over. lar
and equally painful
in her career totally
characters.
The Key
logic, in the
abandoned to
Uncle
days of
By
a simi-
New York novels Stowe for the first time
historical
Tom
seems
's
and recognizable models for her
Cabin, a collection of historical docu-
ments that purported to substantiate the story of Uncle Tom, proved Stowe's not entirely conscious veracity in her
first
masterpiece;
Hopkins, Byron, Savonarola inspired several of her
Nat Turner, Samuel
finest later portraits.
Her
feminine characters, for obvious reasons, had seldom derived from prominent historical sources, but until 1871 they had always played, and often
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
248
drawn from "real-life." In My Wife Moreover, We and Our Neighbors is the first
forcibly, against masculine characters
and I,
all
characters are fictional.
Stowe ever wrote; like the male sentimentalists, including her she was newly fascinated with the possibilities of art lovingly
actual sequel
brother,
imitating art, with the excision not only of competition, of standards, but
of experience
itself.
Calvinism is
intent
itself is
predictably the
on demolishing.
It is
first
male achievement which Stowe
important to remember that these novels and
sketches are Episcopalian and, equally important to add. Episcopalian as
Stowe understood the term. She, with many other intelligent Americans, had turned to the Anglican Church in the mid- 1860s. It had much to oflFer her.
One should
in part
inely
not overlook the fact that Stowe's
move
to Episcopalianism
bore witness to her broadening religious and social
welcomed the
vision.
potential Catholicism of the Anglican
immigrant and urban culture; she was cognizant of the ways
and
its
orders allowed
which her
father's
it
work more
to
She genu-
Church
its
in
organization
effectively in the exploding cities in
denomination (Presbyterian-Congregationalist) was
ing to take real hold. Yet
it
an
seems undeniable that
in
fail-
her religious realign-
ment, Stowe was confirming and hastening her flight from self-criticism and
from the authority of
vital experience.
Despite sometimes bitter internal debate over the growing use of ritual
by the Oxford Movement, the Anglican Church was, comparatively speaking, a model of non-conflict in a very conflicted society. It was crucial to Stowe that the Episcopal sect, alone among Protestant denominations, claimed a history of organic evolution from the primitive church. Certainly in American life the Anglican Church put a premium on continuity and serenity. The Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists all split officially and deeply on the slavery issue prior to the Civil War, and the fissures initiated
were
in
some
cases well-nigh unbridgeable.
divided, because, as one of to recognize the issue.
its
The
The
Episcopalian Church never
historians has pointed out,^®
style of
Anglican
it
ecclesiastical
simply refused
ceremony con-
firmed the church's image in Stowe's eyes as a model of tasteful self-approbation.
Of
course the Episcopal Church, despite
revivals of 1857
its
participation in the urban
and 1858, was non-evangelical; the kind of
total self-exami-
nation which supposedly accompanied the conversion experience in other
was never demanded of its members. Moreover, the Episcopalian rector was wedded to his prayerbook and to a fixed service which de-emphasized the sermon; his language was the conservative one of public ceremony. It is important that Stowe joined the church just at the time when rituals were proliferating: despite "low church" protest, crosses, candles, saints' days, daily matins and vespers, choral services, weekly communion, even sacramental confession and absolution and elevation of the host were borsects
249
The Periodical Press
rowed from Catholic practice by Episcopalians.^^ Stowe's New York novels show that she heartily approved of most of these practices, and with sure instinct dismissed only those which posterity has also rejected. As we will see,
these rituals had significant narcissistic potential for her.
The
Protestant (non-Anglican) ministry
My
New
New
who
England clergyman
Absorbed
in theological
nanimous"
(35),®°
"God
has
much
in
common
with
Lyman
Beecher.
controversy, "naturally impetuous though mag-
Reverend Henderson has love but limited time for
When Henry
offspring.
not presented as a viable
York novels and sketches. Henry Henderson, the narraWife and I and We and Our Neighbors, is the son of a small-town
option in the tor of
is
is
bless him," said
bom, he
my
takes a short break
from
me and my
father, kissing
his
his
work:
mother, and then
he returned to an important treatise which was to reconcile the decrees of
God
with the free agency of men, and which the event of
entrance into this world had interrupted for some hours.
was a perfect success I am told and nobody moment's further trouble on the subject. (6)
that heard
my
The sermon it
ever had a
Henry naturally devotes himself to his loving mother and fantasizes about a day when his father will be old and unable to preach. After ReverLittle
end Henderson's death,
his closest friend explains that his greatness
was not
which he poured all his energies, but in his benevolent heart, which he in the main ignored. In other words, in so far as he was lucky enough to resemble his wife, he was successful: what he thought to be his achievement was largely a rather touching waste of time. Stowe displays even less sympathy for the more timid clerical souls in his theology, into
whom Lyman
Beecher had fought decades
earlier in Boston.
Reverend
Henderson may have been an anachronism, but at least he was a man. My Wife and I opens with a section entitled "The Author Defines His Position" which is in part a cruelly piercing attack on the often pathetic attempts of the contemporary liberal clergy to rationalize and popularize their predica-
ment.
A
The
few
lines will give the flavor:
"Christianity, a is,
in
Shadow will go on with his interesting romance of Dissolving View" designed to show how everything
Rev. Dr. Cool
many
respects, like everything else,
and everything tant that
—
will finally
and
all
things lead somewhere,
end somehow, and therefore that
it is
impor-
everybody should cultivate general sweetness, and have the
very best time possible
Faced with such options,
it is
in this
world.
(2)
Henry Henderson never profession. He knows he lacks
hardly surprising that
considers the ministry seriously as a possible
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
250
the faith necessary to meet
demands and
its
agonizing about his deficiency. Instead he chooses press that
is
no time
challenges, and he spends
popular
a career in the
competing so handily with the religious one, and becomes
New
reporter for a
The male
a
York newspaper.
come
no better than the ministers in Stowe's acerbic pages. The very title of My Wife and I reminds the reader of George Curtis' Prue and I. The episodic narrative and the male narrators of all the works Stowe turned out between 1868 and 1874, with the exception of Pink and White Tyranny, suggest the same source. Little Foxes (1866), The Chimney Corner (1866), and House and Home Papers (1865), the preparatory works for the New York novels, are collected sketches which origisentimentalists
appeared
nally
narrator,
is
in
reminiscent of Prue's husband.
ous, domesticated,
my
is
and
my
land where
and
literary
man, with
a sensitive stomach,"®^
heels luxuriously
love to
I
"A
he
a
somewhat
bald, fastidi-
is
Like Mitchell's Bachelor, he loves to
effete.
study chair with
"my cloud
Christopher Crowfield, their
the Atlantic Monthly.
delicate nervous organization
in
off
sail
away
lie
"back
propped on an ottoman";
in
this
dreamy quietude, forgetting
the war, the price of coal and flour"®^ until his strong-minded practical wife briskly reminds
him of approaching
deadlines. Crowfield embarrasses the
reader with the apologetic excesses of his self-dislike: palpably afraid of the
women
he propitiates by imitation, he deprecates himself
blind vulcan."®^ Since he
is
Stowe's puppet, he
sentiments about him, but Stowe
which was so crippling every sense.
in is
in terror
love of his
When
as a child
of the big boys life,
who
in part expressing
her
Curtis and Mitchell.
neither a minister nor an author, seems
he
own
also getting at the lack of self-respect
is
in writers like
Henry Henderson, though
is
"clumsy, old,
as a
first
leaves
home
to
threaten to bully him.
whom, with precocious
weak
go to day school, he
Then
Daisy, the
first
anticipation of the domestic state,
comes to his rescue: she has his place moved to the girls' side of the room. "I was a blessed little boy from that moment" (11), he tells us. He is completely dependent on little Daisy, as he will be on Eva van Arsdel, his legal wife. And no wonder. Males in these books are either he
calls his "child wife,"
awkward
transvestites. In either
are
amid feminine
brutes, stumbling
by nature
subtleties,
form, they are by nature
successes. It
is
quite clear that
or wistful would-be
failures, just as the
Henry Henderson
women
has no other
function than to provide an audience, a mirror, an adorer for his wife (or wives).
band,
is
The
crucial point
not apparent but
is
that his subjugation, unlike that of Prue's hus-
Henry, presumably spending
real.
time writing about Eva and
all
her
little
doings,
is
a
good
deal of
advertising his sexual
disadvantage.
And
Eva's doings are very
not to have doubts about her
little
new
indeed.
Stowe was much too
fashionable heroine,
whom
I
intelligent
have already
1
The Periodical Press
25
described as the proto-consumer. Pink and White Tyranny, which appeared in the
same year
as
My
Wife and
I,
the utter small-mindedness of Lillie
reveals the superficiality, the coldness,
eye might seem very similar to Eva van Arsdel. But
modem
who
society belle
Ellis, a
to the casual
if Lillie
represents
Eva suggests her hopes, and in My Wife and I and We and Our Neighbors, she indulges them to the uttermost. Before her marriage, Eva is a pretty society flirt with somewhat higher aspirations than the wealthy loveless match which seems clearly in the ofling. She is a regular churchgoer, but her theology, as we have seen, is a Stowe's fears about the modish
trivial
girl,
and subjective know-nothingism. She prefers the
Biblical explanation
of the creation to the Darwinian one because, as she says, "
'I
think
it
a
good
Garden of Eden story, especially as that's pretty the dear old Book that is so sweet and comfortable
deal easier to believe the
and
poetical,
to us' " (322).
and
A
is
in
quote
like this suggests
accurately not only the thinness of
her personality but the impoverishment of her language. She talks as James
was
to
make Daisy
few years later. Stowe, who could exult of Eva's lovely younger sister Angelique, was
Miller talk just a
over the "curlie-wurlies"
clearly past the point of being critical of her slight heroine.
charm for everyone, including her author and her husband, apparently lies in her tasteful wardrobe. Admiring her, Henry feels compensated for "those severe edicts" which decree that male dress should be dull. Like some kind of bird, the female of the species is apparently destined to Eva's great
brilliant
plumage, the male to drab. Henry's wits seem as dull
as his clothes
when he gapes over her finery; yet it is clear he is undergoing a religious experience, and more particularly, an Episcopalian one. Eva's clothes and the process by which she adorns herself are at
some
Stowe analogous to the rituals of her new-found church. In the two novels in which Eva figures, Stowe lingers fondly over scenes in which young couples adorn and re-adorn
little
chapels at appropriate seasons.
level for
Not too
surprisingly, the
young men always fall adoringly in love with the young ladies on such occasions. In We and Our Neighbors, St. John, a devout Episcopalian rector, has redecorated his church in blue and gold.
van Arsdel conducts her Sunday School outfit.
Of
He
is
class in a
stunned
matching blue and gold
course, although hitherto absorbed in his church, he
love with her. In Stowe's narcissistic imagination, the
become the church, and the man frank about her ambitions. In to "
abandon her vague
is all
girlish
is
a rapturous
We and Our
dreams of
a
woman
now
falls in
has herself
communicant. Eva
is
quite
Neighbors, counseling her sister
hero-husband, she explains sagely:
on pedestals and have you worship them. Now, for part, I'd rather have a good kind man that will worship me' " (403).®'* Her emphasis on the ''man " here, however, is somewhat misleading. She
'your heroes like to
my
when Angelique
sit
for marriage, eager to
make matches
for her sisters and friends at every
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
252
motive
turn, but her in life
is
not finally respect for the value of the male.
is
the essentially narcissistic one of multiplying her image by creating
domesticated replicas of her
little
Her aim
She holds her Thursday evening once in the domestic process; they
life.
get-togethers to implicate her friends at are to participate, admire, and
marriage
do
likewise,
and
own
of them do. Eva's
six
absolutely without content or meaning except as a model.
is
an advertisement, not
a
It is
product. After the honeymoon, her husband's adora-
is
assumed but not expressed. At one point,
we
them going to bed together in a classically sexless scene. He, exhausted from his day, is half asleep, while she is chatting on about subjects which don't interest him. The tion
see
vignette closes with her superior acceptance of his indifference and her
amusement
at his rather gross physical fatigue:
Well, never mind.
Good
night' " (85).
(There
is
"
no evidence
that the female of the species ever needs sleep.
sprightly alert.) Needless to say, the couple has
you sleepy-head!
'Oh,
no
She
is
in either
on
children.
novel
a perpetual, It is
apparent
Eva has no time for childbearing: she is too busy showing off. It is irrelevant to expect children from her as to expect a doll to talk. Henry that
as is
from home. He is like a character always off-stage, for Stowe increasingly omits any information about his job. When at home, he generally absent
is
factotum
a
alone in the
home
goes out, Eva to
we
Furthermore,
figure.
almost never find this model couple
they love so much: either guests arrive, or one of them "visit,"
Henry
to
work or
to his "club."
The
reader
thoroughly sympathetic with their apparently inconsistent dread of vacy:
it is all
is
pri-
too evident that, once alone without an audience, they would
cease to exist.
One must mimics,
much
is
say, to
do her
credit, that Eva, in chatting
with her potential
never base enough to insinuate that romance or even love has
do with marriage. There is a businesslike air lurking behind these matchmaking tete-a-tetes. She is always enticing her feminine friends by the to
possibility that
they can "make" some
nial investment.
The arguments
suitor Jim, a cheery
man by
taking him
up
as a
matrimo-
she uses on her sister Alice in favor of her
reporter, are typical. " 'Your influence might
young
help him' " in his career, she points out. Alice agrees. " 'Jim ought to be married, certainly,' " she says "in a reflective tone. 'Just the right kind of
marriage would be the making of him.'
"
keep
it
a nice thing for us all
if
an interesting version of the
would be
think
it
of
we
us;
and is
live
all
near
know him and us,
and
all
apparently that he
bit like a
is
"let's
like
him
.
.
.
But Eva's clinching argument in
the family" approach.
"
is
do one
'I
you could like Jim, for he's you might settle right down here,
go on together cosily'
" (403). Jim's
main
selling point
already familiar, already domesticated; he sounds a
prefab house, ready to be put up. In marrying Jim, Alice can
quickly dispose of him, and get to the real business of female
life;
setting
up
253
The Periodical Press
an "easy," "nice," "cosy"
home
for others to envy and imitate. Needless to
say, she accepts him.
Eva
exults over their prospective marriage
engineered in a
skillfully
letter
which punctuate the narratives curious
They seldom
affairs.
and two others she has
written to her mother-in-law. These
regular intervals, are in themselves rather
at
tell
letters,
us anything
through the direct narrative. Their purpose
is
we have
not already learned
not to inform but rather, by
which the book operates structurally as well as thematically, to re-reflect, to gloat. As Eva redescribes the trivia which comprise her life, she repossesses her kingdom, and replicates it once again the narcissistic process on
somewhat weary
for her
readers. Here, at her
peak
matrimonial entre-
as a
book she unabashedly demands her due 'Mother, doesn't it seem as if our bright, cosy, happy, pound of " free-and-easy home was throwing out as many side-shoots as a lilac bush?' (462). The natural, even floral, connotations of Eva's metaphor seem insidipreneur, in the key sentence of the praise: "
ously deceptive.
One has a vision of an unending assembly
ing thousands of these homes, essentially
empty
like Eva's
existing only because the others do. Incest has
line,
mass-produc-
and Henry's, each
been commercialized.
The Loss of Romanticism Stowe's
novels hint painfully at the tragic dead end of Victorian Ameri-
late
can culture. There
is
the viciousness between the sexes.
There
is
the trium-
phant drift toward a consumer and mass-media society: Eva the shopper,
Henry
the newspaper reporter,
Stowe
herself at least
momentarily the advo-
cate of the superficial, the replicable. Equally important in these books,
however,
is
what has been
lost:
theology, feminism, and romanticism
—to
all
of which Stowe, like others in her culture, was logically the heir. Stowe herself
is
not to blame for this profoundly disappointing end to a brilliant
She did what she did
career.®^
women
in the
them. But all
that
own
it
was
most
was
way
half-understood effort to vindicate
undervalued
in a society that she sensed
a costly vindication, for to
accomplish
best in her religious heritage, repress
creativity
A
effective
in a
—and then, boast of
all
that
it
she had to debase
was strongest
in
her
it.
period which produced Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman
Melville,
Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edwards A. Park, and Horace Bushnell, among others, produced no women, with the exceptions of Margaret Fuller and Stowe,
even
if
could match their claims
the standards used were appropriately rephrased and redefined.
Edward Beecher, gifted
who
and
the most impressive of Lyman's sons, was,
less intelligent
than either of his more famous
if
anything,
sisters.
less
His achieve-
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
254
ments cannot match Harriet's and are no greater than Catharine's. every
He
they were.
bit as eccentric as
which they lacked.
dignity, even a decency,
sound ridiculous by paraphrasing
had
still
He was
a balance, a restraint, a
could make Edward Beecher
I
his wildest notions
about reincarnation;
would only need to quote a few lines from the most excessive statements in his monumental Conflict of Ages to make my reader know that she would not laugh to his face, that Edward Beecher must be taken seriously. but
To
I
quote Catharine Esther Beecher, however, ludicrously grim with moral
rage in Truth Stranger Than Fiction, or to read from Little Eva's death scene in Uncle
Tom >
Cabin,
one ask for reflection and but his
sisters
were
of
first
is,
analysis.
inflated,
some
at
all,
level to
overdone, and the diflPerence
has nothing to do with propriety. Once,
thought that "anything which
all
He was not
is vital.
sense of proportion. This
when Horace
sets a
man
Bushnell was in
practically in his place,
precondition to intellectual
"room of
is
a
mental
was precisely —dignity honesty — sense of proper the true and own" — the middle-class northern woman,
good, a good of manners, of feeling
no matter how
can
neglected and unknown, but he consoled himself with the
felt
indispensable
later
Edward Beecher was perhaps misguided;
always balanced, but they occasionally lacked
London, he
amuse; only
place,
a
one's
this
itself."®® It
that
intelligent, lacked.
Both exalted and ignored, was the lady the savior of her nation, or
a
slave to an unappreciative master? Defined in unexplored extremes, she
inevitably often dealt in
them
and encouraged those segments of her
herself,
culture most committed to the avoidance of self-examination. Inevitably she
was profoundly barred from the
disaflfected
polls
from
and her
rights;
of placing, the awareness of class
genuine political consciousness she used
it
was not simply that she was she had little to gain from the sense interest, of societal structure, which
politics. It
t*iid
fosters.
When she obtained
the vote in 1920,
with indifference; she voted with her men, not because she was
sheeplike as various commentators claimed, but because, paradoxically, politics
were not
her politics. Sentimentalism had for too long served her needs
better; for sentimentalism
might be defined
as the political sense
obfuscated
modes of genuine
sensibility,
or gone rancid. Sentimentalism, unlike the
never
exists
except in tandem with failed political consciousness.
phenomenon whose appearance
recent
sentimentalism seeks and talism
is
oflPers
is
linked with capitalist development,
the distraction of sheer publicity. Sentimen-
a cluster of ostensibly private feelings
and conspicuous expression. Privacy functions ism only for the sake of as
it is
and
it
titillation, as a
which always
exist
without an audience.
It
attains public
in the rituals of sentimental-
convention to be violated. Involved
with the exhibition and commercialization of the
cannot
A relatively
self,
has no content but
its
sentimentalism
own
invests exposure with a kind of final significance. Little
exposure,
wonder
that
The Periodical Press
255
Harriet Beecher Stowe closed her career as a show-off.
And
she had plenty
of company.
— which covers the "feminiof zation" or sentimentaHzation of northeastern culture—ends with It is fitting, I
my
think, that
chosen period
a series
most notably,
scandals,
as
we have
seen, Harriet
Beecher Stowe's notorious
expose of Lord Byron's relations with his half-sister Augusta and Henry
Ward
Beecher's much-publicized affair with Libby Tilton. Incest underlay
both scandals: brother and in
bed as
sister,
in print their rather
minister and parishioner were advertising
unhealthy, and not altogether willing, need of
New
York novels and the writings of the male sentimentalists, these affairs suggested what could be called the mirrorphenomenon increasingly dominant in American life. Replication of the self, one another. Like Stowe's
absorption in the
self,
disguises confusion as to the purpose of the self;
politics yields to publicity.
Many newspapermen and
Beecher-Byron controversy and the
their trade during the years of the
Beecher-Tilton
some papers devoted
trial:
cartoonists rebaptized
as
many
as ten reporters to the
coverage of the Brooklyn imbroglio. In a self-immersed and self-congratulatory culture unable to generate the genuine tensions and purposefulness of criticism,
only scandal remains to provide the sense of
without which mass communal
life is
ritual excitation
intolerable.
The triumph of sentimentalism in nineteenth-century America is never clearer than when one realizes the relatively small number of romantic writers and theologians, male or female, this country produced.®^ For,
—and
ever one defines the romantic impulse
adequately here
—
I
do not pretend
to be doing that
clearly involves a genuinely political
it
and
sense, a spirit of critical protest alien to the sentimentalism so often
with
it.
Romantics such
even Byron never
lost
as
how-
historical
confused
Goethe, Schiller, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, or
touch with ethical concerns as the mainspring of their
Greek liberty may seem self-glorifying, even diversionary, to some of us now; it is still today as it was to the Greeks then a profoundly different matter from staying at home, writing odes to Greece, and dying in bed. The unmistakable inspiration. Byron's once-celebrated death in the cause of
—
—
exaltation of the self
found
in the
works of the romantics was
a desperate
effort to find in private resources
an antidote and an alternative to the forces
was
not, like sentimentalist self-absorption, a
of modernizing society;
it
commercialization of the inner
The
test
which
life.
distinguishes romanticism
from sentimentalism
is
that
no matter how strained or foreign to modem ears, has not to use Hemingway's phrase "gone bad"; language, like that of the sentimentalists, which has utterly capitulated to the drift of its times invariably "goes bad." Perhaps we would not write today in the way Shelley, for its
language,
its
rhetoric,
—
example, did. Lines like
—
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
256
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near Pourest thy
it,
full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art
may
ring a bit grandiose. But
language to
its
age
is
we
understand that the relationship of such
fundamentally healthy,
is
one
we might
wish
in
our
The language of Victorian religiosity, appears in the pages of Dickens or of Mrs. Sigoumey, we at once
very different fashion to approximate.
whether
it
reject, at least consciously, as a useful
model. Mrs. Sigoumey wrote about
birds too:
Beautiful boy, with the sunny hair.
What wouldst thou do with It
belongs to the sky
—
it
that birdling rare?
hath wings, you know,
Loosen your clasping, and
let
him
go.®®
We find so much of this rancid writing in our nineteenth-century literature. Mrs. Sigoumey 's present disrepute by no means obviates her enormous popularity
among
her contemporaries.
And where
our Goethe, our Schil-
our Hegel, our Byron, our Shelley, our Keats, our George Eliot?
ler,
could go on, but the point seems evident. conflicted,
ent from,
prone to compromises and if
figures.
And
mentalism the
in
more
Our
One
romantics were opposed and
failures of productivity in
not more intense than, anything
European contemporaries. Yet
all
is
known by
in literature as in
ways diflPer-
their English
and
theology, there were such
without some discussion of them, the story of Victorian
America would not be complete. They are valuable to us, precisely because their
more achievement was all
the
senti-
heroic,
so rare
and so threatened. Their romanticism was inevitably characterized and defined by their defiance of sentimentalism and of incipient mass culture.
They had
to try to
move
often became contortion
in straitjackets,
and motion, not unpredictably,
—stunted, incomplete. Yet
it
was motion, and
more significant because it took place under conditions and that would increasingly prevail in America and elsewhere. the
all
against odds
PART THREE ears; Ishmael, de-
spite his disapproval,
but only while
we
is
tells
us of his friendship with
at sea, Ishmael's voice exists in
at
times even supplanted by
it.
gives us, indeed embodies, the "story," and his voice represents the
extreme of public performance and greatest orator, the finest preacher in
had been
American
Ahab
literature; if
is
probably the
Margaret Fuller
would have appreciated his language; if Stowe she would have understood his style and his subject.
alive in 1851, she
had read Moby Dick,
revivalist art.
— Herman
Melville
and
the Revolt
In taking over the narrative voice,
the impersonal; Ahab's
mind may be
Against
Ahab moves
diseased, but
Reader
the.
307
from the personal
it
it is
a sickness
to
he caught
from God, not man. Nor can the movement from the particular
to the
abstract be reversed. After Ahab's death, the closing paragraphs before the
by Ishmael, are in a narrative mode which more mannered, more grandiose, than Ishmael's op)ening
"epilogue," presumably given us is
significantly
style.
Here
is
the start:
—
Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest
me
Call
Ishmael.
me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
(1)
Note the frightening connotations of a plethora of undistinguishable possibilities, Ishmael's hypothetical unwanted but insistent personal perspective. Here is the (penultimate) ending:
Now
white surf beat against
its
steep sides, then
shroud of the sea rolled on
The
tone
yawning
gulf; a sullen
collapsed,
and the great
small fowls flew screaming over the yet
is
no longer
as
it
all
rolled five thousand years ago. (565)
detached but magisterial, even orchestrated. Certain things are
happened. Ishmael
possible: history has
is
no more "important"
than he ever was, but his attitude toward his task of reportage has shifted. Ishmael survives, although he inhabits a universe which stands defined as the
wake of
the whale and the grave of Ahab. His return
no matter how randomly
represents the possibility,
responsibility for experience, even for experience
suggests
if
is
necessary, for he
available, of taking
beyond our
He
control.
not a commitment, a continuity on the part of the author, and
a lesson for the reader.
Ahab's implacability offers a clue to significance. this
His moral value
ambiguity
is
ambiguous, as
central to Melville's design
Lord Jim's courage reader close to
is
Ahab
is
I
have
said,
in
the sense that he
Ahab
self-consciousness here are
as a hero.
is
but
I
is
urging the reader as a
The
He
about
not drawing the
man
to
levels of Melville's literary
numerous and uncannily "modem,"
say in praise of writers of former ages.
do not think
say, the uncertainty
as,
essential to Conrad's. Melville
emulate or even evaluate
identifies
his literary as well as to his religious
as
we
like to
grasped the fact that a reader
with a fictional protagonist not only as he represents a "real"
person, but also purely as a fictional character. Melville brings the reader close to
Ahab because he
wishes the experience of
Ahab
as a hero in a book
to educate the reader not simply as a p)erson but as a reader. Ishmael
only an observer and an actor
in
the book, he
is
a
model for the
is
not
reader.
It
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
308
important that
is
Ahab
is
a deliberately old-fashioned,
even anachronistic,
character; his bombastic, self-consciously literary rhetoric
American drama of the
1830s; his very insanity
is
back; his intensely romantic view of the universe frees
him
to find
compact with meaning,
if
that of the
is
kind of cultural throw-
a
— which
a diabolic
his
one
"monomania"
—
is
not that of
Ishmael, our contemporary. Ishmael, with his utter lack of cultural roots and his terror of a potentially
with
—
Ahab
empty, meaningless universe, needs to identify
as well as to survive him. Ishmael
—but he
he cannot, although he
is
tempted to try
deny that he knew him. Melville
is
insisting that art
finally
consumed and thrown aside, which can and must alter the cannot regain is
is
view of
life
is
asked not to
not a product to be
as the "sketch" suggested, but
participant's
Ahab
not asked to become
is
an experience
and himself. Ishmael
pre-Ahab voice because Ahab has happened. The reader
his
denied the usual cycle of vicarious involvement, readjustment, and rejec-
tion.
Moby Dick
the most powerful attempt
is
on the eve of the commercialization of both to find
a
ble,
literature as a part of
wide audience and to restore the
mass culture
indispensability, the essen-
of the literary work.
tially religious dignity,
In an age
made by an American author
which expected
its
authors to be accessible and easily assimila-
When
Melville advertised the difficulty of his book.
Ishmael arrives at
whose
the Spouter Inn, he finds on the wall "a very large oil-painting" subject
it is
almost "impossible to decipher." There are "such unaccountable
masses of shades and shadows," such "portentous" masses, that
man
to drive a nervous
distracted."
The
it is
"enough
painting possesses an "unimaginable
sublimity" which freezes the viewer to the spot, until he "involuntarily" takes "an oath ... to find out
what
by "much and earnest contemplation, and ever, can Ishmael
make out an image:
—
three masts of a ship
and the Pequod
a picture
oft
that of a
very close to the
(10, 11). Melville
intricate sustained effort
Only repeated ponderings," how-
that marvellous painting meant."
is
whale impaling scene with
final
itself
on the
Moby
Dick
both acknowledging and justifying the
he demands of
his reader: as
Margaret Fuller asked
of her friends, he expects his readers to be productive.
The
reader
is
asked
move from the passivity of the "sub-sub," the Irvingesque persona who opens Moby Dick with his erudite but uncollated series of definitions, the
to
consumer of
the philosophy of
and
who is always more a reader than Ishmael, who is pre-eminently engaged
literature
finally to the passion of
a writer,
toward
with experience,
Ahab, whose imagination encompasses and
creates the enormities of adventure.
The
reader
is
urged to deal with the
ambiguities of Ahab's moral status precisely because to deal with ambiguity is,
in Melville's
mind, to deal with danger. Melville asks the reader meta-
phorically to risk his
life
invites the reader to help
to explore the necessities of the imagination; he
him write the book
—
if
he dares.
Herman
The
and
Melville
reader of Pierre
is
the Revolt
no
way
real
is
had liked
small taste for the sea"
would be
indeed,
is,
not educative here, for Melville allows
into the novel; the story
is
an
insult,
not a dare. In
Hawthorne in which Melville expressed his surMoby Dick "for as a general thing women have
the same letter to Sophia prise that she
309
exposed to endless "ambiguities"; that
the book's subtitle. But the danger his readers
Against the Reader
—
—he promised her that
work, presumably
his next
bowl of milk," a book for the ladies.^ Instead, in Pierre, Melville turned decisively and openly against the middle-class sentimental-minded feminized reading public he had essentially tried to evade or Pierre,
educate
become
it,
The
in
It is as if
their interference with his creative
must deal with
so troubling that he
it,
and he does so by
curious ways, the actual subject of his book.
which were excluded in the earlier works Moby Dick have overwhelmed the world of
forces of domesticity
and intricately contained
For the
Pierre.
^
previous work.
in his
effort has
making
a "rural
first
in
but not the
time, Melville limits himself to a claustro-
last
young Pierre Glendinning, the hero, There is nothing wild in the landscape;
phobically inland setting. Wealthy
grows up on it is all
a lush country estate.
blossoms and birds, a model of the picturesque.
feminine setting, and, Pierre's masterful
fittingly, its
is
dead; he
mother Mrs. Glendinning and
is
the
is,
his
women,
innocent young fiancee,
at least in theory, Pierre's. Pierre's
but again not the
first,
suggests the ideal
other principal inhabitants are
Lucy. Their polite Episcopalian faith father
It
last,
of Melville's heroes
who
does not have to struggle with a living paternal authority, actual or symbolic.
His
essential conflict
is
with
mother.
his
Imperious and beautiful Mrs. Glendinning
is
the daughter of a general,
and, beneath her calculated facade of dignified charm, she reveals the habit
of
command.
Discreetly wielding her sexual attractions to keep her son close
what Melville tellingly calls a "fictitious" relationship. The two evince a confusion between life and literature as deep as any that Henry Ward Beecher would display. They pretend coyly that to her, she envelops Pierre in
they are brother and
sister,
literary allusions. Mrs.
Glendinning wants Pierre to marry a timid, retiring
and their conversation
who
is
studded gaily with
girl,
such as she believes Lucy to be, one
Her
playful
son.
On one occasion, she reproves Pierre in the style of an etiquette manual:
"
decorum
hides a desire to repress
'Never rave, Pierre, and never
the
word Mrs. Glendinning
rant'
"
(14).
will pose all
(26).
woman"
all
of the family, and she uses
rance of the real world, her
it
in
her
In her musings about her son,
uses over and over again to describe
in possessing a
Mrs. Glendinning has
threat to herself.
genuine excitement
"docile." Indeed, she frankly admits to herself that she ble "a fine
no
him
is
hopes he will resem-
swelling chest, abundant hair, and docility
the authority usually associated with the
man
to keep Pierre in innocent and amiable igno-
rival.
Melville seems to be cynically suggesting
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
310
that the \^ictorian lady,
men, and her authors,
The
be.
and reader, will use
as "feminine,"
and
her "influence" to keep her
all
as restricted, as she
is
supposed to
distractions Mrs. Glendinning permits Pierre are precisely those
which perpetuate her power: dabblings, as we have seen, in trivial fashionable verse, and sentimental flirtation with his fiancee. Pierre is the only male heir in his
when
branch of the family.
line
disappearing, and dwindling;
is
Pierre tries on the clothes of his grandfather, a noted leader in the
much
Revolution, they are military ideal in
The
is
clear
from
too large. Pierre's distance from any heroic
Lady
of himself as "First
his jesting description
Waiting to the Dowager Duchess Glendinning"
(17).
Pierre has been raised to venerate his dead father as a perfect gentleman
— what When
else
would be an adequate compliment
to his mother's "influence"?
he learns of the existence of his illegitimate
crisis in his
thinking inevitably occurs.
It
an important
half-sister,
cannot be over-emphasized that
discovery does not disillusion Pierre primarily with his father;
come under
mother's falsifications which
this
is
it
his
most severe scrutiny. The
his
revelation of Mr. Glendinning's sexual transgressions provides Pierre, curi-
ously enough, with his
mannequin with
first real
opportunity to replace
a flesh-and-blood
his
man: to conceive of
mother's idealized virility.
We
never
hear anything really detrimental about Mr. Glendinning beyond the fact of his illicit liaison
and
its fruit.
Pierre recalls his father's deathbed remorse, his
"my daughter"; Isabel remembers his kindness and generosity with her. What Pierre has learned is not that his father was "bad" so much as that he was not altogether satisfied to live a prisoner in his wife's home calling for
and mind. Ironically, Mr. Glendinning becomes Glendinning claims he should be to Pierre's first reaction
at this point just
model.
his son: a
to test out in a covert
is
what Mrs.
manner
mother's
his
response to the possibility of Isabel's existence. In other words, he discussing Delly's case, to find out
describes as "a fine
(3), is
capable of encompassing
his father's experience.
tutes exactly the reality Mrs.
That experience
Glendinning wished to keep from
course, she treats Pierre's hypothetical case with fear and anger.
her no second chance; he clearly does not want
an alliance with Isabel which aflirms his father's far
is
he from wishing to attack
by
her mind, what Melville carefully
if
mind of medium culture"
and dealing adequately with
tries,
to. Instead,
affair
his father that his
He
is
Pierre; of
He
gives
he enters into
with her mother. So
only justification for
cruelty in refusing to explain matters to his mother desire to protect his father's reputation.
consti-
is
his
his repeatedly stated
shielding, even cherishing,
precisely his father's "sin," the masculine right of self-expression, against his
mother's censorious standards. Pierre fondly hopes that in running off to
he
is
performing an act of "heroism,"
a
New
York City with
word he and
Isabel,
Melville use often in
Herman the
first
half of the
Melville
book
her existence, Pierre can
the Revolt
Against the Reader
311
Yet he does
as a possible description of his course.
much
not become an adult,
and
less a
kill his
hero. Simply
by ceasing
mother; she dies of grief
acknowledge and rage, and he to
rightly takes responsibility, describing himself as her "murderer" (403). killing his
mother
is
not the same thing as finding the father his mother has
And
so totally obfuscated.
without
He
significance for his rebellion.
sophisticated protest against
knowledged
But
incentive,
was
a father, Pierre
can find no focus, no
real
can destroy, but not create. His father's
contemporary mores, which
real precisely
daughter, presumably Isabel. Pierre's in all its aspects, religious, literary
because
it
had
is
Pierre's unac-
consequence: a
a
much more extreme
and personal: there
is
revolt
is
a failure
no outcome, no
fruit.
which he was confirmed, yet he finds no way back to the Calvinist epistemology and structure which gave shape to Ahab's vengeance and his rhetoric. In New York Pierre lives Pierre abjures the liberal Episcopal faith in
in
an old church whose former members gradually deserted
neighborhood
moves
in,
which
in
the building
is
it
when
the
was located became declasse; at the time Pierre inhabited chiefly by poor artists and intellectuals.
it
Yet the symbolic transfer of activity
is
not substantiated in fact. Melville,
Matthew Arnold, found art no substitute for religion, because art without dogma is sensibility or rhapsody, incapable of form. The only religious authority Pierre encounters among the "Apostles" is the calm and dry Plinlimmon, more anticipatory of F. Scott Fitzgerald's T. J. Ecklesberg unlike
than reminiscent of Joseph Bellamy's Deity. Plinlimmon's theories are the opposite of any "dogma" Melville, and his characters, have found useful in the past: the philosopher hypothesizes an utter discrepancy between heav-
enly and earthly time, facts, and values. In other words, the system of
analogy which was essential to the dignity of Ahab's blasphemy has totally
broken down. Meaningful destroys the
fx)lite
art
is
impossible. Before he leaves
poetry he wrote
earlier;
home, Pierre
he no longer reads novels, finding
that they utterly falsify existence. In the city, steeping himself in
Shakespeare, he the publisher
toils
who
on
a
"blasphemous rhapsody" (497)
indignantly rejects
it)
as p>ersistently
(in
Dante and
the phrase of
and painfully
as
any
of the great Edwardsean ministers worked on their systems of divinity. Yet,
on the worthlessness of the "popular novels" the publisher and the public favor, he never tells us whether Pierre's work is of
although Melville
is
clear
genuine value or even coherent. In any
This pattern of
futility
is
case,
it
will never see the light.
reiterated in Pierre's personal revolt.
defied his mother's conventional ethics, he has run
makes no bones about
oflF
with
He
has
Isabel. Melville
their strong sexual attraction, but they apparently
do
not sleep together. His father chose sex without marriage; Pierre picks
marriage without
sex. It is
one of the greatest ironies of the novel that
Pierre,
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
312
while revolting
officially against
None
Virgin Absolute of the story.
boy Redbum, had been a virgin;
he
of Melville's earlier heroes, except the
obsessed and defined by his virginity.
is
himself the
is
particularly continent. Pierre, in contrast,
enough, unlike Melville's other his
Mrs. Glendinning's code,
sailor narrators,
Redbum,
is
just
interestingly
had no close friends among
fellow crew members; Pierre too has no intimate male friends.
his virginity
not
It is as if
a pledge of his allegiance to feminine values, a pledge
is
he
desperately wishes to break, but cannot. Lucy's decision to follow Pierre to
New
York, and
his decision to
welcome her
there, bring
down on him
the
hatred of her brother and of Pierre's cousin and former dear friend. Glen.
At the end of the book, Pierre welcomes a challenge from Glen and Lucy's brother; he kills them, then commits suicide. In the earlier works, as I have said, the "sons," usually crew members, banded together in fraternity against the "father," usually a captain. In Pierre, since there
is
no father whose
real
power must be opposed or supported, the sons in pointless rivalry merely for feminine attention turn on each other. In the essentially political world of Moby Dick, most of the characters die, but it is for a purpose which we
may
like
or
dislike. In
the domestic psychological world of Pierre, the main
characters die for no real reason. If
Ahab was
a
"monomaniac," Pierre
is
a
neurotic. Pierre
is
of course fictional as none of Melville's earlier works were.
we are getting straightforward description of a place or an experience. The grandiloquent rhetoric of Moby Dick has given way to a hothouse language of exaggeration. Pierre may actually
There
is
no moment when we
feel
be a parody of the legendary and tempestuous best-sellers cranked out by
women like Mrs.
E. D. E.
N. Southworth
in this period. ^^ Certainly, Melville
makes the sentimental domestic romance into a cage in which he deliberately confines his main character and himself both to define the limits of the
—
form and
to test the possibility of breaking out
of prisoner of fiction, Pierre
something
—
else.
is
and destroying
it.
trying to get out of his book or to
His struggle forces the reader to
know
the
form
A
kind
make as
it
one
knows a cell in which one has been frantically seeking an egress. But there is no exit, only a final and desperate exhaustion. There are so many straight lines, metaphorically speaking, in the narrative of Moby Dick Queequeg and Ishmael signing for the Pequod, the chase :
of the whale
itself,
cannot be reversed: Pierre are
all
the thrust of the harpoon. it is
circular,
themselves out:
if
historicist in the
ending dismally
Pierre leaves
in the city; if Isabel settles
Lucy
The
action proceeds and
Hegelian sense.
The
plot lines in
at their starting point,
in the
on one candidate
canceling
country, she comes after him as her actual father, she later
discovers another equally plausible one. Like Mrs. Sigoumey's tales and sketches, Pierre takes place in the mind, and so nothing can happen; there
3
Herman is
no
narrative,
and
Melville
and no history.
character in the book.
Against the Reader
the Revolt
Isabel
is
destroys Pierre's concept of his
history and of his father's, and she has nothing to put in
pure conjecture. Her amnesia
is
seems retarded, a
bit like
dissolves
ways
into
dim
dreams are
Everything
at times ludicrous; she
sensations.
" 'Al" into solidities'
She admits:
a manifestation of the insidious female sexuality of
which Mrs. Glendinning's drive for power was both act to conceal and distort the I
place.
Faulkner's Benjy in The Sound and the Fury, as she
what must have been events
(165). Isabel's
tive;
is
its
me, the solidest things melt into dreams, and dreams
in
1
symbolically the most important
Her very presence
Isabel tells Pierre
3
have tried to argue elsewhere
a
very different representa-
past.
in this
book
that the
American women
of Melville's generation were trying to replace the masculine vision of
economic
history as a series of political and
men with
a
masculine maturation hero;
it
and what
in his society. Pierre
it
his
meant for the
possibility of
cannot become an adult,
much
could almost be said that he cannot be bom. Narrative time
has been replaced by psychological time and
works on
and marshaled by
feminine view of social and biological process. Pierre represents
Melville's horror at this substitution
less a
facts enacted
by
biological time. Pierre
book in a cold room; Isabel wishes to keep the door between study and her bedroom open, "so the heat of her room might bodily go his
into his" (414). Pierre refuses.
It is
that he
is
is
world of
trying to escape; he reality. In vain.
Isabel reclaims him.
"
the ravishing, suffocating heat of her
literally
trying to enter the proverbially cold
He dies, symbolically
'Ye
knew him
Millthorpe, Pierre's only loyal,
not!' " she
enclosed in a prison
falls
and arboured him
on in
Pierre's
and
exclaims rather unkindly to
her point, however; Pierre has been separated from his
Dying, Isabel
cell,
simple-minded, male friend. She has
if
body
last
made
masculine
ally.
dead body, and "her long hair ran over him,
ebon vines"
(505). Pierre
has suffocated in the feminine
sensibility.
