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Content
DREAMING AN AMERICAN DREAM:
UTOPIAN FICTIONS BY UNITED STATES WOMEN
1840—1920
by
Tami J. Parr
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1994
Copyright 1994 Tami J. Parr
UMI Number: DP23196
All rights reserved
INFO RM ATIO N TO ALL U SER S
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Di&s& rtaiion Publishing
UMI D P23196
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
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TH E GRADUATE SCHOOL
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? i & \,
3*61
This dissertation, written by
TAMI J . PARR
under the direction of ..... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirements for the degree of
D O C TO R O F PH ILO SO P H Y
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
In tro d u ctio n ............................................................................................... 1
I. C hapter One--Constructing the Steam Engine in the
Forge of Desire................................................................................ 11
Divided Loyalties...............................................................................28
Gendered Meanings...or why Iona had to die.............................43
The Uninvited Guest........................................................................ 56
II. C hapter Two-Racing Toward Freedom(s)..................................64
Gender Slavery......................... ...................................... ................ 77
Colorphobia....................................................................................... 87
Natural Affection / Natural Selection............................................. 100
III. C hapter Three-Modesty + Religion = Activism ................ 118
Acting Out, Dying Young................................................................... 136
Raised Voices.................................................................................... 159
IV. Chapter Four-'Factory Amazons' at the
Career Frontier.................................................................................. 174
Unemployment: An Elusive Goal................................................... 186
Employment: An Elusive Goal. .................................................... 211
V. C hapter Five-Dreaming an American Dream, or,
Envisioning a Feminist Utopia......................................................... 231
Gendering and Regenerating Utopia............................................ 249
Feminist Utopias: Then and Now?................................................. 265
B ib lio g ra p h y........................................................................................... 282
A ppendix: Utopian Fiction by United States Women: Nineteenth
and early Twentieth Century, with Selected Bibliographical
Sources.............................................................................................. 292
Figure 1: " Aims of a Comprehensive WAC Approach".................... 281
1
Introduction
I walked into New York City with a pair of high heels
and a dream. And look at me now.
Ru Paul, drag queen and pop culture icon1
I started this project with an interest in a collection of strange novels
and stories, called 'utopias,' many of which were conceived and written
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America. What was
striking to me then about these novels was that they are so different from
the social realism common during the period. Utopias imagine future
societies full of time travel, technological miracles like mechanical food
production, alternatives like a return to pastoral simplicity, or forebode
social chaos and degeneration, depending on the perspective of the
author. Mrs. Anna Adolph locates an ideal society on the North Pole in
Arqtiq (1899); Charlotte Perkins Gilman locates Herland (1915) in the
uncharted regions of the western United States. Other authors locate
their utopias in contemporary moments and introduce utopia in the form
of a strange new machine or technology; this is, for example, true of
Elizabeth Bellamy's "Ely's Automatic Housemaid," (1899), discussed in
chapter four, which places a futuristic robot into the otherwise tranquil
world of a nineteenth century household.
1Ru Paul, Interview Entertainment Tonight December 31, 1993.
2
Kenneth Roemer defines utopias as "hypothetical communities, societies,
or worlds reflecting a more perfect, alternative way of life" (xiii). But as I
began compiling lists, narrowing my focus to women authors, and then
reading utopian texts, I began to see obvious connections between the
components-hypothetical characters, settings and events--that constitute
utopian fictions, and the historical time period within which these texts
were published and read. As I point out in chapter five, one example of
these historical 'components' is the flying machine-depending on the
novel, this sometimes occurs as a plane, a blimp, or a proto-spaceship.
Flying vehicles within these novels or stories reveal the contemporary
concerns with technology as it specifically centered around attempts at
flight, within which airplanes as we now know them eventually emerged.
Understanding textual details in this way became a way of understanding
the genre of utopia as inherently historical, as both "posit[ing] a future
and simultaneously interrogating] the present moment of its production
. . ." (Bartkowski 11). Another way of putting this is to say that, in this
project, I have understood utopias not so much as places like Roemer, or
in terms of their 'distortion' of contemporary reality, but as a type of
analysis about the time period from which utopian texts emerge(d); I think
the imaginary communities which they posit, whether positively or
negatively, can be read specifically as social commentaries upon some
component(s) of the contemporary social milieu. Literature and the
societies which produce it exist in complex, dialogical relationships;
utopian fiction by American women writers during the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries is no exception.
This historical approach is one layer of the analysis that characterizes
chapters one through four. In these chapters, I discuss in depth four
general themes of many utopian narratives by women authors of this time
period-gender, race, religion and labor. For example, I read Mary Agnes
Tincker's utopian novel San Salvador (1892) in chapter one as
representing two types of womanhood through the main characters of
Tacita and Iona. The events of the novel, Iona's death and Tacita's
eventual motherhood, demonstrate the text's negative view of women
like Iona, who attempt to expand gender roles beyond their traditional
boundaries. This is a message directed toward activist women of the
nineteenth century; for some, these women were causing great harm to
society by attempting to expand women's roles. Sarah Josepha Hale's
Liberia (1853), discussed in chapter two, takes up the nineteenth century
race/slavery issue by suggesting a solution to the race problem-sending
slaves back to Africa--as a means toward achieving future tranquility on
the domestic front. Separation of the themes of gender, race, religion
and labor in these chapters is not meant to imply the discrete nature of
these issues; in fact, one point that emerges from these four chapters is
that these themes are hopelessly interconnected, and cannot, except for
purposes of retrospective analyses, realistically be considered as
discrete issues separate from one another.
4
While plotting connections between imagined futures and historical
moments, I began examining historical documents of the nineteenth
century period such as the Declaration of Sentiments, which so definitely
marks 1848 as a moment of the emergence of a gender based activist
movement in the nineteenth century. I soon began to understand that
such historical documents, while different than fictional utopias, exhibit
some of the same characteristics, or impulses. While the Declaration of
Sentiments does not specifically imagine a gender-netural society in
florid detail like a fictional utopia might, it certainly strongly implies such a
society within its criticisms of the contemporary social milieu.
Not surprisingly, the expansion of what I consider to be a 'utopian text'
to include such documents had specific consequences for my definition
of utopian texts or narratives in general. The traditional definition of
utopias points toward fiction as the arena within which the genre is fully
realized, whether specifically or implicitly. The connection is overt in this
definition:
There are three characteristics which distinguish the utopia
from other forms of literature or speculation:
1. It is fictional.
2. It describes a particular state or country.
3. Its theme is the political structure of that fictional state or
community. (Nelson 109)
A distinction is created in this type of definition between a 'real,' historical
document like the Declaration of Independence or Constitution, and a
fictional utopia like Thomas More's. It became clear to me that the
traditional definition of utopia has unnecessarily restricted what we
5
usually consider utopian texts, and that this distinction is unnecessary,
and even misleading. In my view, any document, whether strictly
'fictional' as Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, or as 'real' as the
Declaration of Independence, is utopian when it explicitly or implicitly
imagines an alternative future.
