 |
|
|
|
Lori Johnson |
January 2003 |
||||||||||||
|
Editor's Note: Life writing or journaling has been done for centuries. For some, it is the time and the place for one to connect in a world where that opportunity is not always afforded. Even if it is there are still some things so personal, so private, and so sacred that only the paper, the pen and you must know. My personal journaling contains my heart secrets and disappointments, my triumphs and failures, all my hopes and all my dreams. There is nothing new under this sun; the true adventurers among us take the time to record the details of the journey to reflect upon when the adventure is over. In the nineteenth century, as a call for equal rights for women was made, a greater attention came to women’s writing by their peers. Some was of it was autobiographical as pioneering missionary women recorded their experiences, while other writing manifested itself in spiritual journals and intellectual analyses of politics and literature. Female authors of every genre were represented: voice and prose, fiction and non-fiction, in the form of short-stories, authors were seeking an audience, a place to be heard or read, to be discovered by another sister’s soul. Their work was classified as “sentimental,” “domestic,” or “romantic,” as their fiction novels contended with male authors, achieving a fair measure of financial success. A most injurious complaint came around the mid 1850’s, when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a letter to his publisher lashing out at the “damned mob of scribbling women.” The sting of that remark has lasted more than one hundred years with the efforts of many literary professionals to reevaluate and overturn that claim. The literature of the nineteenth century was very diverse; as it included at least three major writing movements within the one hundred year period. They are romanticism, transcendentalism and realism. The number of authors, both male and female, was extensive and somewhat intimidating to this “occasional” reader. I choose authors that assisted me in presenting the material from the historical timeline. The nineteenth century in a historical perspective was a very active time full of great change and reform. The historical climate easily explained to me the reason behind the many artist voices and forms that are reflected during this period. Most people were looking for answers as well as being individually reflective with attempts to evoke such examination upon society. Perhaps that may qualify one half to two-thirds of the literature of the nineteenth century while there was still a portion of the “sentimental” and “romantic” that occupied the print throughout the first fifty years. In this essay, I would like to discuss some of my research findings including some of my personal favorites discovered in and before this project. Thanks to some very well prepared web-sites, I have links for the people who need or want to know all the details. I hope that you will find this article as informative as I did in the process of preparing it. There were three streams for publishing literary work for women during the nineteenth century. First there were the general audience magazines that did not always embrace the woman writer. While some publications did, their target audience was largely the general “male” population. I have included a few titles below. However, I would recommend the following link for “The Making of America-Library of Congress” This site will provide a larger list complete with publication dates. This list is not all all-inclusive, however. The second stream was audience specific women’s publications which date back to the eighteenth century according to one source. There are a number of them. Thanks to some great people at Stanford University, this was the best link I found on the web for women’s periodicals . Over Sixty Listed! The third and last stream was a collection of a lot of other print media not considered under the other two headings but equally if not, more important. They are the newspapers and the “Little Magazines.” Short-stories were a publishing staple for these large newspapers during this period and women’s work was welcomed. “Little Magazines” were usually considered an “avant-garde” publication with a very limited publication history. Many well-known women authors’ works are found in these collections. Publications That Accepted Women’s Publications
Other Print Media Newspapers – daily, weekly, monthly (i.e. New York Times) Boston Post Biography & Brief Publication History One of the most popular magazines of the nineteenth century was the Godey’s Lady’s Book. Between 1839 and 1860, circulation rose from 25,000 to 150,000. Much of that success can be attributed to its editor of forty years, Sarah Josepha Hale (1836-1877). Hale began her career as an editor in 1827 for Ladies’ Magazine and served in that capacity until the magazine was merged with Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1836. Necessity required Sarah Hale to work outside the home when her husband died leaving her five children to support on her own. Well educated and a life-long learner, Hale was resourceful to quickly assess her skills to select a job that suited both her interest and her talent. Hale, being sensitive to her editorial powers used the Lady’s Book to campaign for Thanksgiving as a national holiday but was very selective in promoting women’s issues. Hale favored the magazine as a place of promoting “sentimental” American literature to educate the female reader, while seeking an elite audience. She maintained that the educated women would lead the human race upward, making better wives and mothers. While the Lady’s Book