The Magazine Pierre
was
Pieces:
a critical
Going Underground
and popular
failure of an order that
made Mardi look
like a success. Melville's implicit hostility to his readers
sensed,
and returned
extant,"
one
is
critic
almost infinite
Another
critic
in spades.
went on
was
to say:
"The amount of utter trash
in the
volume
—trash of conception, execution, dialogue and sentiment."
fulminated against the "supersensuousness with which the
and son, brother and
sister are
"modem literati."^^
and warned the author: "Mother
sacred facts not to be distorted by sacrilegious
speculations." Significantly, Godey
of
critics
After labeling Pierre "the craziest fiction
early relations of the family are described,"
a satire
and
It is
's
picked up on the fact that the book was
hardly surprising that in the works which
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
314
succeeded
Pierre, Melville
went underground. After
he had written a friend "what a madness never
&
anguish
—under no conceivable circumstances— be Melville
ers."^'*
became
finishing White-Jacket,
it is
at all
that an author can
frank with his read-
increasingly adept at the art of withholding and innuendo. In Pierre there
is
grew
distinctly less "frank" later in his career; he
a frequently felt
Moby Dick and
Hamletlike "antic disposition," as Melville
dangles and twitches possible gratification before his audience; in the works
which succeed vitality
Pierre,
this process of
manic tantalization
is
missing.
The
of desperation has been replaced by the cunning of deceit. Melville
has dispossessed his readers without totally destroying his
own
rationale for
becomes his motivation. Reading the ship on a stormy sea; reading the later ones
writing: indeed, the dispossession itself earlier is
works
like sitting
is
like
rocking
becalmed
in
in a
ominously
waters.
still
In the period between 1853 and 1857 Melville produced
undoubted masterpieces:
Israel Potter,
some of
his
The Confidence Man, "Bartleby the
Scrivener," "Benito Cereno," as well as half a dozen tales of genuine interest
and power. Significantly, he intended them and Putnam's, and pages.
Of
all
but The Confidence
all
for
Man
two magazines.
Harper's
actually appeared in their
course Donald Mitchell, the "Ik Marvel"
who wrote
Reveries of
a Bachelor and founded the legendary "Easy Chair" in Harper's, and Curtis, author of the sentimental pastiches Potiphar Papers (1853)
and I it.
J.
that
George
and Prue
were the editors of Harper's during Melville's association with H. Dix was editing Putnam a newer periodical, but it was well known he followed Curtis' advice and lead in every possible instance.^^ As we (1856),
's,
have seen, both Curtis and Mitchell were
doubting "magazinish" writers working
skillful, trivial,
and wittily
in the graceful tradition
self-
of Lau-
rence Sterne and Washington Irving for a largely feminine audience.
That Melville designed his own magazine tales to pass muster with the same genteel handkerchief-reaching audience these men attracted seems very clear. The fact is that, without winning acclaim, they did pass muster. The Piazza
Tales, a collection
of a
number of
these pieces published in 1856,
received favorable reviews: one critic complimented Melville for having
"much of his former freshness and vivacity. "^^ Strikingly, the great American public chose precisely from among Melville's magazine works to
regained
perpetuate the once-immoral author's fame.
A
McGuffey's Reader of 1888
actually anthologized Melville's account of Benjamin Franklin's pro-temper-
ance comments delivered to the
a skeptical Israel Potter^^ for the edification of
American young. Melville was undoubtedly writing
McGuffey's didn't notice.
More
tellingly, the reserved but secretly
hearted clerk Titbottom in Curtis' Prue and
refugee in the bureaucratic ranks, actually leby's.^«
satirically,
I,
a
owns
but
warm-
shy but benevolent
little
himself a friend of Bart-
5
Herman
Ahab and
and
Melville
Pierre, vast as
expensive:
it
still
cost
Against the Reader
3 1
were the differences between them, had both
been rebels against their society.
which Melville
the Revolt
It is
an indication of the seriousness with
considered his culture that their revolt was open and
them
their lives.
The
lesson that Melville learned
from the
Hkes of Curtis and Mitchell, and one which by 1853 he was sufficiently alert
and
bitter to
a price.
absorb and elaborate, was that there was no need to pay such
His readers did not demand or understand
immolation, were like conflagrations kindled
Ahab's death, Pierre's
it.
in situations for
which
a
match
would have been sufficient: ludicrous. The excesses of their eflPorts at masculine stature were beside the point, outmoded, passe. Melville's newly lowered estimation of his audience was evident in the doll-house proportions of the
work he
oflFered
them; he deceived his readers, he veiled his
insults, partly
them how little worth the effort of attack they were. In the mid- 18 50s Melville, in whose writing speech was always to be key, turned for his models from the stage, where bombastic actors like Edwin Forrest paced and postured before mixed audiences in half-sincere struggles to idealize America's barbarity, to the "Easy Chair," where editors pontifi-
to demonstrate to
and equivocated for parlor consumption. In order to Melville always needed close contact with the nightmare central to
cated, jested, flattered, create,
the American psyche: in the mid- 18 50s, he found anguish, but affability;
its
subject
dynamic was not
its
was not the death-throes of masculinity
but the vicious coquetting of the feminine or effeminate.
The are
all,
them
in is
stories Melville
wrote for the magazines between 1853 and 1857
form, variations on the "sketch," and the central figure the "Ik Marvel" character, descended
from
Irving's
in
most of
Geoffrey
Crayon. In Moby Dick, Melville had quickly dismissed the Irvingesque "subsub"
who opens the book;
in the sketches, the indolent,
sentimental observer, toying with the tragedies of
disavowing them,
rules.^^
Let
me
start
smug, dreamy, timid,
life,
precipitating and
with the narrator of "Bartleby the
more important magazine tales. This prosperous complacent lawyer clearly owes much to Sterne, Irving, and
Scrivener," the earliest of Melville's
Marvel, and probably influenced Curtis' conception of his narrator
and I. The story he
pities,
is
but also because
him. In a sense, he
he
is
really his not
is
we
only because he
cannot get
at
is
between Bartleby 's meaningful
Bartleby 's story except through
what he
inaccessibility
liberal in religious belief.
Church, and he
is
is
fails
will print. It
to flatter him; is
the contrast
and the narrator's sometimes
meaningless garrulity which provides the heart of the Bartleby 's employer
Prue
as barren as the scrivener
the reader, screening out whatever
the editor choosing and rejecting
in
tale.'*®
clearly, like all the narrators of these sketches,
He
attends the fashionable Episcopalian Trinity
so ignorant of theology that he
is
capable of grouping
together the well-known free-thinker Joseph Priestley and the orthodox
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
316
Jonathan Edwards
(130).'*^
He
has no real equipment to understand Bart-
economic and spiritual dilemma; what he wants, and what he succeeds doing despite some genuine twinges of uneasiness, is to sentimentalize his
leby's in
clerk's story, to
make
it
resemble those he has read in magazines like the one
which "Bartleby" itself appeared. Melville is dramatizing here the process by which an essentially mass sensibility transforms and assimilates the alien to its own needs. The narrator is clearly a literary facilitator, a conveyor belt to his culture. At the start, he assures us that he could "relate divers histories at which good-natured gentlemen might smile and sentimental souls might in
weep"
A
would-be memorialist
feminine
he
is
regretful that he lacks the materials for a full "biography" of Bartleby:
it
is
(103).
in the clerical
style,
"an irreparable loss to literature" (103).
This lawyer has already had several rather eccentric
and apparently willingly accepts their
peculiarities.
clerical
employees
Although he unwit-
by small and futile oddities of behavior rebelling against the routinized and monotonous quality of their work, his own sympathy for them seems rather to come from their willingness to appeal to his emotions than from any real comprehension of their position. Turkey, who is wont to blot his afternoon copying under the influence of his lunchtime drinking, disarms his employer by an "appeal" to tingly allows us to understand that these copyists are
his "fellow feeling":
men
they both are getting old, he points out
are not really alike: one
in a position
is
relatively secure
of insecure dependency. But
it
is
(107).
The two
and prosperous, the other
this sentimental illusion of
brotherhood, this obfuscation of an essentially class situation, which the narrator
demands
as the price of his
sympathy, and
it is
precisely this
which
Bartleby denies him.
his
The narrator is constantly trying to use Bartleby 's plight to touch oflF own emotions. "His poverty is great," he ruminates, with the kind of
which Mitchell's Bachelor was a past master, "but his solitude how horrible! Think of it!" (120). He is lost in "fraternal melancholy," a perversion of the word "fraternal" to which Melville was as sensitive as Whitman could have been. He tries to extract Bartleby 's story from him
sadistic pity of
(122);
he attempts to force the scrivener to express gratitude for
benevolence
(123).
The
apparently morose clerk in Curtis' Prue and I
claims cousinship with Bartleby does finally
tell his
employer about
Bartleby does not. Faced with his only possible biographer, his
most important preference table
it
must be
his day;
he
Humanity!"
is
—
is
for oblivion. Bartleby 's revolt
easy,
tially so defiant in its
letter."
—and Melville knows
just is
how
The narrator,
how
ironic;
how
his past;
final
recessive
own who
if
and
inevi-
against the literature of
refusing, essentially, to be a character.
How
his
"Ah
Bartleby! ah
hard that Bartleby 's
life,
poten-
meagemess, should become indeed another "dead
having "placed" Bartleby 's story within the context of
7
Herman
Melville
the biographies of oblivion
and
the Revolt
Against the Reader
we have examined,
with onanistic indulgence he hastens to share the emotions which seized too. Melville
reminds
in the
how
Dead
(140)
on
a
his pity:
how
mangled,
rather than to distort
"hardly can
—he has almost, but not
I
express
quite, got us
final solution, his
"rumor" that Bartleby had worked
Letters Oflice at Washington; his silence,
massaged,
1
has finally got his "emotions";
however, that the narrator's
us,
interpretation, rests only
me"
3
as a clerk
no matter how coaxed,
Bartleby prefers to destroy history
persists.
it.
occupant of the "easy
Melville's distrust of the narrator figure, the chair," in the tales of this period
never flagged; he came, however, increas-
ingly to sense and exploit the hostility of this character to the very audience that he
had been formed and maimed to
in certain
ways most
interesting
"The Apple-Tree Table," possibilities
serve. In Melville's
magazine
and
stories, "I
My
two latest and Chimney" and
Melville puts himself behind the antagonistic
of his sentimental male narrator, even while he grimly predicts
the eventual success of those this personage both flatters and In the
first tale,
humorous" and, the
which Curtis praised particularly final
resists.
as "capital, genial,
compliment, "thoroughly magazinish,'"*^
we
find
the Melville narrator closest in character to the narrator in Curtis' Prue and /,
recently serialized in Harper's.
to "indolently
father of
lady
who
weaving
[his]
"A dozy
vapors"
old dreamer," given to a pipe and
(154),^*^
two daughters and husband
he
lives in a
world of women,
to a strong-minded positive-thinking
almost totally intimidates him. In describing his subjection, the
narrator slips in an astute analysis of the political possibilities of the current
notion of woman's "sphere" for those it:
"By
my
women
willing to pay lip service to
wife's ingenious application of the principle that certain things
belong of right to female jurisdiction,
find myself,
I
through
my
easy com-
by degrees of one m.asculine prerogative after another" (133-34). He has made his stand, however: his wife and daughters wish to tear down the tremendous central chimney, "a huge, corpulent old pliances, insensibly stripped
Henry VIII of a
chinfiney" (109) as he proudly describes
it,
which dominates
the architecture of the house, but he steadfastly refuses.
The
issues here are
many, and complex. The
women want
the house
redesigned along the recent convenient proto-suburban pattern, best suited to feminine needs and ideals:** timid himself, the narrator nonetheless de-
fends the chimney as a bastion of phallic, assertive, and aggressive mas-
takes a
The fate of most of Henry VIII's spouses is well known. The story new twist when the wife calls in an architect named "Hiram Scribe,"
who
paid by her to claim that the chimney has "a reserved space, hermeti-
culinity.
is
cally sealed" (148) possibly containing
be torn op>en. Scribe
is
—an inner space with
hidden treasure, and therefore must
suggesting in veiled fashion by this a "treasure,"
i.e.
a child, in
it
womb
imagery
—that the chimney
is
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
318
The narrator is able to more money to support
feminine.
dispose of this interpretation by offering
Scribe
his
architect
own
Among
case.
other things, the
possibly a "hired scribe," emblematic of the writers and
is
terateurs bribed
lit-
to invalidate and destroy the
by the feminine populace
masculine experience.
The that
story closes on a deceptively light note.
he leaves for
if
a day, his
womenfolk
I
have become
I
am
my
simply standing guard over
chimney
"mossy man," the great American writer he had be. It
is
Redbum
all
say
the time the fact
is,
and
my
come a long way from
the
mossy old chimney; for
will never surrender" (166). Melville has
and himself, to
down
moved from home: "Some
mossy old misanthrope while
a
narrator has learned
will call in laborers to tear
the chimney. So for seven years, he has not that
The
in
...
I
1850 hoped Hawthorne,
The
with his gun, but aged and weakened.
narrator can merely fend off his destructive audience, and perform a custodial role relic,
toward an
and one
in
achievement which he knows
artistic
is
whose making he could never have had
only
decaying
a
a share.
"The Apple-Tree Table," the struggle for appropriation, the conflict of interpretation which we have already seen in diflferent guises in "Bartleby" and "I and My Chimney" continues. The basic question remains: who will determine the content and form of American culture? Once again there In
is
antipathy to domesticity planted in the midst of a domestic the narrator of "I and
My
The
tale.
Chimney," although apparently
narrator
is
diff^erent
and smaller house, with the same bustling wife and the same genteel
daughters. This time the object quarreled over
with
a devilish hooflike leg
acting
which the narrator
is
in a
an old "apple-tree table"
finds in his attic.
Apparently
from the most benevolent and sentimental impulses, he determines
bring the table into the parlor. His tone to surround "this sad
hood with
all
hearts, little
little
is
positively missionary: he wishes
hermit, so long banished
from
warm arms, warm warm nursing would
the kindly influences of
dreaming what
this
all
to
genial neighborfires,
and
hatch"
warm
(15).
His
daughters fight his plan to "domesticate" the table, destined to become a source of terror to them.
The
table soon gives
a persistent ticking noise.
oflf
undoubtedly influenced by the recent wave of noise to ghostly presences; result of girls still
two
it
is
The
daughters,
Spiritualism,"*^ attribute the
actually, as they eventually discover, the
incarcerated bugs working their
way
The
out of the wood.
claim a sort of "spiritual" interpretation, rationalizing,
in
pious
fashion, that the insects symbolize Christ's
and man's resurrection. One
daughter closes her explanation with a
moral: "
exclaimed, with rapture, I
thought of them with
nine
—he speaks
at
'I
still
trite
believe in
them with
terror' " (51). Melville
'Spirits! spirits!'
delight,
assumes
one point to "whatever lady doubts
when
she
before
his readers are femithis story"
—and he
— Herman apparently it.
He
can
lets
Melville
modest successor ville's last
his
the
tale to
word "bug." "Humbug"
it
asso-
or not, however,
them, as Bartleby did not his history nor his
"chimney" to
their foes.
short magazine piece.
He was writing another book.
in reality a string of sketches
in
319
perhaps not unimportant that "The Apple-Tree Table" was Mel-
It is
and
Against the Reader
and the daughters' triumph; he has already
word "hum" with
he has relinquished the
Man,
the Revolt
them have the tale, for the daughter's speech pretty well ends
label the story,
ciated the
and
intended for serialization
he brought to a culmination
to say, in the shorter works.*^
up the
has in several senses given (April Fool's) in the
life
The
The Confidence 'j,
he had been trying to say, and not
all
struggle for possession
ship.
Putnam
in
The book
past: Melville
is
day
ostensibly details a
of a crook aboard a steamer called the Fidele; in his
numerous disguises, the con man tries to talk various other passengers out of their money. In actuality, the work shows American society ravaged by a sentimentality whose underlying viciousness Melville almost celebrates. He is no longer interested in the ambiguities of the genteel narrator but rather in his appetites. A book without a hero or even a narrator a book,
—
most
reveals the ity
about
significantly,
is
a ship
without a captain
triumph of "affection" over "authority"
seducing and fleecing the nation. Melville
of the market.
of "I and
Where
My
is
in
The Confidence
Man
America: sentimental-
here intent on the
realities
the narrator of "Bartleby" or the wife and daughters
Chimney" and "The Apple-Tree Table,"
absorbed by
all
questions of ownership, had at least been arguing over matters of interpretation, this
confidence
man
when he
has finally reached his goal only
someone else's pocket to his own. two of his most important incarnations, as "the
has
transferred the contents of Significantly, in
with the
Weed" and
"the Cosmopolitan," the confidence
kin to the sentimental observer.
and good
faith,
he
is
With
his
man
is
Man
clearly close
emphasis on sweetness and light
the apotheosis of the religious liberal: he can succeed
in distorting the Bible
message to
fit
precisely because, as he points out,
his
own
no one
exploitative creed of "trust" in
America reads the Bible
anymore. There are two clergymen aboard, one Episcopalian, the other Methodist, and Melville paints a favorable picture of both; yet both are
taken in by one or more of the confidence man's impersonations. As "the
Man
in
Gray," the confidence
man
easily
dupes
a sentimental lady
reading her Bible and gazing devoutly at the sunset.
confidence man's similarities to the editors for
As
whom
if
prone to
to underscore this
Melville
was writing,
he makes him explain that he has invented a "Protean easy-chair so bejointed, behinged and bepadded, every
way
all
over
so elastic, springy, and docile
some one of its endlessly changeable accommodations of back, seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the most tormented conscience must, somehow and somewhere, find rest" (32).'*^ The to the airiest touch, that in
.
.
.
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
320
pun on the "Easy Chair" column of Harper's is obvious. Exposing the ethic which underlay the "dreamer's" pose, the ethic which exploited weakness as the basis for a power-play, Melville
pointing at the fundamental
is
and of the magazine
sponsibility of the feminized sentimental observer
which was
culture
his milieu.
defense of the press
poem .
.
The Cosmopolitan's
distributors and
'I
The
over duty.
press
still
I
because
it
and
tract
has neither opponents nor competiis
nothing to
acknowledges here that America has only one spokesman,
The
has only one culture, precisely that of "the press."
simply whether or not to believe or disbelieve
But
it.
this
is
issue
is
ished.
to be a fool; perpetually to distrust
Both
sides lose in so far as
The world
of The Confidence
To
Twain's Fudd'nhead Wilson,
atmosphere
in
which
ideas,
it is
or
is
arid.
can
art,
to be alone, crippled, unnour-
human development
genuine
Man
is
Nowhere flourish.
is
is
floats.
no people, there
are
horribly grounded. in
which had destroyed him
painted, imperishable in is
its
no water, no
The
appropriately the
which we hear next
kind of masquerade. Melville has anticipated that the
set, flat,
The
we
to nothing
boat
itself is a
will be the
no
is
Hollywood boat, there
are not just becalmed,
Man
is
dispossession of his readers.
man
there. " This it?"
But he
he does not
is
There
it
marks
his final
is
something vindictive
at
work
here: the
it
either.
I
is
tells his
readers:
also the only role
he has
"how do you left
is
like
to utilize, and
have said that Melville's Americanness consisted
awareness that he could not be significantly better than
culture; never before did he feel the constraints of this If his
the
has Melville's stage because Melville recognizes that he
realizes that "this"
in part in his
is
most elusive work:
Melville's
what you've chosen," he
like
are
itself.
The Confidence
confidence
we
absence of any genuine culture, Melville suggests
the slickest, driest nightmare penned by an American author,
absence of reality
first
and archetypical
final
very flimsiness. There life:
of
like that
there a possibility of the
This
about the water on which the craft presumably locale of the anti-culture
concerned.
is
one of handy-dandy;
story Melville has located on shipboard in
is
book of
a
vanishing conflicts, and even this one dissolves into a hopeless paradox. trust
it
speaks for Truth' " (197).
he does not meet even with custodian figures, for there
preserve. Melville
tellingly, his
is,
think interest never prevails with
The confidence man fundamentally tors;
sham
hold the press to be neither the people's
paid fool nor conceited drudge.
.
final
—of course several of the confidence men are readers: "
irre-
readers are dispossessed, so
is
theorem so
his
bitterly.
Melville.
The Late Prose: The Independent Vision After the publication of The Confidence
some
sort of
nervous collapse.
None
Man
in 1857, Melville
underwent
of his books were selling; he had no
Herman
Melville
and
321
He
compensate for popular neglect.
coterie of adoring disciples to
Hawthorne were no longer
Against the Reader
the Revolt
and
indeed they ever had been. His family
close, if
Lemuel Shaw,
did not understand or believe in his work.
Melville's brother-
in-law, could refer casually in a letter to "that horribly uninteresting class
of nonsensical books he passage in the
a
mood both
is
work of
given to writing." Melville at this time underlined
a
French author which aptly summed up
of profound discouragement: "the literary career seems to
and
in its essence
in the spirit
in the
rewards which one seeks from
My
of the narrator of "I and
a friend's report,
was wont
Chimney,"
to "pat great trees," as
if
it."'*®
a trip abroad,
by the
spending most of
heat, the
during his
on the advice of
flies,
his
his family
time
cemetery
saw
a
woman
it;
as
if
in Para,
over a
calling
speak to me?
it.
his doctor, Melville
in the pain
took
He was tortured
East.
throws out image after image of
he kept
isolation
and
they suggest. After
he notes:
new
grave
—no grass on
of misery! Called to the dead, put her head to
Somewhat
his relentless inability to sleep. In the journals
travels, Melville
unreal,
to remind himself that
Middle
in the
non-communication absolutely terrifying visiting a
and
me
Melville, according to
strength existed although he no longer felt he had access to In 1857, acting
own
his
down a hatchway
My God! — It
So much for consolation.
Ah,
is I!
or
cellar;
yet.
Such abandonment
down
as close as possible
it
"Why don't you
besought
—speak — but one word!"—
—This woman and her
cries
haunt
all
me
deaf.
horri-
bly.*^
Melville too has been unable to raise his dead.
His peculiar pilgrimage reached tion of stones .
.
He
its
apotheosis in Judea: "one accumula-
—stony mountains & stony
stony homes
&
stony tombs.
actually tasted the
.
.
.
plains;
stony torrents
Before you
Dead Sea and found
it
&
behind you are stones."
"bitter," adding, in the bleak
which marks the
repetitiousness, the more-coals-to-Newcastle principle style of these entries, "bitter
found an objective yet
is it
to be
correlative, the
what makes the journal
so
poor
& bitter to be reviled. "^*^ He has
geographic analogue to
wrenching to read
inability to find his suffering interesting.
comes from
& stony roads
The
is
his state
of mind;
precisely Melville's
extraordinary almost unique
combined intensity and flatness. Melville has come close to believing that no one but no one will ever read his pages. He has, at least momentarily, abandoned the secret cherished illusion which makes all of us, great novelists or unknown diarists and
quality of the writing
its
—
—
correspondents, write: the imaginary audience. His strength here
own
is
indeed
the strength of stones. Melville's pain creates of necessity
its
—
must convey, the
stiff,
jerky, stitched sentences sticking to the facts they
literature
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
322
bleached skeleton of rhetoric
everywhere
tion, Melville
When series
—but
baldly sidesteps inspiration. Inspira-
it
implies, has misled him;
he has no more use for
it.
he returned home, Melville embarked, without enthusiasm, on a
make money. Oliver Wendell Holmes regarded
of lectures to
lecturer as a "literary strumpet," and said so at a party in
which Melville
857
1
the
no prostitute ever minimized her charms more punitively than did Melville in his unpopular talks on "Statuary at Rome" and "The South attended;^
^
Sea Islands." If to lecture was to dramatize the dependence of the writer or
on the public, Melville made
intellectual like a lethal at
mass of
eloquence"
—
Hawthorne up
this
lead.
his
dependency
fall
on
his patrons
As one reviewer reported, "He makes no attempt
about the creator of Ahab,
half the night talking.
Islands" lecture.^^ Melville begins
by
We
this
have
telling his
about the
man who
a report of the
kept
"South Sea
audience that he will cover
nothing about which he has written in Typee or Otnoo, although those books
which drew
are presumably the incentives
The
lecture
makes
it
his
audience
strikingly clear that Melville
satirizing his public as
he did
to giving up. Melville
in
The Confidence
is
in
the
place.
first
no longer goading or
Man; he
has
wrote no more prose for thirty
come very
close
years.
Melville did experience, however, a brief period of renewed hop>efulness about his writing career, and reveals so clearly
it is
worth discussing
precisely because
what Melville considered the causes of
his defeat.
it
At the
outbreak of the Civil War, Melville began to write poetry, extraordinary
He published the resulting 1866. On every page Melville's
poetry, about the conflict between the states.
group of war poems as Battle-Pieces quickened faith in his nation is evident. realities
of
in
He apparently
believed that the stem
war would destroy the sentimental culture he detested: "Nothing
like a bullet
can undeceive," he writes. Hearing Sumter's cannon,
"how tame
trymen
will surely realize
before."
The war must prove The
his
coun-
the Nation/ In the age that went
a foe to domesticity:
appealings of the mother to brother and to brother
Not
in
And
the fissure in the hearth
hatred so to part
Growing momently more
The
"optimist" will
flee,
wide.
for the Calvinist Deity reasserts his supremacy and
"confirms his deep decree"; the "code" of battle corroborates "Calvin's Creed." Heroism has become possible once again, masculinity
"nothing can Melville's
lift
the heart of
war poems show
man/ Like manhood
little
values of nurture and healing
in a
is
an option:
fellow man."^^
of the concern for the wounded, for the
which characterize Whitman's response
in
— Herman
and
Melville
Drum-Taps; the older man
is
the Revolt
Against the Reader
323
not interested in finding an outlet for his
maternal feelings.^^ Melville dedicated Battle-Pieces appropriately to the
northern soldiers his
who
rough, irregular, and forceful poetry found
critics
who
Not surprisingly praise among American
died for "the flag of their fathers." little
considered Tennyson's verse the beau
ideal.
Melville continued
to write and publish poetry, fine poetry, after 1866; his later
poems never
summons
to a waiting
evinced, however, the felt spirit of expectancy, of
audience, which characterizes Battle-Pieces. It is
one of the good fortunes of American
letters that Melville's thirty-
year enforced silence in his chosen medium, prose, did not
stifle
him
al-
him for a statement for a kind of public balancing of accounts whose powers of condensation have seldom together, but rather prepared and disciplined
been equaled. In Billy Budd, Melville
not
is
a
combatant; he
is.
never
as
before, at a distance, having calmly assumed the authority he has not oflicially
been granted.
in the narrative
form,
We are back we
Potter and "Benito Cereno"
and
this narrative
itself as history.
above
all
is
world of men, we are back
are back with Calvinism, but with important
Probably written
diflPerences.
at sea in a
in the late 1880s, Billy
were among
is
is set,
as
only
Israel
Melville's earlier works, in the past;
uniquely conscious, as
Melville's tone
Budd
its
two predecessors were
not, of
dignified, balanced, formal, legalistic,
judicious. Despite Melville's frequently stated awareness in the tale
that his audience
is
unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the Bible and with
Calvin, theological discussion and definition are here as never before, their
own
terms: Melville
is
explicit
on the point that
on
oflicer Claggart's
hatred of the handsome sailor Budd, on which the plot turns, can be explained only
by the doctrine of depravity
(75-79).^^ Captain Vere's rationale
Budd for the unwitting murder of Claggart Angel of God, but the Angel must die!' " (101) draws
for his decision to punish " 'Struck
down by
meaning from
the
a text often used
by
Calvinist thinkers
and repeated by Lin-
coln in the spare theological cadences of the Second Inaugural Address: is
impossible but that oflPenses will come, but
they come" (Luke
17:1). In
"it
woe unto him through whom
the austere literary
form which Melville has
evolved here, he has apparently discovered an analogue, perhaps a substitute, for the theological discourse ily intellectual tradition.
which was the substance of America's primar-
In Billy Budd,
all
experience
is
ultimately to be
marshaled before the faculties of judgment and assessed by them.
This
is
a narrative not only of the
"phenomenal men," and
a
son and
mutual comprehension between two
a "father,"
—the "handsome
his abstract, intellectual, but fair-minded superior.
sailor" Billy
Budd
Captain Vere
—but
of the understanding between the son and the father (115).
It is
not simply
compared to Christ, and to Adam, and Vere is cast as his paternal superior, i.e. God. Whether or not he consciously intended it.
that
Budd
is
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
324
Budd something
Melville has given us in Billy
close to an allegory of the
older Calvinist gubernatorial theory of the Atonement. Just
God
as, in this
view,
sacrificed Christ, his innocent son, to dramatize his hatred of man's sin,
Vere suppresses the "fatherly" feeling he has for Billy and becomes the "stem disciplinarian" intent on demonstrating to the rest of the crew the quickness and fierceness with which he will put down any effort at rebellion. Captain Vere refuses to listen to sentiment. Vere's primary concern is not so
the happiness or even the just deserts of his things.
He urges the
men
as
they understand these
jury to rule out "the heart," the "feminine in man," and
even the "private conscience"
in
the interest of the "imperial" conscience of
There are no Bushnellian elements in this Atonement process; Vere sacrifices Budd to instruct his crew and to keep his distance from them, not to win their afl^ection by a display of his love
their public duties (110-113).
of them.
am
I
not suggesting that Melville wrote Billy Budd as a conscious
allegory of the older doctrine of the Atonement;
denouncing Vere's
in
belief in
injustice or in
God's malignity, are
Melville opposed
viewing
it
am suggesting that critics, evidence of Melville's
as
of just the liberal heresy which
in part guilty
—and opposed even
I
in its highest
form when
it is
closely
Such critics are like the readers Melville addresses whom he knows are no longer familiar with Calvinist doctrines (75), the chief of which is that God rules men according to his linked, as
it is
in Billy Budd, to "charity."
needs, in the interest of his honor, not in consideration of their desires. Again, it is
not that Melville believes
literally in these principles,
to the rigor of the structures they create. is is
Budd
a testament of loss. Billy
damaging
as well as sustaining to
and
we
haps easy. Captain Vere here.
"remorse," as Melville
As
a
The
Budd
Billy
re-established father-son relation
both participants. Budd
is
partially
than his
filial
the simplification of justice he finds congenial and per-
resist
mously important
No one could deny that
He feels his fraternal ties less forcibly
speechless, even childish.
ones,
dies.
but that he adheres
is
is
As
of course a man, and the a
human drama
is
enor-
from Budd's death: not from emphasize, but from grief and loss (129).
man, he
at pains to
suffers
man, Vere's motives cannot be altogether pure; although Melville
stresses his impartiality, his intellectuality, his extraordinary sensitivity,
also points out that sanity.
Yet Vere's
Vere
is
suflFering
he
perhaps ambitious, that others even question his
and
his
imperfections do not alter the fact that
condemning Budd is analogous to the Calvinist Deity's in Christ. Vere suffers in private for the fact that he has pulled off
his action in
sacrificing
a totally public gesture:
even those readers
feel that Melville suggests
Budd. Since he
is
\^ere can hardly
he was motivated by any personal animus against
human, he pays
on the impersonal, even
who condemn
a price for his
allegorical plane, but
it
determination to operate is
just this
determination
Herman
Melville
and
the Revolt
Against the Reader
325
which creates the large, although painfully measured, spaces of the tive. Psychology has given way to judiciousness; everything has its Injustice, as
we, and even Melville, understand
narrative
not,
is
however,
a protest against
it, is
place.
undeniably present.
Melville's imaginative
it.
narra-
The
energy
has unquestionably decreased; but his philosophical vision has gained precision.
Despite Billy Budd's lack of dialogue, sciousness of the characters, the reader
about the situation
interior views, yet this
of the narrative:
ness,
story
if
is
refusal to penetrate the con-
given almost complete information
is
which the story
in
its
grounded.
is
We
no
are allowed
part of the essential fairness, as well as the remote-
it is
as
if
Melville can only fathom and bear his ov/n
presented in an extreme long shot. Yet one should add that Mel
i
He
respects his characters' privacy as he could not respect Pierre's; Piti^e's
nightmare was that he had nothing but is
his privacy. In Billy Budd,
decorum
the word. Within these limitations, there are no missing pieces of informa-
tion
comparable to the unknown fate of
Toby
in
Typee,
or the actual
paternity of Isabel in Pierre, or the real identity of the confidence man; there are
no symbols
that precipitate
jacket or the white whale; there
and yet absorb events, such is
white
absolutely none of the sensuous detail
which over-runs and destroys the narrative of between narrative and story
as the
Pierre; the action
as in Mardi, Redburn,
or
is
Moby
not divided
The
Dick.
ization too strong,
become too important, the imperatives of rationalfor the case to rest on symbols or withheld information.
As
Melville's works, the tale simply proceeds, straightfor-
process of judgment has
in
no other of
wardly, chronologically; the reader
is
given whatever
it
is
necessary he
know.
The
some ways dry as a result, and its restraint is a testimony to its impulse toward edification. Because Melville so precisely acknowledges what can and what cannot be known, and because no one thing is less known or unknown than another we learn as much, or as little, narrative
is
in
—
about Claggart's depravity authority
mote, as
all
as
we do
about Budd's innocence or Vere's
— Melville presents an entire universe to the reader,
all
parts re-
parts equally accessible. Melville assumes an audience in Billy
he did not
in the
Dead Sea
journals; yet
particularly well. His very audience has
it is
not one he pretends to
become
Budd
know
generalized by the un-
known possibilities of history: we, the readers of the late twentieth century, are among Melville's rather indifferently hypothesized readers, yet Melville does not attempt to speak personally to us, as Whitman does in "Crossing Budd represents Melville's established distance from literature as an object to be consumed by a mass audience. The book is extraordinarily helpful to us precisely because Melville was not writing it Brooklyn Ferry."
for
us,
and
I
Billy
think Melville
knew
this.
We may
not possess the truth, the
THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
326
conflicting but equally false oflicial and popular accounts of the incident
appended a sense
of
at the story's close
suggest
its
dimensions, of the space
its
it
inaccessibility.
We attain, however,
occupies. Melville had always been
imaginatively preoccupied with bigness, with
size;
now he is concerned
with
We the readers approximate to the "truth" simply because we are not deceived. We are kept to the actual facts and to those rather abstract measurement.
statements and generalized scenes in which complex emotions and personalities
can be presented with the solidity and impersonality of Despite
its
lack of dialogue, or perhaps because of
it,
facts.
Billy
Budd
is
about
communication, and the language and actions which can be trusted to accomplish
In Pierre,
it.
sant talking, singing,
where almost no
real interaction takes place, inces-
and attitudinizing occur among the characters. In
Budd genuine communication does occur although
—only
off-stage. \^ere
tion to the
young
—and
this
presumably explains Budd's fate and
sailor in
his
is
Billy
significant
own
motiva-
an interview whose "inviolable" privacy and
"holy oblivion" Melville honors (115).
We are told,
however, that "in view
of the character" of Vere and Budd, "each radically sharing in the rarer qualities of
our nature,"
we may
conjecture with the author that Vere
explained himself to Billy, that Billy fully understood, that Vere embraced Billy
with the passion Abraham
felt
obedience to the exacting behest"
There
is
no doubt
that in Billy
for Isaac before ofl^ering
(115).
Budd
Two men
him up
"in
have met and spoken.^®
Melville has taken his final leave of
abundance; he does not believe, as he once did, that he should try to have everything; he
is
no longer taking revenge on
a public
such an attempt impossible. Melville has muted the mastery blematic.
He
is
itself
which helped
his material to
to
master
make it,
but
"phenomenal." Melville's very control becomes em-
achieves what the sentimentalists with their unexamined fasci-
nation with process, with biology, failed to do; history, presented in
uncompromised
detail,
merges, no matter
ambiguously, with providence.
how
its
inscrutably and partially,
EPILOGUE
Melville last
worked on
decade of
his
Billy
life.
At
Budd
in the late 1880s
this time,
and early
1890s,
during the
many men, and women, were becoming
deeply concerned about the "feminization" of American culture and the closing of the frontier, actual and metaphorical,
which
suggested.
it
Muscu-
was popular even in elite clerical circles. In less fashionable Sunday was beginning the career which would culminate in
lar Christianity
quarters, Billy
the avowal that Jesus Christ Jesus
was the
was "no dough-faced,
greatest scrapper that ever lived."^^
lick-spittle proposition.
Movements were afoot
in
the field of education to control the still-proliferating and preponderant ratio of
women to men among grade-school teachers, even to reverse the tide
of co-education at the university level.^® Violent collegiate sports, outdoor
camping, hunting, and fishing grew rapidly its
exaltation of the right of the strong to
political practice
Darwinism with trample the weak dominated
in favor. Social
and sociological theory. Naturalism with
its
emphasis on
Teddy Roosevelt "Rough Riders" to
brute instinct and force influenced American novelists.
was launched San Juan
in the career that
would
him and
his
Hill.
Melville
was irrevocably apart from
culinity even while he understood
Sunday or even
a
its
this militant
deepest sources.
Teddy Roosevelt was
victory of the sentimental sabotage a defeat.
lead
—
crusade for mas-
The rhetoric of a
a signal, paradoxically, of the
a victory
which was
in a larger sense
For the point about the crusade for masculinity was the
which the majority of
its
Billy
proponents conducted their campaign.
level at It
was
a
— THE FEMINIZATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE
328
no higher
level
maintained
in
in
an intellectual,
or political sense than Sarah Hale
spiritual,
the veiled propaganda of the pages of Godey V Lady V Book or
The
than Harriet Beecher Stowe descended to in Lady Byron Vindicated.
Teddy
Roosevelts had learned
ance movement, even the in
common
ladies'
the Purity Alliances, the temper-
magazines. T. R.'s "big stick" had something
with Carrie Nation's hatchet.
enough
significant
much from
The
forces of feminization were
—they had tapped the increasingly formidable processes
of industrialization, commercialization, and mass culture deeply enough so that
any opposition, even when waged by
Harvard graduate like T. R., terms. Certain forms of deprivation and
had to be conducted on their exclusion had
made
ers of the nation,
middle-class
American women, the readers and consum-
men who
and the
a
imitated, flattered,
logical heirs to the anti-intellectual tradition in
and exploited them,
American
culture;
and they
had conspired willy-nilly with changing historical circumstances to make anti-intellectualism the tradition in
American
culture.
hardly surprising that the long-overdue rediscovery of Melville
It is
took place
in the
when Neo-orthodox
1920s, at a time
were noting and attempting
historians
and religious endeavor.
intellectual
exhumed and published
in 1924, as
It is
theologians and
to rectify the vitiation of serious
Budd was and the Niebuhr
especially fitting that Billy
Karl Barth, Paul Tillich,
brothers were beginning their careers. Billy Budd's importance as a cultural
document
is
not only in
its
creation of a structured arena for (masculine)
discourse but also in the quality and
unnoticed leave of
his audience, Melville
has since called the "Life of the
This
which
make is it
as
a
is
Mind
figures like Sarah
that discourse. In taking his
reminds them of what Perry Miller
in
America."
not to say that nothing worthwhile
is
present in the mass culture
Hale or Teddy Roosevelt helped to create and
the principal carrier of our political, cultural, and sexual identity; nor
to imply that the formalism a
it is, is
work
like Billy
the only artistic good. Commercialism
minimal degree of
in
form of
consumer
is,
Budd after
partly suggests, fine all,
inseparable
from
some segment of lost productive energy resides even if it has hardly found there a safe home. Many
vitality;
appetite,
intellectuals mistakenly
if
inevitably over-value formalism of a kind
much
more extreme than Billy Budd displays as the only available antidote to mass culture. At its worst, however, formalism can function simply as the unexplored reversal of mass stereotyping. confined, even nullified, in formalist elitist. ^^
Our
A
radical
critique of society
works whose epistemology
is
is
punitively
current allegiance to the comforts of our televisions
is
not
altogether a matter for embarrassment or shame. Mass culture rests on an
enormous Utopian promise, what Stendhal even
if
in practice
Budd with
its
it is
largely
engaged
called "la promesse de bonheur,"
in the destruction of that hope. Billy
imaginative investment in the absolute poetry of conceptuali-
Epilogue
zation,
is
a great
work; yet
it is
inferior to
329
Moby
Dick.
Moby Dick
represents
most seriously hopeful engagement with his audience; it brings the sheer energy and fertility of the best of popular culture to the service of profound thought. In a country as diverse, as ideologically strained, as Melville's
unmistakably materialistic recorded but not
as
America, the "Life of the Mind" can be
finally defined. In Billy
Budd, Melville
is
as conscious of
the material he has lost as of that he has found abiding. In the most essential sense, Melville consistently
produced
a literature of inclusiveness.
would not allow him to conceive economic system, an honest culture he society
—
a
recognition of the price of their
loss.
—sexual equality, also included
a
What
his
non-oppressive
by making
his
work
APPENDIX A Alphabetical Listing of in
the
Women and
Control Groups Discussed
in
Ministers
Chapter ^
WOMEN May
17.
Mary Lyon
18.
Sarah Edgarton
Catharine Esther Beecher (1800-78)
19.
Elizabeth Peabody (1804-94)
4.
Alice Gary (1820-71)
20.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
5.
Lydia Maria Child (1802-80)
21.
Elizabeth Prentiss (1818-78)
6.
Emily Chubbuck Judson ("Fanny
22.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789-
1.
Louisa
2.
Delia
3.
Alcott (1832-88)
Bacon (1811-59)
Forrester") (1817-53)
Cummins
7.
Maria
8.
Dorothea Dix (1802-87)
(1827-66)
(1797-1849)
Mayo
(1819-49)
( 1
844- 1911)
1867) 23.
Lydia Huntley Sigourney (17911865)
Harriet Farley (1813-1907)
24.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-93)
Charlotte Fillebrown (Jerauld)
25.
Ann Stephens
(1820-45)
26.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96)
11.
Martha Finley (1828-1909)
27.
Susan Warner (1819-85)
12.
Margaret Fuller (1810-50)
28.
Adeline D. T. Whitney (1824-1906)
13.
Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879)
29.
Emma
14.
30.
Sara Payson Willis ("Fanny Fern")
15.
Mary J. Holmes (1825-1907) Lucy Larcom (1824-93)
16.
Sara Clarke Lippincott ("Grace
9.
10.
Greenwood") (1823-1904)
(1810-86)
Willard (1787-1870)
(1812-72)
331
MINISTERS
W^
Greenwood (1797-1843) James K. Hosmer (1834-1927) Frederic Dan Huntington (1819-
Joseph H. Allen (1820-98)
16. 17.
4.
Henry Bacon (1813-56) Edward Beecher (1803-95) Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87)
5.
Joseph Buckminster (1784-1812)
19.
