Who Reads an American Book?

Pettingill: Sisterhood in a separate sphere/Farrow

Sisterhood in a Separate Sphere: Female Friendship in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette and The Boarding School –Claire C. Pettingill 

This article explores the difficult contradictions in the societal expectations of women in The Coquette and The Boarding School. Pettingill uses the phrase “useable fiction” to describe Foster’s two works. She also explores the complex female connections and bonds formed and relied upon in both.  

In The Boarding School, Mrs. Williams’ girls are taught the ways to be gentle and socially acceptable young women. The girls form bonds through these teachings with each other and with Mrs. Williams. A type of sisterhood is formed. They embody all their lessons and have grown accustomed to the close bond between female friends. The problem of “separate spheres” comes into play, however, when the girls are out of the boarding school. In real life, they find it difficult to share with any other females that did not share the same experience with them and continue to rely on their circle from the school. They confide in one another and use what they have learned and the virtues they keep to give each other advice and to criticize the women in the new sphere they inhabit. But The Boarding School is mainly didactic and instructional.  

On the other hand, The Coquette shows what can occur when real life weakens the bonds of “female connectedness” and a young woman strays from her friends’ advice. In the letters of The Coquette, Eliza opens all of her thoughts and feelings to her friends and accepts and begs for their advice and criticism. But as her friends move beyond the sphere of being young, single women Eliza finds herself falling behind. Lucy is getting married, Mrs. Richman becomes a mother, and Eliza, newly freed from an unwanted engagement, is not ready to settle or give up the friendships she relies on. 

In The Boarding School, theory is never really put to the test, whereas Eliza is tested and challenged and torn between her desires and what is expected of her. It is easy to picture the girls from Mrs. Williams’ school writing to one another and discussing the affairs of Eliza and reaffirming their own virtue. This would be to their moral education and Eliza’s tragic demise.  

This article also leads one to wonder at what might have happened in Eliza’s case if her circle of girlfriends had not been broken by life and the expectations of wife and motherhood. Would they have been able to “save” Eliza or would she still have come to the same end. But then again, it can’t be ignored that in these scenarios we are only blaming the women who are only a product of their highly controlled environments. Pettingill also notes the strong influence of this ideology of sisterhood on the development of women at the turn of the 18^th century and its important “social function”.  

One if the interesting things Pettingill observes about The Boarding School is that the circle of sisterhood at the school takes on an importance and ideology that seems even better than real family. This is shown in the way that once the girls have left the school they criticize everyone, strongly identify with their “sisters”, and long for the comforts of Harmony Grove. Also, in The Coquette, Eliza is less and less able to turn to her mother and desperately looks to her female companions. It shows the difficulties of the teachings and expectations of young women on the brink of adulthood to bridge the gap between what they’ve learned and what they are actually faced with.

Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors

Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors

Nina Baym (from the book Locating American Studies: The Evolution of Discipline edited by Lucy Maddox)

Main Topics:

-       The absence of female writer in the American canon.

-       Female roles in literary criticism.

-       The problem with American literary criticism.

            Baym addresses one major question on her article “Melodramas”: Why are there no women in the American literary canon?  In order to answer her own question, she clarifies that, “This paper is about literary criticism rather than American Literature (215).”  In order for this article to be effective, one must accept that we read through the perspective given to us by literary criticism and theories.

            Baym’s first argument is that literary theories are too controlling, so they lead to the exclusion of women from the canon.  It is not as if women were not writing during the founding of the United States of America, because there was an excess of female writers during that time.  The female writers were numerous enough that Nathaniel Hawthorne complained about them to his publisher.  Some of the most notable works have been written by women, such as The Coquette and Uncle Tom’s Cabin; these works are not traditionally included in the canon.  Baym asks, why, then, have all of the major novelists in America been men?  (If one accepts the canon.)

            There are two proposed answers to the former question, suggests Baym.  She writes that pure bias is one reason and the other is the idea that female writers have not written works that would be considered “excellent”.  Baym pursues the second option by exploring what criticisms and theories determine what makes a work “excellent”.  The idea of “excellence” is merely a cultural preference.  Theories come from a cultural reality that exists at the time that it is formulated; so, many American literary theories come from the idea that literature is male.  The gender of literature as male dominates literary theory, and the way American culture responds to literature.

            The American public did not have a system to judge American literature, since it was seeking to break from England politically and culturally.  The judgment of literature was based on a scale of the Americanness of the novel, rather than constituted literary excellence.  Eventually, the two ideals of Americanness and literary excellence became synonymous.  This statement raises the question for Baym and our class, “Can only a handful of American works really be American (219)?”   The culture of America is seeking to be defined through literature, but discrepancies between critics lie in what they personally think the American experience is.

            Critics, according to Baym, traditionally see the woman as the enemy because they write trifling novels that distract readers from “excellent” novels.  The novels that exist in the American tradition follow a certain myth that Baym identifies.  The myth focuses on man versus wilderness.  The man ventures away from society into the untamed, which is the American experience.  Authors saw the American experience as inherently male, but Baym argues that the American experience can pertain to either gender.  The main characteristics of the protagonist are not limited to males, because of there larger than life quality.  The American protagonist is basically a myth. 