was not the oldest publication of its time, it was one of the most influential women’s magazines in print. The oldest women’s publication published was the Lady’s Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge (1792-1793). From the outspoken remarks of Abigail Adams to the full voice and writings of Catherine Beecher, the Woman’s Movement found foot holds in the national spotlight as early as the 1830s. This time the cries were coming from the middle class women as new strong voices were waiting in the wings. Massachusetts mill workers penned words in The Lowell Offering (1840-1845) as Amelia Bloomer promoted temperance and dress reform in The Lily (1849-1856). The next writer has earned her name in the book of America’s firsts. She was the first female foreign correspondent and first book review editor in the United States and her name is Margaret Fuller. Fuller was born in 1810 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was educated at home by her father an attorney and legislator. She was reading the classics in Latin by the age of ten. Rooted in the soil of New England, Fuller was a noted transcendentalist. She founded The Dial, a quarterly literary publication with friend Ralph Waldo Emerson and served as its editor from 1840 to 1842. The Dial promoted principals of transcendentalism which were individualism, inner change, and self-realization. I believed it served as the building blocks for the reform movements of the nineteenth century. Another family of transcendentalists would provide a woman author that would change the face of women’s literature: the Alcotts. Louisa May Alcott was best known for her 1868 novel, Little Women, which has never been out of print. This novel, partially autobiographical, has shaped the way many women relate to womanhood and family. During her lifetime, Alcott published material under at least two pseudonyms to exercise her writing gifts and talent. It was her own name that brought her the financial stability she and her family struggled to know but never had under her family’s work as an author. By the 1850’s, many supporters of both the women’s rights and abolition movements had merged platforms. I would like to include two other voices which made notable contributions. There names are Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Sojourner Truth, an illiterate former slave, was a strong advocate for both abolition and women’s rights. During the struggle for women’s suffrage; in response to a question about literacy requirements in order for women to gain the right to vote, Truth said, “You know, children, I don’t read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations.” She is best known for her “Ain’t I A Woman” speech, delivered in 1851 at a Women’s Convention at Akron, Ohio. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was active in abolitionism, suffrage and the temperance movement. She gets credit for introducing the tradition of the African American protest poetry. Famous during her lifetime and most popular as a speaker, Harper used her prestige and writings to fight racism and also make strong feminist statements. In my initial draft of this article, I had excluded this next author and almost did the second time. As I focused on the time period and the historical points of the timeline, it would be unfair of me to overlook Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin published in 1852 remains one of the most controversial anti-slavery novels ever written. Even today, it requires its reader to define racism. Criticism has ranged from “romanticizing” slavery to the stereotyped portrayal of the African-American characters. Stowe maintained that the novel was written by God and that she was merely His instrument. She said that after she was given a vision of a slave being beaten to death by his owner. It was an important novel and statement during a very critical time in this nation’s history. During my research one source discussed the difference in life writing or journaling before and after the Civil War. It was suggested that the women’s writing of pre-Civil War times was more romantic, perhaps idealistic. While the post-Civil War writings were more career or education driven, goal-oriented, identifying the specifics of how, when and where each goal would be met. A cynical observer was quoted to say that one woman journal writer was being do dutiful to detail her steps to success in a society where she nor her degree would not be taken seriously. I believe that was the reality of the world at that time. Rebecca Harding Davis has been accredited as a pioneer in realist fiction in American Literature. Her 1862 novel, Life in the Iron Mills, had to be well stated on some first hand observation as she was born in Washington, Pennsylvania and raised in Wheeling, Virginia. She has been connected to over five hundred pieces of literature, ranging from children’s romances, from travelogues to incisive essays. Her writing career, born out of the Civil War, which spanned five decades, was instrumental in exposing political corruption in the North, unmasking bias in legal constraints on women, while drawing attention to the oppressive chains of industrial capitalism. By 1868, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded The Revolution, a weekly magazine that addressed women’s rights and took on topics such as labor reform as well. The second half of the nineteenth century offered any thinking, intelligent person enough moral and ethnical issues to consider, discuss and write for a lifetime. While society was in the midst of reform so were the cities of America. With the dawn of the Industrial Age, there was a distinct difference between “rural” and “city” living. The cities could afford to support the museums and the performing arts. Amusement parks, theatres for vaudeville and minstrel shows were added for the working classes to enjoy in their leisure time. Finally, professional baseball and a “red-light” district were fashioned for every man’s “sporting” convenience. Contrary to popular belief, New York City maintained an open door policy for gay-lesbian bars in this very same area. While both prostitution and homosexuality were against the law in that city, the laws were mostly dead letters. I found there was a clear division of upper, middle and lower classes that emerged during this time frame. As the immigrants came into this country, they expected one thing for their children that they could attend school free. It was expected that every child be able to read, write and do arithmetic. According to Judy Crichton, in her book America 1900, “Illiteracy had dropped to an unprecedented eleven percent, and outside the South the record was far better.” (p.206) While I have listed a number of magazines that published women’s literature, it was the newspapers that most people read on a continuing basis. The immigrants had begun newspapers in their native language to assist other newcomers as they came to America. Editions would include advice, news from the old country, an introduction to the neighborhood based machine politicians and emergency financial aid in- return-for-the- votes-plan. By the 1890’s, most middle class women were reading The Ladies Home Journal with the Journal to be the first magazine to reach one million in circulation in 1904. During this time, newspapers achieved mass circulation through circulation wars and by appealing to diverse audiences. “Adorned with bold headlines and illustrations, filled with advertising, and hawked by thousands of newsboys, newspapers like Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World included sports and fashion news, household tips, color comics, and short stories.” The news dailies were a hit with the working-class and middle-class readers. I felt that America’s transformation had a direct impact on the women writers of this era. America was growing at such a rapid rate. I think its timing frightened some writers while stimulating others. I think perhaps Sarah Orne Jewett may have been one of the artists that were affected by poor timing. My research uncovered that she was quickly dismissed as a “regional” writer. Was it easier to dismiss her as a regional writer than to explore the universality of her work? The other writer is Emily Dickinson. Did the current events of her life time and the Civil War have a repressive effect on her causing her to become a reclusive? Regardless of the answers to all the questions, no one will take away the words she penned from her heart with the great talent she possessed. I found diversity (or did I?) in the names of published women writers of Alice Dunbar Nelson, the wife of Paul Dunbar who wrote deliberately “raceless, “and argued with her husband over the use of dialect; and writer, Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton) who wrote under layers of pretense hiding her real identity. For me, the most note-worthy novel of this time frame was Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. I remember reading this book in college and fell in love with the work and the author. Having published this book in 1899, Chopin penned herself into literary oblivion because of the emotional journey and choices of Edna Pontellier. Having taking a critical beating by the public, she died in 1904 of a brain hemorrhage, obscure and bitter. Recalling my feelings about The Awakening, I just remember wanting my daughter to read that book. I can do that today. That was not the case in 1899. As another writer stated between 1880 and 1910 all the rules and patterns of gender behavior and relationships were being redefined. In 1851, the best-selling novel (and America’s first) was Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World. It was a tearful account of a girl painfully separated from her mother. But in 1882, in Warner’s (same author, 31 years later) artistically superior but less-celebrated Diana, the reader is given a startling modern analysis of psychological warfare between mother and daughter over the mother’s attempts to thwart her daughter’s romance. (If I had more time, I would like to find the memoirs for Miss Warner’s reflections on those two works.) Just as Kate Chopin’s Edna Pontellier in The Awakening struggled with her own identify, American women were redefining their own values and priorities for education, work, mobility, sexual autonomy and power within and without her own worlds. Even as unmerciful as the critics were to Chopin, I would like to believe that her work created a conversation and the recognition of the woman’s individual sexuality. In my research time I was pleased to find a self-published magazine editor and writer in the person of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She wrote and published The Forerunner from 1909 to 1916, which served as a map, a critique of feminist thought and direction. Other books by Gilman include Women and Economics (Vassar College used it as textbook for a short time), Concerning Children (1900), and The Home: Its Work and Influence (1904). I found Gilman to be a driven visionary setting aside family for her and the feminist cause. Author Ann Lane describes Gilman’s goal as “to draw upon anthropology, biology, history, sociology, ethics and philosophy to comprehend the contours of human evolution and human society in order to create a humane social order.” I have not had the time to read all of her works but I sensed