Sylvester Judd (1813-53)
6.
Horace Bushnell (1802-76)
20.
7.
William ElleryChanning (1780-
21.
1843)
22.
8.
William Henry Channing (1810-84)
23.
Andrews Norton (1786-1853) Edwards A. Park (1808-1900) Theodore Parker (1810-60) Edward Payson (1783-1827)
9.
James Freeman Clarke (1810-88)
24.
William Peabody (1799-1847)
10.
Theodore Cuyler (1822-1909)
25.
Austin Phelps (1820-90)
11.
Orville
Dewey
26.
12.
Bela B.
Edwards (1802-52)
13.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
28.
Henry Soule (1815-52) Joseph Tuckerman (1778-1841) Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843)
14.
Charles Follen (1796-1842)
29.
William
15.
Ezra
1.
2. 3.
Stiles
(1794-1882)
Gannett (1801-71)
18.
F.
P.
1904)
27.
30.
Ware (1797-1852) Noah Worcester (1758-1837)
APPENDIX
B
Biographical information on the wotuen IS
and ministers
here listed in chronological order
FATHER'S
WOMEN 1.
Emma
Willard
(1787-1870)
OCCUPATION
SPOUSE
m. 1809 Dr. John WUlard,
Samuel Hart, Connecticut farmer
doctor
(d.
1825);
m. 1838 Christopher Yate doctor (divorced 1843) 1
2.
Sarah Josepha Hale
(1788-1879)
Gordon
m. 1813 David Hale, law^
Buell,
New Hampshire
farmer,
tavern-keeper
3.
Catharine Maria
Sedgwick
(1789-1867)
4.
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
(1791-1865) 5.
Mary Lyon (1797-1849)
Catharine Esther
Beecher
(1800-78)
chUd
Theodore Sedgwick,
(d.
1822)
5 children
single
Massachusetts lawyer, politician
Ezekiel Huntley,
Connecticut gardener, hired
man
Aaron Lyon,
m. 1819 Charles Sigourne merchant 2 children
single
Massachusetts farmer
Lyman
Beecher,
Connecticut preacher, theologian, reformer
single
333
MAIN PLACES OF RESIDENCE Berlin,
CT
housewife*
Middlebury,
VT
NY
Waterford,
Boston
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
OCCUPATION
teacher
(liberal) Congregationalist-^
Episcopalian
writer
administrator
NH
Newport,
teacher
Boston
housewife
Philadelphia
millinery-shop worker
Congregationalist-^
Episcopalian
editor
writer
Stockbridge,
New York
MA
City
housewife writer
Congregationalist-^
Unitarian
Boston Lenox,
MA
CT Hartford, CT
Norwich,
teacher writer
Congregationalist^ Episcopalian
housewife
MA
Buckland, E. Derry,
NH
housewife
Baptist
teacher
MA Hadley, MA
Ipswich,
revivalist
S.
administrator writer
CT CT
Litchfield,
housewife
Congregationalist^
Hartford,
teacher
Episcopalian
Cincinnati,
OH
and extensive
travels
administrator writer
throughout the U.S.
*I have listed "housewife" as an occupation for any woman, married or unmarried, voted significant time and energy to the management of a home.
who
de-
Appendix
334
B
FATHER'S
WOMEN 7.
OCCUPATION
Dorothea Dix
Joseph Dix,
SPOUSE single
Massachusetts farmer,
(1802-87)
Methodist preacher
8.
Lydia Maria Child
David Convers Francis,
m. 1828 David Lee
Massachusetts baker
(1802-80)
Chi]
lawyer, politician, reformer, farmer
no children
9.
Elizabeth Peabody
Nathaniel Peabody,
single
Massachuetts teacher,
(1804-94)
dentist
10.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith
David Smith,
m. 1823 Seba Smith,
Maine ship captain
(1806-93)
journalist,
humorist
5 children
11.
Timothy
Margaret Fuller
(1810-50)
Fuller,
Massachusetts lawyer, politician
12.
Ann Stephens
John Winterbotham, Connecticut
(1810-86)
wool manufacturer 13.
Harriet Beecher
(1811-96)
m. 1849 Angelo
Stowe
Lyman
Beecher,
Italian 1
nobleman
child
m. 1831 Edward Steph
customs house clerk 2 children
m. 1836 Calvin Stowe,
Connecticut preacher,
theologian, teacher,
theologian, reformer
author 5 children
14.
Delia Bacon
(1811-59)
Ossoli,
David Bacon, Connecticut minister
single
Appendix
MAIN PLACES OF RESIDENCE
OCCUPATION
ME
Hampden,
B
housewife
335
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION Congregationalist/
Boston
teacher
Methodist^
Trenton, NJ
writer
Unitarian
and extensive
travels
nurse
throughout the U.S.
reformer
MA Watertown, MA
housewife teacher
Unitarian
Boston
writer
(transcendentalist)
Medford,
New York
Congregationalist-^
reformer
City
editor
Salem,
MA
Unitarian
teacher
Boston
writer
Concord,
MA
reformer
Portland,
ME
housewife
New York
City
(transcendentalist)
Congregationalist^ Unitarian
lecturer journalist
and writer
minister
MA
Cambridgeport, Groton,
MA
teacher
Providence, RI
Jamaica
Plains,
New York Rome,
lecturer
(transcendentalist)
journalist
MA
writer
revolutionary
City
Italy
Humphreysville, Portland,
CT
ME
New York
City
CT CT
housewife
writer
teacher
Hartford,
writer
OH Brunswick, ME
Cincinnati,
Andover,
Episcopalian
editor
Litchfield,
Congregationalist -^^
Episcopalian
housewife
MA
Talmadge,
OH
Boston
New
Unitarian
Haven,
teacher lecturer
CT
London, England Stratford, England
writer
Congregationalist-*"
Episcopalian
Appendix
336
B
FATHER'S
WOMEN 15. Sara
Payson
OCCUPATION
Willis
("Fanny Fern") (1812-72)
Nathaniel
SPOUSE
m. 1838 Charles Eldn
Willis,
Maine deacon,
banker
(d.
1847);
m. 1849 A. D. Earring
editor
merchant (divorced 1853);
m. 1856 James Partor historian, writer
3 children
16.
m. 1854 John
Stephen Farley,
Harriet Farley
New Hampshire
(1813-1907)
minister
17.
Emily Chubbuck
Qudson) ("Fanny Forrester")
New York
Dunl
engraver, inventor 1
Charles Chubbuck,
I.
chUd
m. 1846 Adoniram Ju
farmer
missionary 2 children
(1817-53)
18.
Elizabeth Prentiss
(1818-78)
Edward Payson, Maine teacher
m. 1845 George Preni minister
6 children
minister
19.
Henry Warner,
Susan Warner
New York
(1819-85) 20.
Sarah Edgarton
Mayo
(1819-49)
single
lawyer
m. 1847 A. D. Mayo,
Mr. Edgarton,
Massachusetts
minister
factory worker, manufacturer. First
1
child
name
unknown 21. Alice Cary
Robert Carey,
(1820-71)
Ohio farmer
22.
Charlotte Fillebrown (Jerauld)
(1820-45)
Richard FUlebrown,
single
m. 1843
worker
W.Jeraulc
occupation unknow
Massachusetts craft
L.
1
child
Appendix
B
337
MAIN PLACES OF
Portland,
ME
Boston
New York
seamstress
Congregationalist->
writer
(liberal)
NH NH
teacher
Atkinson,
mill operative
MA
New York
Congregationalist
housewife
City
Claremont,
Lowell,
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
OCCUPATION
RESIDENCE
Congregationalist
editor
City
writer
Eaton,
NY Utica, NY
factory operative
Burma
writer
Baptist
teacher
missionary
housewife
ME Richmond, VA
writer
New York
lay preacher
Portland,
Congregationalist
teacher
City
housewife Constitution Island,
NY Shirley,
Presbyterian
housewife
MA
Gloucester,
writer
MA
Hamilton County,
New York Boston
writer
Universalist
housewife
OH
writer
Universalist
book-binder
Universalist
City
writer
housewife
Appendix
338
B
FATHER'S
WOMEN 23.
OCCUPATION
Sara Clarke Lippincott
("Grace Greenwood")
Thaddeus Clarke, New York doctor
SPOUSE m. 1853 Leander K, Lippincott,
(1823-1904)
clerk 1
24.
Lucy Larcom
Benjamin Larcom,
child
single
Massachusetts
(1824-93)
merchant, sea captain
25. Adeline D. T.
Whitney
(1824-1906)
Enoch
m. 1843 SethD. Whitne
Train,
Massachusetts
merchant, ship owner 26.
Mary J. Holmes (1825-1907)
Preston Hawes, Massachusetts,
occupation uncertain (uncle: Joel
wool and leather
trade
4 children
m. 1848 Daniel Holmes, teacher, lawyer
no children
Hawes,
Congregational minister)
27. Maria
Cummins
Martha Finley
(1828-1909)
29. Louisa
May
single
Massachusetts lawyer
(1827-66)
28.
David Cummins,
Alcott
(1832-88)
James
B. Finley,
single
Indiana doctor
Bronson Alcott,
single
Massachusetts teacher,
reformer
30. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
(1844-1911)
Austin Phelps, Massachusetts minister, teacher, theologian,
writer
m. 1888 Herbert D. War writer
no children
Appendix
B
MAIN PLACES OF OCCUPATION
RESIDENCE Pompey,
New
NY
Brighton,
PA
339
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
writer
Congregationalist-*"
reformer
(liberal)
mill operative
Congregationalist-*'
Congregationalist
Washington, D.C. Philadelphia
New York
City
MA Lowell, MA Beverly,
Godfrey, IL
Norton,
Episcopalian
writer
MA
editor
Boston
housewife
Boston Milton,
teacher
writer
MA
housewife
Congregationalist-*"
Unitarian ->•
Episcopalian Brookfield,
MA
KY Brockport, NY
Versailles,
teacher writer
Congregationalist-^
Episcopalian
housewife
traveled widely
MA
writer
Unitarian
South Bend, IN
teacher
Presbyterian
New York
writer
Salem,
MA Dorchester, MA Springfield,
City
Philadelphia
Bedford, Elkton,
housewife
PA
MD
Concord,
MA
seamstress servant
Unitarian (transcendentalist)
teacher
nurse writer
housewife
Boston
writer
MA Gloucester, MA
reformer
Andover,
teacher
Congregationalist ->•
Episcopalian
340
B
Appendix
FATHER'S
MEN 1.
Noah Worcester (1758-1837)
OCCUPATION Noah
Worcester,
SPOUSE m. 1779 Hannah Brown
New Hampshire justice of the peace
(d.
1797);
m. 1798 Hannah
Huntington 8 children
2.
Joseph Tuckerman
(1778-1841)
Edward Tuckerman,
m. 1803 Abigail Parkman
Massachusetts
(d.
merchant
1807);
m. 1808 Sarah Gary 10 children
3.
William Ellery Channing
(1780-1843)
4.
Edward Payson (1783-1827)
William Channing,
Massachusetts minister
m. 1814 Ruth Gibbs 4 children
m. 1811
Seth Payson,
Maine
Ann Shipman
8 children
minister 5.
Joseph Buckminster
(1784-1812)
Joseph Buckminster,
single
New Hampshire minister
6.
Andrews Norton (1786-1853)
Samuel Norton,
m. 1821 Catharine Eliot
Massachusetts gentle-
man
active in
6 children
town
affairs
7.
Henry Ware, Jr. (1794-1843)
Massachusetts minister,
m. 1817 Elizabeth Waterhouse (d. 1824);
theologian, teacher
m. 1827 Mary Pickford
Henry Ware,
10 children 8.
Orville
Dewey
(1794-1882)
9.
Charles Follen
(1796-1842)
Silas
Dewey,
Massachusetts farmer
Christoph Follenius, Giessen,
Germany,
m. 1820 Louisa Farnham 3 (?) children
m. 1828 Eliza Lee Cabot 1
chUd
judge 10.
F.
W.
P.
Greenwood
(1797-1843)
William
P.
Greenwood,
Massachusetts dentist
m. 1824 Maria Goodwin 5 children
Appendix
MAIN PLACES OF RESIDENCE Mollis,
NH
Brighton,
OCCUPATION teacher
NH
Thornton,
MA
B
341
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION Unitarian
minister editor
theologian
Boston
minister
Unitarian
reformer
Cambridge,
MA
Boston
minister writer
Congregationalist-
Unitarian
theologian
NH Portland, ME Rindge,
Portsmouth,
NH
minister
Congregationalist
minister
Congregationalist-
Boston
writer
MA Cambridge, MA
minister
Hingham,
Unitarian
Unitarian
teacher scholar
theologian
Hingham,
MA
Boston
minister
Unitarian
teacher
Cambridge,
Sheffield,
MA
MA
Boston
writer
teacher minister
New York
City
Congregationalist
Unitarian
writer lecturer
Giessen,
Germany
teacher
MA
minister
Cambridge,
Unitarian (transcendentalist)
reformer
Boston
minister writer
Unitarian
342
Appendix
B
FATHER'S
MEN 11.
William Ware
(1797-1852)
OCCUPATION Henry Ware,
SPOUSE m. 1823 Mary Waterh
Massachusetts minister,
7
children
theologian, teacher 12.
William Peabody
(1799-1847)
Oliver Peabody,
New Hampshire
m. 1824 Elizabeth lawyer,
Wh
5 children
politician
13.
Ezra Stiles Gannett
(1801-71)
14.
Horace Bushnell (1802-76)
15.
Bela B. Edwards
(1802-52)
Caleb Gannett, Massachusetts minister
Ensign Bushnell,
Connecticut farmer
Elosha Edwards, Massachusetts farmer,
m. 1835 Anna Tilden 3 (?) children
m. 1833 Mary Apthor] 3 children
m. 1831 Jerusha
Billin
3 children
deacon 16.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-82)
William Emerson,
m. 1829 Ellen Tucker
Massachusetts minister
(d.
1831);
m. 1835 Lydiajacksoi 4 children 17.
Edward Beecher (1803-95)
Lyman
Beecher,
Connecticut preacher,
m. 1829 1 1
Isabella
Jones
children
theologian, reformer
18.
Edwards A. Park (1808-1900)
19.
William Henry
Channing
Calvin Park,
Rhode
Francis
Island teacher
Dana Channing,
Massachusetts lawyer
m. 1836
Ann Edwards
3 children
m. 1836 Julia Allen 2 (?) children
(1810-84) 20.
James Freeman Clarke (1810-88)
Samuel Clarke, Massachusetts, no
m. 1839 AnnaHuidek 3 (?) children
settled occupation
21.
Theodore Parker (1810-60)
John
Parker,
Massachusetts farmer,
mechanic
m. 1837 Lydia Cabot
no children
Appendix
B
MAIN PLACES OF OCCUPATION
RESIDENCE Hingham, MA New York City
minister
343
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION Unitarian
novelist
editor
Exeter,
NH
teacher
MA Springfield, MA
Cambridge,
Unitarian
minister critic
writer
MA
Cambridge,
Boston
teacher
Congregationalist
minister
reformer
New
Preston,
Hartford,
CT
CT
teacher
Congregationalist
minister writer
theologian
Southampton,
MA
Boston Andover,
Congregationalist
editor
MA
Boston Concord,
minister
minister
MA
writer
Unitarian-^ (transcendentalist)
lecturer
Litchfield,
CT
teacher
Boston
minister
Jacksonville, IL
editor
Galesburg, IL
writer
Congregationalist
administrator
Providence, RI Braintree,
Andover,
MA MA
teacher
Congregationalist
minister
theologian
Boston
minister
Liverpool, England
writer
Unitarian (transcendentalist)
reformer
Newton,
MA
minister
LouisvUle,
KY
writer
Meadville,
PA
reformer
Unitarian (transcendentalist^
Boston Lexington,
Boston
MA
minister writer
reformer
Unitarian (transcendentalist
344
Appendix
B
FATHER'S
MEN 22.
Henry Bacon (1813-56)
OCCUPATION Robert Bacon,
SPOUSE m. 183? Eliza Monroe
occupation uncertain
3 children
(probably a craftsman or laborer in Boston) 23.
Sylvester Judd
(1813-53)
m. 1840 Jane Williams
Sylvester Judd,
Massachusetts
anti-
3 children
quarian, editor
24.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87)
Lyman
Beecher,
Connecticut preacher,
m. 1837 Eunice Bullarc 2 children
theologian, reformer
25.
Henry Soule (1815-52)
26. Frederic
Dan Huntington
(1819-1904)
Clement Soule,
New York
farmer
Dan Huntington, Massachusetts minister
m. 1843 Caroline Whit< 5 children
m. 1843 Hannah Dana Sargent
4 children 27.
Joseph H. Allen (1820-98)
28. Austin Phelps
(1820-90)
Joseph Allen, Massachusetts minister
Eliakin Phelps,
Massachusetts minister
m. 1845 Anna Minot
\^
6 children
m. 1842 Elizabeth (d.
Stu;
1852);
m. 1854 Mary Stuart (d.
1856);
m. 1858 Mary Johnsor 3 children
29.
Theodore Cuyler (1822-1909)
Benjamin Cuyler,
New York
farmer
m. 1853 Annie Mathio children (number
unknown) 30.
James K. Hosmer (1834-1927)
George Washington
Hosmer, Massachusetts farmer
m. 1863 Eliza Butler (d.
1877);
m. 1878 Jenny Garlanc children (number
unknown)
Appendix
MAIN PLACES OF RESIDENCE Boston
OCCUPATION minister
MA
Cambridge,
B
345
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION Universalist
writer
Providence, RI
editor
Philadelphia
MA Cambridge, MA Northampton,
ME
Augusta,
writer
minister
Lawrenceburg, IN
writer
Indianapolis, IN
lecturer
NY
Brooklyn, Utica,
minister
CT
MA
Northboro,
minister
MA
Plains,
MA
ME
Cambridge,
Unitarian^
writer
Episcopalian
scholar editor
MA minister
Philadelphia
teacher
Boston
writer
Andover,
Aurora,
Unitarian
teacher
MA
Pittsfield,
Congregationalist-^
editor
minister
Washington, D.C. Bangor,
Universalist
editor
Boston
Jamaica
Congregationalist
writer
Boston Hadley,
Unitarian
reformer
NY
Hartford.
Congregationalist^
reformer
CT
Litchfield,
minister
Congregationalist
MA
NY
minister
New York
City
writer
Brooklyn,
NY
lecturer
MA Cambridge, MA Antioch, OH St. Louis, MO Minneapolis, MN Northfield,
minister writer
teacher
(liberal)
Presbyterian
Unitarian^ Liberal
NOTES
INTRODUCTION: THE LEGACY OF AMERICAN VICTORIANISM 1.
On
American Victorian
Meade Minnegerode, The 1840-1850 (New York,
culture,
conservation,
is
a hunter
who
kills
more
ani-
mals and Indians than he saves. Whether he likes
or not, Natty
it
is
the vanguard as well
as the refugee of civilization,
see
ance
Fabulous Forties
mise.
any forest prophesies
in
The
and
of Melville's
protagonist
great
his appear-
eventual de-
its
and E. Douglas Branch, The Sentimental Years 1836-60 (New
quest,
York and London,
ing industry, and as such, a proto-technocrat;
1924),
1934).
For important
efforts to define "Victorianism" as
can phenomenon, see the essays issue of
an Ameri-
in the special
American Quarterly, 27 (1975) entitled
"Victorian Culture in America," particularly the lead article by Daniel
Walker Howe,
"American Victorianism as a Culture." 2. See Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp' " in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New
Moby
if
Ahab, whatever
Dick,
a part of
is
his
Natty's most intimate friend
Ahab's
his
is
spiritual
America's aggressive whal-
harpoon.
The
is
his gun,
transcendental
jingoism of Whitman's early Manhattan per-
sona is
is
not designed to conceal the fact that he
celebrating the proliferating population,
self-propagating machinery, and randomly
abundant materialism of the most ruthlessly expanding and constricting city
am
in the
world.
Haw-
York, 1969), pp. 277-83. 3. See Exiwin Wilbur Rice, The Sunday School Movement 1780-1917 and the American
thorne's treatment of the pure maiden figure:
Sunday School Union 1817-1917 (Philadelphia,
Hilda
1917), pp. 42 4.
Thoreau
6.
carefully told his readers in
any conventional
is
hardly a
sense, the
mone-
I
Priscilla in
ff.
Walden, a rural narrative which pastoral in
5.
thinking here particularly of
in
I
The Blithedale Romance (1852) and
The Marble Faun (1860).
hope the reasons
I
have chosen
this
period (1820-75) as the crucial one for the development of Victorian sentimentalism in the Northeast will
become
clear in the course
tary cost of his experiment in self-reliant soli-
of this book. Recent historical opinion has
whose
minimized the importance of the Civil War as a crucial dividing line for American culture.
tude; and he never forgot the railroad
thundered near his retreat. Cooper's Natty Bumppo, the hero of the Leatherstocking Tales, despite his religious adherence to
cars
I
will
First,
make
few further points
here.
the period 1820-1875 includes the
initial
just a
.
Notes
to the
347
Introduction
of Denominationalism (New York, Perry Miller, who might
commercialization of culture, most notably
Sources
the revolution in printing and the rise of na-
1929). Scholars like
magazines. Second, the
circulated
tionally
most important work of the leading figures in the sentimentalization process (see Appendix
A) seems to apjjear and, more receive
valuation during
highest
its
significantly, to
these
be seen as the head of "Neo-orthodox" historiography, did not necessarily share the religious beliefs of those they studied, or of the
Neo-orthodox
theologians
Niebuhr
(the
brothers, Paul Tillich, and others)
who began
years. Elizabeth Stuart Phelf>s, for example,
to write in the 1920s. But they are
who was bom
orthodox"
late in the
period (1844), pro-
duces her most characteristic work. The Gates Ajar, in 1868; thereafter, she repeats herself
and receives
steadily less critical attention
and
praise until her death in 1911. Third, the pe-
Calvinist tradition
This
10.
Stowe
the
and regret
title
passing.
its
of a novel published by
in 1871.
My
1 1
is
"Neo-
they admire the
in the sense that
understanding of "influence" and
marks the time when the majority of Protestants in the Northeast changed from a strict to a "liberal" creed and when the Protestant Church forged its relationship with the newly commercialized culture: both changes are still in force today. In Chapter Three, I
how
that,
while Protestant ministers had been part
try to break the period into smaller, defined
of an
elite
riod
units. In
Chapter Seven,
I
discuss
its
tion in the early 1870s with the late
Henry Ward Beecher and In discussing
what
I
study on
I
its
am
focusing throughout this its
seven-
New
England exponents not because the former were greater than the lat-
teenth-century
Such subculture groups,
and present, evince certain inherent patterns. Most simply, one might say that society forces members of a subculture at any mopast
ment of
intersection with the larger culture
into a constant, simplified, and often
ing process of self-identification.
demean-
The minister
between 1820 and 1875 was beginning to the
perience
enforced
had long known. In 1820 the
on the nineteenth-century Protestant clergymen whose reformulation of Calvinist thought will be my chief concern. I
ment
am a
use the term "Calvinism," despite
what it does today: bound eff^orts at
directly influential
imprecision, because isterial
it
its
partial
was the word the min-
and feminine groups
I
most commonly employed to
am
studying
descrih)e the
older, sterner creed of their forebears. 8.
Martin Marty,
in
the "Foreword" to
Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in
America
(New
York, 1970), notes: "today
seven out of ten citizens identify themselves as Protestants"
(n.p.).
For an excellent introduction to Neoorthodoxy, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Reli9.
gious History of the American People
Haven and London, Martin E. Marty,
(New
932^8, and 233^3. For the
1972), pp.
op. cit.,
pp.
most astute Neo-orthodox analysis of the American religious tradition, see Francis Miller,
Wilhelm Pauck, and H. Richard Nie-
buhr. The Church Against the World (Chicago, 1935),
and H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social
"I
ex-
self-simplification
women
were inevitably more
ter but because they
join-
women and becoming part of
ing middle-class
calling Cal-
eighteenth- rather than
group, they were increasingly
a sp)ecial subculture.
of
vinism, the older Protestant tradition of the
Northeast,
work of Sigmund Freud and Heinz Kohut on narcissism as well as by the theories of a number of sociologists. I came to feel the
work
Harriet Beecher
am
nine groups under discussion was shaped by
culmina-
Stowe. 7.
functioned for the clerical and femi-
it
state-
minister" had a series of possible
precise connotations, theological and political.
By
meant roughly
1875, the statement it
connotes vague church"goodness."
"I
housewife," millions of American
am a women
have been explaining implicitly and explicitly for the last hundred and fifty years; yet, the term "housewife" is imprecise and obfuscating to an extreme. Surely there
much
was (and
is)
as
between tending a childless urban apartment and running a fully populated farm household as there was between diflPerence
practicing law and selling merchandise. Yet just at
the period
when women were
increas-
ingly adopting a punitively generalized
of self-description, selves in ever
more
men were
mode
labeling them-
specialized terms.
The allway
inclusive designation "lady" slowly gave
over the nineteenth century to the equally blank-check appellation "housewife." In contrast,
the polite term "gentleman" had no real
successor;
it
fragmented into
a
thousand
parts.
.
348
Notes
personal,
political,
men
have not equally
Why
and professional.
identified themselves
adequate,
or
inadequate,
to
by an
catchall
phrase such as "breadwinner"? Quite obviously, because society expresses
Chapter 1
in the past
gic elite";
Henry James, "Anthony Trol-
See
12.
Art of
ture.
1956), pp. 247-8.
lope," in The Future of the Novel: Essays on the
Naturally those h)elonging to a subculture
themselves be preoccupied with
who
they
are, often in equally simplistic
They
distorted terms.
will struggle obses-
and monotonously to
repetitiously,
sively,
and
deal with the burden of self-dislike implied
and imposed by their society's apparently low evaluation of them. In a sense, they will be
forced into some version of narcissism, by
which
mean
I
to suggest not only a psycho-
and even
logical process but a sociological political one. Narcissism
self
by
alien,
Fiction,
of
aspect
Works
Parker
(New
Roland Barthes, The Pleasures of the Text, Richard Miller (New York, 1975); and Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," New Left Review 82 (1973), especially 12-16. 14.
am
I
indebted for
maintenance of
in the
in early life
.
.
from the environment,
.
ways by
a
[he] turns
The
narcissist
must
.
Bronte
to
J. S.
Charlotte
Doris Lessing (Princeton, 1976). For
Mill reference, see The Autobiography
(New York,
n.d.),
pp. 103-
17. 15.
World
Herman Melville, White-Jacket, tn a Man-ofWar (New York,
or the 1967),
141.
p.
.
al-
definition be self-taught, because the
world's lessons are inevitably unacceptable to his ego.
From
Tradition in the English Novel:
[the nar-
to self-stimulation in order to retain [his]
precarious cohesion."
understanding of
perb study by Elaine Showalter, The Female
its
lacking in adequate confirming re.
my
objective means, a
ofJohn Stuart Mill
.
York, 1972), pp. 1-56;
trans.
causes for the development of narcissism:
.
think-
American Women on Womanhood 1820-1920, ed. Gail
the
sponses
my
ing are the "Introduction" in The Oven Birds:
customary role in the business of self-evaluaHeinz Kohut has explained lucidly the
cissist is]
phenomenon.
that particularly stimulated
the positive side of sentimentalism to the su-
tion.
cohesive self because
interesting studies of
reading
the
refusal to
a
willed inability to allow the world to play
"Being threatened
Leon Edel (New York,
ed.
There are many
13.
this
best defined not as
is
exaggerated self-esteem but as
judge the
a
Society
1963).
teem for masculine occupations by honoring them with a highly differentiated nomencla-
will
Modem
ing Elite: Strategic Elites in
(New York,
greater es-
its
what Suzanne Keller calls a "stratesee Suzanne Keller, Beyond the Rul-
He
is
CLERICAL DISESTABLISHMENT
committed not only to an un-
derestimation of the force of facts, but, in
Freud's words, to an "over-estimation of the
power of wishes and mental
1.
processes. ... a
2.
words and a method of dealing with the outer world the
God
belief in the magical virtue of
—
art of magic." Narcissism
can necessitate the
replacement of society by the literature.
self, reality
by
See Heinz Kohut, "Thoughts on
Quoted
in F.
W. Dupee, Henry James: (New York, 1956), p. 1.
His Life and Writings
1
H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of America
in
Winthrop
(New York,
1937), p. 193.
Hudson, American tantism (Chicago and London, 1961), 3.
Protes-
S.
p.
136.
Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (New York, 1965), pp. 23, 25. For 4.
New
other studies from a version of the "Neoorthodox" view, see William A. Clebsch, From
York Psychoanalytic Society on November
Sacred to Profane America: The Role of Religion
Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage," a paper delivered as the A. A. Brill Lecture of the
30, 197 l;Sigmund Freud,
Introduction" in
A
"On
Narcissism:
An
General Selection from the
Works of Sigmund Freud, M.D. (New York, 1957),
John Rickman, p. 106. For a definition of minority groups, see Helen Mayer Hacker, "Women as a Minority Group," ed.
Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series Sciences, 5-108.
in
the Social
The ministry had
constituted
in
American History
ert
Handy,
A
(New
Christian America: Protestant
Hopes and Historical 1971),
tian
York, 1968); Rob-
Realities
(New York,
and "The Protestant Quest for
America
1830-1930,"
a Chris-
Church History,
21-22 (1952-53), 8-20; Joseph Harountunian, Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of the
England Theology (New York,
1932);
New Win-
.
349
Notes to Chapter 1
throp
Hudson,
S.
(New
Religion in America
York, 1965); Martin E. Marty, Righteous EmThe Protestant Experience in America
pire:
(New
York,
tory
Sydney
is
E. Ahlstrom's
A
his-
Religious His-
of the American People (New Haven and London, 1972), which notably ignores the tory
ministry
itself
and focuses on the richness of
America's pluralist religious culture. For the classic
and monumental study of the
vitiation
of nineteenth-century Protestantism, see Karl
E.
Dewey,
Autobiography and
ed..
of Orville Dewey, D.D. (Boston, 1884),
Letters
pp. 88, 230, 231, 224.
A notable exception to the
1970).
pervasive pessimism of current religious
Mary
15.
See Milton Powell,
16.
The Voluntary
ed..
Church: American Religious Life (1740-186S)
Through
Seen
Eyes of European
the
(New York and London, 17.
Visitors
1966), p. 90.
See Timothy Smith, Revivalism and So-
Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve
cial
War (New York,
of the Civil
Winthrop
1957), pp. 20, 21;
Hudson, American
S.
Protestantism,
pp. 97, 98.
Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth
18.
For discussion of disestablishment,
see
Century: Its Background and History (London,
Daniel Calhoun, Professional Lives in America:
1972).
Structure
am
I
5.
using "liberal" to descrih)e the non-
evangelical, non-revivalist
almost ists
all
wing of the north-
Church;
Protestant
eastern
many
Unitarians,
included
this
Congregational-
and Episcopalians, and some Presbyteri-
ans.
For reasons which
clear in this chapter,
I
hope
am
I
will
become
primarily con-
cerned with the Unitarians and Congrega-
and Aspiration 1750-1850 (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1965); Evarts B. Greene, Reli-
gion and the State: The Making and Testing ofan
American Tradition (Ithaca, N.Y., 1941); Sid-
ney
Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shap-
E.
(New
ing of Christianity in America
York,
H. Shelton Smith, Robert T. Handy,
1963);
and Lefferts A. Loetscher, American Chris-
An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents (New York, 1960), I, pp. tianity:
tionalists,
and
to
a
degree,
lesser
the
Episcopalians. 6.
See Ahlstrom,
Steele 1947),
op.
cit.,
p.
400;
Henry
Commager, Theodore Parker (Boston, passim; Henry F. May, Protestant
Churches and Industrial America 1949), p. 30.
I
(New York,
have downplayed the reform
aspect of liberal Protestantism in the period. \'ital as
it
was,
does not seem to
it
Protestantism's central
rian
me
legacy;
\'icto-
but
it
should not be forgotten. The Works of Charles Pollen with a Memoir
7.
of His Life (Boston, 1842), I, pp. 514, 515. 8. James Elliot Gibot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston and New York, 1887), I,
James K. Hosmer, The Thinking Bayonet
(Boston, 1865), pp.
17, 15, 54.
10.
Joseph Henry Allen, Our Liberal Move-
ment
in Theology (Boston, 1882), pp. 190, 196.
William Henry Channing, Memoir of William Ellery Channing with Extractsfrom His Correspondence and Manuscripts (Boston, 1846), 1 1
II, p.
12.
cences
Palmer Peabody, Reminis-
Elizabeth
of Reverend William Ellery Channing, See
ibid.,
Stokes, Church
and State
(New York, 1950), 3 vols.; The New Heavens and New Religion in America (New
United States
Cushing Strout, Earth:
Political
is H. Richard Niebuhr and Daniel D. Williams, eds.. The Minis-
York, 1974). Also useful
try in Historical Perspective
(New York,
1956).
For consideration of the broader problem of which the loss of ministerial status was a j>art, see
Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism
American Life (New York, 1962). 19. See Clebsch, op. cit., Handy, tian America,
and Mead,
A
in
Chris-
op. cit.
The Autobiography ofLyman Beecher, ed. Barbara M. Cross (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), I, p. 192. p. 336.
21.
Ibid.,
22.
Philip SchafF, America:
Political,
Social,
p. 259.
23.
by
A
Sketch of Its
Religious Character,
Visit to the
Deputation from
American Churches the
Union of England and Wales 1835),
ed.
p. 80.
Andrew Reed and James Matheson, A
the
24.
p. 302.
and
Perry Miller (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), Narrative of the
266.
D.D. (Boston, 1880), 13.
Anson Phelps
ff.;
in the
20.
pp. 105, 167, 329. 9.
432
II,
Congregational
(New York,
pp. 98fr.
Elwyn A.
Smith, Religious Liberty and
The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. (Boston and New York, 1849), VI, pp. 190 ff.;
United States: The Development of ChurchState Thought Since the Revolutionary Era (Phil-
and see Peabody,
adelphia, 1972), p. 107.
14.
op. cit.,
pp. 203, 257.
the
1
350
Notes
Greene,
25.
op.
cit.,
97.
p.
to
See also M.
Chapter 1
lians,
1905).
1964); S.
Strout, op. cit, p. 343 znd passim;
26.
F.
Maclean,
Church and
"
James 'The True American Union' of
State," Cburcb History, 28 (1959),
41-54, partially reprinted in John F. Wilson, ed.,
Cburcb and State
in
American History (Bos-
ton, 1965), pp. 110-14. 27.
Quoted
28.
Ibid.
29.
Marty,
relatively
in
p. 114.
op. cit,
few good
p.
138.
There are
still
denomina-
histories of the
his-
of America, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1864); Leonard Trinterud, Tbe Forming of an AmeriStates
A
can Tradition:
Re-examination of Colonial
Presbyterianism (Philadelphia, 1949); William
Warren Sweet,
Religion on tbe American Fron-
1783-1840, Vol. IL Tbe Presbyterians:
A
of Source Materials (New York, William Trice Thompson, Presbyteri1936); ans in tbeSoutb, 2 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1963); Collection
A. Smith,
"The Forming of
a
Modem
American Denomination," Cburcb History, 3 (1962), 74-99; and Fred J. Hood, "Presbyterianism and the New American Nation, 17831826: A Case Study of ReHgion and National unpub.
Life,"
diss.,
Princeton
On
Methodism, see Early American Metbodism, 1968.
Emory
1949);
the Episcopa-
A
Albright,
tbe Protestant Episcopalian
History of
(New
Cburcb
York,
D. McConnell, History oftbe Ameri-
can Episcopal Cburcb 1600-1915 (Milwaukee, 1916);
A
William Wilson Manross,
1950).
History of
(New York,
American Episcopal Cburcb
tbe
For general studies of the CongreGaius Glenn Atkins and
see
gationalists,
Walker, Congregational Cburcbes op. cit,
History oftbe Presbyterian Cburcb in tbe United
Elwyn
Raymond W.
gregationalism (Boston, 1942), and Williston
tory of Presbyterianism, see E. H. Gillett,
tier,
see
Frederick L. Fagley, History ofAmerican Con-
Wilson,
under consideration here. For the
tions
On
Society (Philadelphia, 1955).
Louise Greene, The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut (Boston and New York,
Wade 2 vols.
Stevens Bucke,
ed.,
University, C. Barclay,
(New York, Tbe History
of American Metbodism, 3 vols. (Nashville, Tenn., 1964); William Warren Sweet, Religion
States 30.
(New For
in tbe
United
York, 1894).
distinctions
and relations between
Congregationalists and Old School and
New
School Presbyterians, see the excellent study
by George M. Marsden, Tbe Evangelical Mind and tbe New Scbool Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Tbougbt and Tbeology in Nineteentb-Century America (New Haven and London, 1970). 31.
A
See Earl Morse Wilbur,
History of
Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and
America (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), and Conrad Wright, Tbe Beginnings of Unitarianism in
America (Boston,
1955).
32.
Evarts B. Greene,
33.
Ibid
34.
David D.
op. cit.,
pp. 90
Hall, Tbe Faitbful Sbepberd:
New England Ministry
History oftbe
if.
A
in tbe Sev-
enteentb Century (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), pp.
146
ff. I
am
deeply indebted as well to David
Hall's helpful
comments on
my
work.
pp. 190-3.
35.
Ibid.,
36.
Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards
York, 1949),
(New
p. 197.
op
on tbe American Frontier, 1783-1840, Vol. IV,
37.
Hall,
Walter
38.
Calhoun,
39.
Arethusa Hall, Life and Character oftbe
Tbe
Metbodists
(Chicago,
1946);
Brownlaw Posey, Tbe Development of Metbodism in tbe Old Soutbwest, caloosa, Ala., 1933);
1783-1824 (Tus-
Wesley Gewehr, "Some
cit,
p.
186.
pp. 120, 121.
op. cit.,
Reverend Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1854),
William C. Gannett, Ezra
p. 231;
Gannett Uni-
Stiles
Factors in the Expansion of Frontier Method-
tarian Ministers in Boston 1824-1871 (Boston,
ism, \SO(^\S\l," Journal of Religion, 8 (Jan.
1875), p. 359.
On the Baptists, see Norman A. History oftbe Freewill Baptists: A Study
40.
Quoted
41.
Ibid, pp. 158-61.
New England Separatism (Rochester, N.Y., 1957); Albert Newman, A History oftbe Baptist Cburcbes in tbe United States (New York,
42.
William M. Thayer, Spots
1928), 98-120.
Baxter, in
1894); tists
Robert G. Torbet,
(Philadelphia, 1950),
A History oftbe BapA Social History of
in
Calhoun,
op. cit,
in
p.
174.
Our
Feasts
of Charity (Boston and Cleveland, 1854), pp. 231, 232. 43.
"The Shady and
the
Sunny Side of the
Ministry," Christian Examiner, 55 (1853), 338-
(Philadelphia, 1944), and Venture ofFaitb: Tbe
50. See also Rev. Amzi Benedict, "Ministerial Support," National Preacher, 29 (1855), 129-
Story of tbe American Baptist Foreign Mission
40,
tbe Pbiladelpbia Baptist Association:
1707-1940
and Rev. T.
S.
Clark,
"The
Pulpit
Worth
1
Notes
More than
Costs," National Preacher,
It
to
13
(1839), 161-76.
G. Goodrich, Recollections of a Lifeor Men and Things I Have Seen (New
44. S. time,
York, 1856), pp. 27, 99, 76. 45. J. H. Allen's astute observations on the state of the clergy
articles
Some
can be found
he pubhshed
in
two
in the late 1860s:
Modem
Conditions of the
"On
Ministry,"
Christian Examiner, 82 (1867), 51-63,
Some
crucial
and "On
Results of the Voluntary System, Espe-
Our Country
cially in
Parishes," Christian Ex-
aminer, 84 (1868), 207-29. 46.
See Roland H. Bainton, Yale and
the
(New York, 1957); Alice M. BaldNew England Clergy and the American Revolution (New York, 1958); Alan Heimert,
Chapter 1
351
Southern Clergy as a Strategic Elite: 17801870," a paper delivered before the American Historical Association in 1970.
For discussion of
56.
Hobbs
Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse 1830-
(New York;
1844
this issue, see Gilbert
Chicago; and Burlingame,
David Brion Davis, ed., (New York, 1967); Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery 1830-1860 (New York, 1960); Daniel Walker Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy 1805-1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 270-305; Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends California;
1933);
Ante-Bellum Reform
in
American Abolitionism: Garrison and His
Ministry
Critics
on
win, The
(New
York,
pp. 133
ff.;
and
Strategy
Tactics
Stokes,
1967);
1834-1850 cit,
op.
II,
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tap-
War
and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1966); J. Eari Thompson, Jr., "An 'Unnecessary, Unjust and Inexpedient' War:
pan and
Congregational Clergy Dissent Against the
slavery groups in the various denominations.
Religion
War
Andover Newton Quarterly, 1 33^7. Republicans at political ban-
of 1812,"
(1970),
the Evangelical
(Cleveland, 1969).
See Stokes,
57.
op. cit.,
My
58.
(1950), 19-30.
their
constitution,
"The
Pulpit for the Priest not for the Politi-
their
cian." See Stokes, op.
politics
cit.,
I,
religion,"
pp. 409, 410.
James Banner, To the Federalist Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815 (New 47.
59. cit.,
On
is based on "Horace Bushnell and the
Jr.,
Slavery Question,"
—the Bible
for a discussion
discussion of Bushnell
Charles C. Cole,
century made
"The Clergy of all Denominations
II,
of conflicts and breaks between anti- and pro-
quets in (Donnecticut in the early nineteenth telling toasts like the following:
Against Slavery
New England Quarterly,
Finney and slavery see Barnes,
pp. 161
and Wyatt-Brown,
ff".,
op.
23
op. cit.,
passim. 60.
The
Clerical
Appeal of 1837, directed
very specifically against Garrison and his
fol-
was the place "into which we flee from a troubled world for lowers, asserted that the church
The
York, 1970), pp. 150-65.
peace [not for]
Quoted in Vernon Stauffer, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (New York
minister's task
is
religion." See
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-
48.
and London, 49.
1928), p. 94.
50.
Marty,
51.
See David Hall,
52.
Stokes, op. cit,
53.
Charles Forrester
op. cit,
op. cit., II,
pp. 136, 144.
pp. 15-17.
.
doubtful disputation."
"the promotion of personal
pp. 13^5.
Andrew Peabody,
Atti-
missions, prison reform, better conditions for
South
the seamen, temperance
the
1942), p. 53.
leading op|X)nent of slavery and
—
all of them causes whose immediate dimensions were private
and
fjersonal.