In discussing nineteenth century utopian fiction by women authors,
Barbara Quissell sets up this same dichotomy between historical texts
and fiction. She groups fiction writers off into a discrete area, as ". ..
another group of women [who] chose a different approach to what the
century called the "woman question': they ignored the pubJic platform
and the national press and instead recorded their visions of women's
lives in utopian works" (148). This sets up a clear separation of genres of
'history' and genres of 'literature.' In doing so, I think Quissell overlooks
the fact that history is as much a fictional account as more explicitly
intended and created fiction is itself. I understand history to be a
particular story, a tale told about past events which should not be
understood as what 'really' happened. The process by which society
constructs its history has revealed itself, for example, in the erasure of the
histories of certain groups, such as African-Americans or Native-
Americans, from high-school textbooks. 'History' is revealed as a
construction in this case through the efforts of affected groups seeking to
6
include more of themselves into what passes as the definitive narration-
the history--of America.2
I am making several points here. For the purposes of my argument,
there is little difference between what we usually consider history and
what we consider fiction. This has implications for the more specific topic
of utopian narratives. Any discussion of whether or not a text is 'utopian'
should not be confined to highlighting and delineating the qualities of
hyperbole and defamiliarization common to utopian novels. Much
utopian criticism centers around the process of categorizing utopias
around themes like agrarian/rural, urban, dystopian, woman-authored,
and so on. Our definition of what is utopian should be broadened to
include investigations of other documents which also contain or imply a
futuristic, forward looking impulse-documents which imagine an
alternative future. I think that we should consider as 'utopian' a wide
range of documents like the Declaration of Independence and
Constitution, the Declaration of Sentiments, slave narratives, abolitionist
speeches, civil rights speeches, and so on. The utopian impulse, as it
manifests itself in American history, should not be considered as one
which appeared and then disappeared within the context of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century, a time period within which much
utopian fiction was written.
2See, for example, Hayden White, The Content and the Form: Narrative Discourse and
Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Press 1989) on the topic of
history as narrative representation.
7
Considering this expanded definition of utopian texts
suggested what was perhaps already obvious--that what is common to
all of these utopian narratives is a specific connection with revolution and
social activism. Responding to the 1848 Woman's Rights convention in
Seneca Falls, New York, the New York Herald wrote:
This is the age of revolutions. To whatever part of the world
the attention is directed, the political and social fabric is
crumbling to pieces; and changes which far exceed the
wildest dreams of the enthusiastic Utopians of the last
generation, are now pursued with ardor and perseverance
. . . the work of revolution is no longer confined to the Old
World, nor to the masculine gender. (Stanton I: 805)
Revolutionaries perceive a gap between prevailing social discourse and
what they understand as the 'way it should be.' Whenever public trust in
one conceptual scheme wanes, the potentiality for new ideas (or utopias)
to replace the old rises in proportion. Literal revolutions like the French
or American revolutions of the eighteenth century are moments which
were about the struggle for material power which accompanies the
position of dictator of the status quo. But old thoughts do not give up
easily, and competition between new ideas is intense. The space
opened up by 'revolutionary' ideals becomes a battleground which
precipitates literal struggles between neighbors and friends, as well as
struggles between symbolic systems.
Through reading the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as
utopian narratives, I began to think of the American revolution as an
originary utopian impulse which has constituted our understanding of the
history of America, and the Declaration of Independence and
8
Constitution specifically as the documents which initiate and codified an
American utopian impulse (which has its own history within contexts of
imperialism, the Enlightenment, and so on) into words. The American
Revolution was a revolution which exchanged one narrative through
which people had understood themselves (as subjects of a monarch) for
another (as persons to be represented directly through the republican
system). There are, of course, myriad political and social significances of
this Shift, but what I want to highlight is that I think these two founding
documents established a utopian 'logic of representation,' a manner of
speaking and knowing which fills up the space made fluid by their will-to-
revolution. The Declaration and Constitution formulate the constraints
which constitute(d) the founding fathers' vision of American society. This
is the process by which the colonies became the United States. In effect,
I am saying that the United States of America is one big communal
utopian experiment, one that has managed to last longer than most
utopian communities.
In this study, I develop this argument further by saying that this logic of
representation has not only dictated the rules of this country's particular
utopia--via the laws of democracy-but has simultaneously set up the
rules through which revolution (utopia) itself is imagined and thought in
America. The process by which the founding fathers rebelled against
King George III, justified their position through these founding
documents, and proceeded to set up their own government along
democratic principles has become the process by which succeeding
9
generations of revolutionaries (my particular focus is on activists
concerned with gender issues) of all sorts have sought to create change
in America. In other words, the utopia of the founding fathers has had
particular consequences in shaping and forming the application of
utopian narratives, and thus of social activism, within American culture
which resonates to this day.
The idea of a 'logic of representation' and the significance of this
utopian master-narrative forms another layer of analysis through which I
read the themes of gender, race, religion and labor in chapters one
through four. I think that the constraints dictated by the logic of
representation involved the particular women activists of the nineteenth
century on which I am focusing in reifying the categories of power
relations which they sought to undo. As I discuss in chapter two, one of
the most obvious examples of this is the way in which woman suffragists
began to appropriate race rhetoric and white supremacy as a way to
portray themselves as capable of possessing the vote. The message is
this: when we focus on the fantastic details of utopian narratives, we
overlook complex appropriations and parceling of power relations
inherent within the utopian impulse.
In chapter five, I speculate about the possibility that utopian activism
might be recovered and deployed in new and revolutionary ways, a way
of wondering whether or not American activism might be able to see
beyond the utopian logic of representation. Contemporary analyses of
power relations have changed our understanding of the nature of
10
resistance and/or activism; it is not so easy to simply declare oneself
against a certain politics or a certain school of thought as the founding
fathers did. Imagining a world free of our particular concerns, and
working (or waiting) for its realization is only part of the means by and
through which we can change the way stories are toldAhe way utopias
are determined/the way Ideological State Apparati are created. Mistakes
made by woman suffragists and their successors in the twentieth century
woman's movement should suggest to contemporary feminist activists in
this 'post-feminist' era that in order to address contemporary problems,
utopias are going to have to be imagined and developed in revolutionary
ways.