            Another reason that critics have excluded female writers that Baym cites is that the portrayal of women that is completely inaccurate and highly sexualized.  Female characters are especially misidentified in works written by women; for example, if a female author conforms to the American myth, it is highly sexualized by critics.  If the female author ignores the American myth, then she is dismissed as a minor among male authors who have succeeded in the myth (the American experience).  The female writer is banned from the literary tradition.  The author is the authority, and authority is a male attribute in American society, so the female set up to fail.

 

This site is a little funny considering our subject matter: Feminism is Evil!

-Catherine Manci

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution - Bailyn

Bailyn begins his book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, with an explanation of how his study of pamphlets from the American Revolution solidifided his view that the American Revolution was “an ideological, constitutional, political struggle and not primarily a controversy between social groups undertaken to force changes in the organization of the society or the economy” (vi). He concludes that the cause of the Revolutions was Revolutionary thought intersecting with eighteenth-century life in America.

He agrees with many about the emergence of Enlightenment thought and the influence of religion, law, and classical literature, but he adds that anti-authoritarianism coming out of the English Civil War gave radicals a base on which to legitimize the American Revolution. He discusses literature and arrives at the conclusion that pamphlets’ use of inflammatory words, such as “slavery” and “corruption” are not intending to serve as propaganda; he believes these works mean that the people truly believed them and that the words were what clearly showed that they have a vivid fear of political oppression. “The fear of a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world --a conspiracy believed to have been nourished in corruption, and of which, it was felt, oppression in American was the only immediately visible part -- lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement” (ix). 

The people began to base their political theory on logic instead of desire and began to debate strategies to deal with imperial relations. This transformation of thought caused what Bailyn terms the “spill-over effect” (x), in which the thought is involved in both broad and narrow situations. The ultimate effect of these ideologies what that these ideas were old (some literatures even in the seventeenth century) but that America provided a situation where they could flourish and come to fruition through a Revolution. He attempts to answer “why there was a Revolution but how such an explosive amalgam of politics and ideology first came to be compounded, why it remained so potent through years of surface tranquillity, and why, finally, it was detonated when it was” (xi).

Chapter One: “The Literature of Revolution” deals with the importance of the pamphlet as a quickly published, easily consumed mode of discourse in America. It could make bold statements and be printed by one man and reflect his views wholly. The author is able to have complete freedom to print his unadulterated word in a pamphlet. Pamphlets were published as responses to events, “chain-reacting polemics” -- strings of individual exchanges, and and commemorative orations. Above all, according to Bailyn, pamphlets are political not literary. American pamphleteers were amateurs who aimed to persuade their fellow citizens that their view was the best one. His main example of an important pamphlet in this chapter is sets of discussion about the extent of Parliament’s jurisdiction in the colonies, resulting in “in what may be called the conceptualization of American life. By then American shad come to think of themselves as in a special category” (20). Chapter Two: Sources and Traditions explains the similarities of the pamphlets beginning with classical literature. Mentions of European Enlightenment thinkers pervades the pamphlets and opposition thought, especially Locke, was “devoured by the colonists” (43). The key concepts of much American thought were relatively commonplace, but their application was uniquely American. 

Chapter Three: Power and Liberty discusses the theory of politics in America, which Bailyn claims is the disposition of power. Colonial thought began on the premise that power was only natural, but the distribution of power could easily become corrupt. Religious thought that power would destroy men resulted in the thought that standing armies were to be closely guarded because men with arms would be most susceptible to abuse of power. American ideas of a “constitution” also became unique in that they so strongly emphasized that “a proper system of laws and institutions should be suffused with, should express, essences and fundamentals --moral rights, reason, justice” (69). Ultimately, all colonists were driven by a fear of corruption and their publications expressed  different ways in which they resolved these fears. Chapter Four: The Logic of Rebellion, continues this thought to show how colonists began by seeing the overwhelming evidence of their mistreatment by Parliament causing them to find their rebel position logical. As events happened, the feelings of the colonists were reinforced causing them to develop more rebellious ideology. They justified everything by the belief that “America had from the start been destined to play a special role in history” (140).  Chapter Five: Transformation shows the progression from a vision of liberty to a new form of representation and consent, constitutions and rights, and sovereignty. The government produced out of the revolution came from an application of the previously established radical ideologies. 

Chapter Six: The Contagion of Liberty explains how the pragmatic idealism affects actual legislation and government practices. He considers it dangerous in slavery situations where the contradiction of thought and practice was so great that the legislature decided to postpone any changes. Religion was also a problem, because churches were establishments similar to the ones the Revolution sought to overcome. Colonists fought over privilege of power and ultimately complete “democracy,” which included commoners, was postponed in order to establish stability. Writers disagreed on all these issues which is why pamphleteering played a big role in establishing colonial thought and discourse. The ideology of America made these disputes inevitable. “What Boucher, Leonard, Chandler, and other articulate defenders of the status quo saw as a final threat was not so much the replacement of one set of rulers by another as the triumph of ideas and attitudes incompatible with the stability of any standing order, any establishment --incompatible with society itself, as it had been traditionally known” (318).