See
lukewarm protest was of course William Lloyd Garrison. See William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told By His
mary and secondary sources
and John
L.
York, 1885), 4
Thomas, The
vols.,
passim,
Liberator: William
Lloyd Garrison (Boston and Toronto, 1963). 55.
For
gyman's
this
role,
view of the southern see
cler-
Donald Mathews, "The
61.
I
Examiner,
Christian
(1845), 369-70.
(New
Uni-
Toward
the most severe critic of the northern clergy's
Children
a
from Harvard, writing a decade later in answer to another attack on clerical indiff^erence, defensively listed all the good causes the American ministry did support:
Dunham, The
1860-1865 (Toledo, Ohio,
The
II,
.
tarian divine
2.
p. 69.
tude of the Northern Clergy
54.
1879,
Christian Examiner, 2 (1825),
.
base this remark on
am
38
numerous priwhich I have
to
already referred, but
I
what emerged
reform (or several clerically domi-
chiefly referring to
as the semi-official
anti-reform) line in
nated periodicals over the 1850s and 1860s.
See most notably the Unitarian Christian Examiner, the liberal (x)ngregationalist
NewEng-
Notes
352
to
and the more evangelical National
lander,
Preacher.
Contemporary
62.
awareness of
clerical
the diminishing cultural jX)wer of church and
was
pulpit
pervasive, but see especially
"Liberalism
Allen,
in
Church and
Christian Examiner, 85 (1868), 82-98;
Bellows,
"On
28-38; Alvan Lamson,
"A
"The
the
William G. McLoughlin,
Jr.,
to Billy
Graham (New York,
Plea for
if
1959), p. 61.
Sedgwick's voluminous and revealing,
70.
occasionally
illegible, diaries
are at the Mas-
sachusetts Historical Society.
7L For an
39 (1849),
excellent study of Bushnell and
his congregation, see
Barbara M. Cross, Ho-
Changing America
race Bushnell: Minister to a
(Chicago, 1958). fifty
ordained between 1640 and
of these had also followed a post-gradu-
William Ellery Channing,
home. Of the eight hundred Congregationalist ministers ordained between 1740 and 1810, fewer than twenty lacked a
Mary
74.
ate course of divinity study in a qualified
minister's
E.
Dewey,
Letters ofOrville
II, p.
I,
Dewey,
p. 373.
Autobiography and
ed..
p. 36.
Lewis Tappan
the Unitarians because of their lack of
left
Wyatt-Brown, op. cit., pp. 34 ff. John Ware, M.D., Memoir of the Life of
fervor; see 75.
this p)eriod ministerial
candidates had several recognized divinity
op. cit.,
and also SchafT, op. cit., pp. 94, 95. 73. William Henry Charming, Memoir of
11,
but twenty-five held a college B. A.;
many
See Reed and Matheson,
72.
Congrega-
all
and by the end of
in
W.
H.
1740,
B.A.,
Quoted
69.
Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney
Pulpit," Christian
two hundred
tionalist ministers
79 (1865), 177.
iner,
Modem
Examiner, 29 (1840), 19-50.
Of
Mann and
Horace
Victory:
State,"
289-314; "True Work," Christian Examiner, 78 (1865), 165-84, and
Tharp, Until
Mary Peabody (Boston, 1953), p. 47. 68. See "Lyman Beecher," Christian Exam-
the Alleged Unattractiveness of
Theology," Christian Examiner,
63.
also
H.
J.
the Christian Pulpit," Christian Examiner, 87 (1869),
Chapter 1
Henry Ware, Jr (Boston,
1846), pp. 53, 178,
179.
schools at which to pursue their clerical education.
The Methodist
non, see
well into the nineteenth century asked only a
conversion experience of
its
clergy,
and grad-
ually accelerating educational requirements
were long fought by many of
its
most promi-
Training
New England (New Williams,
eds., op.
in
York, 1937); Niebuhr and
cit.,
pp. 237-48.
Autobiography of Peter Cartwrigbt the Backwoods Preacher, ed. W. P. Strickland
(New 65.
York, 1856), pp. 79, 360, 371. The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher,
I,
p. 47.
66.
On
the literary social scene in early
nineteenth-century Boston, see Daniel op.
cit.,
passim;
Howe,
M. A. Dewolfe Howe,
view (Boston, 1910); Lewis
P.
Simpson, The
Mind:
Selections from the Boston Review 1803and Monthly Anthology 1811 (Baton Rouge, La., 1962); and Ronald
Federalist Literary
Story, "Class and Culture in Boston:
Athenaeum, 1807-1870," American
The
Quarterly,
11 (1975), 178-99. 67.
body
Quoted Sisters
in
p. 46.
See
1954); Charles
The Evangelical
1960); Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers' Kee-
Moral Stewardship
in
the
United States
(New
Brunswick, N.J., 1960). For and in my view, more insympathetic, more telligent accounts, see Lois Barmer, "Religious
1800-1 865
Benevolence
as Social Control:
A
Critique of
an Interpretation," Journal of American History, 60 (1973), 23-41; John A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition 77.
(New York,
1925).
The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher,
I,
pp. 113-16. 78.
See William R. Hutchison, The Tran-
scendental Ministers: American Reform in the
New England Renaissance (New Haven,
1959),
pp. 1-3. 79.
Many
Unitarians crossed into the Epis-
copalian fold in this period or adopted a
num-
ber of Episcopalian practices. See particularly F.
Louise Hall Tharp, The Pea-
of Salem (Boston, 1950),
An Errand of Mercy:
United Front, 1790-1837 (Chapel Hill, N.C.,
ed..
Journal of the Proceedings of the Society Which Conducts the Monthly Anthology and Boston Re-
A
1820-1860 (New York,
Foster,
pers:
64.
phenome-
C. Cole, The Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelicals
Eighteenth-Century
this
Allen Billington, The Protestant
Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York, 1938); Charles
I.
Ministerial
Ray
Crusade 1800-1860:
Mary Latimer Gambrell,
nent members. See
For negative readings of
76. sect, in contrast, until
W.
lies
P.
Greenwood,
and Sunday
Hymns for
Social Services for
Schools
Fami-
With a Collection of 1855), and
Private Use (Boston,
.
Notes
to
Chapter 2
353
Huntington, Memoir and Letters of Frederic Dan Huntington (Boston and New
ence" was so widespread and so accepted that
York, 1906). Huntington was a notable con-
its
Arria
S.
to Episcopalianism and
vert
his
defection
from Unitarian ranks caused consternation;
New Discussions of the
see his The
ton, 1860). See also "Unitarian
New
Affinities,"
lian
Trinity (Bos-
and Episcopa-
Englander,
3
(1845),
For
good account of early Episcopa-
a
Joseph
lianism, see
Mind in cut,
terms.
J. Ellis,
The
New England
Samuelfobnson of Connecti1696-1772 (New Haven and London,
source
Sarah
"An
Transition:
at
most valuable
Ladies' Magazine, 1828-36, edited
Hale.
And
see
by
Norman Mezvinsky,
Glenda Gates Riley, "The Subtle Subversion: Changes in the Traditionalist Image of the American Woman," The Historian, 32 (196970), 210-27. 1 am indebted most heavily, how-
And
(1845), 202.
see Rev.
"The Murder of
Henry R. Weed,
a Faithful Minister,"
Ameri-
can Preacher, 8 (1834), 253-61.
"The
Pulpit," Christian Examiner,
29
Nancy
to
Samuel Cutting, "The Inefficiency of the Church," National Preacher, 11 (1849), 14. 82. E. Thurston, "The Magnitude of the 19 Ministerial Work," National Preacher, 81.
Frederick
Henry Hedge, "The
Desti-
nies of Ecclesiastical Religion," Christian Ex-
aminer, 82 (1867),
3.
85.
See Niebuhr and Williams,
86.
"An Andover Student," New Englander
eds., op. cit
"The
Pulpit," Christian Examiner,
29
(1840), 30, 31. 88. Powell,
op
cit.,
p. 85.
Ibid, p. 90.
A
Study in the Nineteenth-Ontury America," submitted to Harvard College in 1971. This thesis has been seminal for my work.
Women
History of
in
5.
Ladies' Magazine,
6.
Ladies' Magazine, 9 (1836), 383-86.
7.
Mrs.
L.
3
(1830), 83, 84.
H. Sigoumey,
Water Drops
For other temperance literature, see Herbert Ross Brown, The Sentimental Novel in America 1789-1860 (Durham, N.C., 1940). Of special interest are the following works by Timothy Shay Arthur: Strong Drink: The Curse and the Cure 1848), pp. 49, 51.
(Philadelphia,
(1855), 236.
undergraduate
Osterud's
"Sarah Josepha Hale:
(New York,
(1840), 30, 31.
89.
is
J.
thesis,
87.
and reform
Idea of Female Superiority," Midconti-
ever,
84.
women
trine of "influence," the single
1973).
83.
will discuss
I
greater length in Chapter Three. For the doc-
nent American Studies Journal, 2 (1961), 17-26;
556-61. 80.
the radicals were gradually forced to talk in
1877);
Ten Nights In a Bar-
Room, and What I Saw
Donald A. Koch (Cambridge, Mass., 1964); Woman's Trials or Tales and Sketches From the Life Around There, ed.
Us (Philadelphia, 1869). See also The Old Brewand the New Mission House By Ladies of the Mission (New York, 1834); Mary L. Fox, The Ruined Deacon: A True Story (Boston, 1851); Dr. H. A. Reynolds, Minnie Hermon: or. The Curse of Rum (New York and Cincinnati, ery
FEMININE DISESTABLISHMENT 1
Mary
Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters
of Horace Bushnell
(New
York, 1880),
p. 142.
2.
Ladies' Magazine,
3.
Cheney, Life and Letters of Horace Bushp. 142. For the comments on women of
nell,
5 (1832),
308-15.
1878): Mrs. S. A.
Hut:
or.
ton, 1854); ace; or
Southworth, The
Inebriate's
The First Fruits of the Maine Law (Bos-
Emma
Wellmont, Uncle Sam's Pal-
The Reigning King (Boston, 1853). For
Bushnell's clerical predecessors, see Laurel
secondary sources, see Henry William
Thatcher Ulrich, "Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministirial Literature, 1668-
The Temperance Movement: or The Conflict Be-
1735," American Quarterly, 28 (1976), 20-40. 4.
Aileen
Woman
Kraditor
in
Suffrage Movement,
The Ideas
of
1890-1920
(New
the
York and London, 1965) documents the shift in the argument of the suffrage party over the course of the nineteenth century from a demand for women's "rights" to a plea for the wider exercise of their feminine influence;
in
other words, the conservative ploy of "influ-
Blair,
tween Man and Alcohol (Boston, 1888); Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, History of the Woman Temperance Crusade (Boston, 1882); Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815-1872 (Pittsburgh,
's
1971); tion
John A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibi-
(New
York,
1925).
I
wish to thank Chris-
tine Stansell for access to her unpublished
paper, "(Darrie Nation and the
Movement."
Temperance
354
Notes
to
Lydia Huntley Sigoumey, The Young
8.
Lady
Gems of
Offering, or
'j
Prose
and Poetry
(Boston, 1862), p. 222.
For
evi-
dence that Hale's paranoia was not altogether unfounded, see the case of the seduced and
murdered Mahon Heberton The
New
10.
Englander,
1
reported in
as
(1842), 442-551.
Ladies' Magazine, 7 (1834), 419.
excellent
women
on
paper
implications
the
for
of anti-Catholic literature, see David
Movements and the Victimized Woman," delivered
Bennett, "Anti-Catholic
Vision of the
1970);
The Old South and American National Char-
(New York and Evanston, 1957). I am basing my discussion here on the following works: Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Era of Expansion 1800-1848 (New York, acter
15.
1969);
For an
1830-1930 (Chicago and London, William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yan-
Politics
kee:
Ladies' Magazine, 8 (1835), 186.
9.
Chapter 2
of
the
1966);
Douglas C. North, The Economic Growth United States 1790-1860 (New York,
Anhur M.
Schlesinger,
The Age of
Jr.,
Jackson (Boston, 1945).
See Lemer,
16.
op.
cit.;
Smith,
op.
cit.,
pp. 49-78.
before the American Historical Association
17.
Cole,
op. cit.,
on Dec. 28, 1975. 11. Such articles by Hale are scattered throughout her first periodical. Ladies' Magazine, which she edited from 1828 until 1836. 12. See J. H. Allen, "On Some Results of the Voluntary System, Especially in Our Country Parishes," Christian Examiner, 84
18.
Ihid.,
pp. 192, 193.
19.
Ihid.,
pp. 97-110.
20.
See Jeffrey Williamson, "Urbanization
in Atlanta, Ga.,
(1868), 207-29. 13.
For help
understanding the process
in
of "disestablishment," see
Mary
R. Beard, ed.,
America Through Woman's Eyes (New York, 1933); Arthur W. Calhoun, A Social History of Vol. 11 (Cleveland, the American Family, 1918); Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth
Century
(New York,
1920);
in the
American Northeast, 1820-1870,"
in
The Reinterpretation ofAmerican Economic History (New York, 1971), pp. 426-36. 22.
Quoted Quoted
23.
Cole, op
24.
See Richard B. Morris, Studies
21.
in Schlesinger, op. in ibid., cit.,
Chap.
p.
18.
190.
Law (New
"Women's Rights
Ill,
cit.,
148.
p.
p.
History of American
in
in the
York, 1930), Early Ameri-
can Law."
My
25.
comments here
are based
say by Johnny Faragher, "Old
Arthur Harrison Cole, The American Wool
Women
Manufacture (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), Vol.
field,"
I,
181.
p.
Seventeenth-Century
in
forthcoming
Women
in
See the widows
's
on an
es-
Men and Old Wethers-
Studies.
Anthony Dexter, Colonial Women of Affairs (Boston, 1911); Gerda Lemer, "The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age
Widow and Her Family (Hudson, N.Y., 1837), and Bella Z. Spencer, Tned and
of Jackson," Mid-continent American Studies
1866).
passim; Elizabeth
26.
in
True; or Love
and Loyalty
Mary Ryan, "Ameri-
27.
can Society and the Cult of Domesticity,
sition
1830-1860"; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine
don, 1918), pp. 117-30.
Journal, 10 (1969),
Beecher:
7, 8;
A Study in American Domesticity (New
Haven and
Lx)ndon,
1973);
Smith,
Paige
Daughters of the Promised Land: Women in American History (Boston, 1970). An imporis Nancy F. Cott, "In Womanhood: Perspectives on
tant unpublished study
the Bonds of
Female Experience and Consciousness England,
1780-1830,"
Ph.D.
in
New
dissertation,
On
the southern
women,
(Springfield, Mass.,
Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in Tran1775-1818 (Washington, D.C., and Lon-
Horace
28.
spun"
Bushnell,
in Litchfield
"The Age of Home-
County Centennial Celebra-
tion (Hartford, 1851), pp. 114, 112, 124. 29. nell,
Cheney, Life and Letters of Horace Bushp. 27.
30.
Ibid.,
pp. 29, 27.
31.
Ibid.,
p.
women, Against
Brandeis University, 1974.
Mrs. Julia H. Scott,
The Blind
111.
For Bushnell's views on
Woman Suffrage: The Reform Nature (New York, 1869). see also
see Lisabeth
32.
Beard,
Cohen, "Beneath Cotton and Lace: The Plan-
33.
Cole,
34.
See Johnny Faragher and Christine
14.
tation
Legacy of the Southern Woman," an
op. cit.,
op. cit.,
"Women
p. 80.
pp. 186-9.
and Their Families on the
important essay submitted as an undergradu-
Stansell,
ate thesis at Princeton University in
Overland Trail. 1842-1867," Feminist Studies,
Anne Scott,
1973;
The Southern Lady from Pedestal
to
2 (1975),
150-66.
355
Notes to Chapter 2
35. Nancy Cott, ed., Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History ofAmerican Women (New York, 1972), p. 235. 36. Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in tbe United States (New York and
Lancaster, Pa., 1929),
II, p.
3.
Home
See Catharine Maria Sedgwick,
37.
(Boston, 1854); Live and Let Live, or Domestic Service Illustrated
(New
or Single?
(New
York, 1856); Married
York, 1858); Means and Ends:
or Self-Training (Boston, 1840).
A
Catharine E. Beecher,
38.
mestic 39.
1841).
Ladies' Magazine,
3
man
On
(1830), 42, 43.
front to dignify feminine enterprise, see Lutz, op.
call .
.
50.
in
Woman
see
Barbara
in
America:
Mabel Newcomer,
A
Women Wolf Thompson,
1959); Eleanor
Education for Ladies 1830 -I860 1947); in
(New
op. cit
Godey's Lady's Book, 20 (1840), 273.
in Cross, op. cit, p. 117.
Exlucation," American Journal of Education,
45.
Mary
E.
Hartford Female Seminary
Dewey,
Sedgwick
and
Life
Letters
(New York,
of
1871),
Grace Greenwood, Greenwood Leaves: Collection of Sketches and Letters (Boston, For the attitude of the
48.
On
neers, see
of His Life (Boston, 1842),
Mem-
p. 108.
I,
54.
Smith,
55.
Ladies' Magazine,
56.
Lydia Maria Child, Tbe Mother's Book
op. cit,
p. 78. 1
(1828),
2.
of Sharon
Rose
Tbe
(Boston,
1849),
p. 287.
58.
For the
lives
Hanson,
ed..
of these
women,
see Mrs.
Our Women Workers:
Bio-
Church for Literary, Philanthropic and
Christian
Werk (Chicago,
1882).
Their writ-
in the Universalist Gift-
book, The Rose of Sharon, and the monthly Universalist
and Ladies'
Repository.
For
a fas-
cinating study of the dependency of the am-
on novels, see Mrs. A. D. T.
Whitney's Hitherto: A Story of Yesterdays (Boston, 1 869). This novel by one of the era's most
Thompson,
op. cit.,
the educational
Alma
Lutz,
ladies'
work of
Emma
maga-
passim.
these pio-
Willard: Daughter
of Democracy (Boston and New York, 1929); Beth Bradford Gilchrist, The Life of Mary
Lyon (Boston and New York, 1910); Edward Hitchcock, Tbe Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon
(Northampton,
extensive analysis. 59.
On
the increase in reading, see (Darl
Bode, Antebellum Culture (Carbondale and
1853), p. 29. 47.
p. 365.
cit.,
popular writers for young ladies would repay
46.
zines, see
Tbe Works of Charles Follen with a
bitious rural girl
pp. 56, 57.
A
Bird, op.
II
and Suggestions Respect-
(Hartford, 1829).
Catharine M.
1966), pp. 152, 338.
pp. 236, 237.
cit.,
ings appeared chiefly
ing Improvements in Education Presented to tbe tbe
Hill Clark (Madison,
53.
versalist
See Catharine Elsther Beecher, "Female
of
Andrew
graphical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Uni-
43.
Trustees
Plan
Englishwoman
52.
E. R.
Quoted
(1827), 219-23, 264^9,
Bird, The
(Dalhoun, op.
57.
42.
44.
A
Willard,
(Boston, 1831), p. 86.
Higher Exiucation," University Magazine,
Woody,
Lucy
Isabelle
York,
Ann Douglas Wood, "Women's Future
52 (1972), 6-13;
Emma
See especially
51.
Cen-
tury of Higher Education for American
(New York,
to
upon the province of men."
America, ed.
oir
of Background and Problems
1923);
we mean
will not create a jealousy that
.
49.
1965); Willistyne Goodsell, The Education
(New York,
27,
p.
Milwaukee, and London,
women's education,
Its Social
where Willard determines to her new school a seminary: "That word
cit.,
Vt., 1818).
of Catharine Beecher, Margaret and M. Carey Thomas (New York,
Women:
cit.
For clear evidence that they were often selfconsciously aware of the need for a masculine
Selected Writings Fuller,
Lyon Eliza-
neer Educator (Phihdelphh, 1932);Sklar, op.
Lady
and The American Gentle-
Cross, ed., Tbe Educated
Mae
beth Harveson, Catharine Esther Beecher: Pio-
Do-
(Philadelphia, 1836).
41.
Mary
ed.,
for Improving Female Education (Middlebury,
40. Charies Butler, Esq., The American
(Philadelphia, 1842)
Lansing,
Through Her Letters (Boston, 1937);
intrude
Treatise on
Economy (Boston,
Marion
1852);
Mass.,
and
Philadelphia,
Edwardsville,
III.,
1959), pp. 109
ff.;
Norman
Werthman, eds., Tbe History of Popular Culture (New York and London, 1968), pp. 84-94.
F.
Cantor and Michael
60. Elizabeth
S.
Wetherell,
World (Philadelphia,
The Wide,
Wide
1888), p. 34. "Elizabeth
Wetherell" was Susan Warner's nom de plume. 61.
I
am
deeply indebted
in
my
discussion
of Stowe here and elsewhere to Elizabeth Kendall,
"Secret
Springs of
Violence:
A
356
Notes
Study of Margaret
to
Beecher
Fuller, Harriet
Stowe, and Kate Chopin," an unpublished
Chapter 2
issues of the Lowell Offering,
(1845).
5
es-
77.
Lowell Offering
say submitted as an undergraduate thesis at
78.
Quoted
Harvard University in 1969. 62. David Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character
79.
Lowell Offering
80.
Quoted
81.
Lowell Offering
(Chicago, 1954), pp. 173-5.
82.
Harveson,
83.
Godey's Lady's Book, 45 (1852), 283.
63.
on
have consulted the following sources
I
advertising: Daniel Boorstin, The Image:
Guide
A
(New York,
Pseudo-Events in America
to
1972); J. A. C. Brown, Techniques ofPersuasion: From Propaganda to Brainwashing (London,
Revel Denney, The Astonished Muse:
1963);
Popular Culture in America (New York, 1957); Frank Presbrey, The History and Development
of Advertising (New York, 1929); Walter Dill "The Psychology of Advertising," At-
Scott,
Turner,
lantic Monthly, 93 (1904), 29-36; E. S.
The Shocking History of Advertising (London, 1952); James Pleysted Wood, The Story ofAdvertising
(New
York, 1958).
64. Presbrey, op.
See
65.
A
ing in
Ann
cit.,
pp. 255, 256.
Douglas, "Art and Advertis-
Connecticut
The Robber
Yankee:
Baron Revisited," Canadian Review of American Studies, 6 (1975), 182-95. Presbrey,
66.
op. cit.,
Quoted
69.
Ibid.,
70.
Ibid, p. 318.
71.
See Margaret Mead, "The Pattern of
in Presbrey, op.
cit.,
pp. 276-8.
ff.
Larrabee and Rolf Meyersohn,
72.
eds..
Catharine E^her Beecher,
and Abolitionism with
Slavery
Mass Lei-
1958), p. 14.
111.,
p. 188.
cit.,
p. 231.
op. cit.,
1
(1828), 422, 423.
Englander, 11 (1953), 152.
For examples, see Rev. John S. C. AbMother at Home; or the Principles of Maternal Duty Familiarly Illustrated (New York, 1833); Jabez Bums, D.D., Mothers of the Wise and Good (Boston, 1830); Margaret Conkling. Memoirs of the Mother and Wife of Washington (Auburn, Me., 1851); Marion Harland, The Story of Mary Washington (Boston and New York, 1892); Our Mother: A Memorial of Mrs. S. C Farley Maxwell (Boston, 1860). Elizabeth Prentiss wrote a novel which is an extreme illustration of the motherhood cult, The 86.
bot, The
Home at Greylock (New York,
1876).
The clas-
example of medical support of the cult is Dr. Exlward H. Clark, Sex in Education: or a Fair Chance for Girls (Boston and Cambridge,
sic
On
the medical background, see
Fashionable Dis-
eases:
Women's Complaints and Their
ment
in
Treat-
Nineteenth-Century America," Jour-
of Interdisciplinary History, 4 (1973), 25-53, and Clio's Consciousness, ed. Louis Bannal
Leisure in Contemjwrary Culture," in Eric
sure (Glencoe,
p. 193.
5 (1845), 264.
Ann Douglas Wood, "The
68.
cit.,
5 (1845), 56.
in Josephson, op.
New
Mass., 1878).
p. 259.
67. Potter, op. cit, p. 169.
pp. 370
The
in Josephson, op.
Magazine,
84. Ladies' 85.
(1845), 190.
5
An
Essay on
Reference to the
ner
(New
York, 1974).
John Hawksley, ed., Memoir of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards Compiled Originally by Sam il.
Hopkins (London, 1815), p. 89. 88. Mrs. L. H. Sigoumey, Letters
to
Mothers
Duty ofAmerican Females (Philadelphia, 1837) and The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women
ney's account of her relationship with her
(Boston, 1851).
own
73.
Emma
Willard, Via Media:
A
Peaceful
and Permanent Settlement of the Slavery Question
(Washington, D.C., 1862).
74.
For an
Taylor, 75.
New son, nity:
pp. 115^1.
See Hannah Josephson, Golden Threads:
I
am
The
(New
indebted also to John Kas-
"The Factory
as
E^rly
Andrew,
89.
Bernard
Republican
History
Commu-
of
Lowell,
The
Child
p. 30.
ley gives her account in the July
fF.
Far-
and August
For a good L. Kuhn,
Anne
New (New Haven,
90.
See
Ann Douglas Wood, "The Fashion"The War Within a
able Diseases," p. 49, and
Women
pp. 191
the
1947).
War
San Fran-
and
The Mother's Role in Childhood Education:
England Concepts 1830-1860
Civil
in
(New
of Modem American Child
Nurture (Philadelphia, 1968),
War:
op. cit,
The Faded Hope
Wishy,
Dawn
American Studies Association cisco on Oct. 19, 1973. See Josephson,
in
See also Mrs. Sigour-
York, 1853).
Massachusetts," a paper delivered before the
76.
p. 10.
discussion of motherhood, see
England's Millgirls and Magnates
York, 1949).
son,
Republic: The
analysis of Hale's politics, see
op. cit.,
(Hartford, 1838),
Nurses
History,
in the
Union Army,"
18 (1972), 197-212.
91. For Stanton's views and experiences of motherhood, see her autobiography. Eighty Years and More (1815-1897): Reminiscences of
Notes
to
Elizabeth Cody Stanton (Lx)ndon, 1898), pp. 108-25.
For the
92.
reaction, see Goodsell, op.
cit.,
Chapter 3
357
the invaluable source nals
which
1837-69),
have studied
I
Also useful have been
passim.
whose
New
The
Englander, North American '
Godey
zine,
ROLES should stress that
I
I
Lady
'j
The
Magazine.
have tried to
re-
's
sixty individuals
works by and on them. I have consulted manuscript sources on the following: Catharine Esther Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe in the Beecher-Stowe
will
available
all
Collection at the Schlesinger Library at RadchflFe
College, Cambridge, Mass.; the Marga-
ret Fuller papers at the Boston Public Library and Houghton Library, Harvard University;
the letters of Sarah Zdgarton L. B.
J.
Case
Mayo and
Mrs.
at the Schlesinger Library; the
Catharine Maria Sedgwick papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society; the
Sigoumey
papers at the Connecticut Historical Society in
Hartford, Conn.; the Fanny Fern (Parton)
Book, The Universalist
impKjrtant autobiographies,
under
in the
be cited
sf>ecial
by the
consideration
course of discussion.
Christian Examiner, 87 (1869), 29. Evan-
2.
gelicals of course also
the
and
and the Christian Parlor
biographies, and literary productions
search these sixty individuals carefully, reading
of magazines
Review, The National Preacher, Ladies Maga-
Ladies' Repository,
1.
in its entirety.
number
a
read through: The Christian Ex-
files I
aminer,
AND MOTHERS: CHANGING AND EXCHANGING MINISTERS
William Sprague, An9 vols. (New York,
is
of the American Pulpit,
press;
urged or
justified
made
extensive use of
non-evangelicals
indeed,
often
publishing in terms of
catching up with the productivity of evangelical rivals.
The
difference
one
is
in prestige
and influence.
Lawrence C. Wroth and RoUo G. Silver, "Book Production and Distribution from the American Revolution to the War Between the States," in Hellmut Lehman-Haupt, ed., 3.
in America (New York, 1951), p. 71. am drawing my information about the
The Book 4.
I
papers at the Sophia Smith Collection in
Harpers, unless otherwise stated, from Eu-
Northampton,
gene Exman, The Brothers Harper
Mass.; and the Joseph
Buck-
minster papers at the Boston Athenaeum. Al-
though
I
am
using these sixty persons as a
"control group" in Chapter Three, here and
elsewhere
have tried to check
I
my
conclu-
by a wider if thorough survey. For useful biographical information on the women of the period, see Exiward T. James, Janet Wilson James, Paul S. Bryer, eds.. Notable American Women 1607-
sions against the data gathered less
1950,
3
(Cambridge, Mass., 1971), and
vols.
Frances E. Willard and
Mary A. Livermore,
American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies, 2 vols. (New York, Chicago, and Springfield, Ohio, 1897). Also useful are Eminent Women of the Age (Hartford, 1869) and Our Famous
Women
(Hartford, 1885). Nina
Baym
in a
manuscript to be published by Cornell University Press,
"Women's
Fiction in
America
many Where I am
1820-1870," provides a helpful study of of the
women
I
am
considering.
interested only in certain aspects of their pro-
duction and
in the
underlying unity of their
work, she treats their careers more broadly and examines the distinctive quality of each woman's effort. Baym furthermore sees their collective contribution in
terms than
I
am
much more positive
able to do.
On
the ministers,
(New York,
1965). 5.
Charles A. Madison, Book Publishing
America
(New York,
in
1966), p. 6.
William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America 1790-1830 (Philadelphia, 1959), p. 26. 6.
7.
Ibid
8.
Exman,
9.
Charvat,
op. cit., op. cit.,
p. 45. p. 307.
10.
Ibid, p. 56.
11.
Madison,
12.
North American Review, 56 (1843), 110. Nathaniel Hawthorne suffered; see
13.
Charvat, 14.
op. cit.,
op. cit.,
Quoted
in
p. 45.
pp. 57-9.
Gordon
S.
Haight,
Mrs
Si-
goumey: The Sweet Singer of Hartford (New Haven, 1930), p. 80. 15. Eminent Women of the Age, p. 87. 16. Quoted in Carl Bode, The American Lyceum:
Town Meeting of the Mind (New York,
1956). 17. Sigoumey wrote prolifically for a number of the magazines, most notably Godey \ Graham and Peterson Y Henry Ward Beecher's work appeared in a newspap)er he 's
largely
controlled.
The
Independent.
wrote almost exclusively for the Ledger.
New
Fern York
358
Notes
Quoted
Matthew
to
Chapter 3
Bruccoli, ed.,
35.
Sprague, Annals, VIII,
The Profession of Authorship in America 18001870: The Papers of William Charvat (n.p.,
36.
Christian Examiner, 28 (1840), 33.
37.
Sprague, Annals,
38.
I
18.
in
J.
1968), p. 92. 19.
American
North
41
Review,
(1835),
441-3. 20.
Examiner,
Christian
(1826),
3
"The Poetry of Mrs. Hemans," aminer, 3d series,
(New York, Earlier
Memoir
41.
p.
A
Grecian Romance
which is concerned with the problem of slavery and women's place. 24. For the importance of feminine novels
(Boston, 1845),
women
reformers, see Gail Parker,
Women
The Oven Birds: American
hood 1820-1920
(New York,
a severe
on
Woman-
1972), pp. 1-56.
but accurate critique of
Martin E. Marty, John G. Deedy, Jr., David Wolf Silverman, and Robert Latachman, The
(New York,
Religious Press in America
1963).
Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters
of Horace Bushnell
(New York,
27.
Christian Examiner,
28.
Ibid.,
29.
Ibid, 38 (1845), 299.
3
1880), p.
The
Unitarian
Daniel Walker
is
Conscience:
1805-1861
Harvard
(Cambridge,
Eliza Buckminster Lee, Memoirs of Rev.
Stevens
Buckminster
(Boston,
1S5I),
33.
J.
H. Allen, Our Liberal Movement
34.
Mary
E.
Dewey,
p. 358.
in
p. 45.
ed..
Letters ofOrville Dewey,
Poisoned,"
Harper's
New
(1866), 771.
This paragraph
is
a
summary
of
Ann in
Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 4 (1973). 4 (1831), 3-4, and
Ladies' Magazine,
43.
Woman's Record, p. 682. 44. For Sigoumey's life, see Haight, op. cit., and her own autobiography. Letters of Life (New York, 1866). For Hale's life, see Isabelle Webb Entrikin, Sarah Josepha Hale and 'GoBook' (privately printed, 1946),
dey's Lady's
and Ruth
E. Finley, The
Lady ofGodey
's:
Sarah
Josepha Hale (Philadelphia and London, 1931). I
will
46. In
come back
to the uses of Episco-
of
an earlier study of
women
Stowe
in
my
Chap-
Impoverishment:
Autobiography and
D.D. (Boston, 1844),
a smaller
number
"The
Literature of
The Women
Local Colo-
sentimentalists,
America 1865-1914," Women's Studies, 1 (1972), 3-46, 1 found a higher percentage of marriages and assumed wrongly that this would hold true for a bigger sample. Much of my research and discussion here, however, rists in
confirms the research for the earlier study. 47.
Henry James,
don, 1905),
p. 116.
Theology (Boston, 1882),
See
164.
ter Seven.
Joseph Buckminster, D.D. and of His Son Rev. Joseph
1856), p.
"The American Peo-
discussion of Harriet Beecher
Mass., 1970). 32.
for Schools
palianism for the feminine subculture in
(1826), 97.
best study of the Boston Unitari-
Philosophy
Calisthenics
See Beecher, Letters to the People on and Happiness (New York, 1855),
45.
43 (1847), 189.
ans from this point of view
Moral
pp.
Women's Complaints and Their Treatment
2.
Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the Reverend Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1854), p. 138.
Howe,
Leaves,
Douglas Wood, "The Fashionable Diseases:
30.
The
Congrega-
124.
42.
ed..
the present state of the religious press, see
31.
Starved and
Monthly Magazine, 32
reform pur|x>ses. See L.
Philothea:
and
ple
See Eliza-
women did use literature at least
Maria Child,
Greenwood
and Families (New York,
1891), p. 224.
for
Mary
Physiology
40.
Health
occasionally
For
Greenwood,
39.
Christian Ex-
A
reference to the
in
non-evangelical
also Catharine Beecher,
(1836), 328-62.
1
and
Unitarian
a in
by
covered
period
403-18, and
beth Stuart Phelps, Austin Phelps:
26.
toward
tional ministry.
attitude, see the follow-
"The Poetry of Mrs. Hemans,"
ing reviews:
25.
shift
310-12.
Christian Examiner, 29 (1840), 40-6.
For Norton's
War
pre-Civil
Sprague, most notably
but see particularly "The Pulpit,"
lander,
to the
statement on the basis of a
study of Sprague's Annals; the the
Christian Examiner, 28(1840), 119.
Awareness of the potential power of the press is evident everywhere in the articles in the Christian Examiner and the New Eng-
23.
this
pp. 656, 657.
II,
feminized descriptive vocabulary occurred
21.
22.
make
p. 174.
Partial Portraits (Lon-
p. 177.
James Hart, The Popular Book: A Hisof America's Literary Taste (New York,
48.
tory
1950), pp. 91-2. 49.
tracts
Among these
the
more important of the see Edward
men produced,
..
Notes
to
Beecher, The Conflict of Ages: or The Great Debate on the Moral Relations of God and Man
Horace Bushnell, God in Christ (Hartford, 1849) and Nature and the Super(Boston, 1853);
natural
(New
York, 1858); Andrews Norton,
Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels (Boston, 1877); Exi wards A. Park, The
Atonement
For examples,
50.
Common
see
Catharine
Elsther
Sense Applied to Religion; or
The Bible and the People
(New York,
1857);
An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (Boston, 1833) and The Progress of Religious Ideas Lydia Maria Child,
Through Successive Ages
(New
York, 1835),
3
vols.
59.
the
359
William Wilson Manross,
American Episcopal Church
Sedgwick, Sigoumey, Smith, Stephens,
Stowe, Warner, Whitney, and Willis ("Fern")
History of
60.
Howard Allen Bridgeman, "Have We a
Religion for Men?" Andover Review, 13(1 890), 388-96. 61.
Aaron
Ignatius Abell, The Urban Impact
bridge, Mass., 1943), p. 214. 62. Paige Smith, Daughters
Land:
Women
in
of the Promised American History (Boston,
1970), p. 49. 63. William Henry Channing, Memoir of William Ellery Channing, With Extracts from
His Correspondence and Manuscripts (Boston, 64.
I,
p.
140.
Edmund S. Morgan,
A Life of Ezra Stiles and London, 1962), p.
prolific.
Best-selling
65.
Sprague, Annals,
interest
by these au-
66.
Ibid, p. 559.
thors are: Alcott, Little
Women
(1868); Finley,
Dinsmore (1867); Holmes, Lena Rivers
(1856); Phelps, The Gates Ajar (1868); Prentiss,
Stepping Heavenward (1869); Sedgwick, Hope
The Gentle Puritan:
1727-1795
were exceptionally works of considerable Elsie
A
(New York,
1950), p. 246.
1846),
Alcott, Finley, Holmes, Phelps, Pren-
51. tiss,
Chapter 3
on American Protestantism 1865-1900 (Cam-
(Boston, 1839).
Beecher,
.
(New Haven
188. p. 372.
I,
and Letters ofHorace Bushnell, p. 3 3 68. See Mrs. E. A. Bacon, Memoir of Reverend Henry Bacon (Boston, 1857), passim; and Caroline A. Soule, Memoir of Reverend H. B. 67
Life
Sigoumey, The Young Lady's Offering (1847); Smith, The Newsboy (1854);
Soule (Boston,
Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852); Stephens, Fashion and Famine (1854); Warner, The Wide
LL.D., Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography (New York, 1902), pp. 4, 120-1, 1 19.
Leslie
(1827);
Wide World
(1850);
Whitney, Faith Cartney's
a 863); Willis ["Fanny Fern"], Fern
Girlhood
Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio (1853) and Ruth Hall:
A
Domestic Tale of the Present Time
(1854).
enteenth Century (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), pp.
271-2.
See "The Influence of the Gospel on
the Character and Condition of the Female Sex," in Sermons by the Late Joseph Buckminster
(Boston, 1841), pp. 383-410. 54.
lor
York, 1892),
Quoted
in
Milton Powell,
ed.,
The Vol-
73. 74.
York and London,
1966), pp.
56.
The Universalist,
57.
F.
125-6
2 (1833), 326.
D. Huntington, Sermons for the People
(Boston, 1856),
p. 350.
Christian Examiner, 62 (1857), 264.
Quoted in Powell, op. cit., p. 127. Quoted in ibid., pp. 68-9. Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character
76.
Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the
Reverend Sylvester Judd,
p. 148.
Charles Butler, E^., The American Lady
(Philadelphia, 1842), p. 36.
See
Henry
Steele
Commager,
Theodore
Parker (Boston, 1947), passim. 79.
Visitors
D.D.,
erson (Boston, 1834), pp. 74, 127.
cences
of European
Cuyler,
ofMiss Susanna Anthony (Portland, Me., 1810). 75. Ralph Emerson, Life of Rev. Joseph Em-
(New
the Eyes
Ledyard
p. 28.
untary Church: American Religious Life Seen
Through
Theodore
Quoted in Frank Hugh Foster, The Life of Edwards Amasa Park (New York, 1936),
78.
p. v.
860), passim.
71.
77.
Daniel Wise, The Young Lady > Counsel-
(New
55.
70.
72.
David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Sev52.
53.
69.
1
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Reminisof Rev. William Ellery Channing, D.D.
(Boston, 1880), pp. 41, 42. 80.
William Henry Channing, Memoir of
William Ellery Channing, 81
58. Rev. William L. Gage, Trinitarian Sermons Preached to a Unitarian Congregation
Jesse
(Boston, 1859), pp. v-xxi.
ment
I,
p. 67.
On the development of the libraries, see H. Shera, Foundations of
the Public Li-
brary: The Origins of the Public Library in
New England 1629-1855
Move-
(Chicago,
360
1949),
Notes
to
and Sidney Ditzion, Arsenals of a DemoA Social History of the American
cratic Culture:
Public Library the
Movement
(Northampton,
1900 (Chicago,
to
82. Shera, op.
cit.,
p. 209.
tory of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley,
terly,
cit.,
p. 166.
York,
Ibid.,
87.
Ditzion,
88.
Parker Willis, Tbe Rag Bag:
to Religion,
A
Collection
90. See
Housekeeping"
Minister's
Oldtown 91.
I
women
and
p. xii,
Letters on the
of Religion (Hartford, 1857). Harriet Beecher Stowe, "The
Difficulties
in
Sam Lawson's
will discuss ministerial biographies
by
Chapter Five.
92. Edwards A. Park, ed., The Works of Samuel Hopkins, D.D., With a Memoir of His Life,
Vol.
93.
(Boston, 1854),
I
Sprague, Annals,
94. Selections from the Writings
C
Mayo
Edgarton
band (Boston,
with a Memoir
and
Universalist
Hartford Female Seminary
the
of
(Hartford, 1829),
p. 7.
For examples of p>opular biographies
105.
of popular
women
missionaries, see Daniel C.
(New York,
sion
Woman's MisEmily C. Judson,
(Boston, 1847).
A
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, The Gaywor-
107.
and Thrums (Boston
Story of Threads
and London,
and
of Female Education,"
1855);
Memoir of Sarah B. Judson (New York, 1849); James D. Knowles, Memoir of Ann H. Judson
By Her Hus-
1865), p. 287.
See Michael Davitt
Romance of New England
the Historical
108.
All page references are to Eliza Buck-
Two Hundred
minster Lee, Naomi; or Boston
96. Catharine E. Beecher, The True
for the Wrongs of Enterprise
Women
Remedy
Years
with a History of an
Having That for
Its Object
(Boston,
Hawthorne
Bell,
(Princeton, 1971).
8 (1840),
15.
Ago
109.
(Boston, 1848).
Mary
Wyman,
Alice
ed..
The Auto-
biography of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (Lewiston,
Me., 1924), pp. 22, 85, 216.
1851), p. 49. 97.
the Trustees
106.
ofMrs. Sarah
Ladies' Repository,
13^8.
Catharine E. Beecher, Suggestions Re-
104.
thys:
1849), p. 88.
95. "Illustrations
World Mission
in
1968), pp.
specting Improvements in Education Presented to
p. 28.
p. 551.
I,
(Grand Rapids, Mich.,
Exidy, Daughters of the Cross or
Fireside Tales (Boston, 1871).
in
R. Pierce Beaver, All Loves Excelling:
American Protestant Women
p. 83.
of Ephemera (New York, 1859), p. 262. 89. Catharine E. Beecher, Common Sense Applied
n.d.), p. 348.