11
I
Constructing the Steam Engine in the Forge of Desire
I should feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you at
this time, having never before spoken in public, were I not
nerved by a sense of right and duty, did I not feel the time
had fully come for the question of woman's wrongs to be
laid before the public, did I not believe that woman herself
must do this work; for woman alone can understand the
height, the depth, the length, and the breadth of her own
degradation. Man cannot speak for her, because he has
been educated to believe that she differs from him so
materially, that he cannot judge of her thoughts, feelings,
and opinions by his own.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton1
On July 19, 1848, the first Woman's Rights convention in the United
States met in Seneca Falls, New York. After several frantic days of
deciding just what was supposed to be involved in putting on a
convention, feeling "as helpless and hopeless as if they had been
suddenly asked to construct a steam engine," organizers Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright and Mary Ann McClintock
"resigned themselves to a faithful perusal of masculine productions"
(Stanton 68). Finding the procedures of the Anti-Slavery, Peace and
Temperance conventions of the past not radical enough for their tastes,
at length one of the women picked up a copy of the Declaration of
1 From Elizabeth Cadv Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Correspondence, Writings,
Speeches Ed. Ellen Carol DuBois (NY: Schocken Books 1981). This is a selection from
Stanton's "Address Delivered at Seneca Falls," p. 28.
12
Independence. This was instantly seized upon as the appropriate model
for the convention platform, which became known as the Declaration of
Sentiments. Appropriating the Declaration of Independence as a model
for subsequent manifestos was a fairly common narrative move in the
nineteenth century; Louisa May Alcott's Work and Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin both appropriate the Declaration within their
narratives at specific moments as a tool for highlighting themes of their
own.2 Barbara Bardes and Susan Gossett view this allusive move as a
unique message coming from women who were otherwise excluded from
direct participation in the political system that the Declaration represents:
"For a woman to appropriate the Declaration of Independence to herself
meant she was asserting her equality to men and her independence of
male control" (2). Use of the Declaration was a way of emphasizing and
attempting to control an entire complex of political apparatuses that the
Declaration represent(ed) and codified. While the Declaration outlines
an idea of what constitutes the nation, the laws set out in the Constitution
form the specific rules deemed necessary to the achievement and
function of that prescribed nationality. Together, the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution codify the relations of power which
2 Bardes and Gossett also discuss the appropriation of the Declaration by Harriet Beecher
Stowe in My Wife and I ; see also Philip S. Foner Ed., W e the Other People (Urbana: Univ
of Illinois Press 1976), which collects various formal declarations based on the 1776
Declaration made by political groups throughout American history. See also Victoria
Woodhull's "A Page of American History: Constitution of the United States of the World"
in the Victoria Woodhull Reader Ed. Madeline B. Stern (Weston, MA: M & S Press 1974),
which was originally published as "A New Constitution for the United States of the World
Proposed for the Consideration of the Constructors of Our Future Government" (NY:
Woodhull and Claflin 1872). In this document, Woodhull combines the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution together, with the Declaration surviving as the
'Declaration of Interdependence.'
13
form the concrete terms of the utopian ideal; the mythical nation posited
in the Declaration of Independence is construed by the Constitution as
literal reality. The way that slaves were, for example, considered as
three-fifths of a person in Article one of the Constitution for purposes of
representation, and the exclusion of women and Native Americans from
voting and other rights, make it clear that the historical moment of the
founding of the United States was simultaneous with a solidification of
power in the hands of white male property owners. Those persons not
fitting into this majority had, then, variously defined relationships to the
center of power that the Declaration represents. This meant that black
women of this time period carried the burden of multiple oppressions
which hampered their participation, at least early on, in the emerging
mainstream gender discussion. What this meant for the white, middle
class women in the nineteenth century who eventually populated the
suffragist ranks was a defined sphere of influence centered around the
home and domestic affairs. Their place was to function as a support
system for the public, civilizing influence of the male sphere of power
coming into its own along with the founding of a new nation and political
system. As will become clearer in later chapters, these white middle
class suffragists would eventually have to realize their positionality in
relationship to other women as well as to men in nineteenth century
society.
Historians see the nineteenth century as a time of increasing
solidification of this idea of a proper female role, fueled by the birth of
14
industrialism and the rise of an economic middle class. In the second
half of the century, industrial labor replaced agricultural labor as the
primary basis of support, and this new wage earning responsibility was
taken up by men as a logical extension of their already ingrained social
duty, while women's role became maintenance of the family hearth
(Woloch 116). This division-increasingly reinforced and codified by
etiquette manuals, ladies’ magazines, and later in the century, medical
discourse-produced a distinct ideology of proper public (male) and
private (female) realms of influence supported by a burgeoning middle
class.3 The terms of female behavior are usually expressed as the 'cult
of true womanhood,' codifying values of piety, purity, submissiveness
and domesticity. True woman' was the the nineteenth century's own
term for the ideal, which is more significant as a widespread cross-class
ideology than as something that anyone ever actually achieved. Woman
was expected above all to be a paragon of religion, an activity which did
not sap energy from the duties associated with the domestic sphere; her
corresponding moral and physical purity made her an unsullied example
of earthly virtue. Her submissiveness to the will of the more worldly man
was a necessary aspect of her domestic isolation: "She is in a measure
dependent. She asks for wisdom, constancy, firmness, perseverance
and she is willing to repay it all by the full surrender of the full treasure of
her affections" (Welter, Cult of True Womanhood 159). A woman should
3ln At Odds Carl Degler discusses the extent to which the new ideology of womanhood,
while most solidified in middle and upper classes, was in fact a widespread belief to which
, the lower classes both adhered and aspired. See chapter two, "Wives and Husbands,":
j 49.
wait for a man's advice, and never contradict her husband's opinion--"if
he is abusive, never retort," was the directive of one advice manual
(Welter, Cult of True Womanhood 161). Her place in the home was
creating and maintaining a safe, loving and pure environment for her
husband and children. Harriet Beecher Stowe sums up the role in Home
and House Papers (1865) this way:
Homes are the work of art peculiar to the genius of woman.
Man helps in this work but woman leads; the hive is always
in confusion without the queen-bee . . . she comprehends
all, she balances and arranges all; all different tastes and
temperaments find in her their rest, and she can unite at
one hearthstone the most discordant elements .... Quietly
she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook.
What the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies.