something familiar about this woman. The early twentieth century was so rich with literature-man and woman alike. As I continue to focus on the women, I have three that I want to mention; all of them are Pulitzer Prize winners and have societies (and web sites) established in their names. All of them led interesting lives and have volumes of works between them. They are Edith Wharton, Willa Cather and Edna St. Vincent Millay. While their work was published in the twentieth century, much of it is set in the Victorian era making it very important in understanding the cultural activities of women during this period. To continue the support of this web site, I would like to suggest several titles for your reading pleasure available at www.amazon.com. In addition to most of the titles that have been mentioned throughout this paper, I would like to suggest Traditions of Victorian Women’s Authobiography The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing by Linda H. Peterson, and an anthology of women’s short-stories (they are several) of your choice. I choose Nineteenth Century Stories by Women edited by Glennis Stephenson for the writers included. For the hopeless romantic that I am, I choose Dearest Friend: The Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey. Having the heart of a true adventurer, I am so grateful to the scores of women who have valiantly shared their lives with me through their writings. Driven to strong female role models, I have lived vicariously through their achievements and have attempted to learn from their mistakes. I have appreciated the platforms they stood on and the emotional and physical whippings they took for me. I think if our pioneering fore-mothers could us now they would be proud. I know mine are. “AWord from Onoto.” Available at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~yoonmeec/todir/onotomain.html 12/5/02 Beekman, Mary. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Women’s Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mine and Society. Editor, Dr. Linda Woolf. Online Journal. Available at: http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/women.html 12/7/02 Bois, Danuta. “Margaret Fuller.” Distinguished Women of Past and Present. Online Archieve. Published November, 1998. available at www.netsrq.com~dbois/fuller-m.html 12/03/02 Crichton, Judy. America 1900. New York: Holt, 1998. Greenberg, Hope. “About Godey’s Lady’s Book: Publication History.” University of Vermont. Online Archieve. Published August 1998. available at http://cit.uvm.edu:6336/dynaweb/godey/aboutglb/@Generic_BookTextView 12/03/02 Gutman, Herbert. and Brier, Stephen. eds. Who Built America? Vol. 2. New York: Pantheon. Harris, Susan. “But is it Any Good?”: Evaluating Nineteenth-Century Women’s Fiction.” American Literature. 1.63 Henretta, James a., and Brody, David, eds. America A Concise History Volume 1: to 1877 ---. America A Concise History Volume 2: Since 1865. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. Hiatt, Mary. Style and the “Scribbling Women”: An Empirical Analysis of Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993. Ker, Christina. “Kate Chopin.” Empire: Zine. Online Journal. Available at http://empirezine.com 12/7/02 Knight, Denise. and Nelson, Emmanuel. Eds. Nineteenth-Century American Women-Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997. Lasseter, Janice. “Introduction to Rebecca Harding Davis.” Dr. Lasseter’s English Web Page-Samford University. Available a http://www.samford.edu/schools/artsci/english/lasseter/intrordh.htm 1/6/03 “Little Magazines.” Department of Special Collections-University of Wisconsin-Madison Editor/Curator, Geraldine Laudati. Online Archive. Published 1999. available at http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/SpecialCollections/sceal.html 12/3/02 MacKethan, Lucinda H., and Miller, James A. “Introduction to Scribbing Women.” Scribbling Women. Ed. Valerie Henderson Online Archieve. Published November, 2002. available at www.scribblingwomen.org/intro.html 1/3/03 Miller, Carol. “ Mourning Dove.” Voices from the Gaps-University of Minnesota. Editor, Rebecca Scherr. Online Journal. Published 1996. available at http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/MourningDove.html 12/5/02 Niles, Lisa. “Biography for Sarah Josepha Hale.” Domestic Goddess. Editor, Kim Wells. Online Journal. Published 1998. available at www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/hale1.html 12/03/02 Reuben, Paul P. “Chapter 5: Late Nineteenth Century – Frances Harper.” PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap5/harper.html 12/3/02 ---. “Chapter 5: Late Nineteenth Century – Sarah Orne Jewett”PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap5/jewett.html 12/3/02 Royster, Jacqueline. “Perspectives on the Intellectual Tradition of Black Women Writers.” The Right to Literacy. Eds. Andrea Lunsford, et. al. New York: Modern Language Association, 1990. Showalter, Elaine. “The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton’s House of Mirth” Representations. Winter. 1985: 133-149. Thom, Mary. “Magazines.” Readers Companion to U. S. Women’s History. Mankiller, Wilma “et al.” New York: Houghton Miffin, 1998. available at http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/wm_021700_magazines.htm 1/6/03 Wells, Kimberly A.. “Biography for Louisa May Alcott.” Domestic Goddesses. Online Journal. Published July, 1998. available at www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/lma.htm 1/6/03 Wells, Kimberly A. “Biography for Harriet Beecher Stowe.” Domestic Goddesses. Online Journal. Published July, 1998. available at www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/stowe1.htm 1/7/03 |
|||||||||||||