103.
p. 94.
86.
op. cit.,
1961), p. 223.
102. L.
Ibid, p. 140.
85.
(New York,
Girl-
T. Guilford, The Use of a Life: Memorials of Mrs. Z. P. Grant Bannister (New
27 (1975), 178-99.
84. Shera, op.
hood
(Spring-
Lucy Larcom, A New England
101.
83.
Half Century
Mass., 1887).
field,
Ronald Story, "Class and Culture in Boston: The Athenaeum," American Quar-
Philadelphia,
See Mrs. Sarah D. (Locke) Stowe, His-
100.
Mass. During Its First
1947).
and
Mass.,
1852).
New England and
in
Middle States from 1850
Chapter 3
See Emily Noyes Vanderpoel and Eliz-
abeth C. Barney Buel,
eds.. Chronicles
of a Pio-
110. All
page references are to Elizabeth
Oakes Smith, Bertha and Lily; or The Parsonage
Miss Sarah Pierce and Her Litchfield School
of Beech Glen: A Romance (New York, 1855). 111. Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record:
(Cambridge, Mass., 1903); Vanderpoel,
or Sketches ofAll Distinguished
neer Schoolfrom 1792-1833, Being the History of
ed.,
More
Chronicles of a Pioneer School from 1792 to 1833 Being Added History on the Litchfield
Female Academy (Cambridge, Mass., 1927). 98.
Mae
E.
Harveson,
in
Catharine Esther
Beecher: Pioneer Educator (Philadelphia, 1932),
correspondence with
includes
her
Grant
Appendix A,
in
99. All
Zilpah
pp. 257-9.
page references to Lyon's career
here, unless otherwise stated, are to
Edward
Hitchcock, The Power of Christian Benevolence Illustrated in the Life and Labors of Mary Lyon
Creation p.
to
Women From the A.D. 18H (New York, 1855),
328. 112.
Hart,
op. cit.,
113. Shera, op.
15.
p.
cit.,
113.
p.
114.
Ibid.,
pp. 117-18.
115.
Ibid.,
p.
116.
Ditzion,
117.
Ibid.,
118.
Quoted
Feminine pp. 55-6.
120. op. cit.,
p.
and Shera,
Fifties
in
132.
op. cit.,
pp. 146
Fred Lewis Pattee,
(New
York,
1940), op.
ff.
The cit.,
Notes
1
The Writings of Mrs Sarah
19.
Mayo,
C.
to
Edgarton
D.D.
The Works of William E. Charming, (Boston and New York, 1849), \'I,
121. Ibid.,
II, p.
Dewey, "On
Human
Life" in Discourses on
and
Life
141.
280.
122.
Christian Examiner, 21 (1836-7), 399.
123.
Ibid, 80 (1866), 360.
124.
Ibid, 56(1854), 33-4.
125.
Horace
Things
Novels," North American Review,
the
32 (1831),
the Religion of
Human (New York,
Nature,
Nature of Religion,
I
1847), 292-3.
162.
p.
361
386-421; Orville
p. 32.
120.
Chapter 4
(New
York, 1868),
See "Jane Bouverie," Christian Exam-
50(1831), 178-89.
Fumess and Dr.
142. "Dr.
Question of
Moral Uses of Dark
Bushnell,
iner,
Words and Names,"
Christian Ex-
aminer, 66 (1859), 115. 143.
p. 27.
"Miss Bremer's Novels," North Ameri-
W.
Quoted in William G. McLoughlin, The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecber: An Essay
Peabody, "Paul de Kock's Novels,"
on the Shifting Values of Mid-Victorian America
(1843), 276-300.
126.
1840-1870
(New York,
128. Wise, op. 129.
cit.,
For several
144.
p. 87.
classic statements
"The
Up From
A
Memoir by His Brother
(Boston,
Bushnell,
Reform Against Nature
Woman Suff(New York,
p.
135.
of Piety," Christian Ex-
aminer, 74 (1863), 428. 148.
ed.,
Sermons by
the
Late William B. 0. Pea-
body, p. 133. 149. Almira H. Lincoln Phelps, Lectures to Young Ladies Comprising Outlines and Applications
of the Different Branches of Female Educa-
tion (Boston, 1833), pp. 171, 172.
See Beaver,
131.
Sarah Hale, Manners or Happy Homes
and Good
op. cit,
passim.
Society All the Year
150.
See
Sedgwick, Home (Boston, I
base
Lynn and
ibid.,
ist,"
my
Elliott
Maria
Catharine
particularly
"Novels and Tales," Christian Exam-
66 (1859), 297. 151. H. T. T., "Mr. Thackeray As a Novel-
iner,
Round (Boston,
1868), p. 53.
152.
60 (1856), 103.
Dewey,
Discourses, pp. 261-4.
153. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Austin Phelps:
1854).
remarks here on Robert
W.
Wright, The Big Little School:
Sunday Child of American Protestantism (New York, 1971); Edwin Wilbur Rice, The Sunday School Movement 1780-1917 and the American Sunday School Union 1817-1917 (Philadelphia, 1917);
36
William B. 0. Pea-
"New Books
130.
133.
body With
the Late
"Miss Bremer's Novels,"
1869).
132.
Sermons by
147.
included in Aileen Kraditor,
Horace
145.
146.
History ofAmerican Feminism (Chicago, 1968), rage: The
ibid.,
Regard to Reading," New
in
Pasto-
the Pedestal: Selected Writings in the
pp. 50-2, and
O.
Englander, 10 (1852), 188-97.
of the
Letter" of 1837 provoked by early femi-
nist activity
"Duty
B.
1849), p. cviii.
anti-feminist clerical pK)sition, see ral
can Review, 37 (1845), 128. See also
1970), p. 88.
Edwards A. Park, The Theology of the Intellect and of the Feelings (Andover, Mass., 1850), pp. 3^. 127.
A
Bushnell:
Joanna Bethune, The Power of Faith Ex-
134.
and Writings of the Late Graham (New York, 1843). Lynn and Wright op. cit., p. 128.
135.
Christian Examiner, 78 (1862), 178.
136.
National Preacher, 3d
A
Memoir, 1
54.
p. 224.
"Dante's Beatrice as a
Type
of
Wom-
anhood," Christian Examiner, 64 (1858), 49. And see J. W., "The Woman Question," Christian Examiner, 56 (1854), 1-34.
William Ware, Zenobia; or
155.
Palmyra (New York,
1854),
the Fall
of
p. 196.
I,
emplified in the Life
Mrs
109.
Isabella
See Calhoun,
137.
Ware,
1
(1862),
1.
The Miscellaneous Writings of Henry Jr.,
IV
(Boston, 1846), p. 338.
138.
Christian Examiner,
139.
"The Poetry of Mrs.
tian Examiner, 3d series, 140.
series,
p. 109.
op. cit.,
See Daniel
204. See
W.
B.
1
Howe,
34 (1845), 136-7. W^mzTis,''' Chris-
(1836), 335, 341. op.
cit.,
THE LOSS OF THEOLOGY: FROM DOGMA TO FICTION
pp. 189-
O. Peabody, "The Waverly
All page references are to Joseph Bel-
lamy, True Religion Delineated in The Works of Joseph Bellamy With a Memoir of His Life and Character, 1853), 2.
tory
ed.
Tyron
Edwards
(Boston,
I.
Hugh New England
A
See Frank
Foster,
of
Theology
1963), pp.
200
ff.;
Genetic His-
(New York,
Joseph Harountunian, Piety
362
Notes
New
Versus Moralism: The Passing of the
land Theology
See
3.
York, 1932), pp. 164^79. Grandmother's Blue Book" in
"My
May
F.
(Cambridge,
Mass.,
Chapter 4
Eng-
(New
The
4.
problem
the "Introductory Essay" in Disvii-
are
the Exiwardsean position on the Atonement.
ing Conceptions of Original Sin:
American Theology Since 1750
which sheds
light
on
A
Study
(New
in
York,
a closely related
problem. See
5.
Grounded
gation
(New York,
(New York,
of Universal Obli-
1877), p. 37.
Christian Examiner, 80 (1866), 278-9. 15.
See the excellent discussion
ton Smith,
ed.,
Horace Bushnell
16.
Excerpts from
this
Bushnell, pp. 277-359. ness
The
and Law was published
Emmons,
Nathaniel
particularly
God
Horace
original Forgivein
New
York
in
Emmons
Smith,
pp. 281,
Woman Record; or Women From the AD. 1854 (New York, 1855), pp.
Sarah Josepha Hale,
Sketches
(Boston,
's
of All Distinguished
Creation to
ibid.; Hopkins apparently got this from Jonathan Edwards' wife, Sarah Pierpont. See "Sin Through Divine Interposition, An Advantage to the Universe and Yet This No Encouragement for Sin" and "An Inquiry Into the Nature of True Holiness," in
Horace Bushnell,
ed.,
xxxvii, xxxix.
See
6.
19.
Smith,
Horace Bushnell,
ed.,
The Works of Samuel Hopkins, D.D. (Boston, II, pp. 493-545, and III, pp. 5-66.
Under pressure by
7.
the Universalists, Bel-
lamy, like other prominent Edwardseans, was
move toward
ment.
In
Christ has
the idea of a general Atone-
other words, God's sacrifice of
made
saved, although
it
all
possible for
men
men
all
will not
to be
20.
Haroutunian,
Quoted
8.
op. cit.,
21.
I,
p. lix.
Treatise on the
Quoted
Hosea Ballou,
Atonement (Boston,
1860).
William Sprague, Annals of American Pulpit (New York, 1837-69),
10.
in
Henry Ware, Jr., Memoirs of Reverend Noah Worcester (Boston, 1 844), p.
is
in
National Preacher,
22.
This essay
is
in ibid.,
20 (1846), 169-79.
sive Virtues," Sermons for the
York, 1858),
p. 339,
and "The
New
23.
C
Selections from the Writings
Edgarton
Mayo
24.
Hall,
op
with a Memoir
1849), p. 57. cit.,
pp. 459-60.
25. For a brilliant critique of the newly humanized Christ, see Charles Hodge, reviewing Bushnell's God in Christ in Essays and Re-
views
(New York,
1879), pp. 436-43.
a strict Calvinist, points
out that
to the
Memory of the
Rev.
Noah
Worcester,
"a
sion
D.D.
Atonement
work of art [which] produces an impresmore powerful than a formula" (p. 437).
26. I,
Hodge,
in Bushnell's
the
(Boston, 1837).
in
of Mrs. Sarah By Her Hus-
is
Tribute
(New
Coat"
Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the Reverend Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1854), pp. 274-6.
interpretation, Christ's act in the
A
Life
Little
VTII, p. 197, and
See also William E. Charming,
13
See also Bushnell, "The Efficiency of the Pas-
band (Boston,
pp. 164, 165.
All page references are to
9.
This essay
p. 36.
(1839), 65-80.
Exiwards, ed., The Works of
in
Joseph Bellamy,
See
Christopher Crowfield [Harriet Bee-
cher Stowe], Little Foxes (Boston, 1866),
be able to
themselves of this opportunity.
avail
302,
pp.
307.
1852),
127.
Vicar-
280, 282. 18.
to Punish Sinners," in Jacob Ide,
The Works of Nathaniel
the
York,
work and The
ious Sacrifice are included in Smith, ed.,
idea
A
H. Shel-
in
(New
1965), passim.
1842), VI, pp. 111-22, 181, 152-7.
to
And see
1866), pp. 279-83.
See "Review of Current Literature,"
14.
17.
ed..
in Principles
1874.
"God's Hatred of Sinners," "The Heavenly Hosts Praise God for His Justice," and "Saints Desire
Display of
Horace Bushnell, "Loving God is But Letting God Love Us" in Sermons on Living Subjects
Essay on
Moral Agency (Salem, Mass., 1 794). For an excellent recent study on the idea of sin and human agency, see H. Shelton Smith, Chang-
1955),
rifice,
an understanding of the range of
An
Noah
to
A
See Horace Bushnell, The Vicarious Sac-
13.
See also Stephen West, D.D.,
are
Sacrifice:
Life of Bronson Alcott (Boston, 1937), p. 169.
Edwards A. Park, ed.. The Atonement: courses and Treatises (Boston, 1859), pp. Ixxx. The documents included here essential to
references
ed.
best discussion of this theological is still
page
1966),
391^12.
pp.
All
11.
Worcester, The Atoning
Love Not of Wrath (Cambridge, Mass., 1830). 12. Odell Shepard, Pedlar's Progress: The
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oldtown Folks,
Henry
to
434.
Park, ed.. The Works of Samuel Hopkins,
.
Notes
Exiwards A. Park,
27.
Emmons
thaniel
ed.,
to
Memoir of Na-
(Boston, 1861),
I,
p.
Chapter 4
"Judd's Discourses on the Church," Christian
Examiner, 56 (1854), 428-45.
434.
28. The Autobiography ofLyman Beecher, ed. Barbara M. Cross (Cambridge, Mass., 1961),
45.
Ibid.,
II, p.
133.
For examples of Lyman Beecher's exhortations to his eldest sons William and Exi30.
ward, see
ibid.,
For
31.
I,
ibid.,
cher:
Study in American Domesticity
(New
Haven and London, 1973), passim. 33. Quoted in William G. McLoughlin, The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher: An Essay on the Shifting Values of Mid-Victorian America
1840-1870 (New York, 34.
Autobiography
1970), p. 15.
of Lyman
Beecher,
I,
Ibid.,
pp. 55-7. Harriet Beecher
theology
York,
Wooing
The Minister's
in
(New
Memoir (New York, 1891), pp. 23-5. 38. Mary E. Dewey, ed.. Autobiography and
Letters p. 33.
52.
of
Orville Dewey, D.D. (Boston, 1884),
A
See Sylvester Judd,
Young
Man
'j
Churches in 1894), pp. 40.
the
216
53.
Spend Holy Time" can be
to
The Works of Henry Ware, Jr. (Boston, 1846), I, pp. 87-106. in
Henry Ward Beecher, Norwood
lage Life in
New England (New
or Vil-
York, 1868),
pp. 301-2, v-vi.
Horace
55.
Work and Play Q^tv/
Bushnell,
York, 1883), pp. 10-16. 56.
Henry Ward Beecher,
Yale Lectures,
p. 186.
57.
Mary
Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters
of Horace Bushnell
(New York,
1880), p. 537.
Ibid, p. 517. p. 60.
59.
Ibid.,
(New York,
60.
Quoted
ff.
in
Smith,
ed.,
61.
Cheney,
Works by Lyman Beecher
62.
Ibid, p. 532.
63.
Richard Hofstadter
in
II,
pp. 221-2.
See the seventeenth-century treatise by
New
England minister Thomas Shepard, The Parable of the Ten Virgins (London, 1660), a work very influential on the Exiwardseans. 42. William Henry Channing, Memoir of
the
1973).
Horace Bushnell,
p. 281.
(Boston and Cleveland, 1852), 41.
"How
found
See "The Design, Rights and Duties of
Local Churches"
Donald Meyer,
World W^^r / (Hanover, N.H.,
Congregational
United States
1971);
A
(New York, 1965); and Gail Thain Parker, Mind Cure in New England: From the Civil War
58.
Walker,
Williston
(New York,
Study of the American Quest for Health, Wealth and Personal Power
ton, 1838). 39.
(1854), 437.
Vale Lectures on
See Richard Huber, The American Idea
The Positive Thinkers:
Ac-
count of His Conversion from Calvinism (Bos-
"Judd's Discourses on the
in
Henry Ward Beecher,
of Success
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Austin Phelps:
37.
A
1
54.
Frank Hugh Foster, The Life ofEdwards Amasa Park (New York, 1936), pp. 52-3.
Quoted
1874), pp. 181-6.
1859).
36.
(New
Warner], Daisy Plains
Preaching (Boston and Chicago, 1872, 1873,
Stowe
used this letter as the basis of her heroine's
p. 21.
p. 223.
cit.,
Church," Christian Examiner, 56
to
pp. 224-6. 35.
Ibid, p. 187.
5
See Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Bee-
A
48.
49. [Susan
pp. 355-86. 32.
Voung Man's Account,
Hall,
50.
see
A op
47.
York, 1885), pp. 102-22.
pp. 278-80, 288-9.
correspondence,
this
See Bushnell, Christian Nurture, passim.
46. Judd,
p. 28.
29.
363
op. cit.,
Anti-Intellectualism
in
p. 518.
in his classic study,
(New
American Life
York, 1962), speculates that the root of the
American disrespect or lies in
distrust of the
the sentimentalization of
faith: "to the extent that
it
its
mind
religious
becomes accepted
William Ellery Channing, with Extracts from
in
His Correspondence and Manuscripts (Boston,
largely an affair of the heart or of the intuitive
1846), 43.
I,
pp. 375-6.
Horace
qualities of the
Views of Christian
Bushnell,
Nurture (Hartford, 1847), 44.
For Judd's views,
any culture," he
of Discourses (Boston, 1854). For a favorable review of Judd's book which links it with Series
see E. E.
is
mind and
is
that the rational
irrelevant or worse, so far
it
will be
believed that the rational faculties are barren
p. 11.
see The Church in a
Bushnell's Christian Nurture,
mind
writes, "that religion
H.,
or perhaps dangerous" 64.
Horace
Bushnell,
(p. 47).
Woman
Suffrage: The
Reform Against Nature (New York, 1869), pp. 65, 66, 24. For a study of the problem of
364
Notes
and
anti-intellectualism
women,
to
nineteenth-century
Chapter 4
erals:
A
Study
(New
American Theology
in
Mid-America, 48 (1966), 258-70. Also of im-
York, 1941), pp. 6-13. 80. Foster, Edwards Amasa Park, pp. 233-5. 81. See "Subjects for the Pulpit," Christian
portance for this problem
Examiner, 41 (1846), 381-92.
see Barbara Welter, "Anti-Intellectu-
American Woman: 1800-1860,"
alism and the
is
Barbara Welter,
"The Feminization of American Religion 1800-1860"
Hartman and
S.
Mary
in Clio's Consciousness, eds.
Banner
Lx>is
(New York,
Harriet Beecher Stowe, My Wife and I Henry Henderson's History (New York,
1872), pp. 189-91. 66.
Neighbors Street 67.
tan:
We and Our
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
of an Unfashionable
the Records
or,
(New York,
1875), p. 39. Italics mine.
Conn., 1969). For American scholars
in
many,
Histori-
Quoted
Than Fiction
'j
Magazine, 8
torical Penpective
( 1
85
1 ),
29-
133-4.
1 (1850),
H. Richard Niebuhr and
in
Daniel D. Williams,
The Ministry
eds..
(New
in His-
York, 1956),
p. 244.
70.
Quoted
71.
Daniel (Dalhoun, Professional Lives
in ibid,
p. 279.
in
America: Structure and Aspiration 1750-1850
(Gimbridge, Mass., 1965), National Preacher,
p.
152.
new
no.
2
eds.,
op.
cit.,
p. 45;
Mary Latimer Gambrell,
Training
Ministerial
New England (New 75. Emmons said,
in
Eighteenth-Century
York, 1937),
They
See
Memoir of Nathaniel
ed..
Sprague, Annals, VIII,
77.
Charles
Dwtght (New York, P.
Timothy
Andrews Norton,
1942), pp. 44-7.
Fisher,
A
Discourse
Com-
(New Haven, 1858), p. 26. Day Williams, The Andover Lib-
Daniel
A
Statement of Rea-
Not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians Concerning the Nature of God and the Person of Christ (Boston, 1867), p. 37. 87. Quoted in Perry Miller, The Transcen-
An
dentalists:
Anthology (Ciambridge, Mass.,
1967), p. 221.
Exiwards A. Park,
A
Discourse Delivered
at the Funeral of Professor Moses Stuart (Boston, 5.
89. See particularly Edward Beecher, "The Nature, Importance and Means of Eminent Holiness Throughout the Church," Na-
10 (1835), 193-223.
tional Preacher,
Beecher
the true Christian must possess both the
military and pacific virtues. See also
(1861), 223-31,
Religion That
and Is
F.
Henry A.
Energy of
new
series
4
D. Huntington, "The
Natural," in Sermons for the
gian:
Edwards A.
An
Park, Duties of a Theolo-
Anniversary Address
(New
York,
1839), p. 25.
memorative of the History of the Church of Christ in Vale College During the First Century of Its 79.
86.
sons for
90.
p. 45.
Cunningham,
E.
1852),
People (Boston, 1856), pp. 362-99.
76.
Existence
Mass.,
Christianity," National Preacher,
pp. 106-7.
George
(Cambridge,
Christianity
293.
are the offsprings of a cor-
Park, I,
ing p.
Nelson, "The Gentleness and
rupted heart and nourished by vicious exam-
Emmons,
p. 7.
Andrews Norton, "A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity" in Tracts Concern-
reason or
in
in
85.
insists
"Diversions, properly so
have no foundation either
religion.
p. 27.
Study
Kermit Vanderbilt, Charles
in
(Cambridge, Mass., 1959),
1852), p.
Niebuhr and Williams,
p. 279.
78.
A
Ger-
Eliot Norton: Apostle of Culture in a Democracy
88.
series
(1859), 186.
Ibid.,
Quoted
84.
All page references are to (Datharine
and The Literary World,
ple."
German
of Culture (Ithaca, N.Y., 1965).
Beecher's hostility, see The Knickerbocker, 36
called,
see Jurgen Herbst, The
American Scholarship:
(1850), 464^5, Holden
74.
Wayne Brown,
The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America 18001870: The New England Scholars (Middletown,
the Transfer
book, responses which sensed the source of
73.
a discussion of the failure of Biblical
criticism at this time, see Jerry
cal School in
(Boston, 1850). For negative responses to the
72.
York,
Life of Delia Bacon ((Cambridge, Mass.,
Elsther Beecher, Truth Stranger
69.
For
44.
1959), p. 100.
30,
(New
See Vivian C. Hopkins, Prodigal Puri-
A
68.
Memoir of the
See Christian Examiner, 43 (1847), 324-
83.
65.
A
n.d.), p. 311.
1974), pp. 137-57.
or,
Rev. Asa Cummings,
82.
Reverend Edward Payson, D.D.
91.
Exiwards A. Park, The Theology of the and of the Feelings (Andover, Mass.,
Intellect
1850), pp. 92.
5, 3, 34.
"The Andover and Princeton Theolo-
gies," Christian
Examiner, SI (1852),
31.
Notes
to
Chapter 4
365
Hodge, "The Theology of the Intellect," Essays, pp. 543, 572. For Hodge's life, see A. A. Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge
gotten Samaritan
(New
Dix (Boston and
93. Charles
York, 1880).
Ihid, p. 272.
95.
115. Marshall,
Em-
p. Ixiii.
I,
96. Park, ed.,
Memoir of Nathaniel Emmons,
p. 76.
97. Park, The Theology
of the
Intellect
and of
98. Ibid., pp. 21-2.
Hodge,
99. Charles
Walker, op
100.
op. cit,
ctt,
p.
625.
gationalists in America:
A
Popular History of
and Work
their Origin, Belief, Polity, Growth,
(New
York, 1894), pp. 467-88. 102. J. H. Allen, "On Some Effects of the
Voluntary System, Especially
Our Coun-
in
try Parishes," Christian Examiner, 84 (1868),
Ihid.,
117.
Marshall,
T. McColgan, Joseph Tucker-
103. Daniel
man: Pioneer
in
DC,
ington,
discussion of
American Social Work (Wash-
1940),
pp. 9,
Tuckerman's
10,
19,
32.
My
based on this
life is
biography.
Results of the Ministry at Large in Boston (Bos-
ton, 1838), pp. 135, 139, 37.
nett,
3,
Yale Lectures, 173.
William C. Gannett, Ezra
Gan-
Stiles
Unitarian Minister in Boston 1824-1871
(Boston, 1875),
p. 387.
D.D. (Boston and
New
Channing,
York, 1848), VI, pp.
209-10.
The
108.
V,
Works of Charles Follen with a Life (Boston and New York,
p. 254.
Sumner
The Life of Edwin H. Chapin (Boston, 1882), pp. 87-103. 110.
Ellis,
For anti-professionalism,
anti-intellec-
tualism,
and anti-institutionalism among early
women
nurses and doctors, see
Wood, "The War Within
Ann Douglas
A War"
and "The
Fashionable Diseases." See also Lydia Maria Child, The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages vols.,
111.
115.
L.
War (New York,
Dannett,
1959), p. 60; Sylvia
Women of
Noble
ed..
(New York and London, 119. Tiffany,
op
cit.,
1959), pp. 88-104.
p. 358.
120.
Marshall, op
121.
Quoted in Young, See Young, op. cit.,
122. op. cit,
p.
G.
North
the
cit,
pp. 206, 210. op. cit,
p.
104.
pp. 308-9; Tiffany,
141.
123.
Marshall,
124.
Fanny Fern, Rose Clark (New York,
op. cit.,
p. 57.
1856), pp. 15-21. 125.
The popular
novelist Elizabeth Stuart
was passionately
Phelps, for example,
inter-
ested in anti-vivisection. Yet she never lets the
ti-vivisection societies or
even be aware of
their existence. See Though Life
Do Us
Part
126.
Tuckerman,
127.
Calhoun,
op. cit.,
op. cit,
p. 324.
p. 183.
128. Park, Duties 129.
of a Theologian, p. 5. Exiwards A. Park, The Indebtedness of
130. IHd., p. 22. 131.
Gannett, Ezra
Stiles
Gannett, pp. 30,
76, 500.
Memoir of His 109.
p.
the State to the Clergy (Boston, 1851), p. 11.
The Works of William E.
107.
1887),
op. cit,
(Boston, 1908), and Trixy (Boston, 1904).
Henry Ward Beecher,
pp. 187, 189, 192, 193, 215, 106.
101.
heroines of her anti-vivisection fiction join an-
Joseph Tuckerman, The Principles and
105.
p.
ff.; David the Discovery Asylum: Social The Rothman, of J. Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston and Toronto, 1971); Agatha Young, The Women and the Crisis: Women of the North in the
222.
104.
op. cit,
11.
p.
p. 104.
116.
Civil
pp. 597-9.
Rev. Albert E. Dunning, D.D., Congre-
101.
York, 1891),
118. See Tiffany, op. cit, pp. 53
the Feelings, p. 8.
3
New
114.
Memoir of Nathaniel Emmons, The Works of Nathaniel
1937),
Francis Tiffany, Life of Dorothea Lynde
p. 296.
mons,
I,
112.
Ihid, p. 19.
Ide, ed..
N.C.,
Hill,
p. 54.
113.
94. Park, ed.. I,
(Chapel
(New York and London,
1855),
for a veiled attack on theology.
Helen
E. Marshall, Dorothea Dix: For-
132. John Ware, M.D., Memoir of the Life of Henry Ware, Jr (Boston, 1846), pp. 99, 46. 133.
Ibid, pp. 46,466, 87,469.
134.
Ibid.,
pp. 321-3,474.
135.
Ibid.,
p. 331.
136.
Henry Ware,
Jr.,
On
the
Formation of and
the Christian Character ((Cambridge, Mass.,
Boston, 1831), pp. 288, 318, 390, 293, 391. 137. Ibid., pp. 165, 53, 67-8. 138. [Catharine
England Tale
Maria Sedgwick],
(New
A New
York, 1822), pp. 214, 252. 139. Elizabeth Wetherell [Susan Warner],
Queechy (Philadelphia, 1892), 140.
Ibtd,
II,
pp. 213-14.
I,
p. 69.
366
Notes
Henry Ware,
141.
to
Progress of the Chris-
Jr.,
Chapter 5
The Rise and Fall of Feminism
5.
George H.
THE ESCAPE FROM HISTORY: THE STATIC IMAGINATION Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A
Guide
to
(New York,
1972).
A
Pseudo-Events in America
"pseudo-event," in Boorstin's definition,
event which
is
made
happen, because indeed
so that
it
it
to happen, or
mass
an
seem to
covered by the media,
is
can be covered by the media.
many of the "events" of
Boorstin suggests that
modem
is
life
cations; that attention-getting substitutes for
have found
I
helpful for
my own
2.
I
this analysis greatly
thinking.
am not using the term "ideology" in the
Marxist sense of that cluster of concepts by
which a ruling class perpetuates and solidifies its hegemony. I rather mean to suggest by the term a coherent body of doctrine to which groups and individuals give their allegiance
and which opposes apparent
as well as supports their
self-interest.
Both
Marxism and
Christianity have at different points func-
tioned as an ideology in this sense. For
two
crucial discussions relating to this issue, see
Georg Lukacs,
History and Class Consciousness:
Studies in Marxist Dialectics,
trans.
Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.,
Rodney and
1968),
Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia:
An
In-
troduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans.
Louis Wirth and
Edward
Shils
(New York,
n.d.). 3. There were exceptions, of course, although they lie largely outside this study. See
the
openly feminist
Christianity the Equality
revisionist
studies
of
by Sarah M. Grimke', Letters on of the Sexes and the Condition of
Its Practice
timore and London, 1970),
and Purpose
(Bal-
p. 35.
pp. 57-9.
6.
Ibid.,
7.
Whitman
of course argues this in his
"Preface to 1855 Exiition of Leaves of Grass" in
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass and Prose, ed.
Sculley Bradley
Selected
(New York,
1960),
arguments from the turn of the nineteenth century, see The Ameripp. 453-72.
For
similar
can Literary Revolution, 1783-1837, ed. Robert E. Spiller
are not actualities but fabri-
experience.
Callcott, History in the United
1800-1860:
States
1.
America
in
(Chicago, 1969).
tian Life (Boston, 1847), pp. 67, 69, 68, 85.
8.
(New York,
Callcott, op.
cit.,
1967).
p. 195.
Quoted in ibid., p. 139. 10. For the biographies and studies on which my discussion of the lives of these four 9.
men
Van Wyck Brooks, The (New York, 1936);
are drawn, see
Flowering of New England
David Levin, History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley and Parkman (Stanford, 1959);
A
Harvey Wish, The American
Social-Intellectual History
of
the
Historian:
Writing of
(New York, 1960); Marcus Cunliffe and Robin W. Winks, eds., Pastmasters: Some Essays on American Historians (New the
American Past
York, 1969); Russell
B.
Nye, George Bancroft:
Brahmin Rebel (New York,
Oliver
1943);
Wendell Holmes, John Lathrop Motley: A Memoir (Boston, 1879); Howard Doughty, Francis Parkman (New York, 1962), and "Park man's Dark Years:
Dwight
Mary
Letters to
Parkman," Harvard Library Bulletin,
4 (1950), 53-85; George Ticknor, Life of William Hickley Prescott (Philadelphia, 1863).
On
11.
the birth and meaning of the "his-
toricist" viewpoint, see Callcott, op.
cit.;
R. G.
Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York, 1956); Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal
Cady
Return: Or, Cosmos and History, trans. Willard
Stanton, The Woman's Bible (Seattle, Wash.,
R. Trask (Princeton, 1954); G. P. Gooch, His-
Women 1974).
(Boston, 1838), and Elizabeth
Both documents were disavowed, not
simply by the sentimentalists with
whom I am
tory
and Historians
(New
in the Nineteenth
Century
York, 1913); Paige Smith, The Historian
(New York,
Hayden
concerned, but by most of the suffragists
and History
themselves.
On Sarah Grimke's life, see Gerda Lemer, The Grimke Sistersfrom South Carolina:
White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination
Rebels Against Slavery (Boston, 1967).
London,
4. For an interesting although not fully comprehensive study of the feminist move-
quoted
ment from its inception until the present, from the {perspective of this ideological failure, see William O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave:
1964);
of Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and 12.
13.
my
1973).
The I
in
historian
Gooch,
is
Leopold von Ranke,
op. cit.,
p. 87.
speak of Calvinism here, but of course
remark
is
equally
applicable
to
the
Pauline or Augustinian tradition in Catholi-
Notes
to
cism on which the Protestant reformers drew so heavily.
Georg Wilhelm
14.
Philosophy of History, York, 1956), p. 21. 15.
Callcott, op.
16.
Quoted
18.
Quoted Quoted
19.
I
am
trans.
(New
Sibree
J.
(New York,
1965), p.
in
White,
in
Kaufmann,
op. cit.,
my
indebted in
op.
A
1.
cit.,
George
discussion of
He-
p.
in
Nye,
op. cit.,
New
York, 1925), pp. 272-3.
op. cit.,
25. 26.
Ticknor,
27.
Quoted
op. cit,
in
Quoted
28.
in
(New York,
pp. 5-6.
passim.
John Lothrop Motley, The
Holmes,
op. cit.,
p. 26.
Critical Miscellanies (Philadelphia, 1890), p. 77.
Quoted in Ticknor, op. cit., p. 135. 32. Quoted in Herbert Baxter Adams, The Life and Writings of fared Sparks (Boston,
Past: An Interpretation of the Development of Historical Studies in America 16071884 (Chicago, 1960), pp. 115-17. Van Tassel 's
on the
political
motivation of
34.
Quoted
35.
Bancroft's analysis of the witchcraft
44. Francis
George Bancroft, The His-
in
Parkman, La
Salle
and
Nye
the Dis-
125.
III, p.
45. Motley, op.
cit.,
I,
p. 59.
46. Ibid., p. 35.
Exiward Everett, Orations and Speeches
47.
on Various Occasions (Boston, 1870),
Parkman,
48.
III, p.
200.
The Conspiracy of Pontiac,
pp. 312-13. 49.
I
am
indebted in this discussion to
cit.
On
50.
the continuing high reputation at
home and abroad of the romantic historians, John Higham with Leonard Krieger and
see
Felix Gilbert, History (Princeton, 1965), especially pp. 3-72.
in ibid.
late
II.
See also Callcott,
op. cit.,
pp.
21-3.
early nationalist history.
controversy of the
Francis Parkman,
covery of the Great West in Parkman's Works,
Eliade, op.
p. 32.
excellent
is
tory of the United States, ed. Russell B. (Chicago and London, 1966), p. xviii.
See David D. van Tassel, Recording
America
Quoted
43.
31.
I,
The classic example among
pp. 158-9.
The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War After the Conquest of Canada in Parkman
von Ranke, see Smith, op. cit., pp. 50-6, and Gooch, op. cit., pp. 76-100. 30. William H. Prescott, Biographical and
33.
1860), p. 12.
the treatment of Indians, see Levin,
the historians themselves
On
1893),
p. 385.
I,
Francis, Life ofJohn Eliot: The
Works (Boston, 1891-7),
Rise of the Dutch Republic: A History (London, Toronto, and New York, 1920), I, p. 5.
is
Adams,
York, 1856), pp. 177, 391.
!r
Quoted in ibid., p. 66. Doughty, Francis Parkman,
29.
(New
Con vers
On
S.
ofAlexander Wilson and Captain
41.
op. cit.,
Orator and Statesman (Boston and
24.
[William B. O. Peabody and George
40.
42.
p. 41.
Paul Revere Frothingham, Edward Ev-
23.
39.
Hillard], Lives
I,
22. Ibid., p. 63.
erett:
See The Library of American Biography, IS volumes, ed. Jared Sparks (New York,
Apostle to the Indians
Quoted
pp. 200-^. 108.
38.
Tick-
120. 21.
See Prescott, The Conquest of Mexico, The Conquest of Peru and Other Selections, ed.
John Smith Hillard (Boston, 1877),
S.
the 74.
36.
p. 251.
and Journals of George
Life, Letters,
20.
States of America from the Discovery of American Continent (Boston, 1844), III, p.
1835-48).
p. 91.
gel to Larry Gross.
nor, ed.
161
Roger Howell (New York, 1966), 37. Quoted in Nye, op. cit, p.
pp. 9-11.
cit.,
Walter Kaufmann, Hegel:
in
Reinterpretation 17.
Friedrich Hegel, The
Chapter 5
seventeenth century as
outcome of the attempt by
33^.
51.
Callcott, op.
52.
See Higham,
53.
See Daniel Clalhoun, Professional Lives
cit.,
pp.
op. cit.,
pp. 3-72.
America: Structure and Aspiration 1750-1850
certain groups England clergy to regain their rapidly waning power in community affairs is
(Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 195. For the more general climate of nostalgia in the ante-bellum
both keen and unfair. Bancroft's
period, see
the
of the
ism
is
isters,
New
apparent
in
such statements as "the min-
desirous of unjust
build their
anti-clerical-
hope of
it
influence,
only on error"
could
—hardly
an adequate summation even of the complex role of the
Mathers
in
the witchcraft
crisis.
See George Bancroft, The History of the United
in
the
Arthur
P.
Dudden, "Nostalgia and
Amenczn," Journal of the History of Ideas,
22 (1961), 515-30; Neil Harris, The Artist in
American
1860
Society:
(New York,
The Formative Years 17901966);
Michael
B. Katz, The
Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation
in
Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachu-
368
setts
Notes
to
(Boston, 1968); Marvin Meyers, Tbejack-
sonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief {Stanford,
Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle: Memory
1957);
and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom 1815-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y, 1967); Bernard Wishy, The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modem American Child Nurture (Philadelphia, 1968).
See Callcott,
54.
pp. 69-70, for a
op. cit.,
sociological profile of the
more distinguished
and pp. 111-15 for
historians of the period,
of the antiquarian impulse.
discussion
a
He
makes no mention of the conflict between romantic and antiquarian history I am discussing. 55. Callcott, op.
New
57.
"The Religion of
Englander, 12 (1854),
p. 194.
the Present," Chris-
See Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of
193, 211,
290-3 for his views on war.
Edwards A. Park,
Duties of a Theolo-
(New York,
Anniversary Address
Exiwards A. Park, The Indebtedness of the
64.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick,
York, 1835),
1860
The Lin-
(New
p. xii.
I,
Ann
D. Wood, "The 'Scribbling Women' and Fanny Fern: Why Women 71.
See
On
Christian Attitudes Towards
and
(New York and Radical
(1971), 3-24.
Roland H. Bainton,
pacifism, see
War and
Peace:
Bushnell,
Moral Uses of Dark
York, 1868),
America
Antebellum
in
Eugene
The
Curti,
ment: Phases ofAmerican Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil
(New York, 73.
Curti, op.
cit.,
74.
Henry
May,
op. cit.,
of the State
to the
War
1944), pp. 396-423.
F.
p. 22.
Protestant Churches
(New
York,
op. cit., p. 399,
1949),
cit.,
pp. 201-2.
76. Ibid, pp. 23-4.
Ladies' Magazine, 9(1836), 215-19.
His-
78.
Ladies' Wreath,
tory ofAmerican Magazines Vol. II, 1850-1865 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), p. 51.
79.
Ladies' Album,
80.
See Alice M. Baldwin, The
67.
Quoted
in
Frank Luther Mott,
A
EUet here strikingly anticipated the
French historian Lucien Febvre. See his essay "Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past," in Lucien
Febvre,
A New
Kind of History and Other Es-
K.
trans.
says,
Folca
(New York,
68.
an
'j
Quoted
in
Sarah Josepha Hale,
the Creation to
A.D. 1854
and
the
(1847-8), 50-3.
10(1848), 109-13.
New England (New
American Revolution
York, 1958). (1815), 24-5.
81.
Friend of Peace,
82.
Ibid,
83.
"War: Discourses Before the Congre-
1
5.
gational Ministers of Massachusetts" in
Wom-
and
Record; or Sketches of All Distinguished
Women From
Clergy
1
1973),
pp. 12-26.
(New
York, 1855), pp. 645-6. 69. For examples of typical reviews of
pp.
and Curti,
77.
Clergy, p. 11.
and
p. 48.
75. Curti, op.
p. 76.
65. Park, The Indebtedness
66.
A
Critical Re-evaluation
Nashville, 1960); Peter Brock,
Pacifists
26-7. See also Tyler,
in ibid., p. 11.
(New
Things
70.
to
woods; or Sixty Years Since in America
Industrial America
State to the Clergy (Boston, 1851), p. 11.
Quoted Horace
in the Literary Thought of Her Time Up (Washington, D.C., 1937).
(Princeton, 1968); Merle
1839), p. 29.
63.
A Study of the Works of Catharine Maria Sedgwick (Columbus, Ohio, 1958), and Sister Mary Michael Welsh, Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Her Position
N.C., 1929); Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Fer-
Horace
62.
inadequate, eval-
Bushnell, "Barbarism the First
60.
1
Danger," National Preacher, 21 (1847), 218.
An
later, also
American Peace Crusade 1815-1860 (Durham,
Friend of Peace,
61.
For
uations, see Richard B. Gidez,
(1815), 39.
59.
gian:
(1828), 403-20.
Historical Survey
the Rev. Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1854), pp. 121,
I
(1827-28), 289-95; [F. W. P. Greenwood], ''Hope Leslie, " North American Review, 26
72.
tian Examiner, 67 (1859), 55. 58.
""Hope Leslie, " Western Monthly Magazine,
Wrote," American Quarterly, 23
pp. 112-15.
cit.,
56.
Chapter 5
The
Works of William E. Channing, D.D (Boston New York, 1848), III, pp. 40-1, 50. For a
more ambivalent response to pacifism, see Ralph Waldo Emerson, "War," in Emerson's
New
Works (Boston and
York, 1878), XI,
pp. 177-201.
Sedgwick's historical novels which single out
84.
Ladies' Album,
for praise their ahistorical qualities, see [Wil-
85.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Chapters From
liam
CuUen
Bryant], ''Redwood,
can Review, 20 (1825), 245-69;
''
North Ameri-
Timothy
Flint,
a Life (Boston and 86.
Adams,
10(1848), 109.
New
op. cit.,
II,
York, 1897), p. 191.
p. 98.
Notes
87. The Memoir of
to
Chapter S
"A
96.
Lucretia Davidson" by Catharine
97.
exception, appropriately,
is
369
Hall, op Cheney,
Life,
Lucretia Davidson was a young, consump-
York, 1895),
tive,
pious
in
from the
p>oet, entirely different
p. 510.
and Diary (Boston and
Letters
New
p. v.
Henry Bacon,
99.
p. 2.
Addison, Lucy Larcom:
98. Rev. Daniel D.
The Library of American Biography, VII (New York, 1860), pp. 219-98.
Maria Sedgwick,
cit.,
op. cit.,
and Prose by Mrs.
Poetry
usual subjects of the Sparks biographies, and
Charlotte A. Jerauld (Boston, 1850), pp. 17-19.
Sedgwick's account of her
See also Selections from
in the tradition
is
of the clerical-feminine memoirs as describing 88.
I
work
I
will be
it.
am
contemporary
referring to the
of the historian
Femand Braudel and
of
the psychologist-historian Erik Erikson. See particularly Braudel, Capitalism
and Material
Miriam Kochan (New York, 1967), and Erikson, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New Life 1400-1800, trans.