Everybody in her sphere breathes easy, feels free . . . so
quiet are her operations and movements, that none sees
that it is she who holds all things in harmony. (77)
This forms the idea of the perfect woman in her closely demarcated
sphere of influence, the Home. The ideology of the silent, pious
helpmate was the construction of woman the convention at Seneca Falls
was beginning to work against by exposing the close relationship
between the ideal of the home and the ideal of the state originally forged
in the Declaration of Independence.
16
When, in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary for
one portion of the family of man
to assume among the people of
the earth a position different from
that which they have hitherto
occupied, but one to which the
laws of nature and of nature's
God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they
should declare the causes that
impel them to such a course.
When in the Course of human
events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the
political bands which have
connected them with another,
and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the
Laws of Nature and of Nature's
God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which
impel them to such a separation.
These first sentences of both the Declaration of Independence and
Declaration of Sentiments in one way operate similarly. Each assume a
baseline 'course of human events'-a basic idea about the nature of
history as a constant process of forward progression toward an ultimate
perfection of the human state. Each is addressing itself to the currently
established dominant middle class social discourse community which,
they assert, fails to recognize a disparity between its own principles and
those ideals the document propounds. The proposed new narrative
voice should ideally be (but wasn't being) perceived as essentially and
finally equal with the existing status quo-for Jefferson, this means
equality between the British and the Colonists; for the women at Seneca
Falls, this means equality between men and women. This state of
equivalency, each asserts, should become the newly transformed social
discourse that will usher in a proper continuation of that course of human
events, aligning humanity closer to hoped for perfection. These first
17
sentences are also quite different. While the Declaration of Sentiments
repeats the general rubric of rebellion, it also operates via an elision of
meaning(s) in its rebellion against the once similarly rebellious, but now
foundational, Declaration of Independence. This proceeds with the
substitution of 'family of man' for Jefferson's 'one people.' While ’family
of man' might seem an equivalent collective phrase for a large group of
people all subject to similar laws and concerns, it more literally evokes
the domestic nuclear family governed by man to which the women writing
this declaration feel subjected; the effect is to reveal the close ties
between notions of family and notions of state. Jefferson's first sentence
stresses the need for the colonies to assume a status as a separate but
equal power, repeating the word separation twice and modifying it with
'dissolve,' while the women declare not a separation but a position
'different from that which they have hitherto occupied' in man's family.
Their concentration reconceptualizes the way their position is collectively
thought by society; the play of meanings becomes part of the
reconceptualizing process. Where Thomas Jefferson asserts that
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes," the Declaration of
Sentiments repeats the same phrase, but it becomes clear that in this
new context, the government being referred to is not literally tyrannical
British rule, but reminiscent of it. The women continue: "But when a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their
18
duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their
future security." This mimics Jefferson’s text exactly, but conveys a
markedly different meaning. "Such has been the patient sufferance of
the women under this government. . . ( . . . Such has been the patient
sufferance of these Colonies ...)... The history of mankind is a history
of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman,
having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world." Like
Jefferson, the women go on in their Declaration to list their grievances
with this now revised tyrant, Man, carefully playing on the double
meaning of government as both noun and verb. The women are also
playing on the terms 'man' and 'mankind'; while often used in the
collective sense to refer to both men and women, the terms are used in
this case to refer to men specifically. Within this doubleness between the
two spheres-public authority and private 'rule' among men and wom en-
the Declaration of Sentiments demonstrates that in fact the two types of
rule are not separate at all, but so similar as to be practically equivalent.
The hoped for equality of status for women would equalize the old terms
of hierarchized differences in voice and explode the claim to authority of
a separated, hierarchized gender status. The concerns of women would
emerge as equally important to other prevailing concerns in society, aptly
comparable to the revolutionary spirit of the founding of the nation.
So in one way we can view the Declaration of Sentiments as the
invocation of a uniquely female public voice, constructed solely by
19
women and beginning to speak specifically in opposition to the formerly
monolithic voice of men (who spoke for both men and women). But the
fact that these Seneca Falls women were advocating a distinct voice
wasn't anything new; clearly they already occupied a very specific and
separate private and domestic sphere within the course of hu(man)
events. What takes their declaration beyond a restatement of this already
established ideology is that it declares the need for a shift in the old
system of valuation. Within the old system this supposedly new
language of the Declaration of Sentiments wouldn't amount to much,
being negatively coded as idle chatter and gossip among sentimental
women, perhaps over their embroidery. This is why one newspaper
called the Declaration of Sentiments "a parody upon the Declaration of
American Independence" (Stanton 802). In fact, this comment
demonstrates precisely the problem the Declaration of Sentiments was
attacking-a societal inability to conceptualize the female voice as
anything other than representative of a specific domestic private sphere,
horribly out of place alongside such a revered public document as the
Declaration of Independence. Their construction of the Declaration of
Sentiments challenges the authority of the Declaration of
Independence's idea of nationhood by, among other things, calling its
language into question; in doing so it highlights the system of power
relations which the idea of American nationhood perpetuates.
In another way the Declaration of Sentiments is about downplaying
the disparity of differently gendered voices, and about working toward
20
creating a new conceptual space where equality can be conceived. This
is why Bardes and Gossett can suggest that women were asserting both
their independence (or difference) and their equality at the same time.
Women did not necessarily want to become the same as men, they
wanted their voice/language to be perceived as equally valued, and
valuable, as man's by creating a system of validation that shatters the
public/private binary, revealing the pervasive connections between the
two systems which make their differences impossible to distinguish.
According to the Declaration of Sentiments, difference would lead to
egalitarianism, not detract from it. Thus the Declaration of Sentiments
mimics the notion of historical progress assumed by the Declaration of
Independence by asserting that despite the finality of the rules of utopia
outlined by the founding fathers, there were still plenty of areas of reform
needing attention. The truly liberated America (in effect, the true America
itself) would only come into being when the problem of relations between
the sexes was addressed.
Among other documents published in 1848 was a tract titled Voices
From the Kenduskeaq, a publication which consisted of short stories by
residents of Bangor, Maine, collected by women of the community
interested in generating subscriptions for the support of an orphanage.
Most interesting among the collection of stories and poems are two
selections titled "The Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century" and
"Sequel to 'The Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century'." Before we
21
start reading them, these texts already exist in a dialogue with each other
that begins with the titles; one author offers 'The Vision1 in a title whose
article seems to exclude other possibilities, and the other offers a
'Sequel' already commenting directly on that solidly confident closed
text. Because the first text is by a man and the second by a woman, I
think these works form another example of the complex and increasingly
heated conversation about gender erupting in 1848 and continuing
throughout the nineteenth century.