York, 1958). Dramatically different as Braudel
and Erikson of course are, they are among the most distinguished representatives of the modem school which has questioned and overcome the abstract and political quality of traditional history Braudel by stressing the material and environmental aspects of the human experience, Erikson by exploring the psychological and spiritual development and influence of prominent historical figures. One should also mention in this context the recent work of the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, whose expressed antagonism to the historicist view would have won some allegiance among the ministers and women I am
—
See
discussing.
"The Kyong,"
particularly
Levi-Strauss,
Tristes Tropiques,
trans.
and Doreen Weightman (New York,
John 1974),
pp. 405-15.
For an excellent essay on a more recent example of this phenomenon, see Leo Lowen89.
thal,
"The Triumph of Mass
ture,
Popular Culture, and Society (Palo Alto,
Calif., 1961), pp.
90.
acter
Idols" in Litera-
109-^.
C
Edgarton
Mayo
of Mrs.
The Works of Charles Pollen with a Life (Boston and New York,
101.
Memoir of His 1887),
I,
pp.
7,
325, 414, 534.
A
102.
Mary Clemmer Ames,
104.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, describing
Memorial of Alice and Phoebe Cary With Some of Their Later Poems (New York, 1874), pp. vi, 97. 103. Bacon, op. cit., pp. 9, 74, 76-7. his
uneasy relations as a child with
his rather
stem and harsh minister
compared
himself to
Adam
father,
hiding in the garden at the
sound of the Lord's voice. See James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston and New York, 1887), I, p. 35. In a sense, the liberal minister of Emerson's generation did indeed wish to hide from the father and the command to historical responsibility he suggested and take refuge in the garden, a place rich in Biblical, sexual, and feminine
connotations. Another Unitarian, a convert
from Episcopalianism, explaining
his
new
sense of freedom, wrote in 1852: "Nature has
recovered the bloom of her
lost
Eden; and
Lord God walks again in his garden in the cool of the day; and I no longer tremble
the
sound of his voice, but listen to it, as to the melodious whisperings of the wind amid at the
fragrant arbors." See
How
I Became a Uni-
tarian Explained in a Series ofLetters to a Friend
By
a Clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal
Church (Boston, 1852),
of Miss Susanna Anthony
son, this
(Portland,
the Writings
with a Memoir by Her
Husband (Boston, 1849), pp. 9-10. 100. Cheney, op. cit., pp. 549, 510.
See Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Char-
man
p. 192.
UnHke Emer-
has achieved a reconciliation
with God: he has found a milder and kindlier
1810). 91.
New
92.
Marie Howland, Papa V
Englander, 24 (1845), 387.
Own
Girl
Deity
(New
York, 1874), pp. 64-5. 93. William Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York, 1837-39), I, pp. 659, 655. 94.
Ibid, p. 556.
95.
Mary
(New York,
who
is
now
a part of the soft scenery
of the Garden rather than an admonishing
The Garden,
God, become the primary reality; the Fall, which marked the beginning not just of mortal alienation but of human history, ha^ been intruder in
it.
rather than
has
obviated. Guilt and the threatening paternal
Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters
of Horace Bushnell 468.
Sarah
1880), pp. 465,
presence have disappeared together.
The garden was
the chosen and conse-
crated terrain of the feminine sensibility in
.
370
Notes
American
mid-nineteenth-century
to
Chapter 5
culture.
Lady-litterateurs like Sarah Hale and
Flora
titles:
Interpreter and Fortuna Flora
's
(Boston, 1848) or Drops from Flora Poetry of Flowers (Boston, 1852).
umes were often extremely
Cup or the These vol-
!f
who
loved the
"little."
usually consisted
1930],
Mrs. Sigoumey was the perfect confidante
book
this case. In 1856, she published a
tled Past Meridian
(New York and
on the "beauty of
1854),
They
The Sweet
[New Haven,
p. 5.)
petite in size; their
femininity seemed to dictate their smallness, and one remembers Sarah Exlgarton Mayo,
Sigoumey:
Mrs.
Singer of Hartford
Griffin respectively turned out books with
coy
Haight,
S.
Mary
in
enti-
Boston,
age"; in later life she
exulted, "the overmastering force of the passions to
broken." In a long passage in Letters
[is]
Mothers, she elaborated further:
of poeticized, moralistic, and sentimental de-
probably the highest
whose pretty appearance and sweet scent were
Entire resignation
clearly to symbolize and suggest a kind of
debility gives leisure for meditation.
transfigured female "influence." Ladies' maga-
If
of
scriptions
the
various
flowers,
zines and gift annuals of the day,
women
edited by
from
their titles
ning
if
...
.
Protracted
.
.
.
it is
cun-
its
because those weary laborers
tence has come.
The Amaranth,
.
the right hand forgets
have need of repose.
favorite flowers: The Ladies' Violet,
faith.
the deafened ear no longer excites the
mind,
commonly
or by ministers, often drew
The Lily, The
Wreath,
is
attainment of our
It
The Sabbath
brings with
it
of exis-
a season
The Rose of Sharon, The Lily of the Valley were among such popular floral offerings. Girls
of silence, in which to meditate, to release
were frequently named after flowers: Bushnell called one of his daughters "Lily." As we
past
have seen, many women authors selecting noms de plume took floral or at least vernal
let.
names. Fictional heroines,
Stowe's
A
framed
in a
105.
thaniel ix.
For
Wooing
Minister's
bower of apple
Exlwards A. Park,
Emmons
first
ed.,
a similar fascination
Edwin Pond
men were
I
pp. clxxiii-
Memory
are
of debility, pensioners of
flow
should add here that
Harmah Gould,
a
in a
own
if
a
in
108.
School
the most exu-
talking with a companion,
man
trembling, white-haired aged
passes before me,
hot and rolling
upon
my
change
lips,
in
my
I
feel the tears
call
it
gushing
down to quench the smile before I am aware of the emotions. But
mourning nor sorrow only
in
it
is
that does this.
melting. (Quoted in
moved by
the
el-
I
not
can
Gordon
embody the virtues memory unfit for
the tribute which in part
is
her
Thomas J. Sawyer and of Caroline M. Sawyer (Boston and Chicago, 1900), p. 336. A. A. Miner, St.
A
Discourse, Delivered in
Church, Boston at the Funeral of the
Rev. Hosea Ballou (Boston, 1852), pp. 16, 17, 21, 33,40.
109.
and
reverses her tab-
kind of excess of self-love; she pays
man
Indeed, the sentimental literature of
early religious liberalism streets,
cur-
106. Maturin M. Ballou, Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou (Boston, 1852), pp. 212-13. 107. Quoted in Richard Elddy, The Life of
ney:
spirits,
far-off"
due.
New
ence for the elderly, wrote to Mrs. Sigour-
berant
The
competition with the world. Gould's tears the old
poet, trying to explain her rever-
Walking the
.
moving
Mothers [Hartford, 1838],
Gould and Sigoumey
with the aged
they were fragile but because they were
some Hampshire
{Letters to
.
pp. 224-8.)
Parker, ed., The
precious not simply because
sense feminized.
rent of things.
of the Sabbath destined to
man's rugged militant Calvinism by focusing his gentle old age.
.
to the feminine ideal: they are pious creatures
a literal follower of Bushnell, softens the older
aged
ties.
vivid than the
appears
Autobiography of the Rev. Enoch Pond (Boston, 1883). Parker, Pond's grandson, a minister and
on
more
derly because the aged are by definition close
Memoir of NaI,
is
in
blossoms.
(Boston, 1861),
minister, see Rev.
had
possible,
if
Mary Scudder
flowers in their hands;
the soul from earthly
makes stock
out of the "father" and the to
villains
(Dalvinist minister
whom he is symbolically allied.
The Univer-
and Ladies' Repository was launched in 1833 under the editorship of the Streeter
salist
brothers simply as The Universalist.
was
filled
As such
with sermonizing non-fictional
it
arti-
on the advantages of the Universalist faith. Within the year, it changed editors and became a magazine for Universalist ladies. cles
Notes
dedicated to the proposition that true
kindness of their nature and [their]
29 [1833], 230).
(II,
win
azine tried to
estingly enough,
.
.
.
The new mag-
religious fiction
with scathing attacks on Calvinist clergymen.
Such men have "passed
bounds of de-
all
cency," one contributor warns
luridly, to se-
more significantly, the first piece to appear by a woman (who calls herself "Fidelia") was entitled "Letter from a Young Lady to Her Fafeminine
cure
ther"
243-4).
i,ibid.,
Even
converts.
The daughter
firmly
announces her new allegiance to Universalism and defies her tyrannical and orthodox parent.
From
1833 on, the Ladies' Repository regu-
about cruel Calvinist fathers
larly ran stories
and pure Universalist daughters.
"The Vampyre: or Calvinism"
A
title like
the Legitimate Fruits of
(4 [1836], 17-23)
speaks for
itself.
daughters, but
all in vain.
Jr.,"
wayward
Whether he
resorts
to seduction or violence, the father-figure finally exerts his authority
only as a gesture of
impotence: the daughter-figure remains true
body, p. xlvii.
pastor and
her
own
p. xc.
Ibid.,
5.
The
some mourning in America between 1820 and 1875 are complex and elusive. The historian's first instinct is to turn to demography and to consider the possi6.
causes of this literary, and in
part actual, magnification of
of an unusually high death rate in this
bility
There was of course the
period.
which
struction [Boston, 1961], p. 531). Massive,
national,
about the destination of the departed during
and after the war seems
trusting
Lydia Huntley Sigoumey, The Young Offering, or
(Boston, 1862),
Gems of
Prose
and Poetry
p. 10.
111.
Ibid, pp. 253, 247.
112.
Compare Lydia Huntley Sigoumey,
Letters
(New York,
of Life
Connecticut,
Forty
1824), or The Lovely Sisters rietta
1866), or Sketch
Years
Since
of
(Hartford,
Margaret and Hen-
(Hartford, 1846), with Lucy Howard's
Journal
(New
inevitable. Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps claimed that she wrote her bestselling novel The Gates Ajar (1868), a fictional-
mourning manual, because she was
ized
touched by the grief of the thousands
had
lost
New
who
beloved sons and husbands in the war.
York, 1897),
p. 97.
Yet the shock im-
War
merely dramatized
parted by the Civil
and accelerated
way. Phelps's
a trend already well
own
under
father had felt for years
that only his "conception of heaven as a place .
.
not unlike this world," an idea which
is
the
key to the appeal of The Gates Ajar, made living
Lady V
even
need for consolation and curiosity
tolerable
him.
to
heart. 110.
War,
Civil
took a million lives (James G. Randall
and David Donald, The Civil War and Recon-
.
to the precepts and examples of her gentle
Universalist
Late William B. 0. Pea-
the
See Phelps, Chapters From a Life (Boston and
Fathers with names like "John Calvin,
oppress and even murder their
371
Sermons by
4.
amiable
a female readership, inter-
by mingling
Chapter 6
women
repugnant "to the
instinctively find Calvinism
sympathies"
to
Phelps, Austin Phelps:
A
(Elizabeth
Stuart
Memoir [New York,
1891], p. 18.) Writers in both England and America had anticipated Elizabeth Phelps's preoccupation with death and the afterlife; Heaven Our Home (Boston, 1864) and Life in Heaven (Boston, 1865) by the Englishman Peter Branks went through dozens of editions in England. And The Gates Ajar was even more successful in England, which had had no civil
war, than in America.
York, 1858).
Many
cultural historians have
assumed
or implied that nineteenth-century American children died of
THE DOMESTICATION OF DEATH: THE POSTHUMOUS CONGREGATION 1.
Christian Examiner, 62 (1857), 114.
2.
Sermons by
the
Late William B. 0. Peabody
with a Memoir by His Brother (Boston, p.
1
849),
XXV.
more or
less
natural causes in
staggering numbers. In this view, the copious consolation literature, so largely concerned
with deceased children, was
way
a sentimental
but
cope with a widespread and valid sense of loss and deprivation. Recently, however, scholars, most notably Maris
viable
to
Vinovskis of the University of Wisconsin,
have begun to demonstrate that the mortality
3. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, ed.. The Poets and Poetry of America (New York, 1874),
rate of the period
p. 266.
is
was not so high
supposed. Although no at least
final results
as
are
once in,
it
uncertain that the death rate for
372
Notes
infants increased
from the eighteenth
to
to the
nineteenth century in the northern United States;
it
may have
The outpour-
decreased.
ing of mourners' manuals needs further explanation.
The answer may
well
lie
con-
in
temporary perceptions or misperceptions of demographic data, perceptions shaped by economic and social factors. Northern middle-class families by mid-century were beginning to "plan" their families;
women hoped
to
have three or four children, rather than keep
Chapter 6
and "Spiritualism and Science: Decade of the Spirit Rappings," American Quarterly, 29 (1972),
(1975), 200-21,
Reflections on the First
474^500. 19.
For accounts of the "Rural Cemetery"
movement, see Thomas Bender, "The 'Rural' Cemetery Movement: Urban Travail and the
New England
Apf>eal of Nature,"
Quarterly,
47 (1974), 196-211; John Brinckenhofl^ Jackson, American Space: The Centennial Years
perity and incipient scientific investigation,
(New York, 1972), p. 70; Stanley French, "The Ometery as Cultural Institution: The E^ablishment of Mt. Aubum and
expectations were perhaps raised beyond the
the 'Rural Cemetery'
three or four. In a period of increasing pros-
level of available
medical competence.
Mrs. Sigoumey's
7.
poem
has been
re-
American Women on Womanhood 1820-
(New
1920
York, 1972), pp. 59, 60. George C. Prentiss, The Life and Letters
8.
(New York, 1882), p. 295. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans (New York, Evanston, and
of Elizabeth Prentiss 9.
eds..
London,
1963),
II, p.
Movement"
Death
in
in
America, ed. David E. Stannard (Philadelphia,
printed in Gail Parker's anthology The Oven Birds:
1865-1876
475.
1975), pp. 69-91; Neil Harris,
American
The Artist
in
The Formative Years 1790-
1860 (New York, 1970), pp. 200-8; Barbara Rotundo, "The Rural Ometery Movement," Essex Institute Historical Collections,
231^0; Peter
Schmitt, Back
J.
Arcadian Myth
in
to
1
09
( 1
97 3 ),
Nature: The
Urban America (New York,
1969), pp. 67-8. 20.
See The Works of Anne Bradstreet, ed.
Society:
Merrifield
Harriette
Forbes,
Grave-
Jeannine Hensley (Cambridge, Mass., 1967),
of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them 1653-1800 (Boston, 1927), pp.
p. 235.
63-7.
10.
Theodore Cuyler,
11.
The
Empty Crib
(New York,
1873), pp. 81-2. Cuyler also produced two other very popular mourning
manuals, Beulab Land: or Words of Cheer for Christian Pilgrims (New York, 1896), and God's Light on
Dark Clouds (New York,
1882).
Eunice Hale Cobb, Memoir ofJames Arthur Cobb (Boston, 1852), pp. 24, 30, 111. 13. Sermons by the Late William B. 0. Pea12.
body, pp. xlvii, xc, Ixxiv. 14. Lydia Huntley Sigoumey, Zinzendorff and Other Poems (New York and Boston,
1835), p. 111. 15.
Life
16.
Sisters
York, 1866),
Letters
of
at the 18.
My School," MS in The Sigoumey Collection
Sigoumey, "A Record of
am
21.
1972).
Moses
King,
Aubum
Mt.
Cemetery
(Cambridge, Mass., 1839), pp. 46-8.
Theodore Cuyler explained that no phrase was as popular for tombstone inscrip22.
tions as "asleep in Jesus"; see God's Light on
Dark
Clouds, p. 164.
Cuyler, The Empty Crib, pp. 158, 173. 24. Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the
On
basing
my
interpretation
of
on the brilliant work in progress by R. Lawrence Moore of Comell University. See his articles, "The Spiritualist Medium: A Study of Female Professionalism in spiritualism
Victorian America," American Quarterly, 11
p. 523.
flowers, see Jessica Mitford, The American
Way of Death (New York,
1963), pp. 198-9.
Nehemiah D. D. Adams, Agnes and the Coffin By Her Father (Boston,
Key of Her Little 1857), p. 15. 26.
Connecticut Historical Society. I
(New York,
25.
1846), p. 238. 17.
Experimental and Willow Trees: Archaeology in Colonial Ometeries," American Antiquities 31 (1966), 502-10; and Edmund Gillon, Jr., Victorian Cemetery Art ubs,
Reverend Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1854),
p. 408.
Lydia Huntley Sigoumey, The Lovely Margaret and Henrietta (Hartford,
unpublished
On cemetery art, see also Edwin Dethel-
son and James Feete, "Death's Heads, Cher-
23.
Lydia Huntley Sigoumey,
(New
stones
also
Quoted
in
Mitford,
op. cit.,
p. 222.
See
Robert Haberstein and William Lamers,
The History of American Funeral Directing
(Milwaukee,
1955).
op
27.
Hall,
28.
Quoted Quoted
29.
cit.,
in
p.
131.
Rotundo,
in ibid.,
op. cit.,
p. 237.
p. 238.
Notes
on
excellent
to
Chapter 6
373
p. 281.
this
54.
Ibid.,
aspect of the cemetery movement. For the
55.
Elizabeth
Harris,
30.
cemetery
op.
is
cit.,
as Utopia, see Sylvester Judd's ex-
A
traordinary romance, Margaret:
Tale of the
Real and Ideal: Blight and Bloom
(Boston,
which the hero and heroine set up an ideal liberal religious community called Mons Christi which is laid out exactly like the new 1845), in
cemeteries, with floral names, marble statuary, etc.
32.
Quoted Quoted
33.
See The Picturesque Pocket Companion
31.
and
French,
in
op. cit.,
p. 87.
in ibid., p. 79.
Guide Through Mt. Auburn (Bos-
Visitor's
ton, 1839), pp.
3
Toward
From
Death:
don, 1974),
to
the Present,
M. Ranum (Baltimore and LonFrench,
in
op. cit.,
(Richmond, Wilder Foote, Three CentuVa., 1927); Henry Hymnology (Cambridge, ries of American Mass., 1940); Edward S. Ninde, The Story of the American Hymn (New York and Cincinnati,
Christian Examiner, 26 (1836), 338-9.
37.
Rev.
Samuel
H. W. Stephenson, Unitarian Hymn Writers (London, 1931). For the most impor-
The
Phillips,
Christian
Hymns and Choirs (Andover,
L. Furber,
57.
Foote,
58.
Ibid.,
59.
See
Theodore Cuyler,
An
Long
39.
Quoted
1902), p. 37.
B.
Tatum, "The
Quarterly,
3
N. Parker
40. tion
(1951), 36-51.
(New
Life:
Rag-Bag: A
York, 1855).
Collec-
p. 124.
cit.,
op. cit.,
Park,
63.
Ibid, pp. 81-2.
64.
Quoted
in
mestic architecture, see Carl Bode, Antebellum
65.
Phelps,
Park,
For
42.
cit.,
p. 209.
Culture (Carbondale and Edwardsville,
111.,
Picturesque Pocket Companion, pp. 22-3.
44.
William Holcombe, Our Children
Heaven (Philadelphia, 1868), p. 24. 45. Ralph Waldo Trine, In Tune With Infinite or Fullness
(New
of Peace, Power, and Plenty
(New
My
A
Portfolio:
York, 1882),
Austin Phelps, The
Still
munion With God (Boston, 50.
Austin Phelps,
51.
Ibid, p. 240.
52.
Rev.
A Mem-
My
Payson, D.D.
Hour:
or.
Com-
George
op. cit.,
and
p. 66.
Furber,
op.
cit.,
Ninde,
in
op. cit.,
pp. 165, 168,
Austin Phelps, The see
George
Still
C. Prentiss, Life
Hour,
p.
45.
and Letters of
Elizabeth Prentiss, p. 60, for a similar expres-
69. Elizabeth
Portfolio,
70.
Stuart Phelps,
For
a
Between the
p. 223.
study of these monastic visions,
development and themes, see Ann Douglas Wood, "Piers Plowman and the Monastic Vision Tradition," Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1970. I
The common
pattern
discovered in these visions was one in which
the dreamer, after a tour of
p. 23.
hell, is
given a
glimpse of heaven; ravished with delight, he
A
Memoir of the
(New
York,
n.d.),
p. 246.
53.
cit.,
their
1860), p. 96.
Rev. Asa Cummings,
Edward
Ibid, p. 82.
Quoted
And
Collec-
p. 263.
p. 227.
49.
op.
173, 347.
A Mem-
48. Elizabeth Phelps, Austin Phelps: oir,
66.
Gates (Boston, 1887),
Austin Phelps,
of Essays
Furber,
sion of confidence.
pp. 127, 100.
47. tion
the
pp. 181-2, and Ben-
and
Ninde,
67.
68.
York, 1897).
46. Elizabeth Phelps, Austin Phelps: oir,
in
of a York,
pp. 84, 64-5, 85.
1959), pp. 38-50. 43.
(New
pp. 82, 52, 123, 79.
a discussion of "picturesque" do-
41. Harris, op.
Chris-
pp. 46ff.
Phelps,
62.
Recollections
Autobiography
See Foote,
61.
son, op.
Willis, The
of Ephemera
pp. 42, 44, 48.
"Hymns and Hymnbooks,"
Christian Examiner, 31 (1841), 151.
George
op. cit.,
p. 61.
tian Examiner, 8 (1832), 163-81.
38.
and the Picturesque," American
Mass.,
1860).
60.
Beautiful
hymns, see
Austin Phelps, Edwards A. Park, and Daniel
(Springfield, Mass., 1860), p. 15.
in
Christian Church
1921);
p. 83.
36.
Home
Use in Worship (Philadelphia, 1915), and The
Hymnology of the
p. 72.
Quoted
35.
Middle Ages
the
trans. Patricia
Heaven-
Stepping
tant nineteenth-century study of
flF.
Philip Aries, Western Attitudes
34.
Prentiss,
ward (New York, 1880), pp. 23, 425-6. 56. For the development of American hymnology and its context, see Louis F. Benson, The English Hymn: Its Development and
wishes to stay but
and
Letters
Elizabeth Prentiss, pp. 11-12, 142, 60, 510.
of
forced by his guide to
return instead to a better performance of his earthly duties.
C. Prentiss, Life
is
It
should be stressed that this
vision tradition persisted in various guises until
modem times.
For American examples, see
.
Notes to Chapter 6
374
Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of Dr. George De Benneville (Germantown, Pa., 1890); David Lx)rd, Visions ofParadise: An Epic (New York, 1867). In the monastic
dreams heralded
and
persisted in life
link
among
visions,
such
a conversion experience; this literary
William Sprague, Annals
gelical groups. See
of the American Pulpit
VI and VII on
(New
York, 1837-69),
the Baptists and Methodists,
see
The Perpetuity of the Earth; a Discourse Preached Before the Premillennial Advent Lillie,
(New
Association
York, 1842), and Anna
man. The World's Jubilee
tradition
nineteenth-century American evan-
For other examples,
135, 50, 15, 253, 10.
John
Jacob
80.
Emmons
(New York,
Ide, ed.. The
(Boston, 1842).
I,
Sili-
1836).
Works of Nathaniel p. 187.
George B. Cheever, The Powers of the World to Come (New York, 1853), pp. 108, 221, 81
250.
For other examples of
this
ambivalent
passim.
attempt to enforce the older theocentric
For general discussion of the develop>ing ideas of heaven and the millennium, see James P. Martin, The Last Judgment in Protestant Theology from Orthodoxy to Ritschl (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1963); Ulrich Simon, Heaven in
heaven, see Rufus
71.
the Christian Tradition
(New
York, 1958); Er-
Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia:
nest
Study
in the
A
Background of the Idea of Progress
(Berkeley, Cahf., 1949).
Second Gaming: The Millenarian Tradition
Light on the Grave
A.
J.
De
Jong, As the
Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise
of Anglo-American Missions 1640-1810 and Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer
Thomas
movements
America; see Arthur Beston,
in
Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian Origins and the in
Owenite Phase of Communitarian Socialism America 1663-1829 (Philadelphia, 1970),
and
6-8;
pp.
Oneida: Utopian ration 73.
Maren Lockwood Garden, Community to Modem Corpo-
(New York,
ed., Premillennial Es-
says of the Prophetic Conference (Chicago, 1879), p. 7.
74.
1844), 75.
Sermons by I,
F.
W.
Greenwood (Boston,
P.
Duffield,
Dissertations on
Prophecies Relative to the Second Christ 76.
the
Coming ofJesus
(New York, 1842), p. 381. Rev. J. W. Brooks, Essays on
the
Advent
and Kingdom of Christ and the Events Connected Therewith (Philadelphia, 1840), 77. 78.
West,
ed.,
p.
op. cit,
pp.
xiii,
17-70; H.
Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God America (New York, 1937), passim; and
mon, 79. the
op. cit.,
in Si-
pp. 20-37.
Henry F. Hill, The Saint V Inheritance; or to Come (New York, 1853), pp. 178,
World
F.
Doc-
Living,"
National
and Augustus C. Believer's
Home (Boston, 1854). See William Henry Charming, Memoir
Journey and Future
of William Ellery Cbanning with Extracts from His Correspondence and Manuscripts (Boston, 1846),
II, p. 18;
Men"
Charles Follen, in
"On the Future
The Works of Charles Follen
with a Memoir of His Life (Boston and New York, 1887), V, pp. 12-96; F. W. P. Green-
wood, "Recognition of Friends," "Voices from Heaven," "The Good Revealed," "Peaceful Sleep," and "Seeing the Departed" in
Sermons of Consolation (Boston, 1842) pp.
216-62, 312-21, and "Heaven a Place of Rest" in
Sermons
pp. 109-21;
II,
and "A Door
Andrew Peabody,
Heaven"
in
in Christian Belief
and Life (Boston, 1875), pp. 160-8; Henry Ware, An Inquiry Into the Foundation, Evidences and Truths of Religion (Cambridge, II,
pp. 263-70.
83. Of course the big influence here was Emanuel Swedenborg, Concerning Heaven and Its Wonders and Concerning Hell: From Things Heard and Seen (New York, 1863). For an example of heavenly scenes from consolation
literature, see
17.
Premillennial Essays, p. 17.
See Martin,
the
to
Thomp)Son, The Better Land; or The
Mass., 1842),
pp. 41, 35.
George
to the
"Identity of the Eirthly and Heavenly Life"
1969), p. 12.
Nathaniel West,
York, 1869); C.
"No (Dommunications
Shipman,
L.
from the Dead
State of
impulse was very fundamental to the Utopian
Its
ofa Future Life (Boston, 1858); John WilHeaven liams Kimball, (Boston, 1857);
(n.p., 1970);
Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago and London, 1968). The millennial
and
trine
82.
view, 39 (1952), 44^58;
(New
Hudson, Debt and Grace As Related
America," Mississippi Valley Historical Re-
in
Clark, Heaven
Preacher, 30 (1856), 246-54;
See Ira V. Brown, "Watchers for the
72.
W.
Spiritual Emblems (Boston, 1857); Peter Grant,
Thomas Baldwin Thayer, Over Walks Into
the River, or. Pleasant
Shadows and Beyond: the Sick, the Dying,
1862).
For
a
more
A
the Valleys of Book of Consolation for
and
the
Bereaved (Boston,
learned version, see Rev. H.
Harbaugh, Heaven; or An Earnest and Scriptural Inquiry Into the Abode of the Sainted Dead (Philadelphia, 1853),
3
vols.
Notes to Chapter 7
interesting is George Wood's which he published to Httle effect then, capitalizing on Elizabeth Stuart
The most
84.
Future
Life,
in 1858;
Phelps's best-selling The Gates Ajar, he repub-
Wide Open: or
lished the novel as The Gates
Scenes in Another
World (Boston,
Heaven,"
Visit to
in
The Complete Works of
Mark Twain (New York,
1922), vol.
\'III,
See
Mary Angela
Bennett, Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps (Philadelphia, 1939),
more recent
interpretation
p. 2.
For
of Phelps,
in
a
see
Christine Stansell, "Elizabeth Stuart Phelps:
Study
and
Unitarian
Congrega-
non-evangelical
A
Female Rebellion," The Massachusetts
who found it impossible to who has ever known
Grandison Finney,
believe that "a person
the love of
(quoted
pp. 223-78. 86.
Dulany Addison, The Clergy in American Life and Letters (London, 1900). This was a period which saw a marked refinement and secularization of sermon style, especially among the tional groups. Revivalist leaders like Charles
1869).
See "Extract from Captain Stormfield's
85.
375
em
in
God
relish a secular
William G. McLoughlin,
Revivalism
nounced
can
[New York,
1959], p.
was
which
preaching
novel"
Mod-
Jr., 1
de-
18),
but
the
"reading of elegant literary essays" (Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, ed. William
McLoughlin [Cambridge,
Mass.,
1960],
G. pp.
"A Wom-
176-8). Joseph Buckminster, in contrast, had demonstrated that the pulpit could and
an's Pulpit," Atlantic Monthly, 26 (1870), 11-
should induce "gratification of the taste as
22.
well as
Review, 13 (1972), 239-56. 87. See Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Gates Ajar,
88.
Helen Sootin Smith (Cambridge, Mass.,
ed.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Strugglefor
New
Immortality (Boston and
York, 1889),
.
improvement of the character"
(El-
1851], p.
and most non-evangelicals followed
When
356),
his lead.
Austin Phelps inquired, a half century
"why should not a work of intellectual
after Buckminster's death,
pp. 55, 61. 90. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Songs lent
.
Stevens Buckminster [Boston,
1964), p. 108. 89.
.
Buckminster Lee, Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D.D. and of His Son Rev. Joseph iza
New
World (Boston and
of the Si-
York, 1885),
Christian sermon be a
art?" (Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Austin Phelps:
Memoir [New York,
pp. 11-12. 91. Elizabeth Phelps, Gates Ajar, pp. 48-9.
92. Elizabeth
Stuart
Beyond
Phelps,
the
1891],
p.
A
he was That serwas amply
69),
clearly posing a rhetorical question.
mons could be art, and popular art,
demonstrated by the constant appearance of
Gates (Boston, 1883), pp. 125-6, 128.
the flowery efi^usions of
men
like F.
W.
P.
Greenwood and
THE PERIODICAL
PRESS:
ARENA
FOR HOSTILITY 1.
tion 2.
can
N. Parker
Willis, The
of Ephemera
Frank Luther Mott, Magazines,
Vol.
II,
A
Collec-
1855), p. 70.
A
History of Ameri1850-186S (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1938), pp. 141, 10-11, 60. 3.
Gannett lamented that the opinion that is not entitled to rank as one of the highest forms in which genius may give expression to its thought" {Christian Examiner, 45 [1848], 429) had gained wide currency. The sermon, no matter how literary and sentimentalized, had limited intellectual and commercial value. The contrast between Emerson's Stiles
"the sermon
Rag-Bag:
(New York,
E. H. Chapin in the ladies' albums and magazines of the day. Yet, during the same period, the Unitarian minister Ezra
Frank Luther Mott, A History of AmeriI, 1741-1850 (New York
pulpit performances and his lectures reveal
can Magazines, Vol.
the strictures even a very liberal clergyman
and London,
felt
1930), pp. 303-12.
4.
New
5.
Christian Examiner, 42 (1847), 395, 397,
Englander, 2 (1844), 96.
See Lawrence L. Buell, "Unitarian Aes-
thetics
and Emerson's Poet-Priest," American
Quarterly, tarian
viewer for the
9).
New
Moreover, while a
Englander could boast
re-
in
1868 that the publication of sermons, as of
393, 394. 6.
the sermon form imposed (Buell, "Uni-
tarian Aesthetics,"
20 (1968), 3-21, and
Movement and
Nineteenth-Century
"The Uni-
the Art of Preaching in
America,"
American
Quarterly, 24 (1972), 166-90. See also Daniel
hymns, had greatly increased, proving that such works were "popular reading" (27 [1868], 190), other clerical commentators were aware that both sermons and hymns, at least
tury,
those written in the mid-nineteenth cen-
were perilously
close to the
domain of
376
Notes
to
Chapter 7
journalism: their very effort to be topical, apn
Mrs. N. T. Munroe, the corresponding editor
and attractive doomed them to be ephemeral in a way even a novel was not
Mrs. C. A. Soule.
propriate,
Hymn
("New
Books," Christian Examiner, 40
Furthermore, Henry Ware,
[1846], 29-47).
Jr.,
Christian Parlor Magazine,
24.
3
(1846-7),
Frank Luther Mott says, "The Christian Parlor Magazine was a part of 155, 13, 16, 113-15.
movement by which
reviewing a collection of Greenwood's
ser-
the
mons
was no
attempted to compete with the lady's books
for the Christian Examiner in 1843,
forced to admit that the sermon was
how
matter
still,
polished, basically an oral form,
unlike the novel: as a result.
Ware
only a "small
sermon can be
.
.
.
part of the
and popular family magazines of the times" {op
laments,
brought before us by the printed page" (34 Mott,
8.
William Warren Sweet, Religion
op. cit.,
I,
in the
Development of American Culture 1765-1840 York, 1952), pp. 184-5.
p. 745). is
included in The Miscella-
neous Writings of Henry Ware,
ton and London, 1846),
Mary
E.
Dewey,
D.D. (Bos-
Jr.,
pp. 139-46.
I,
ed..
Autobiography and
of Orville Dewey, D.D. (Boston,
Letters
pp. 42, 131, 198.
I,
This sketch
26.
(New
1884),
p. 176.
MelChapter Nine. A clerical reviewer could complain of Richard H. Dana's Two 27.
will treat the critical response to
I
in
ville
Mott,
op. cit.,
II, p.
10.
Lee,
op. cit.,
pp. 152, 84.
11.
Buckminster's journals and papers are
admire greatly, that
Athenaeum in Boston. The entry
hue"; E)ana does not "extract a kindly lesson
9.
in the
62.
Years Before the Mast, a
I
refer
Aug. 18, 1804. 12. Lewis P. Simpson, The Federalist Literary Mind: Selections from the Monthly Anthology 1803-1811 (Baton Rouge, La., 1962), pp. 88, 174. See also Lewis P. Simpson, "A Literary Adventure of the Elarly Republic: The Anthology Society and the Monthly Anthology," New England Quarterly, 11 (1957),
to
cit,
25.
[1843], 85). 7.
the religious press
is
168-90.
See Mott,
14.
Theodore Cuyler,
An
Life:
op. cit.,
I,
all
men."
{New
He shows no
Englander, 9 [1851],
Christian Examiner, 36 (1844), 284.
29.
New Englander,
6 (1848), 556.
An anon-
ymous reviewer for the United States Magazine in 1856 summed up the dire influence of the American female writer on her male
Recollections
(New
The magnetism produced by her outgiven heart-throbs has warmed into vitality a vast number of womanly men, who,
of a York,
without manly force or manly vigor of The Rose of Sharon includes sermons,
have given way to unmanly mawkishness and morbid complainings prettiness and sentimentalisms, quite to the shame of manhood. Our literature is growing rather fine than forceful. We are tired of the whole school of mosaic workers like Longfellow, and imintellect,
which sketches, or essays by Universalist ministers Thayer, Bacon, Chapin, Skinner, Adams, Grosh, and Thomas. This degree of clerical
(Boston,
1841)
participation
16.
spirit' "
28.
p. 56.
Autobiography
See, for example.
demise
things and
33).
1902), p. 93. 15.
all
'motherly
book Melville was to showed a "sombre
peers:
13.
Long
from "
it
is
typical of the annual until
.
Webb
.
.
its
in the late 1850s.
Isabelle
.
Entrikin, Sarah Josepha
.
.
Bayard Taylor and Curtis
itators like
Hale and Godey's Lady's Book (Philadelphia,
(III
[1856], 242). 1846), p. 14. 17.
New Ibid,
1
19.
Ibid,
11 (1853),
21.
the feminine sentimental vogue succeeded,
(1843), 112.
18.
20. Ibid,
Those who accommodated themselves to
Englander, 2 (1844), 96-101.
but often
210-22.
Universalist
and Ladies'
Repository,
2
(1833), 184.
23.
See The Ladies' Repository, 25 (1857), for
editor
is
of genuine
the changed
title.
The
Mrs. E. A. Bacon, the assistant editor
at
artistic
the cost of
presumably spent
lit-
time lamenting his current reputation as a
"namby-pamby
Ibid, 291-2.
first,
the cost
their self-respect. Willis tle
22.
example. Note,
at
achievement and sometimes
17 (1859), 277, 275.
writer in twaddling albums,"
but Longfellow, that ajwgee of Victorian poetic piety, felt
mands of
frequently trapped by the de-
his public for
innocuous, cheerful,
.
Notes
to
The work he prided poems like "Michael
morally uplifting verse. himself on
— vigorous
Angelo," abstract narratives
met with
little
approval.
The
like
is
—
aphorism Kavanagh
bitter
that appears in his early novel
"This country
Cbristus
—
not priest-ridden but press-
ridden" {Longfellow's Prose Works [London
New
and
York,
n.d.], p.
— was
238)
in a sense
Chapter 7
377
however, and here lay her second distinctly of stronger
stuflf.
p>oint,
was
When the couple's
only son died, and the poet-father was weeping over his grave, the
of fate pointing to
mother saw "the
me
finger
as the only deliverer"
Then and there was conceived the North American Magazine^ an enterprise which her (96).
husband's
made distinguished but Jane's acumen could have
talent
prophetic of the difficulties of Lx)ngfellow's
which
own
brought into being. She was writing an exemplary moral tale of how to succeed in American letters, casting herself in the virtuous
For the
career.
best discussion of this
aspect of Longfellow, see
Matthew
J.
Bruc-
The Profession of Authorship in Amer1800-1870: The Papers of William Charvat
coli, ed..
ica
pp. 106-67.
(n.p., 1968),
Quoted
30.
ington Irving:
apprentice's role. In contrast to her husband,
she demonstrated well-calculated aggressive-
combed
in
William L. Hedges, Wash-
ness as she
An
American Study 1802-1812
patrons, and subscribers.
(Baltimore, 1965), p.
14.
known under
to be
only
Donald Mitchell,
the
later
pseudonym of "Ik
Marvel," long hesitated to go into a literary
men
career because, in his words, "the literary
of our country have impoverished themselves
the country for money,
by their labors" (Waldo H. Dunn, The Life of Donald G. Mitchell [New York, 1922], p. 1 16).
self-reliant sex.
The
career of the poet
bitter narrative), but she
field
(1801^44)
may
Sumner Lincoln
Fair-
be used as an illustration
of Mitchell's observation. In The Autobiogra-
phy ofJane
whose love for the "sentimental" (18) had impelled her from a girlhood of suburban
dreariness in a poet
ing
life,
told his genuinely touch-
tale.
domestic life. She concluded that "a creative and poetical mind was a fatal gift" (53). She did not add "in America," but she probably should have. Fairfield was a literature a miserable
man who "found
dependence, and he was
utterly without business faculties, or a profes-
any kind"
(35).
His
futile
attempt
acting career (his wife helped laugh
an
at
him
ofl^
accounts a
Perhaps she lacked genius
(so
the better! she implies throughout her
knew how
to find
was genius worth anyway? 3
Unpublished undated
1
latter in the Par-
ton Q)llection in the Sophia Smith Collection in
Northampton, Mass. Quoted in Gjrtland
32.
P.
(New
Willis 33.
two major points to make. Her husband, whose talents even she in her most critical moments (and they were legion) was astute enough not to doubt, was in her opinion "a genius." As such, he was hopelessly unstable, unsuited to In her biography, Jane Fairfield has
all
readers for genius, and without these, what
New Jersey into a marriage with
and a city
sion of
much
Fairfield (Boston, 1860), his wife
Jane,
By
handsome woman, she used her feminine charms for masculine purposes: the long-suffering wife with her two helpless little girls and her helpless husband could open purses closed to pleaders from the supposedly strikingly
I
P.
York, 1969),
Auser, Nathaniel p. 59.
have also examined the
works of
a
and
lives
number of other members of
the
genteel or Irvingesque school (broadly conceived), practitioners of a kind of witty yet
sentimental
journalism;
most
particularly
Lewis G. Clark (1803-73), Willis G. Clark (1808-41), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-94), H. W. Longfellow (1807-82), James Russell Lowell (1819-91), Henry Tuckerman (181371), and Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900).
The
personal and professional patterns
line for Curtis, Irving, Mitchell,
not hold true for
all
I
out-
and Willis do
these men,
are strong affinities of literary
though there style and sub-
ject.
Edgar Poe on drugs and alcohol to help him endure miseries he had no real resources to
34. Washington Irving's sire was a New York businessman and a Presbyterian deacon who demanded daily family worship at home and church attendance three times on Sun-
alleviate, are painfully detailed in
days.
the stage), his tragic period as a teacher, his increasing insanity, his growing reliance a
field's
la
Jane Fair-
account, a narrative more painful for
the evident lack of
sympathy displayed by
the author for her subject. Jane Fairfield,
Mr.
Irving
distrusted
emotional nature; Washington
Washington's in
turn
dis-
and always preferred his more kindly tempered mother. (See Stanley T. Wil-
liked his father
378
Notes
[New
The Life of Washington Irving
Hams,
York, 1935],
ists.
evangelical ministers, as part of a sociological
East Argus
Portland,
in
Boston Recorder and
the
later
paper
Willis,
Companion, and served as a deacon
in
"Brimstone Comer," the Park Street Church
which was the stronghold of evangelical vor
One
in Boston.
phers,
summing up contemporary
wooden
fer-
of Willis' earliest biograimpres-
him
sions of the older Willis, described
rather
as "a
person," subscribing to "the
formal and narrow piety of the gelicals of that
.
.
.
evan-
day, revolting against the
of the
latitudinarianism
Boston churches"
(Henry A. Beers, Nathaniel Parker Willis [Boston and New York, 1885], p. 11). Willis never got on with his father, although he, like his sister "Fanny Fern," adored his devout, affectionate, and playful mother. He liked to believe he inherited from her the "quick-silver spirit" which was his distinguishing characteristic. Willis was sent to Congregationalist Andover Academy and Yale. Although he later joined Exlward Beecher's church in Boston, he became increasingly convinced that he had never experienced gelical protestations
the
elite
a saving change.
were
also a
Evan-
hindrance
Unitarian circles to which Willis
In
pired.
he was
1829,
officially
in as-
excom-
municated from the Park Street Church for "absence from
.
.
communion
.
.
.
.
and
atten-
dance at the theatre" {ibid., p. 95). Donald Mitchell was the son of an Andover-trained Congregationalist minister very
much
oriented toward revivals; despite a love
for the beautiful. Reverend Mitchell was, in his son's
words, "a very severe disciplinarian,
too severe to kindle a child's best love" (Dunn, op.
cit.,
many
p.
Mitchell, like Willis and so
24).
liberal ministers,
scent only
from
his
claimed emotional de-
charming, consumptive
pick a
life
of writing and talking than their
stronger peers. 36.
For
Curtis'
Not one
of them was genuinely heal-
good
portions of their lives struggling with con-
sumption.
Willis
in
his
later
years wrote
frankly and profusely about various remedies for tuberculosis; he received
many
letters of
inquiry from his readers, especially from cler-
gymen, "the
class oftenest stricken
by con-
Edward Cary,
see
New York,
1894).
Willis
37.
as a kind of
Even
as
was proud to announce lapdog
his status
feminine
in chic
an undergraduate
much
flattered in
vacation by the attentions of literary
women,
more
the latter
seemed to consider
circles.
he could
at Yale,
write his mother: "I was
men and who
particularly
quite the thing to find
it
who was not a bear and who could much from the excelsia of his profes-
a poet
stoop so
sion as to dress fashionably and
ments" (Beers, 38. 39.
op. cit.,
pay compli-
p. 57).
Dunn, op. cit., p. 161. Life and Works of Washington
(New
Richard Henry Stoddard
Irving, ed.
York, 1880),
pp. 372, 379, 391. 40.
See
George William
Curtis,
Lotus-
A Summer Book (New York, 1852); "Ik Marvel," Fresh Gleanings or A New Sheaffrom Eattng:
the Old Fields of Continental Europe (New York, 1907); N. Parker Willis, Pencillings by
the
Way (New York,
41.
Quoted
in
1852).
Auser,
op.
cit.,
23-4.
pp.
Moreover, Willis had been something of
a
lit-
erary prodigy in his youth, and he always
disavowed hard
who had
critics,
labor. In 1855,
answering
his
been warning him for twenty
years that his "light and flippant"
work could
not outlive him, he explained that he had no
posthumous fame. He wished only LIVE, as variedly, as amply, and as worth-
desire for 'Vo ily
as possible
ture
—
off^ered
";
least
ety, the
— periodical
"literature
him the
of Horace Bushnell
thy: Irving, Willis, and Mitchell spent
life,
George William Curtis (Boston and
freest access to
p. 55).
perforce
kept closer to mother were more likely to
—the
{ibid.,
who were
pattern: the frail boys
Episcopalian mother; he was to be an admirer
35.
functions
ill-health
ministers as well as several journal-
the
!$•
Chronic
459).
p.
with the male sentimentalists, as with the non-
Maine, and Youth
[New York,
sumption" {Outdoors at Idlewild
a
His father, also called Nathaniel
edited
Chapter 7
1855],
I.)
Nathaniel Willis' ancestors included
number of
to
confining
readiest
mode
litera-
means for
this
of subsistence, the
contemporary mind and
soci-
most influence and power" {Outdoors
at Idlewild, pp. v-vii).
For other important examples of the Gaylord Clark, KnickKnacks (New York, 1852) and The Literary Remains of the Late Willis Gaylord Clark (New York, 1843); H. T. Tuckerman, Leaves from the Diary of a Dreamer (London, 1853), The 42.
"sketch," see Louis
Notes
to
(New York, 1850), and Rambles and (New York, 1841). The four writers in discussion ended
Optimist Reveries 43.
their days presiding over carefully planned
and dearly cherished semi-country Irving's
Sunnyside
Willis'
Idlewild
Exigewood
Mitchell's tis'
New near New
retreat
Ashfield,
in
on her breeds anMaria off^ers to dry his handkerchief in her bosom, he leers tenderly at her, " 'And is your heart still so warm, Maria?' " Thus reminded of her sorYet
his parasitic reliance
not
New York;
rows, she
question in a "service to the virgin."
City;
Haven; Cur-
Massachusetts.
style,
line
All
woman, that could the traces be ever worn out of her brain, and those of Eliza
but to duck out of the arena of mascu-
surrounded by
New
[London and
an exalted ideal of family
life
cherished
which
their be-
48.
moved by
they were
their occupation into feminine society
ward feminine
to-
values.
and Works of Washington
44. Life
and
Irving,
Pry"
45. "Paul
is
the
title
of the
first
Donald Mitchell,
46. or,
A
Book of
York, 1888),
The
47.
50. William G. McLoughlin makes Norwood central to his recent re-evaluation. The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher: An Essay on
the Shifting Values
Heart by Ik Marvel
the
(New
p. 33.
encounter
locus classicus for this
Laurence Sterne's description
in
51.
See
Village
Reveries of a Bachelor:
is
A Sentimental
Prue and I
Curtis,
49. Mitchell, Reveries of a Bachelor, p. 9.
chap-
ter in Mitchell, Fresh Gleanings.
122,
1893), p. 48.
of Mid-Victorian America
1840-1870 (New York,
pp. 447-50.
my
Eliza
to
York, 1960], pp.
George William
(New York,
havior mainly supported. Like their liberal clerical counterparts,
in
daughter {A
124).
bevy of
a
men
be
...
as a
Sentimental Journey; The Journal
domesticity. Irving, a bachelor until his later life
me
bosom, and be unto
ambition into the safe shelter of feminine
adoring nieces; the other three
that
all
the heart wishes or the eye looks for in
English
in the
he
Still,
So much was there about her of
out of mine, she should
be landed gentry
days, ended his
response to his unspxjken
pip>es a
us coyly:
tells
they represented their owners' desire
just to
When
other conflicting impulse.
these homes were "picturesque" in Andrew Jackson Downing's best style (both Willis and Mitchell were avowed followers of the architect);
379
York
Tarrytown,
in
outside
retreats:
Chapter 7
1970).
Henry Ward Beecher, Norwood, in
Life
New England (New
or
York,
1868), pp. 211-16. 52. Quoted in Robert Shaplen, Free Love and Heavenly Sinners: The Story of the Great Henry Ward Beecher Scandal (New York,
1954), pp. 53, 33.
Journey of the meeting between Yorick and
53
.
The
scandal was one of a series involv-
the abandoned insane Maria, a scene
ing the ministry. For contemporary attacks
was to
on the
which England
inspire a host of imitations in
W.
subject, see
and America. Yorick has heard of Maria and
A
seeks her out as a kind of sentimental side-
(Boston, 1874); and
When
show.
he finds her, she
is
dressed in
F. Jamieson, The Clergy,
Source of Danger to the American Republic
The
Satire in Verse on The Rev.
Drama of Deceit: A Henry Ward Beecher
white, with hair hanging loosely about her
(Worcester and Clinton, Mass., and Roches-
shoulders; she
ter,
dog not
is
tearfully imploring her
little
to desert her. Yorick immediately, in
a symbolic gesture, attempts to appropriate
her
wounded I
sat
sensibilities for his
down
close
wipe them [her
by
her;
tears]
in
mine, and then I
did
it, I
within
felt
me
as
I
and Maria
away
my handkerchief. my own, and then in
with
own:
I
as
they
me
fell,
then steeped
hers,
and then
in
sure could not be ac-
counted for from any combinations of matter and motion. I
am
jxjsitive
I
have a
soul.
A
Complete 1874),
184.
55. See most notably Tilton's extraordinary romance, Tempest-Tossed (New York,
1874),
wip'd hers again, and as
am
The Beecber-Tilton Scandal:
54.
author.
and
his tract. The True
Church (Philadel-
it
such indescribable emotions I
anonymous
History of the Case (Brooklyn, N.Y., p.
let
N.Y., 1875) by an
phia, 1867). 56.
Quoted
Beecher:
An
in
Paxton Hibben, Henry Ward
American Portrait
(New
York,
1927), p. 183. 57.
The Beecher- Tilton Scandal, pp.
58.
Ibid, p. 92.
59.
Quoted
in
Hibben,
op. cit.,
p.
54, 91.
195.
380
Notes
61.
Quoted Quoted
62.
Ibid.,
60.
in Shaplen, op.
cit.,
in
p. 99.
cit.,
Emanie Sachs,
''The Terrible
Siren": Victorian Woodhull (1838-1927)
York, 1920), 66. 67. 68.
and
in ibid., p. 262. in
and
(Indianapolis,
Beecbers
Annie
Runaway
Stowe
I
The Story of Harriet
(New York,
Trumpets of
1963);
Constance
ed.
Jubilee,
Kenneth
Lynn (New York and Burlingame, 1963), pp. Edward Stowe, Life of HarBeecher Stowe Compiledfrom
Journals (Boston and
mund
New
Her Letters and
York, 1889); Ed-
Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies
erature of the American Civil
in the Lit-
War (New York,
1966), pp. 3-98; Forrest Wilson, Crusader in
Crinoline:
Lady Byron
The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe
London, and New York, 1941). critical works are Alice Crozier, The
woman's
because
moral
God
is
ever-loving, ever-forgiving,
has given him no high range of
faculties,
no sense of
which the
Justice
laws, literature
induce
in
women
Charles
77.
Edward Stowe,
My
The Rungless Ladder:
derson's History
(New York,
pers
p. 85.
op. cit.,
ries
Oldtown Fireside
Stories (Boston, 1871).
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny
of Foreign Lands (Boston, 1854),
72.
Ibid.,
p. 388.
73.
Ibid,
I,
Memo-
II, p.
166.
p. 281.
The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, ed. Barbara M. Cross (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), I, 74.
393^. When Byron died in 1824, Lyman young Harriet, " Tm sorry that Byron is dead. I did hope he would live to do something for Christ. What a harp he might have swept!' " He preached a sermon on Bypp.
told the
or,
Henry Hen-
1872).
Little Foxes (Boston, 1866), p. 69.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Household Pa-
82.
New York,
and Stories (Boston and
1896),
83. Crowfield, Little Foxes, p. 238.
to Harriet Beecher Stowe,
p. 232.
For notable examples, see Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Mayflower and Miscellaneous Writings (Boston, 1855), and Sam Law71.
cher Stowe],
84. All references here
Wilson,
70.
son's
Wife and I:
Christopher Crowfield [Harriet Bee-
81.
lished paper delivered before the Association
69. Forrest
471.
page references are to Harriet
Beecher Stowe,
28, 1975.
op. cit., p.
York, 1951), pp. 192-8.
tanism (Durham, N.C., 1954). See also Carol V. R. George, "Harriet Beecher: Suffering and the Feminization of Jesus," an unpub-
Dec.
vir-
James Thayer Addison, The Episcopal Church in the United States 1789-1931 (New
(New York,
of American Historians in Atlanta, Ga., on
and
78.
Ibid, p. 207.
Puri-
and misun-
as a sp>ecial grace
All
New England
bit-
tue."
79.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and
She
derstood religion of England have sought to
80.
1969); Charles Foster,
justice."
terly protests "that utter deadness to the sense of
The
Novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe
pas-
affection should not
be expected to resemble that of a devoted
(Philadelphia, best
friends
Stowe exclaims
to evince,
dog: "The dog
Heaven:
Byron's
fidelity
thought appropriate for the much-abused
of Harriet Beecher Stowe (BosYork, 1897); Johanna Johnston,
to
pp. 118-19. In protesting the
silent
sionately that a
are:
67-112; Charles riet
ibid.,
dumb and
Field, ed.. The
Beecher Stowe
Rourke,
See
76.
Lyman Beecher Stowe,
Letters
New
History of the Byron Controversy
(Boston, 1870), p. 395.
have found useful Life
A
Vindicated:
in ibid., p. 236.
1934), p. 154. Biographical studies of
ton and
saw Byron as tormented by a dark religious faith and wished he might have talked with him and helped him. 75. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lady Byron
in ibid., p. 193.
Sinners,
Saints,
(New
p. 174.
Quoted Quoted Quoted Quoted
65.
in Harriet's words, "with a most eloquent lamentation over the wasted life and misused powers of the great poet." He
p. 193.
p. 266.
Quoted
Chapter 7
ron and closed,
in ibid., p. 269.
63. Shaplen, op. 64.
to
bors: or,
The Records of an Unfashionable Street
(New York, ous,
1875).
Stowe was
85. if
producing more
also
not original work, in
town Fireside Loves and Lives
Sam Lawson
Poganuc People:
Stories,
(New York,
A
in Sacred History:
York, 1874), as well as Idea
and elsewhere are We and Our Neigh-
(New York,
Series
1878),
and
Old-
Their
and Women
of Sketches
trivia like Betty
1876),
seri-
'j
'/
(New Bright
Little Pussy Wil-
low (Boston, 1870). 86.
Mary
Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters
of Horace Bushnell (New York, 1880), p. 168. 87. See R. A. Yoder, "The Equilibrist Perspective:
Toward
a
Theory of American
Romanticism," Studies
in
Romanticism,
12
.
Notes
to
705-40, on the special problem of
(1973),
Chapter 8
ed.
ham, The Triumph of Romanticism (Q)lumbia, S.C., 1970), and Quentin Anderson, "Practical
xxvi.
and Visionary Americans," American
127-8.
Mrs.
L.
H. Sigoumey,
Poems
Select
York, 1963), pp. xxv-
Wetmore
William
James,
The Letters of James Freeman Clarke
p. 234.
1952), pp. 78-9.
Memoirs,
MARGARET FULLER AND THE
13.
For recent biographies,
39.
see
Wayne An-
drews, Germaine: A Portrait ofMadame de Stael
DISAVOWAL OF FICTION
(New
Journals ofRalph Waldo Emerson, ed. Exi-
ward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson York, 1912), VIII,
II, p.
to
John Wesley Thomas
ed.
Fuller,
12.
New
pp.
11.
I,
(Hamburg, Germany,
(Boston and
I,
Memoirs,
8
1.
Story,
10.
Margaret
(Philadelphia, 1854), p. 13.
(New
Perry Miller
9.
45 (1976), 405-18. 88.
Her Writings and Correspondence,
Selection from
American romanticism. See also Morse Peck-
Scholar,
381
York, 1963), and Andre Maurois,
A Life of George Sand, (New York,
p. 116.
Hereafter referred to as Journals
trans.
Lelia:
Gerrod Hopkins
1953).
14.
Memoirs,
15.
She
I,
p. 229.
left Italy
for America in 1850, for
The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon (New York, 1897), I,
example, because she could not earn the
p. 460.
side the
2
money
she needed to supf>ort her family out-
none of which are fully adequate, are as follows: W. H. Channing, J. F. Clarke, and R. W. Emerson, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller
United States. There were a number young men with whom Fuller was in love as a young woman, most notably Samuel Ward, who married Fuller's closest friend, Anna Barker. Faith Chippenfield stresses (in-
(Boston, 1852), 2 vols, (hereafter re-
deed, over-stresses) Fuller's love-life in her
3.
The
standard biographies of Margaret
Fuller,
Ossoli
Thomas Wentworth
ferred to as Memoirs);
Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Boston, 1884);
Julia
Ward Howe,
Margaret Fuller
(Boston, 1883); Katharine Anthony, Margaret Fuller:
A
1920);
Arthur M. Brown, Margaret Fuller
(New
York, 1967); Faith Chippenfield, In
Psychological Biography
(New York,
Quest of Love: The Life and Death of Margaret Fuller
The
(New York,
Roman
1957);
Joseph Jay Deiss,
Years of Margaret Fuller
(New
York, 1969); Mason Wade, Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius ler's
papers are in
(New York,
(New York,
Story
gallantry with tion.
At times
Life
and
1956), p. 97.
Fiction" and
"The Future of
of the Novel, ed. Leon Edel
the
(New
York, 1956).
James, in idealizing the mid-nineteenth-
century Italy of Story and his friends, seems to have been vindicating his
oirs,
II,
felt
isola-
her loneliness to be
pp. 167-8). Yet she held herself to a
from
a spirit of
own courage
in
tate affection
manded
breathing
Fuller,
American Romantic:
also clear that she de-
She strug-
is
difficult.
Repeatedly, she faced
ruthlessly the waste of her emotions.
She
strove for "humility" {Memoirs,
she
could be
he
is
gled ruthlessly to live in altitudes where
is
evasion.
it
a basic precondition of self-respect.
a half
later: expatriation,
—
generosity of thought from herself as
implies,
century
II, p.
While it is clear that this high tone served a compensatory function she would be admired if she could not be loved, she would predict destinies if she could not dic-
Europe
no longer an
martyrdom {Memoirs,
167).
prayed,
Margaret
she
unbearable, that she had "no real hold on life, no real f>ermanent connection with any soul," and recorded with horror: "This thought envelops me as a cold atmosphere. I do not see how I shall go through this destiny. I can, if it is mine; but I do not feel that I can" {Mem-
confronting a vastly changed and modernized
8.
which she handled her
—
127.
Novel," collected in Henry James: The Future
7.
mod-
scrupulous enough to distinguish rigorously
James's standard defenses of fiction are
"The Art of
strikes a
Houghton Library of Har-
and His Friends (Boston, 1903), I, p. 5. F. W. Dupee, Henry James: His 6.
What
em reader of Fuller's letters and journals is the
high tone of magnanimity which she was
Henry James, William Wetmore
Writings
sentimental biography.
1940). Ful-
vard University and Boston Public Library. 4.
of
"Would its
own
I,
that love like
p. 166);
knowledge
reward" (Higginson,
op. cit.,
p. 180).
A
16.
Fuller once wrote that those
who
live
.
382
Notes
to
without love and support "are thrown upon themselves," and
and incessant "there
is
they do not find "peace
if
life," at least
none to
flatter
them
New
W.
Caroline
the
in
York, 1835],
p. 97.
Healey, Margaret and Her
W. Higginson
T.
in his
biography of
had turned "from the weak side of
American
intellect,
to the strong side, {op. cit.,
which then was literature, which was statesmanship"
Memoirs,
20.
Quoted
in Chippenfield, op.
21.
Higginson,
22.
Memoirs,
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid.,
p. 82.
cit.,
See Alexander E. Jones, "Margaret Ful-
Attempt
ler's
Woman,
Fuller,
26.
Memoirs,
referred to as Literature.
It is
interesting that
as a critic writing for the
New
York Tribune in
the mid- 1840s, Fuller had utter scorn for the
I,
p. 303.
I,
p. 20.
liere,
Woman,
I,
p. 387.
Thomas
Carlyle, to pick one example
undeniable utterances
work
.
"the
of a truly heroic
...
mind; altogether unique
.
.
among
the writ-
women of this generation, rare enough the writing
men" (quoted
in
Howe,
.
186).
(Boston, 1949),
p. 28.
See the early correspondence in James
Freeman Clarke
to
This poem
Works ofJames
Margaret is
Fuller.
included
Russell Lowell
in
The Poetical
(London,
n.d.),
was mocking a real attitude of Fuller's. In 1839, she wrote a friend: "I was proud that I was to test myself in the sternest way, that I was always to return to child,
my own
priest, pupil, parent,
husband and wife" {Memoirs,
What Lowell Fuller had
Woman,
specially tailored
and
which speak of "great a girl, she
realities" (p.
had read for pleasure Mo-
Clervantes, Shakespeare,
all
of
whom
Not what
{Memoirs,
is"
I,
failed to
I,
p. 99).
understand was that
no other option.
35.
Memoirs,
36.
Quoted
I,
in
Margaret Fuller
op. cit.,
Ossoli,
flp.
At Home and
Europe (Boston and London, 1836), pp. 171-2. Home and Abroad.
Hereafter referred to as
Quoted
in
44. Memoirs, 45.
Quoted
46.
Memoirs,
47.
Woman,
48.
Memoirs,
Andrews,
op. cit.,
p. 97.
p. 55.
I,
in
Maurois,
II,
p.
op. cit.,
p.
113.
195.
p. 94. I,
pp. 248-9.
which was an imporon Fuller, is described in Elizabeth Peabody, Record of Mr. Alcott's School (Boston, 1874). See also Dorothy McCuskey, 49.
Alcott's school,
Bronson Alcott, Teacher
Hereafter referred to as 51.
Healey,
York, 1940).
52.
See
op.
ibid.,
cit.,
pp. 67
Letters.
pp. 139^K). ff".,
where Fuller
delib-
erately enjoys an anecdote of cruelty (Apollo's
pp. 280-2.
(New
The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ralph Rusk (New York, 1939), II, p. 202. 50.
flaying of Marsyas) in most unfeminine
fashion, to the
p. 231.
Wade,
Woman, pp. 130
tant influence
pp. 140-80. Lowell
myself, to be
(
Abroad, or Things and Thoughts in America and
43. op.
John Wesley Thomas, James Freeman Clarke: Apostle of German Culture to America
34.
root"
p. 30).
.
32.
33.
its
for children, she be-
he should be, but what he
42.
p.
find
fit
p. 297.
toute epreuve" and thought her
cit.,
must
were not such
41. Fuller,
ing
it
"loved the natural history of man.
of many, praised her "chivalrous nobleness a
among
which put "instruction"
The works
As
312).
Memoirs,
Ihid.,
run of children's books coming into
style of narrative
classics
Memoirs,
30.
pp. 130-1. Hereafter
65.
II, p.
28.
Fuller,
II,
and Art
Literature
Fuller,
1832),
truncated "thin and baseless fictions" but the
p. 41.
27.
29.
Write Fiction," Boston Public
Margaret
40.
(New York,
lieved,
154.
p.
to
nature in which
18.
p.
cit.,
for Fuller's relations with other
women.
39.
p. 311).
25.
31.
fF.,
over "development," "the moral" over "the
p. 22.
op. cit.,
I,
(Bos-
popularity. She disliked the "Peter Parley"
pp. 31-2.
I,
pp. 35
common
pp. 132-3).
19.
's
on
Library Quarterly, 6 (1954), 67-73.
Fuller noted that Fuller, influenced by her father,
She hoped
ton, 1836), pp. 327, 323. See Higginson, op.
older
Fuller (Boston, 1895), p. 156. 18.
closer to her mother.
that they are not
Ten Conversations with Margaret
Friends, or,
After the birth of her child. Fuller
her return to America in 1850. The Young Lady Friend By a Lady 38
Hereafter referred to as Woman). 17.
37.
drew much
to bring her family to live with Mrs. Fuller
Nineteenth Century and Kindred Papers [Bos-
and
Chapter 8
they are honest;
very poor and very mean" {Woman ton, Cleveland,
.
dismay of one of her more
conservative students.
Notes to Chapter 8
53.
Memoirs,
54.
Quoted
55.
Memoirs,
56.
Howe,
57. See,
cluded
in
77. Letters,
p. 329.
I,
Higginson,
in
II, p.
op. cit.,
p. 117.
op. cit.,
creativity: "But,
"The Magnolia,"
in-
and Life Within, or Reviews, Narratives, and Poems (Boston, 1960), pp. 333-5. 59.
Quoted
60.
See
Essays,
in Chippenfield, op.
Madame
de
windows when p. 197.
cit.,
Stael, Corinne; or Italy,
Emily Baldwin and Paulina Driver (London, 1890), passim. 61. See F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (London, Toronto, and New York, 1941), p. 17, and pp. 3-75 passim. 62. For contemporary views, see William Wirt, The Letters of the British Spy, ed. Richard trans.
Beale Davis (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), especially
pp.
132^7, and The
Henry (Hartford, ple,
remarked: "If
[Fuller] justice,
what she has
I
I
Life
I,
19).
I,
79.
.
tive
Memoirs,
p. 32.
I,
See Ann Wood, "Emerson's RepresentaMen, " New Republic, Jan. 1-8, 1972, p. 29.
84.
p. 295.
Wetmore Story,
I,
p. 171.
and see Wade,
op. cit, II, p.
322.
pp. 166, 167.
op. cit., II,
pp. 2-3.
Letters, III, pp. 19-20, 29.
85. Her fascination with Goethe had stemmed largely from the fact that this emphasis on the outward world was his central message. See Frederick Augustus Brown,
Margaret Fuller and Goethe
24.
II, p.
II, p.
83. Literature,
p. 59).
(New York,
1910).
86. Letters, III, p. 180.
op. cit., p.
Edgar Poe was aware of Fuller's confusion between life and literature at this time. He wrote perceptively: "her personal character and her printed book are merely one and the same thing. Her acts are bookish, and her books are less thoughts than acts" (quoted in Wade, op. cit., p. 155). Healey,
Letters,
'Never read
I,
have
"overwhelming question" to him with such force. And no one did.
Letters,
.
his journal, "I
her death no one would again address the
87.
130.
71.
he wrote in
audience" {Journals, VIII, pp. 115What he meant probably was that after
Higginson,
p. 294,
70.
later,
my
82.
67. James, William
Memoirs,
years
lost
written' " (Letters of Elizabeth
66. Memoirs,
New
81.
64. Letters, IV, p. 222.
69. Ibid.,
six
to
80.
65. Journals, VIII, p. 250.
68.
on her York, saw herself as Emerson's vanishing Muse. When he heard of her death
way
wished anyone to do her .
III, p. 284).
to realize that Fuller, then (July 1844)
of Patrick
Browning, for exam-
should say
Barrett Browning,
she can get a chance, for they
Emerson, notoriously cold-blooded, liked a fire even in summer. It takes little imagination
1848), passim.
63. Elizabeth Barrett
to
have seen her several times, especially near night. Sometimes she looks in at your study are almost always shut" {Letters,
p. 238.
I,
Muse
the
was capa-
Emerson with his failures of Waldo, how can you expect come to you} She hovers near, I
ble of taunting
p. 85.
for example,
Memoirs,
p. 32.
I,
Ibid, pp. 351, 245, 239. Fuller
78.
160.
Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Life Without
58.
383
much
I
am
of
indebted for this point and for
my
thinking on the Fuller-Emerson
relationship to Michael Davitt Bell of Wil-
liams College. 88. 89.
Quoted Quoted
dentalists:
An
in
Higginson,
in
Perry Miller, The Transcen-
op. cit.,
p.
165.
Anthology (Cambridge, Mass.,
1950), pp. 307-8.
p. 137.
90. Memoirs, II, p. 58.
11.
For two fine articles on the Emerson relationship to which I 72.
91.
Fuller-
am
in-
debted, see Girl Strauch, "Hatred's Swift
Odell Shepard, Peddlar's Progress: The
Life of Bronson Alcott
(Boston,
1937),
pp.
155-6.
Memoirs,
Repulsions: Emerson, Margaret Fuller and
92.
Others," Studies in Romanticism, 7 (1968), 63-
93. Memoirs,
II, p. II,
29.
pp. 151
ff.
See also Horace
103; and Harry R. Warfel, "Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson," Publications of the Modem Language Association, 30 (1935),
Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York, 1868), pp. 169-91. For Greeley's career,
376-94.
in
73.
Higginson,
74.
Memoirs,
75.
Quoted Quoted
76.
op. cit.,
II, p.
see
Frank
W. Scott, "Newspapers
p. 85.
Luther Stoddard, Horace
75.
in
Higginson,
in
Warfel,
op. cit.,
op. cit.,
1775-1860"
The Cambridge History of American Literature, II (New York, 1918), pp. 177-95; Henry
p. 62.
p. 382.
tor,
Crusader
Greeley, Printer, Edi-
(New York,
1946);
Garlock Van Deusen, Horace
Glyndon
Greeley: Nine-
384
Notes
Crusader
teentb-Century
(Philadelphia,
to
Pa.,
1953). 94. Fuller,
Woman,
MetnoirSy
95.
11, p.
p. 103.
Chapter 8
moment, she could refer to Ossoli's love as "all fondness, but no help" {Memoirs, II,
In a dark
p. 233).
She had reservations about the
tion of marriage
156.
{ibid.,
institu-
and gave
p. 278),
a
great deal of thought to the freedom the
97.
Woman, pp. 119, 172. Quoted in Wade, op. cit., p. 143.
98.
Memoirs,
(Deiss, op.
96. Fuller,
11, p.
much younger
151. Fuller's friendship
with Greeley was not the only sign of the
change taking place in her, however. She had an unpromising relationship with a German
107. Fuller, 108.
Ossoli might one day need p. 295).
cit.,
Home and Abroad,
pp. 162, 166.
See Paul P. Baker, The Fortunate
Pil-
grims: Americans in Italy 1800-1860 (Cam-
Jew called James Nathan, an evasive and weak man whose presence in Fuller's life at first glance tells more about her hunger for
Otto Wittman,
affection than about her ability to read char-
Natalie Wright, American Novelists in Italy
acter.
After a few months he
fled to
Europe,
and another woman. Yet she was attracted to Nathan at least in part because he worshiped
Margaret the "Muse" only intermittently,
if
at
While she wrote him that she was one of "the few in whose lot the meaning of the age
all.
is
concentrated," she also confessed that she
On
lacked "humility."
from
coiled
one occasion she
he had hurled
insults
she liked his telling her, fool" (quoted in
Wade,
op. cit.,
responding positively to
this
you are
pp. 164-5). In
it
often by defi-
for self-demythification. (See also Julia ed..
1844-1845
Ward
The Love Letters of Margaret Fuller [New York, 1903], for Fuller's let-
Quoted
Wade,
in
American
Travellers in Arcadia:
1951);
111.,
109.
Quoted
110.
A. William Salomone, "The 19th-cen-
in Baker, op.
tury Discovery of Italy:
An
p. 42.
cit.,
Essay
Ameri-
in
can Cultural History," American Historical Review, 173 (1968), 1360-2. See also
Howard
R. Marraro, American Opinion on the Unifica-
(New York,
of Italy 1846-1861
111. Fuller,
Home and Abroad,
112.
Ibid, pp. 331,
113.
Ibid, p. 367.
1932).
p. 218.
334
114. Deiss, op.
p. 222. Fuller's
cit.,
p. 153. It is
op. cit.,
important to note, moreover, that the newspa-
estimate
of the gap between reportage and fact was
not exaggerated.
The
dramatically changing
opinions of Louis Cass, the American attache
who
Rome
arrived in
testify
to the
in the spring
of 1849,
same phenomenon. Pleading
with his government to empower him fully to recognize the young republic, he
ters to Nathan.)
99.
Richardson and
apparently de-
nition did, but also her half-conscious instinct
Howe,
P.
1830-1895 (Detroit,
a
woman even when
that involved belittlement, as
Edgar
(Philadelphia, Pa., 1965).
tion
grading remark, she was recording not simply her desire to be treated as a
Artists in Italy
re-
at her, yet
"little girl,
bridge, Mass., 1964);
the issue at stake: this
is
summed up
"not, as the
press has so constantly insinuated,
European
[a conflict]
per was a natural offspring of the American
between anarchy and order, [but one] be-
Even
tween constitutional, representative government and the most benumbing despotism"
oratorical tradition.
its
greater informal-
was a logical modification of a tradition which maintained that the most "sublime" eloquence was s{>ontaneous and even untuity
101. Fuller,
Home and Abroad,
man
p. 62.
Home and Abroad,
relationship cit.,
best account of the FuUer-Ossoli is
in I>eiss, op.
pp. 154-70,
106.
is
She wrote
ers only a part of
ceive that
it
cit.
Anthony,
op.
also useful.
a friend,
my
journal, see
Diary," Journal of
115. Fuller,
p. 214.
104. Ibid, p. 243.
The
Roman
p. 71).
Leona Rus-
Modem
History,
12
(1940), 209-70.
Ibid, p. 232.
103. Fuller,
Fuller's
[Madison, Wis., 1954],
tenberg, "Documents: Margaret Fuller's Ro-
100. Letters, III, p. 183.
105.
zini's Writings
For
tored.
102.
(Joseph Rossi, The Image of America in Maz-
life,
"Our but
relation cov-
I
do not
interferes with anything
to have or be" (quoted in Deiss, op.
cit.,
I
per-
ought
p. 295).
Home and Abroad,
116.
Ibid, p. 327.
117.
Ibid, pp. 305-6.
118.
Ibid, p. 420.
119.
Memoirs,
120.
Ibid, p. 209.
121.
See James Freeman Clarke
Fuller,
p. 102,
goumey.
II, p.
p. 248.
310.
where Clarke
to
Margaret
praises Mrs. Si-
Notes to Chapter 9
122.
James Freeman Clarke, Autobiography,
Diary and Correspondence,
New
Hale (Boston and
ed.
Edward
Everett
York, 1891), pp. 171,
123.
Memoirs,
235.
II, p.
Ibid.,
p.
12.
Ibid.,
p. 92.
13.
Melville quickly
became
bitter at the
two successful travelogues, Typee and Omoo. His dislike of such stereotyping led
his first
Leopold Wellisz, The Friendship of Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Adam Mickiewicz (New York, 1947), p. 34. 125. Fuller, Woman, p. 177. 126. Quoted in Anthony, op. cit., pp. 82-3. 124.
him to refer to himself in cruel parody as the "Author of Peedee, Hullabaloo and Fog Dog'' (quoted
HERMAN MELVILLE AND THE Margaret
Selection from
American Romantic:
Fuller:
(New York,
1965), pp. 222-3.
Quoted in Jay Ley da, The Melville Log: Documentary Life of Herman Melville 18191891 (New York, 1951), I, p. 390, II, p. 651. 2.
Perry Miller makes the point that the
New
York
He
could
nursery tale" (quoted in
Herman
14.
Adventure
Ibid.,
16.
Herman
pp. 118, 164.
and Other
5.
Wits in the Era ofFoe and
519.
II, p.
On
Melville's Reading:
A
M. M.
Sealts,
Check List of Books
Owned and Borrowed (Cambridge,
Mass.,
1950). 7.
of War
For another author who became
increas-
mode and Mark Twain, most notably Pudd'nhead Wilson and Tom Sawyer, Detective in The Writings of Mark Twain (New York and London, n.d.). Vols. XIV, XX. 8. The feminine members of Melville's
"Tartarus,"
Marvin
The
Man,
Confidence
women as prominent as
I,
p. 676.
New
York church of
Henry
Bellows, a close
friend of Orville Dewey's. See William Bras-
Interpretation 9.
'j
Religious Thought:
(New York,
1959), p.
Essay in 8.
All page references here and elsewhere
Herman Melville, (New York, 1957).
to Pierre are to
Ambiguities 10.
An
Pierre, or, the
Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gil-
man, The Letters of Herman Melville ven, 1960), p. 93.
(New Ha-
of
"Melville's
New
Certain of Melville's works, most nota-
20.
it
Fisher,
EngAmerican Quarterly, 23 (1971), 79-100.
land,"
bly
see
The Deflowering
do not include
characters; yet
I
classify
"Freudian" and feminine because, as
show
try to
later,
male protagonists
is
feminized culture whose off-stage presof.
Herman Melville, Redburn: His Voyage (New York, 1957), p. 12. see
will
determined by an essen-
21.
22.
I
the consciousness of the
tially
op. cit.,
The Apple-
in
pp. 167-210. For an interesting article on the social and sexual implications of
ence Melville keeps us aware
well, Melville
and London,
and the Tartarus of Maids"
aloud
the liberal Unitarian
the
1959),
Melville, The Apple-Tree Table
family read Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney's works
His wife attended the
or,
Tree Table,
ingly fascinated with the detective
for similar reasons, see
See Leyda,
York,
(New York,
Sketches (Princeton
'Tartarus':
in the 1850s.
(New
Typee
See particularly "The Paradise of Bach-
19.
elors
Melville's reading, see
Narrative of
Melville, White-Jacket,
Man
Herman
18.
Margaret
Fuller (Boston, 1883), p. 186. 6.
A
1922), p. 107.
Ward Howe,
Julia
Melville,
Herman
17.
War of Words and Melville (New York, cit,
Omoo:
South Seas (Chicago, 1968),
1961), p. 175.
for a "genius." See The Raven and the Whale:
Ley da, op. Quoted in
"a
p. 108.
15.
World on a
4.
& ale" and
p. 237).
ibid.,
p. xiii.
literary circle Melville joined in
1956), passim.
Melville,
in the
the later 1840s was self-consciously looking
The
which
later refer to Redburn,
of Mardi, as "nothing but cakes
A
A
3.
The
return to his original material after the failure
Her Writings and Correspondence,
Perry Miller
Bruccoli,
J.
of Authorship in America 1800-1870: The Papers of William Charvat [n.p., 1968], p.
he wrote to answer popular demand that he
REVOLT AGAINST THE READER 1.
Matthew
in
Profession
227).
Jr.,
138.
11.
public's insistence that he simply reduplicate
179.
ed.
385
For an example of the
Thomas
cult of
First
boyhood,
Bailey Aldrich, The Story of a
Boy (Boston and
New
23.
Melville, Omoo, p. 184.
24.
Melville, White-Jacket, pp. 49, 289.
25.
Ibid.,
26.
Interestingly enough,
Redburn style of
is
Bad
York, 1869).
p. 270.
when
Melville in
being genuinely informative in the
Omoo
—about
life at sea,
or conditions
386
in
Notes
Liverpool
— he
to
clearly talking to an imag-
is
Chapter 9
Redbum
"survives," although not happily.
Redbum
5tands, painful in the revealed, self-
inary audience
which
is
male
When
he condescends by ex-
mocking
"microcosm, or
ened
interests.
terms
plaining
world"
words
shows
(102),
little
by using archaic
off
interest.
mocking Redbum's
naive adher-
27.
ence to the causes of temperance or purity, he is
apparently addressing genteel readers.
important to keep
form
a hybrid.
in
mind
that
in
is
Two types of narratives about
were common
life at sea
Redbum
It is
in Melville's day.
There was the straight adventure chronicle, whether fact or fiction, such as Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840) and Melville's first two books, which were clearly designated as reading for boys and men. There was also the sentimental sohh story of the sailor's trials at sea propagated by societies for the relief of
seamen and tailored
to the tastes of a religious and feminine audi-
ence.
and
Sigoumey belonged to such a society, "The Widow and Her Son"
in tales like
[New
{Water-Drops
York,
73) she depicted the unrepentant life at sea as
tle
nursery it is
tale.
a
44wild
an unjust protest against female
Redbum
authority. Melville dismissed
say
pp.
sailor's
1848],
tale";
as a "lit-
more accurately one might
confused parody of a
In Redbum, Melville
nursery
little
writing in deliber-
is
and
intention
unsatisfied
Newton
Arvin,
Herman
Melville (n.p.,
1950), p. 265.
William Charvat,
28.
in one of the finest on Melville and one which has
essays to date
my own
guided
''Moby Dick
was
.
.
remarks that
approach,
[is]
.
the
work of
a writer
in a state of creative tension
whose
ing public
defined" (Bruccoli, 29.
are to
op. cit.,
a read-
had
at last
p. 240).
All page references here and elsewhere
Herman
York, 1948).
Melville,
On
Moby Dick (New
the connections between
Melville and Gilvinism, see particularly Bras-
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Morton White, Paths of American Thought (Boston, 1963), p. 84, where the authors state in connection with Melville and Hawthorne well, op.
cit.;
that "the emotions of Calvinism thus persisted in literature after the
stmcture of theology
had begun to fall to pieces"; Randall Stewart, American Literature and Christian Doctrine (Baton Rouge, La., 1958); Lawrance son, Melville's Quarrel with 1952).
On
Melville's reception in the religious
Mentor
L. Williams,
"Some Notices
press, see
and Reviews of Melville's Novels
mal
is
clear, his for-
what part he is to play, is not. an odd cross between the conven-
identity,
Redbum
is
Thomp-
God (Princeton,
While the character Redbum's meaning vehicle of class-consciousness)
who
with
limitations he
ate consciousness of the sentimental sea tracts. (as a
his
conventional reader's aroused but unfulfilled
satirizes his
(104),
So
tension between Melville's awak-
but
and
"wight"
like
readers by
like
either male or shares
in American Religious Periodicals 1846-1849," Ameri-
can Literature, 22 (1950), 119-27. 30.
Melville
is
of course enormously aware
tional virtuous lad of pious sea literature, ex-
of the economic realities and significance of
posed but resistant to maritime temptation,
the whaling industry, however. See
and the tough
Berthoff, The Example of Melville
tives.
sailor of the
adventure narra-
To further complicate the confusion
the book, like Mardi (although
ously tive,
less
of
conspicu-
Redbum is divided between a narraabout young Redbum's adventures at so),
and a rather improbable "story," which peaks with Redbum's mysterious, perhaps
sea,
Ideal in America (London, Oxford,
and
study of Melville
we
have, not only for a
numh)er of particular points, but for eral
is
not
in
control of the dichotomy between the book's
two formal modes,
narrative and "story."
He
—
nominally finishes off the "story" Melville always rounds out his stories, as he never does his narratives by telling the reader what he or she presumably wants to know, most par-
—
ticularly the sad fate of can't
end the
narrative;
Harry Bolton.
we
He
only learn that
New
York, 1964), pp. 277-319. I should add that I am indebted to Berthoffs book, the finest
Harry Bolton
London. Melville
York,
1962), pp. 78-84, and Leo Marx, The Machine and the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral
decadent, escapades with the English boy in
Warner
(New
my
gen-
understanding of Melville's supreme im-
portance and value. 31.
For further information on
Melville's
intention with Pierre, see William Braswell,
Opinion of
American LitFor an interesting interpretation of the artistic and sexual diflficulties revealed in Pierre, see Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville: A Study ofHis Life and Vision
"Melville's
Pierre,"
erature, 23 (1951), 246-50.
.
Notes
(New York,
1956), pp. 151
interpretation
Herman
ff.
Another helpful
William Ellery Sedgwick,
is
of Mind (Cam-
Melville: The Tragedy
bridge, Mass., 1945), pp. 127 32. Bruccoli, op. 33.
to
see Hershel Parker,
The Recognition of Herman Melville: Selected Criticisms Since 1846 (Ann Arbor, Mich.,
ed.,
Hugh W.
1967), pp. 49-60;
Reviewers
Melville's
1846-1891 (Chapel
"A
Melville's
the
Re-examination
of
Literature,
Melville's
42 (1970),
35.
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951),
221.
p.
Mitchell Curtis, and Melville shared the same ,
Merton M.
see 'I
and
My
Sealts,
Chimney,'
ruff,
Modem
Language
his
own
atheistic, materialistic,
and the writing
sensual, chaotic productions
WoodIS
See Vicki Halper Litman, "The Cot-
tage and the Temple: Melville's Symbolic Use Architecture,"
of
American
Quarterly,
21
(1969), 630-8. 45.
Carolyn
See
Tree Table,' 46.
"
'The Apple-
American Quarterly, 23 (1971),
See Charles N. Watson,
and the
"The
Karcher,
L.
101-9.
draw between
American
Association,
Melville's relations with Harper's, see
ibid.,
"
(1960), 283-92.
'Spiritual Lesson' of Melville's
pp. 282-302. Melville perhaps saw the comparisons critics in the early 1850s liked to
My
"Herman
"Melville and His Chimney," Publications the
of
Eugene Exman, The Brothers Harper (New York, 1965), p. 245. For
publisher. Harper's. See
p. 224.
op. cit,
Literature, 13 (1941), 142-54; Stuart C.