Edward Kent, then Governor of Maine, begins "The Vision of Bangor"
by calling attention to the writing process itself, specifically yet playfully
vilifying the women responsible for putting together the book. "I am one
of the unfortunate victims selected . . . the list [of contributors] was soon
exhibited by an inexorable woman, and the fatal cross stood thereon, like
the marks on the death roll of the Roman triumvirate" (61). Having been
asked to contribute, he describes what amounts to continual harassment
by the woman in charge of putting the text together. "Yes, it will be
[ready]. . . . Beware of the third time asking," he recalls as her
admonishment (62). The editor, a 'fair dictator,' chides him for being so
fearful of writing his piece, noting that fear is not a proper masculine trait,
"whilst we women, timid, delicate, and retiring, as is our nature and
destiny, are ready to go boldly forth to the public, and write our prettiest
and our best, and have it printed too . . ." (63). What makes this four
page beginning to his utopia so interesting is that it isn't about the future
of Bangor or Maine at all, but about a man's struggle to find a voice, and
22
the constant interference he feels from a nagging female editor who
questions not only his ability to compose but reveals the close
connection between authorship and masculinity. This is quite a departure
from the bold confidence of the Jefferson-like declaration of his title;
Governor Kent finds difficulty in producing a confident document of such
singular presence as the similarly utopian Declaration of Independence
because the authority of the voice he attempts to find is continually
fragmented by the interruptions of a woman.
Since he had such a hard time beginning his piece, it is interesting
how Kent finally finds his voice. He slips into sleep and finds his dream,
led by an orphan from the asylum which will benefit from his writing.
What better reason to write, after all, than for the children? The soothing
(female) orphan substitutes for the character of the persistent and
impatient female editor, and after the orphan's appearance, Kent is finally
able to speak the story's narrative. This child becomes a figure of 'real'
need that replaces the by contrast false aggressive need of the
editor/dictatrix; desire for hunger and clothing coming from a helpless
child allows the author to invoke and reassert a role of fatherhood with
which he is more comfortable, a space within which he can speak
because he already knows the rules--the rules of the father/provider of
the nuclear family. These are, of course, the same rules that codify
society's belief in the sanctity of true womanhood. This precipitates the
narrative disappearance of the editor, whose female (motherly) voice, in
23
this conceptual scheme of public discourse, is not significant because it
has no place. The child is, after all, motherless.
Kent dreams the United States in 1978 as including most of South
America. Commerce has shifted from timber to more diversified
industries, and he cannot resist asking his guide, "do men and women
yet live in families, or did the reformers of my day succeed in introducing
the community system?" (70) His guide assures him that all that
nonsense was well past, since "nature was too strong for abstract
theories, and after a considerable struggle between the sexes, they both
became satisfied that it was best to compromise, and let the women rule
indoors and the men out" (70). This was settled on, we learn, after giving
women equal voting rights proved unmanageable--their votes always
went for the most attractive men, if they bothered to vote at all between
shopping and visiting. This clearly was not the most effective way to elect
representation, so the practice of involving women was abandoned.
Governor Kent's narrative began as a discourse in jeopardy and is about
the successful reclamation of control. His fictional future explicates and
justifies this control in the particulars of its calm and ordered society. In
the same way that his fictional society recovered control from a rash
gender experiment, so too does Kent recover control from the nagging
female editor. Kent's language was scrutinized by an aggravating
female voice which pushed him to the verge of madness, yet his story
reverses the threat and reasserts a particular claim to authority--in this
24
case, that of the familiar (emphasis on family) established voice and
narrative.
These two modes of narration, as Edward Kent juxtaposes them,
can be seen as part of the conversation initiated by the Declaration of
Sentiments. What makes the Bangor collection of essays even more
interesting is that Jane Sophia Appleton, the editor of Voices from the
Kenduskeag and presumably the model for Kent's harasser, responded
to Governor Kent's vision in the same collection by creating a "Sequel to
'The Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century'." It works in a similar
manner as the Declaration of Sentiments in that it seeks to revise
standards of understanding and perception by taking off on an already
established text-here, the one written by Edward Kent. "One day
happening by chance to peep into a gentleman's escritoire, I discovered
a 'Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century'. . . . I did not resist the
temptation thus spread before me, but allowed my curiosity the
gratification of reading it from beginning to end" (243). Having
discovered the text by a boldly and decidedly unfeminine invasive
process of 'entering' his writing table Appleton neatly enters his narrative
as well, thereby removing the title's claim to finality. Appleton comments
on Kent's assessment of her own character by asserting her seriousness
of purpose, and thus the viability of the female narrative voice. She then
proceeds toward undermining Kent's authority by dreaming the same
dream as Kent, to the point of imagining herself into the body of the
25
same individual narrator of Kent's text, literalizing her entrance into this
'other' narrative and usurping the space of the father's master narrative.
I will discuss the significance of Appleton's actual metamorphosis of
the body of the narrator later; what is interesting to me in this context,
however, is what Appleton accomplishes in placing the narrator into
different situations than Kent does. Appleton focuses primarily on the
question of gender by placing her narrator (or is it Kent's?) in contact with
a woman of 1978. The narrator attempts to compliment the woman
profusely as the code of the nineteenth century would call for, evoking
laughter from this 'new' woman. "Presuming she did not understand, I
endeavored to make my language more unequivocal" (250). Our
narrator attempts to bridge what is obviously a language barrier, the
language barrier between the old chivalry and the new gender equality.
The guide proceeds to explain: "[w]oman is no longer considered as a
mere object for caresses and pretty words . . . she is not now petted with
adulation, while her true dignity is forgotten .... Your age fondled
women. Ours honors her. You gave her compliments. We give her
rights" (251, Appleton's emphasis). The narrator later learns that his
ideals are considered antiquated, remembered only by scholars of the
past. Where Kent assumed his ideals and rules of language to be
standard, even eternal and transcendental in extending essentially
unchanged into his imagined future, Appleton juxtaposes her belief that
those standards can and should change by putting their common
narrator in an encounter with her own version of a future with a New
26
Woman. Of course, the narrator looks ridiculous as a result, and the
terms of Kent’s derision are reversed.
Having established the new order of gender roles, Appleton proceeds
to explain the significance of what the narrator is witnessing, in effect
explaining the way this new language works. "Nor, much as we elevate
and reverence [woman], do we aim to abolish the difference in the
intellect and constitution of man and woman. On the contrary, we
acknowledge and cherish it, only waiving the worn-out question of the
intellectual rank of the sexes" (252). Appleton demonstrates here that
nothing has essentially changed, only the method of hierarchization, the
way of conceptualizing what was already always there. This is why
maintaining (at least ostensibly) the same narrator as Kent's piece is an
important part of this story, and this is precisely what the Declaration of
Sentiments attempts to accomplish as well. By placing the same narrator
in a differing conceptual framework, Appleton establishes the possibility
of change by highlighting the relativity of the so-called permanent. This
is significant because if gender characteristics are believed to be natural,
they are then by definition final and immobile. Appleton asserts that the
nature of gender is constructed by social norms at least to some extent,
and those social norms are revealed by their juxtaposition with her future
world. She accomplishes this by clothing her 'feminine' narrative in the
accoutrements of Kent's 'masculine' one, and the juxtapositional parody
brings "into relief the utterly constructed status of the original [gender
terms]" in Judith Butler’s words (Gender Trouble 31). What is coded as
27
natural, even biological, perhaps not even worthy of discussion for that
very reason is suddenly revealed as concept and not as permanent
reality by this narrative cross dressing. Gender difference is suddenly
thrown into motion, denaturalized and mobilized, and this parody of the
original "reveals the original to be nothing other than a parody of the idea
of the natural and the original" (Butler, Gender Trouble 31). Thus
Governor Kent's defensiveness is perhaps understandable; his reaction
is similar to one newspaper's view of the implications of the Seneca
Falls Convention:
Society would have to be radically remodeled in order to
accommodate itself to so great a change in the most vital
part of the compact of the social relations of life; and the
order of things established at the creation of mankind, and
continued six thousand years, would be completely broken
up. (Stanton I: 802)
That such denaturalization could cause as much anxiety as this
statement reveals is testament to the extent to which societal structures
were, and continue to be, dependent on the male-female binary and its
derivatives to maintain the framework of interactions that constituted the
idea(l) of the American republic, or even the vaster Order of Things itself.
Appleton reveals the Order of Things to be more aptly described as 'the
way things have been ordered until now' and against the idea of a
nature and an origin of gender difference. She thus implicitly criticizes
documents such as the Declaration of Independence which have created
textual certification of a state of permanence of that (gendered) Order
which elides the gap between the idea and the reality she has just
exposed. Thus the reconceptualization Appleton's voice forces takes on
28
the character of a revolution with the potential to radically remodel
society. Disruption is the name of the game, and exploring the
potentiality (or lack thereof) of this disruption becomes the primary focus
of the nineteenth century discussion about gender.
Divided Loyalties
These, then, were the characteristics of a new age of revolution. The
accepted duties of the True Woman--her meekness, her patience, her
care of children and husband, her maintenance of the family hearth--
were beginning to appear as possibilities along a vastly expanding
continuum rather than a permanently finite list of choices. The Seneca
Falls Convention was not entirely without precedent; for example, when
denied the right to participate in the American Anti-Slavery Society
meeting of 1833, women formed the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery
Society instead, and by 1837 the first National Female Anti-Slavery
Society convened in New York. Excluded because of a principle of
differentiation of gender inherent in prevailing norms, women began to
form their own equivalent societies in an attempt to both further the anti
slavery cause and to declare the simultaneity of their own voices and
capabilities outside of the closed sphere of their domestic role, thereby
effecting the same defamiliarization as Appleton. Similar opposition to
the presence of women within the temperance movement precipitated
the founding of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1874. And
29
on another front, this fast spreading revolution was finding its way into the
educational system, where the newly felt need for equal women's
education led to the founding of many east coast women's colleges such
as Vassar and Mt. Holyoke; later state universities such as those in Iowa,
Wisconsin, and New York became co-educational as a result of this
emphasis.
So the Declaration of Sentiments was by no means a strict beginning
of the nineteenth century's increasingly heated conversation about
gender, but it does mark an important, because officially organized,
declaration of the existence of the conversation. This is an indication of
the concentration of self-conscious effort directed toward what would
become the more formally recognized Woman Question rather than the
woman question being an incidental, interfering part of other larger
concerns like race or temperance. Jill Ker Conway has discussed how
this newly conceptualized nineteenth century feminism eventually
existed as two separate strains, which she terms the 'secular-rationalist'
and the 'utopian-radical.' What distinguishes these two groups is how far
they were willing to go in changing the gender status quo. She says the
utopian-radical group concerned themselves "with changing the social
and cultural boundaries of the gender system in profound ways," while
the more conservative position would "[elaborate] women's claim to
authority and influence because they functioned only in the domestic
sphere and were excluded from the moral hazards of male life" (286).
One group would like to see more sweeping changes of gender roles
30
and concepts with the goal of approaching an ideal of equality of men
and women expressed in the Declaration of Sentiments. The other
would retain the separate spheres concept, while further elaborating on
women’s roles within her domestic realm. While not advocating equality,
these adherents still supported a revised idea of gender.4
While I don't think these two positions are as mutually exclusive as
Conway implies, I think her analysis is a useful assessment of the
philosophies as they developed in this nineteenth century gender
debate. She discusses the conservative position as maintaining that
society already existed in a delicate balance between public and private,
domestic and social, male and female; any rearrangement of terms
would throw society into utter chaos. For this camp, the basic ideological
distinction between domestic and public reigned supreme, along with the
perception of consequently proper gendered behaviors. Still, this proto
feminist position was concerned with articulating a philosophy of
woman's rights within this already existent binary framework; their
strategy b expanded on the already sanctioned role of women as moral
guides, creating a new idea of woman's role as moral exemplar for a
quickly corrupting society. It should be no surprise, then, that the
nineteenth century saw the rise of such a powerful organization as the
Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which at its peak
4This division is reminiscent of many debates between radical and conservative camps of
reformers past and present; for example, debates focusing on race issues between such
movement leaders as Booker T. Washington vs. W. E. B. DuBois, or Martin Luther King
vs. Malcom X. W e can also see this debate between women repeating itself in the split
between liberal and radical feminists of the 1970's. The origins of this second-wave
division are located in the debates and divisions about gender in the nineteenth century.
31
boasted upwards of a quarter of a million members nationally. Its slogan
of 'home protection' encapsulates the basic philosophy of its members-
to save both the individual and the social home from threats constantly
spawning in the outside (considered masculine) world like increasing
poverty, economic instability and labor chaos. Woman gained a sense of
righteousness and power from this role as moral caretaker. As the
century went on, she proceeded more and more to act on that role,
viewing larger society as a macrocosm of the domestic microcosm, and
as very much in need of female (calming, ordering) attention. The
women's club movement of the late nineteenth century and the veritable
explosion of civic reform activity that resulted formed a broad Social
Purity movement, largely fostered by these conservative activists. Women
established libraries, supported the building of hospitals and women's
colleges, and worked for better school facilities for children in addition to,
or as a logical extension of, temperance concerns (Woloch 290). Nancy
Woloch's term 'social housekeepers' is a fitting name for these women,
whose view of what constituted the domestic realm was rapidly
expanding to include as much of the world outside the home as that
within it. This type of activism might be seen as continuing the word play
begun in the Declaration of Sentiments; by expanding on the already set
notion of home as four walls and a roof, these women made it equivalent
to the larger society that functions as a 'home' to humanity, thereby
foregrounding the connection between gender and social organization
highlighted in the Declaration of Sentiments.