44.
Quoted in Bruccoli, op. cit., p. 239. See Leon Howard, Herman Melville
Howard,
Other Sketches For useful studies of "I and
and American
On
in
will be to
Other Tales
43. Page references to "I and My Chimney" and "The Apple-Tree Table" will be to Herman Melville, The Apple-Tree Table and
226-32. 34.
Quoted
Chimney,"
Hill, N.C., 1961).
American
Reviewers,''
Page references to "Bartleby"
41
Hetherington,
of Hetherington, see Hershel
unreliability
Parker,
British
387
Herman Melville, Billy Budd and (New York and Toronto, 1961). 42.
fF.
p. 276.
cit.,
For these views,
Chapter 9
Theme
of Timonism:
The Confidence Man,
Jr.,
"Melville
From
Pierre to " American Literature, 44
(1972), 398-^13.
heart," or the tasteful, "moderate, judicious,
page references are to Herman Melville, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade
and experienced" work of
(New York,
of Mitchell, praised for writing "from the Curtis. See Parker,
48.
ed., Recognition, pp. 63, 93.
36.
see
For
this
Howard,
37.
and other favorable reactions,
op. cit,
47. All
pp. 211
the
can Mind: Social and Moral Ideas
op. cit.,
II, p.
574.
49. Ibid, p. 542.
Ibid, p. 547.
50.
ff.
Richard D. Mosier, Making
1949).
Leyda,
Ameri-
51.
Ibid, p. 579.
the
52.
See "The South Seas"
in
Melville, ed.
(New
Lecturer (Folcroft, Pa., 1970).
York, 1892),
p. 111.
The Portable
(New York,
McGuffey Readers (New York, 1947), p. 130. 38. See George William Curtis, Prue and I
Jay Leyda
in
575-83. See also Merton
M.
1952), pp.
Sealts, Melville as
For modem was working in the Steme-Irving-MitchellCurtis tradition in his magazine tales, see
of Herman Melville, Hennig Cohen (New York, 1964), pp. 7,
Richard Harter Fogle,
Charles Eliot Norton, see Leyda, Melville Log,
recognition that Melville
39.
Melville's Shorter Tales
32.
For
Edward H. Ro-
II, p.
senberry, Melville and the Comic Spirit (Cam-
54.
(Norman, Okla.
1960), p. 46;
bridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 146 cit, p. 193;
Judith Slater,
if.;
Sedgwick,
op.
"The Domestic Ad-
venturer in Melville's Tales," American Literature,
which
For I
''Bartleby:
interpretations
found Art
of
"Bartleby"
John Gardner, Social Commitment,"
helpful, see
and
a negative response to Battle-Pieces
ed. 24,
by
683.
For an
interesting contrast of these
works, see John
P.
McWilliams,
Taps and Battle-Pieces:
Jr.,
The Blossom
two
''Drum-
of War,"
American Quarterly, 23 (1971), 181-201. 55. All
37 (1965), 267-79.
40.
Selected Poetry
53.
Sailor:
page references are to Billy Budd ed. Harrison Hay-
An Inside Narrative,
ford and Merton M. 56.
I
Sealts, Jr.
(Chicago, 1962).
am indebted for the spirit of my inter-
Philological Quarterly, 43 (1964), 87-98; Liane
pretation to the superb discussion of Billy
Norman, "Bartleby and the Reader," New Eng-
Budd
land Quarterly, 44 (1971), 21-39.
in Berthoff, op. cit, pp. 183-203.
differing
and penetrating
analysis, see
For
a
Edgar
Notes to Chapter 9
388
A.
Dry den,
of Form: The
Melville's Tbematics
twentieth century. See
Thomas Woody, A
Great Art of Telling the Truth (Baltimore,
History of Women's Education in the United
1968).
States
57.
Quoted
in
Intellectualism in
Richard Hofstadter, Anti-
(New York,
American Life
58.
The
versity policies
ail
University of Wisconsin, the Uni-
and Wesleyan Uni-
tried to reverse or
on co-education
(New York and
Lancaster, Pa., 1929),
pp. 268-98. 59.
I
am
referring
to
the
which Georg Lukacs descrih)ed
1962), p. 116.
versity of Chicago, Tufts,
II,
modify
at the
their
turn of the
phenomenon "Grand
as the
Hotel Abyss," the "coupling of with
'left'
ethics
epistemology"; see The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, 'right'
Mass., 1971), p. 22.
INDEX
American Revolution,
Abbot, Abiel, 103 Abbot, John,
81,
Ames, Mary Clemmer, 194 Andover Review, 98 Andover Seminary, 42, 145, 146-7,
Abbott, Jacob and John, 233 Abolitionists, 33-4, 35, 69
Adams, Abigail, 54 Adams, Henry, 229 Adams, John, 54 Adams, Nehemiah, 209
Anglican Church, 248; church, 23,
advertising, 66-8, 82, 83, 229 afterlife, 88, 202, 207, 220, 221, 57,
222^
64
Little Coffin
(Adams), 200, 204-5, 209
(Roman
empress), 74
Alcott, Bronson, 127, 269, 278-9 Alcott, Louisa
26. See also
Episcopalianism
Anthology Society, 230 Anthony, Susanna, 101, 190 anti-institutionalism, 152-8, 160
anti-intellectualism, rise of, 141-5, 146-51, 152, 158-61, 165, 168, 230, 328
antinomianism, feminine, 246, 294
agrarianism, 50 II
as established
Annals of the American Pulpit (Sprague), 183, 189, 200
Addison, Joseph, 240
"Age of Homespun," 52, Agnes and the Key of Her
148, 151
Angel Whispers (Eddy), 207
Addison, Daniel D., 192
Agrippina
23, 182, 187, 265,
272, 282, 285
89
May,
127; biographical data
on, 338-9; Little Women, 96
Alderbrook (Forrester), 229
"Apple-Tree Table, The" 317, 318-19
(Melville), 299,
architecture, 212-13
Arminians, 23, 27-8
Arnold, Matthew, 90, 149, 311
Alexander, Dr. A., 106
Arthur, Timothy Shay, 233
Algerian Captive, The (Tyler), 109
association, theory of, 212-13
Allen, Joseph H., 20-1, 22, 31, 48, 91, 152;
Astrea
biographical data on, 344-5
American Biography. See Library of American (Butler), 57
American Peace Society, 186
(fictional character),
71-2
atheism, 76 Atlantic Monthly, 170, 231, 232-3, 250
Atonement,
Biography
American Lady, The
Harmon
109, 121-30, 151; Bushnell's
redefinition of, 124, 127-8, 129, 130;
Calvinist doctrine (Bellamy) of,
121^,
2
390
Index
Atonement
132-3, 134, 218, 309; anti-institutionalism
{cont'd)
153^,
125-6, 131, 324; Congregationalist
of,
by "influence," 126-30; Unitarian view of, led by
344-5; comparisons of, with Bushnell,
Worcester, 124, 126-7; Universalist view by Ballou, 124-6
on mother's
redefinition of, 124;
134-41; definition of a Christian by, 138;
of, led
Atoning
The,
Sacrifice,
A
161; biographical data on,
Display of Love Not
of Wrath (Worcester), 126
love, 110;
101, 138-9, 240-2, 243;
women
Norwood, 87, 90,
sermons
of, 153-4;
and, 98, 101, 103, 241-3, 244, 255
Beecher, Lyman,
24-5, 26-7, 29, 35, 39,
18,
Aurelian (Ware), 116
132^,
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Holmes), 232
daughter Harriet and, 244-5, 247, 249;
305; conversion experience of, 132;
Bacon, Delia, 143-4, 334-5
30,
Religion Delineated,
concerning
on the Atonement, 124; view of,
concerning doctrine of Atonement, 124-6 Bancroft, George, 170, 172-3, 174-6, 177,
as
121;
view
of,
and damnation, 122^, 125
sin
Bellows, Henry, 81, 91
"Benito Cereno" (Melville), 298, 314, 323 Bertha and Lily (Smith), 63, 107-8, 109
Bethune, Joanna,
178, 181, 189
1 1
Between the Gates (Phelps), 220
baptism, 135-6
advocacy of segregation of
Baptists, 22, 23;
state by, 33;
evangelism
membership
of, 218;
predominance
of, in
Beyond
the Gates (Phelps), 220, 225,
of,
figure
Bickerdyke, "Mother," 76 Billy
South, 23; slavery
Budd
(Melville), 298, 323-6, 327,
by Sparks, 188
of, defined
Bird, Isabelle, 60-1
Barth, Karl, 328
Blackwell, Elizabeth, 76, 86-7
"Bartleby the Scrivener" (Melville), 293,
black
298, 314, 315-17, 319
Blake,
Phoebe, 135
women, 49 John
L.,
Bonner, Robert,
Barton, Clara, 75
232
240-1
82,
Battle-Pieces (Melville), 322-3
Boorstin, Daniel, 166
Bay Psalm Book, 1\1
Boston, 29; church membership of
Beecher, Catharine Elsther,
38, 57, 69, 81,
253^; biographical data younger
on, 332-3; comparison of, with sister Harriet, 86, 142;
Yale,
142^,
crusade of, against
154; Domestic Economy, 96;
Episcopalian faith People on Health
of,
1
34; Letters to the
and Happiness,
and
themes
96-7, 104, 143; Truth Stranger
Calisthenics, 92; religious
than Fiction, 143, 158, 254;
education and,
Protestants, 152; library 151;
Lyman Beecher
publishing center, 82; Unitarians of, 37-8,
Boston Ladies' Peace Society, 187 Bradstreet, Anne, 204, 205
Bremer, Fredericka, 114
Bridgeman, Brooks,
women's
J.
Howard
Broughton, Sarah,
59, 71, 105, 106, 143
62, 231
Beecher, Edward, 90, 96-7, 132, 134, 143,
Brownson, Orestes,
of Ages, 254 30, 81, 82,
83^,
Barrett, 259
70, 147
Buckminster, Joseph, 89, 91, 97, 107, 173, 190, 230-1; biographical data on, 340-1
253-4; biographical data on, 346-7;
Henry Ward,
Allen, 98
W., 221
Browning, Elizabeth
Conflict
103,
37-8; as
40, 147, 160, 162
Beecher, Charles, 133, 134
Beecher,
movement,
in,
Brainard, David, 175
92;
Physiology of,
328-9
biography, 168, 176-8, 181-2, 183, 188-99; types
issue and, 34, 248
132, 142, 227,
226
Biblical criticism, 146-7, 148, 151, 181
of, 23; non-intellectualism of, 36-7;
Bartlett,
99, 101, 133, 306,
Atonement
reformulated by, 121-4, 125-6, 127; True
Ballou, Hosea, 124, 134, 196-7, 203; Treatise
hymns
Boston, 37-8; quoted, on
6, 29,
311; doctrine of
Ballou, Adin, 218
36-7;
39^0
Bellamy, Joseph,
143-4
Joanna, 161
church and
of, in
revivalism,
Belknap, Jeremy, 32
Bagley, Sarah, 70 Baillie,
experience
Beecher, Roxana Foote, 132-4
Bacon, Henry, 81, 99, 192, 194, 231; biographical data on, 344-5 Bacon, Leonard,
135, 140, 143, 153, 233, 246, 253,
90,
Burr, Aaron, 246
Index
391
Bushnell, Dotha, 53-4, 74
biographical data on, 340-1; health of,
Bushnell, Horace, 34^5, 38, 39, 52-4, 68, 77,
injured by overwork, 175; marriage of,
81, 87, 88-9, 96-7, 99, 113, 134, 136-7,
161, 227, 232, 253-4, 265;
autobiography
of, 88, 192, 193; biographical data on,
342-3; comparisons of, with
Beecher, 139-41; daughter's
Henry Ward memoir of,
Peabody's memoir
90;
of, 102, 190;
quoted, on historiography, 183, 187-8; quoted, on Tuckerman, 152; "self-culture"
sermons
term coined by, views
of, 90;
of,
138;
God women
concerning
193^; early baptism advocated by, 136; Forgiveness and Law Grounded in Principles Interpreted by Human Analogies, 127; God in Christ, 150;
Channing, William Henry, 271, 274; biographical data on, 342-3
"history of oblivion" defined by, 183,
Chapin, Edwin H., 154, 231
190, 191, 192,
198;
Natural and
the Supernatural,
The,
Atonement, 124, theological thought and
and Atonement,
122, 124, 136;
and, 102
charity, voluntarism
in,
152
114; redefinition of
"Charlotte" (Bacon), 81, 192, 194-5
127-8, 129, 130;
Cheever, George, 222
writing, 139-41; Vicarious Sacrifice, The, 109, 127, 129;
view of conversion,
134,
136, 137, 140;
Woman
Reform
Suffrage: The
Against Nature, 141; on women's role, 44^5, 110-11, 129-30, 141; Work and Play,
139 Bushnell,
Mary Thorp,
Cheney, Mary Bushnell, 192 Child, Lydia Maria, 56-7, 62, 69, 86, 154, 155; biographical data on, 334-5;
controversial themes of, 95, 96 child-raising, 74-5, 264
Chimney Comer (Stowe), 250 Christ: Calvinist view of meaning of death
53-4, 68
Butler, Charles, 57-8 of, 123, 125, 324;
Butler, Kezia, 103
"feminine" nature
of,
108, 110, 116-17, 126-30, 141, 305, 327;
Byron, Lady Anne, 245-6 Byron, George Gordon, 245-6, 247, 255, 256, 284
liberal
views of meaning of death
of, 124,
127-9
125,
Christian Examiner, The (periodical), 29, 31, 32, 42, 81, 88-9, 109, 114, 115, 116, 147,
149, 151, 201, 212, 229, 231-2, 235;
Cabot, Eliza, 102
shift in doctrine
Calhoun, Daniel, 29 Calvinism, 12-13,
18, 20, 81, 131,
139, 146, 274; at
134-6,
Andover Seminary,
42,
146-7; Catharine Beecher's opposition to, 104;
conception of history found
in,
170-2; conversion and, 131-2, 134-5;
decline of, 6-8, 13, 17-19, 151; doctrine
of Atonement as formulated by, 121-4, 125-6, 131, 324; Eliza Lee's opposition to, 107; liberal
wing
of, 124; in Melville, 297,
305-6, 323-4; Stowe's 248;
view of
work
on, 245, 246,
sin in, 122-4, 125,
245
capitalism, 6, 12; sentimentalism linked to,
127 Christian Parlor Magazine, 2}}-4 Christian Union (weekly), 244
Chubbuck, Emily, 336-7. See also Forrester, Fanny church membership and attendance, 97-8; female predominance in, 97-9; New England Calvinist churches and, 135; rise of, from eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, 22-3
church cities,
Civil
254 careers,
women's, 51
Carlyle,
Thomas, 292
Cart Wright, Peter,
37,
and
of Atonement, 124, 126,
tax, 23, 28
population, 50
War,
20, 35-6, 69, 75-6, 156, 208, 322
Clarke, James Freeman, 90, 109, 266, 286;
biographical data on, 342-3; Fuller and, 271, 274
38-9
Greenwood, Grace
Gary, Alice, 95, 194, 195, 336-7
Clarke, Sara. See
Case, Mrs., 62, 231
Clarke, Sarah, 270
Catholics, 22, 23
Clarke, Willis G., 211
cemetery movement, 201, 208-13
class
Channing, EUery, 271 Channing, William EUery,
and oppression:
Fuller's journalism on,
281-2; in Melville's writing, 21, 38, 39, 89, 91,
11,
298-300
clergy: crisis of self-confidence of, 17-22;
109, 154, 155, 159, 173, 223; address of,
decline of scholarship of, 141-2, 144-51,
on the nature of the Church,
152, 158-61, 165, 168, 230-1, 328;
21;
7
Index
392
consumerism,
clergy {cont'd)
5,
64—6, 117, 141, 253, 328; in
disestablishment of, 22-8, 274; economic
literature, 9-10, 64-6, 68, 251; role
consequences of disestablishment
advertising in creating, 66-8
of,
conversion experience, 131-2, 134-8, 140,
28-32; education of, 144-9, 151;
151, 248; "instantaneous" vs. "gradual,"
evangelical, 28, 35, 36^7, 39^K), 113;
exclusion of, from frail
132, 134
political office, 33;
health of, observed, 88-9, 92-3, 175,
215-16; income
Corinne
intellect vs. piety of, 141-4; mobility of,
29-30; theological
Crosby, Fanny, 220
vs.
pastoral role of, 144-51, 158-60. See also
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (Whitman), 325
Cummins, Maria, 338-9
ministry as a profession
Curtis,
Cobb, Eunice Hale, 205
George, 212, 234, 236-9, 314-15,
317; Prue
Cobb, Sylvester, 205 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 255
and
/,
239, 240, 250, 314, 315,
316, 317
colleges: coeducational, 327; proliferation of, in
(fictional character), 62, 261, 271,
276 Cotton, John, 275
28-30, 31, 90; poHtical role of, 32-6; of, 28,
Coop)er, James Fenimore, 5-6, 83, 283
copyright, 229
of, 28-9, 30-1;
intellectualism of, 9, 36-41, 145-8;
tenure
of
1830s to 1850s, 83; women's
Curtis, Harriott, 70
Cuyler, Theodore, 99-100, 204, 209, 218,
vs.
219, 231; biographical data on, 344-5
men's, 143
commercialization, 236, 238, 240, 308, 328 Confidence
Man, The
(Melville), 293, 299,
Daisy Plains (Warner), 137
301-2, 314, 319-20
damnation: Ballou's Universalist view
of Ages (Beecher), 254 Congregationalism, 17, 18, 23, 151; Conflict
Arminian wing
125-6; Calvinist view (Bellamy) of, 122-3, 125-6, 171; Channing's view of, 136; as
of, 23; as established
church, 23, 27; clergy
subject for hymns, 219
of, 28-9, 30, 34-5,
37-9, 41, 89-91; disestablishment of, 23, 24-5, 27; failure of, in
cities,
geographical distribution
248;
of, 26;
hymns
of, 218; installed vs. uninstalled ministers of, 30; intellectualism
151;
membership
of clergy of, 37-9,
of, 27-8;
membership
figure of, 23; millennialism and, 221;
National Council "Plan of Union" of, in
of,
of, in 1865, 151;
Dana, Richard Henry, 295, 297
Dante Alighieri, 219 Darwinism, 251; social, 327 Davies, Samuel, 219
Davenp)ort, John, 53
death and mourning, 200-7 democratization, 24
denomination, church: change
and
of, 27; relative decline
nineteenth century, 23, 26, 27;
ministers, 90, 94;
change
of,
by
of,
women
by
writers, 94; terminology, 32
Dewey,
Orville, 21-2, 40, 43, 46, 91, 115,
slavery and, 34-5; statement of
135, 146, 234-5; biographical data on,
self-definition of, including deletion of
340-1; daughter's
word
Synod of 1646-48
"Calvinism," 151;
of, 151;
Synod of 1852
of, 151;
view
of,
toward Atonement, 124
memoir
of, 190, 191
Dial, The (periodical), 259, 276-7, 278-9,
281 dialectic: of Calvinism, 170-1; Hegelian,
Congregational Library Association, Boston, 151
171, 175, 179-80,
Dickens, Charles,
5,
198-9
256
Congregational Quarterly, 151
Dickinson, Emily, 148
Connecticut: Anglicans as dissenters, 23, 26;
discrimination, 141-3; in education, 143,
Congregationalism as established church,
266; in
employment and pay, 76
23, 27; disestablishment, 24-5;
disestablishment of churches, 22-8
industrialization, 52
dissenters, 23, 24,
Conquest of Granada (Irving),
1
74
Conrad, Joseph, 307 consolation literature, 201-7, 208, 214, 220, 223-6, 234 Conspiracy of Pontiac (Parkman), 179-80
26-7
Divine and Moral Songs (Watts),
2
1
Dix, Dorothea, 102, 154-7, 158; biographical
data on, 334-5 Dix,
J.
H., 314
Dodge, David Low, 186
Index
272; Margaret Fuller and, 259, 260, 267,
Domestic Economy (Beecher), 96
domestic manufacture,
disappearance
50, 52;
393
West, 55
of, 49, 51, 52; lingering of, in
"domestic science," 166
269, 270-3, 274-9, 281, 284-5, 287;
ministry quit by, 20, 21, 275; quoted, on Italy,
Douglas, Stephen, 33
Downing, Andrew Jackson, 212-13 Drum-Taps (Whitman), 323
283-4
Emmons, Emmons,
Erastus, 75, 131
Nathaniel,
6, 8, 31, 75, 78, 122,
123, 131, 133, 141, 150, 159, 196-7, 232;
memoir
Duffield, George, 221
Park's
Dutch Reformed Churches, 144
scholarship of, 145, 148; view of next
Dutton,
Mathew
of, 81, 150, 190, 195-6;
world by, 222
Rice, 89
Duyckinck, Evert, 289 Dwight, Timothy, 60, 145-6,
Empty 175,
218
Crib, The: The
Memorial of Little
Georgie (Cuyler), 200, 204-5
England: Victorian culture Victorian literature
"Easy Chair" column,
in Harper's, lil, 314,
315, 317, 320
economic
women,
shift in,
48-55,
78, 117
5-6;
in,
9
Episcopalianism, 23, 40-1, 94, 248-9; attraction for
role of
in, 5,
women
of, 94;
clergy
practicing, 40-1; as established church, 23, 26;
geographical distribution
hymns
of, 218; millennialism and, 221;
of, 26;
Eddy, Daniel, 58, 207 Edgeworth, Maria, 161, 268 editorial careers, 232; women's, 95
"established" churches, 23
education: of clergy, 144-9, 151;
evangelism, 28, 35, 36-7, 39-40; attitude of,
women's takeover
grade-school,
slavery issue and, 248
of, 76,
327; popularization of, 1830s to 1850s, 83
education of women, 45, 56-9,
76, 104—6,
265, 270; discrimination in higher, 143,
toward conversions,
132; at
Eva van Arsdel
(fictional character), 65-6,
67, 68, 137-8, 140-1, 142, 157,
266; female academies for, 58-9; higher,
Everett, Alexander, 176
co-educational and, 327
Everett,
Edwards, Bela Bates,
female
seminaries, 105-6
Edward,
250-3
82, 172-3, 175, 179,
208
81, 144, 151;
biographical data on, 342-3
Edwards, Jonathan,
4, 6, 29, 32, 40, 101,
121, 135, 140, 145, 146, 171, 174-5, 176, 190, 316; as a father, 74; humility of, 193;
and millennial doctrine
of, 221; Park's
memoir to, 183; "Sinners an Angry God," 155
in the
Hands of
Fall of Mexico (Prescott), 178
Farley, Harriet, 69, 70-1, 336-7; marriage of,
95
farming, shift from subsistence to
commercial, 50 Eliza, 55-6
Famham,
Edwards, Jonathan,
Jr.,
Edwardsean school,
6-7, 77, 121-4, 274
Farrar, Mrs. John, 267
191
fashion, 60-1
"The Father" (Sigoumey), 197-8
"elect," the, 138
change
Eliot,
Charles William, 144
father's role,
Eliot,
George,
Faulkner, William, 313
5,
243, 247, 256
63^,65,
253, 259, 290, 294; twentieth-century, 11.
6
Montgomery
Ellen
(fictional character),
Fern,
George, 200 Dinsmore (Finley),
Elsie's
women's
Fanny
rights
Isabella (Prescott), 173
(worn de
plume of Sara Pay son
Willis), 78, 83, 84, 86, 91, 157, 186;
"eloquence," 271^, 282 Elsie
See also
Ferdinand and
115, 162
EUet, Elizabeth, 184, 207 Ellis,
74-5
feminism, nineteenth-century, 45, 167, 246,
Eliot, John, 175, 177 elite culture,
in,
biographical data on, 340-1; career of, 95,
236
72, 162
Holidays at Roselands (Finley), 72
embalming, 209 Emerson, Joseph, 101-2, 103 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 19-20,
Fern Leaves From Fanny 's Portfolio (Fern), 83 Fichte,
147, 173,
fiction,
Johann Gottlieb, 171 168, 260; Melville's approach
to,
234, 253, 275-6, 292; biographical data
301-2; periodical, 229-30, 232; as
on, 342-3; "eloquence" as sought for by.
replacement for theology as reading
5
1
1
394
Index in the Nineteenth Century,
fiction {cont'd)
matter, 85, 108-9, 160; rise of, 108-9,
women
113-16;
writers'
dominance
work
282, 287;
in,
96,
279-80, 281,
Herald Tribune,
of, for the
279-82, 283, 284, 285; as a writer, 272-3,
279-80, 281, 285-6, 290-1
260. See also novels
Fillebrown, Charlotte, 62, 192-3, 194, 231;
Fuller,
Timothy, 263-6,
269, 272, 274, 282
funeral customs, 209-10
biographical data on, 336-7 Finley, Martha, 72, 338-9
Finney, Charles Grandison,
18, 35, 37, 38,
134, 140
Fitzgerald, F. Scott,
3
1
Gannett, Ezra
Follen, Charles, 19-20, 21, 35, 38, 61, 81, 89, 136, 154, 223; biographical data on,
340-1; wife's
memoir
195
Interpreted by
Human
Analogies (Bushnell),
Genesis, as testament to female superiority,
74
Germany:
formalism, 328
E^win,
3
the
Godey's Lady's Book (periodical), 45, 61, 69, 71, 73, 94, 105, 229, 231-2, 234, 267, 273,
297, 313, 328
1
Fanny {nom
Chubbuck
Biblical scholarship in, 147, 148;
historian-philosophers of, 170-2, 174, 177
Formation of the Christian Character, On (Ware), 160, 162, 163 Forrest,
231
Gay worthys, The (Whitney), 107 in Principles
127
Forrester,
S. J.,
Garland of Flora, The (Dix), 155 Garrison, William Lloyd, 35 Gates Ajar, The (Phelps), 88, 188, 223, 224-5
forgiveness, 123, 125-6, 140
and Law Grounded
Stiles, 29, 154, 159;
biographical data on, 342-3
Gardner, John
of, 190, 191, 193-4,
Follen, Eliza, 162, 191, 192, 193, 194
Forgiveness
Gage, William, 98 Galaxy (magazine), 66
de plume of
Emily
Judson), 95, 186, 229-30;
biographical data on, 340-1
God
in Christ (Bushnell), 150
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 255, 256, 265-6, 269-70, 284
Fowler, Nathaniel, 67
Goldsmith, Oliver, 238, 240
Fox, Katie and Maggie, 207
Goodrich, Samuel,
Francis, Convers, 177
Graham,
171, 172,
3
Isabella, 112
Freeman, James, 91
Graham's (magazine), 229, 232, 234
free will, 126
Grant, Ziipah, 101, 105
Freneau, Philip, 235
Greeley, Horace, 277-8, 279-80, 289
Freud, Sigmund, 67, 75
Greenwood,
Friend of Peace, The (Worcester), 187 Frisbie, Levi,
81, 89, 90, 91, 194,
Greenwood, Grace {nom
89
Clarke Lippincott),
Frohman, Daniel, 66 frontier
W. P,
F.
218, 221, 223; biographical data, 340-1
de
plume of Sara
59, 91, 186;
biographical data on, 340-1
women, 55-6
Grimke, Angelina Emily and Sarah Moore,
Frugal Housewife, The (Child), 56-7 Fuller, Margaret, 13, 58, 95, 143, 253,
259-88, 290-1, 294; biographical data on,
69 Guiccioli, Countess Teresa, 245
334-5; "Conversations," 259, 262, 270, 273, 274; death of, 259, 287; as editor of Dial, 259, 276-7, 278-9, 281; education of,
263-6; "eloquence" displayed by, 260,
271^,
276, 277, 282, 285-6;
Emerson and,
Hale, Sarah
J.,
47-8, 56-7, 59, 61-2, 71,
78-9, 105, 227, 328;
background
of, 94;
biographical data on, 332-3; career of, 95, 231-2, 337; conversion of, to
259, 260, 267, 269, 270-3, 274-9, 281,
Episcopalianism, 94; doctrine of female
284-5, 287, 291; in Italy, 259-60, 282-7;
"influence" developed by, 45, 47, 57, 69,
marriage, 95, 283; and Melville, 289-92,
73, 136, 261;
294, 301, 306, 308;
and oppression, 281-2;
theory
of,
feminine nature of Christ, 108, 128; as
sense of history and action p>ossessed by,
pacifist, 186-7;
262, 265-6, 268, 277, 278-9, 281, 284-6,
self-alienation of, 93-4;
289; socialism of, 285;
Summer
on the
Lakes, 278, 281, 282; transcendental
period
of,
269-79, 281, 286, 291;
Women
concerning
73^,
on the Sabbath, 111; Woman's Record,
81, 128
Hall, Arethusa, 190 Hall, David, 29
Index
395
Harper Brothers, 82-3, 109
Home (Sedgwick), 185 Home Journal, 229 Home Monthly, 236
Harper's Magazine, 66, 229, 237, 320
Homer,
Harper's Monthly Magazine, 229, 314, 317
Hopedale Collection of Hymns and Songs, The,
Hames, William Bradford, 89 Harper, John, 82
Harris,
113
218
Thaddeus M., 108
Harte, Bret, 66
Hope
Hartford Female Seminary, 71, 105
Hopkins, Samuel,
Hartford
Selection,
146, 230;
The (hymnal), 218
women
5, 6,
Friedrich, 170-2,
Ward, 271
Julia
Huntington, Frederick Dan, 98, biographical data on, 344-5
190;
Hutchinson, Anne, 275 198-9
Hegelian
dialectic, 171, 175, 179-80,
Hemans,
Felicia Dorothea, 62, 113, 211
Hemingway, Ernest, 255, 297 Henry Henderson (fictional character),
hymns, 214, 217-20
Hymns "I
65,
249-52
(Watts), 217
My
and
Chimney"
(Melville), 299,
317-18, 319 Ide, Jacob, 150
Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 171 Hildreth, Richard, 147
to Advertisers
immigrant women, 49 immigration,
222
7,
"Improvement
Hillard, George, 176-7
Hints
of, 49,
West, 55
Howland, Marie, 190 Hudson, Winthrop, 18
Place of Rest" (hymn), 219
Georg Wilhelm
demise
50, 52;
Howells, William Dean, 20
women, 91-3
Henry F,
House and Home Papers (Stowe), 250 household industry,
Howe,
295, 309
175, 179, 198, 256
Hill,
K., 20, 21, 22, 81;
51, 52; lingering of, in
Hedges, Frederick, 264 Hegel,
of, 81,
biographical data on, 344-5
20, 96, 181,
health, frail: of clergy, 88-9, 92-3, 175,
A
memoir
274
and, 291, 292, 305, 318, 321, 322; quoted,
215-16; of
101, 190; Park's
150, 190, 195; scholarship of, 145, 148,
Hosmer, James
211, 234, 236, 243, 253, 283, 297; Melville
"Heaven,
Anthony,
excluded from, 143, 266
on Fuller, 266 Hawthorne, Sophia,
101,
196-7, 203, 247; biography of Susanna
Thomas, 219
Hawes, Joel, 113, 218 Hawthorne, Nathaniel,
6, 31, 32, 74, 78, 99,
104, 123, 131, 133, 146, 150, 159, 174-5,
Harvard University: Divinity School, 145, 147, 160; dominated by Unitarians, 42, Hastings,
(Sedgwick), 185
Leslie
incest, 228,
(Frohman), 66
historical novel, 107, 116, 181,
184^
Circles," 70
255
industrialization,
7,
12, 24,
50-1, 52, 328
"influence," 9, 77, 85, 114, 198, 213, 261,
historocal societies, 169
Atonement by,
273; of advertising, 66-7;
historiography, 174, 183, 284; American, political nature of, 175-8;
23
126-30; of the clergy, 77, 85, 136, 207;
German, 170-2,
feminine, doctrine of,
174, 177
9,
45-8, 53, 57,
68-9, 71-6, 77, 97, 103-4, 128-30, 155,
history, 169-72, 180-2, 260; biographical,
310; maternal, 74-6, 99-100, 207; of the
168, 176-8, 181-2, 183, 188; Fuller's sense
press, 85
of, 262, 265-6, 268, 277, 278-9, 281,
Ipswich Seminary, 105
284-6, 289; as literary subject, 169-70,
Irving,
Washington,
174, 234-5, 236-9, 314;
180-2; local histories, 168, 181-2;
Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, 236, 237,
Melville's sense of, 289; social, 188, 189
238-9, 240, 315
History (Bancroft), 176
Islam, Chester, 89
Hitchcock, Exiward, 106
Israel Potter (Melville), 293, 298, 314, 323
Hodge, Charles, 149-51, 221 Holcombe, William, 207, 214
"I
Italy,
283-7
Would Not
Live Always" (hymn), 219
holidays, proliferation of, 167
Holidays Abroad (Kirkland), 290
Jackson, Andrew, 263
Holmes, Mary
James, Henry,
J.,
338-9
Holmes, Ohver Wendell, 231, 232, 322
284
9, 20, 62, 96,
251, 260-1, 283,
Index
396 James, Henry, Sr, 17-18, 19
liberal theology, 124-30, 132-4, 135-51, 197
Jane Elton (fictional character), 161-2
libraries, public, 36, 83, 103, 109, 181;
Jefferson,
Thomas,
23, 50, 175,
Jerauld, Charlotte F. See Fillebrown,
from theological
shift
"Jimmy Rose"
(Melville),
299
Library of American Biography (Sparks,
job discrimination, 76
Judd, Sylvester,
Land (Famham),
Life in Prairie
29, 77-8, 81, 89, 102, 130,
136-7, 182, 210; biographical data on,
"Like Noah's Lily,
of, 190;
quoted, on his
love, 191-2
55
Life of George Washington (Marshall), 175
344-5; conversion of, to Unitarianism,
memoir
ed.),
173, 176-7, 183, 188
Johnson, Richard, 33
136; Hall's
texts to fiction,
108-9
Charlotte
need to
of
Congregational Library Association, 151;
265
Weary Dove" (hymn), 219
The (periodical), 184
Lincoln, Abraham, 323
Linwoods, The (Sedgwick), 185
Judson, Ann, 106
Lippincott, Sara Clarke, 338-9. See also
Judson, Emily Chubbuck. See Forrester,
Greenwood, Grace
Fanny
literary career,
Julian (Ware), 116
literature:
women
in,
95-6, 109
commercialization
of, 236, 238,
June, Jenny (nom de plume), 186
240, 308; in competition with sermons,
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 33
220, 223-6, 234; fiction's rise to
113, 230; consolatory, 201-7, 208, 214,
p)Osition in, 108-9, 113-16; history as
Keats, John, 255, 256
Key
to
Uncle
Tom
Kingdom of God
'j
dominant
subject for, 169-70, 180-2; as mass
Cabin (Stowe), 247
in America,
The (Niebuhr),
medium,
81^,
9,
103, 168, 229, 238, 253,
308; theology subordinated
18
to, 85,
108-9,
Kirkland, Caroline, 290
137-9, 141, 150-1, 168, 253; as biography
Knickerbocker's History of New York (Irving),
defined with types defined, 188;
236
labor: female, 49, 54, 69-70; sexual division of, 56-8; strikes,
Victorian, in America, 5-6,
9,
Victorian, in England,
women's,
5, 9;
61-6, 68, 71-6, 81, 84, 86, 96, 109, 114-15, 168-9, 267-8. See also biography; fiction;
70-1
magazines; novels; poetry
Ladies' Album, The (magazine), 187, 188 Ladies' Magazine, 46, 61, 73, 105, 186-7, 232
Little
Eva
(fictional character), 3-5, 8, 12,
63, 66, 68,
Ladies' Repository, The, 99, 105, 192, 196,
254 250
Little Foxes (Stowe), 129,
233 Ladies Wreath, The:
A
225, 253;
Magazine Devoted
to
Literature, Industry and Religion, 187 Lady Byron Vindicated (Stowe), 245-7, 255,
Little Reader's Assistant, Little
Women
The (Webster), 169
96
Live and Let Live (Sedgwick), 185
London
296, 328
(Alcott),
Times, 285
Lady's Companion, The (magazine), 232
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 234, 235
Lamb, Charles, 234-5, 238 Larcom, Lucy, 70, 105, 192-3; biographical
love, God's: Bellamy's Calvinist self-love
Lotus-Eating:
view
data on, 338-9
Larkspur, Lily (nom de plume), 186
A Summer Book
of, 122-3; liberal
(Curtis),
views
of,
Lowell, Frances, 69
Last of the Mohicans, The (Cooper), 83
Lowell, James C)abot, 210
Lawrence, Amos, 70
Lowell, James Russell, 231, 266
Lee, Eliza Buckminster, 91, 107, 184-5
Lowell
leisure time, 138-9
Lowell Offering (magazine), 70-1
of Life (Sigoumey), 206
Letters to Mothers
(Sigoumey), 74-5
Letters to the People on Health
and Happiness
(Beecher), 92 liberal reformers, 21, 22, 35-6, 155-7, 269,
281-2
of man,
124-8, 133-4
Last Judgment, 221, 222
Letters
237
factories,
69-70
Lucy Howard's Journal (Sigoumey), 206 Lutherans, 25
lyceum
lectures, 36; of Beecher, 84
lyceums, 181
Lyon, Mary,
101, 105-6; biographical data
on, 332-3; and female education, 59, 105
Index
397
MacWorther, Alexander, 143^
293, 299, 301-2, 314, 319-20; disjuncture
magazines,
between form and theme
229-40, 267, 314, 320; family,
36,
186-7, 229, 231-2, 233;
ladies', 59, 61, 104,
in
works by,
302-4; female characters of, 297, 299-300;
229, 232; historical subjects of, 181;
"I
and
My
Chimney,"
299, 317-18, 319;
literary, 84, 230-1; Melville's pieces in,
Israel Potter,
313-20; religious, 230-4; "sketch" form of
Rose," 299; lectures of, 322; magazine
pieces for, 237-40, 315; women's,
pieces of, 313-20; Mardi, 299, 301, 302,
twentieth-century, 185
293, 298, 314, 323;
"Jimmy
313, 325; "Marxist" vs. "Freudian"
Manductio ad Ministerium (Mather), 145,
of, 298-9, 303;
232
themes
masculinity as theme
of,
Moby
294-^, 310, 313, 315, 317-18, 328;
Mann, Horace, 38, 157 Mann, Mary Peabody, 157
Dick, 295-6, 298, 301, 302, 303, 304-9,
manufacturing, 50-1, 52
302, 303;
Mara Lincoln
11, 298; personal
312, 314, 315, 325, 329; Omoo, 296-7, 298,
(fictional character), 65,
128-9, 130, 247
Mardi
and oppression dealt with by,
Tbe Piazza
(Melville), 299, 301, 302, 313, 325
women
291-2, 320-2;
314; Pierre, 294-5, 299,
Tales,
300, 301-2, 304, 309-14, 315, 325, 326;
Margaret and Henrietta (Sigoumey), 206 marriage: of ministers, 90, 95; of
life of,
in
sample, 95
poetry of, 322-3; "Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs," 300; Redbum, 293, 296-7, 298, 300, 302,
303^,
312, 318,
Marshall, John, 175
325; rediscovery of, 328-9; romanticism
Martineau, Harriet, 43, 61, 97, 100
of, 13, 289, sense
Martyn, Mrs. Marvel,
S.
T,
South Sea narratives
187
Ik. See Mitchell,
Mary Scudder
of history
Donald
of, 289;
of, 293, 295, 302;
Typee, 289-90, 296-7, 298, 302, 325;
(fictional character), 64-5,
66, 247
295-6, 297-8, 301, 302, 303-4, 314
masculinity, 228; of
American
history,
176-7, 184; late nineteenth-century
memoirs, as biographical genre, 188-99, 200-1, 205
crusade for, 327-8; as Melville's theme,
Mercersberg Theology, 25
294-6, 310, 313, 315, 317-18, 328
mercy, concept
Massachusetts: Congregationalism as
of, 123
Methodists, 22, 23; evangelism of, 28, 36-7;
established church, 27; disestablishment,
itinerant preacher tradition of, 30;
23; industrialization, 51; Unitarians, 27
membership
mass culture,
view
of sin presented by, 245; Wbite-Jacket,
13, 103, 168, 228, 256, 308,
of, 28;
320, 328; vs. elite culture, 6, 328;
predominance
Victorian culture and,
issue, 34,
mass production,
5,
253
145, 148, 217,
in
South, 26; and slavery
248
232
Middlemarcb
247
(Eliot),
Mather, Richard, 217
Mill,
Mather, Samuel, 99
millennium, doctrine
Mayo, Sarah Edgarton,
62, 81, 104, 109,
130, 231; biographical data,
336-7
John
Stuart, 11 of,
Miller, Samuel,
1
14
Milton, John, 113, 219
McGuffey's Reader, 314
Miner, Alonzo A., 196-7
mechanization, 50
221-2
Miller, Perry, 18, 260, 328
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 266, 285
medical profession,
figure of,
Mickiewicz, Adam, 266, 287
in printing, 82
Mather, Cotton, 98,
membership
23; non-intellectualism of, 36-7;
Minister's Wooing, Tbe (Stowe), 64-5, 244, 51,
76
246, 247
Herman, 5-6, 8, 10, 96, 234-5, 253, 289-326, 327; "The Apple-Tree Table,"
Melville,
ministry as a profession: change
in,
1820-75, 7-8, 9-10, 19-20, 24, 32-43;
299, 317, 318-19; "Bartleby the
eighteenth-century, 6-7,
Scrivener," 293, 298, 314, 315-17, 319;
clergy
9,
32-3. See also
"Benito Oreno," 298, 314, 323; Billy
Ministry at Large (Tuckerman), 153, 158
Budd, 298, 323-6, 327, 328-9; Calvinism
misogyny, 142
in,
297, 305-6, 323-4; class conflicts
treated by, 298-300;
compared to
Fuller,
289-92, 294, 301, 308; Tbe Confidence Man,
missionary work,
35, 105-6, 111; in
Pacific, Melville's
and
condemnation
289-90, 305
of,
Fuller's
the
Index
398 Miss
New
Magazine^ 232, 243
Leslie's
Mitchell, Donald, 236-7, 238-9, 314-15;
mm
de plume "Ik Marvel," 234, 236, 303, 314,
York
City, 50, 277-8, 281; as
publishing center, 82; Sunday School
movement in, 112 York Herald, 281 York Herald Tribune,
New New
315; Reveries of a Bachelor, 238-9, 240,
250, 314, 316
277-8, 279
mobility: of clergy, 28-30, 31, 90; of
New
York Ledger (weekly), 82, 91, 240
women, geographical, 95; of women, upward social, 78-9, 94 Moby Dick (Melville), 295-