32
But of course there is an irony in the existence of such a massive and
exclusively female organizations as the WCTU, or the larger and equally
reform minded General Federation of Women's Clubs. This more
conservative doctrine of reform was the result of quite profound breaches
of female propriety by leaders and members alike who spoke,
demonstrated, travelled the country, circulated petitions, organized local
and national conventions and even operated the printing presses that
produced the WCTU newspaper, the Union Signal. In promoting a
broadened doctrine of domestic tranquility, these groups sidestepped the
fact that implicit in their very existence was the germ of a more radical
view of the need to address issues of gender relations. As Barbara
Welter puts it, "the very perfection of True Womanhood . . . carried within
itself the seeds of its own destruction. For if woman was so very little less
than the angels, she should surely take a more active part in running the
world" (Cult of True Womanhood 174). Indeed, it was gender exclusion
that forced women involved in abolition to form their own exclusively
female societies in the first place, forming the basis of the early
movement led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which eventually recognized
the importance of dealing with gender issues more exclusively.
The Seneca Falls Convention was a prominent development in the
progression which led toward the founding in 1869 of The National
Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which existed alongside the
WCTU and served as an oppositionary organization more focused on
gender reform than the temperance and club movements. Activated by
33
the explicit denial of the right to vote as codified in the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution after the Civil War, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and others continued their efforts through
this organization to secure suffrage for women. Concern for woman
suffrage was a logical extension of their earlier concern for broad based
gender equality as expressed in the Declaration of Sentiments. Woman
suffrage was seen as only the beginning of what would come to be a
broad reassessment of societal mores in all areas, since implicit in its
advocation was the assertion of the need for a newly defined female
sense of individuality and self interest (Degler 343). One period piece on
the woman question fairly gushes over this potential:
But there are thousands of women in the suffrage ranks
who have never before known this stimulation . . . to such
women work in the suffrage cause comes as an inspiration.
It is not selfish, but altruistic, it is not performed alone, but in
groups, and often in the open air; it is always varied and
never dull, it is cooperative, social, and idealistic; above all
it is successful. It teaches reasoning and logic; it teaches
breadth of mind, loyalty and courage. It exacts
organization, obedience, and the power to command. It
scorns indirectness, repudiates weakness and demands
strength. In a word, it trains women in all those qualities
which through no fault of their own they have hitherto been
most deficient. The movement for equal suffrage brings
countless women their first glimpse into a larger and more
socialized life and is of inestimable value to them, quite
apart from their attainment of its object. (Hale 85-6)
This places Stanton and most of the suffragettes in Conway's 'radical'
camp, who increasingly focused their concerns on gaining the vote which
they hoped would lead to much more sweeping reforms, like a
redefinition of properly gendered spheres altogether.
34
Of course neither the more conservative social reformers nor the more
radical suffragettes constituted a homogeneous block of white, middle
class women's attitudes. Frances Willard, longtime President of the
Women's Christian Temperance Union during its most activist years,
advocated a 'do everything' policy which extended focused temperance
concerns toward all sorts of social reforms paralleling the civic concerns
of the women's clubs. On the other hand, her nearly-socialist politics led
her to seek alliances with the likes of the Knights of Labor and the
Populist party. This attitude included advocating woman suffrage, an
idea the WCTU did eventually accept with reluctance.5 And the NWSA
was not the only suffrage organization in America; for several decades
the American Woman Suffrage Association existed simultaneously as the
more conservatively radical organization of the two, focusing more
exclusively on suffrage related concerns and gearing this toned down
message to a potentially broader base of interests, including men and
more conservative women. The two organizations united in 1890, only to
face an increasingly hostile and organized anti-suffrage movement. The
anti's were in turn balanced later in the struggle for suffrage by the
radical National Woman's Party led by Lucy Stone. These women
engaged in such outrageous (for the time) tactics as picketing, chaining
themselves to fences and going on hunger strikes to publicize the
suffrage cause. Despite the real-life ambiguities, Conway's categories
5 After the death of Frances Willard in 1898, the W CTU refocused itself toward a more
conservative program of more strictly temperance related concerns and away from the
more radical 'do everything' course set by Willard.
35
point out a real and fundamental difference separating what ends up to
be to two main attitudes toward this discussion of gender roles. Being
against suffrage most likely was the result of a view of social gender roles
that paralleled the status quo--that the doctrine of separate spheres was
an important, even natural one, and was socially stabilizing in its
reflection of the proper talents of each gender. Separation and
difference (those echoes of the Declaration of Independence) remain
important conceptual rubrics. Suffrage proponents were more likely to
view gender as a socially influenced construction of women (and men)
which was falsely based on natural and historical precepts and ended up
fostering continued oppression of women. Thus would these women
argue at Seneca Falls that in reality, all men and women are created
equal. As Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale put it in 1914: "[o]ne group
seeks to minimize the importance of sex; the other maximizes it. To one
the likeness between men and women is greater than the differences; to
the other the differences are fundamental, the likenesses subordinate"
(210).6 In essence, the discussion of gender in the nineteenth century
was a discussion of just how the word equality was to be defined. Was
the perfect state of gender already in existence, or was it yet to be
achieved? Was the present difference preferable to a future equality? In
this way, the question of gender was closely tied to the question of how
one defined and defended the perception of progress itself.
6See part IV of Hale's What Women Want called 'Future Visions'; futuristic visions like this
one are a common theme of nineteenth and early twentieth century non-fiction texts
i which addressed the woman question.
36
Mary Agnes Tincker's San Salvador (1892) presents us with a society
that places these two prevailing ideologies in competition with one
another through the main female characters of Tacita and Iona.7 San
Salvador is a quietly reserved society located in an isolated mountainous
area unknown to the rest of the world. It is a religiously based paradise
where worship of God is a prominent preoccupation of the inhabitants
and the spare harmonious life of the community reflects their closeness
to spiritual fulfillment and complete happiness-the best of all possible
worlds. Tacita is the character we follow through most of the story as she
travels with her maid to San Salvador. Before leaving, Tacita spurns the
affections of Don Claudio; her father warned him not to marry Tacita
because "he who would have Tacita must live even as I have, without
luxury or splendor, striving to learn what human life means, and following
the best law his soul knows" (17). Don Claudio has no such plans for his
life, and is forced to sigh at these rules of living which, not by accident,
are the rules of both the perfect marriage plot and the perfect society. So
it is clear from the beginning that traveling to San Salvador is part of
Tacita's marriage plot and that the chosenness implied by the stern
warnings of her father combined with the submissive willingness to follow
a maid she hardly knows around the world is part of the specifically
female virtue that makes her the central focus of the novel.
7See also Mrs. Adel Orpen's (Elizabeth Richards) Perfection City (NY: Appleton 1897),
which imitates the structure of San Salvador's oppositionary female characters quite
closely.
37
Once Tacita arrives in San Salvador, she begins to familiarize herself
with her surroundings. In doing so, Tacita encounters a strange portrait:
[It] represented] a young woman of noble figure standing
erect, her arms hanging at her sides, and one hand holding
a scroll. . . under one foot, slightly advanced, lay a cupid
sprawled face downward, the fragments of his bow and
arrows scattered about... all the curves of the face were
tender; but they were contradicted by an assumption of
reserve almost too severe for beauty. It was the picture of a
loving nature that had renounced love. (95)
This is Iona, director of the girl's school in San Salvador, (where
education is separated by gender), who eventually becomes Tacita's
rival. Iona is the all around organizer of San Salvador, though her actual
assigned responsibility in the society is maintaining the educational
system. The portrait's effect is to communicate a strong willed and
competent but somehow unfulfilled woman disconnected with the
peaceful, devotion oriented Salvadoran lifestyle hinted at early on by
Tacita's dying father. Iona is the resident bureaucrat who legislates and
organizes in the outer world, but according to the novel, the effect has
been a renunciation of an inner (feminine) longing, the achievement of
that simplicity and harmony which is San Salvador's highest virtue.
Tacita, on the other hand, leads her life through a series of intuitive and
quasi-spiritual encounters which began with following the maid blindly
on the maid's journey home. This tacit trust is rewarded when the maid
reveals herself to be Tacita's specially appointed guide from San
Salvador.
Along her journey to San Salvador Tacita encounters a portrait of
Mary and Jesus surrounded by several saints which affects her deeply.
38
The saint she is particularly drawn to turns out to be an ancestor of the
current ruler of San Salvador, whom he resembles. Her strange
longings therefore turn out to be natural spiritual affinities, drawing her
slowly toward fulfillment the closer she gets to San Salvador. The
portrait's effect is also to establish the religious bloodlines of San
Salvador; in doing so, the portrait hints of the proximity of San Salvador's
values to the 'original' Truths of the Bible. Iona’s bureaucratic skills
remove her from access to these higher values and purposes. "We do
not lay much stress on the form of government [in San Salvador]. The
important thing is personal character," Iona tells Tacita, familiarizing her
with the ways of her new home (98). This is an ironic statement coming
from Iona, since personal character is precisely what she is guilty of
neglecting.
The reader’s suspicions slowly build about the character of Iona,
whose actions continue to contradict the dictates she speaks. She
describes the care of children to Tacita by saying that "For personal
disorders in the young, parents and teachers are held responsible ....
All blame is finally laid on the father and mother, and more especially on
the mother. The training of the child is held to be of supreme importance,
and there is no more dignified occupation. We say 'the mother of
children is the mother of the state.' You will not hear any mother in San
Salvador complain of her child as having a bad temper, or evil
dispositions. She will be told that the child is what she made it" (97-8).
I While motherhood is the supreme and final duty of women in San
39
Salvador, Iona herself is not a mother. But at this point neither is Tacita,
so a competition is set up between the two for the most eligible bachelor
of the novel, Dylar, the ruler of San Salvador. Access to the center of
power in San Salvador can only come through one type of woman, and it
is clear that Tacita fits the mold.
Dylar's passion for Tacita reveals itself in his pursuit of her. He is the
humble spiritual seeker forecast by her father, and the father's prophecy
becomes the vehicle through which Tacita is exchanged between himself
and Dylar. Tacita continually blushes in Dylar's presence, feeling at one
point upon his departure as if she "floated in the air" (150). Later she is
'intoxicated with delight' in being near him; by now we are quite familiar
with the narrative pattern that Tacita's thoughts and intuitions follow
toward spiritual and material fulfillment. Dylar's castle is what Tacita
eventually calls home, the place where she accepts her role of
motherhood and (symbolic) rule of the state through the cradle. She
becomes an Everywoman, the cornerstone of the family and of the state.
The castle area is a vast landscape that could be read as a garden of
Eden which looks out over the rest of San Salvador, embodying the idea
of perfection as the Home which all the other homes strive to become, full
of gardens, orchards and olive trees as well as ancient relics of previous
rulers of San Salvador. Upon leaving the castle after her first visit Tacita
exclaims "I never dreamed of being so happy," to her maid Elena, "And
they looked into each others eyes, and understood" (171). The (tacit)
40
silence of intuitive understanding communicates what we already know-
that Tacita will soon become the Mother of San Salvador.
As we have seen, Iona is quite different than Dylar or Tacita in their
intuition-based existence. One of the most striking qualities about her is
that she has a plan for the progress of San Salvador. "The time is past
when San Salvador can be long hidden, when it should hold itself only a
refuge for a few, and a nursery for a few. I think the time is come when it
should prepare, prudently, yet with energy, a Christian aggressiveness"
(190). Her idea to spread the word about San Salvador’s philosophies,
much like the medieval Crusades, further foregrounds her interest in the
outside world. Yet these pursuits are never a part of the concerns of
Tacita or Dylar, whose inner pursuits depend on the isolation and
permanence of San Salvador's literal world as the embodiment of its
(permanent, final) philosophical and religious principles. Upon meeting
resistance from Tacita about these progressive ideas, realizing she is
being shut out from Dylar, Iona rages. She says she had "a contempt for
maternity which we share with beasts, reptiles, and insects. I almost
believed that common people only should have children and superior
people mould and educate them." The portrait of herself stomping out
Cupid represented "that the people of San Salvador needed an example
of [a] lofty and laborious [life] which set aside for duty's sake all of the joys
of domestic life" (194-5). Iona wails as she realizes that this, her own
utopian vision of a world ruled simultaneously by her and Dylar would
become "our son"--the civilization as their symbolic offspring (196). Iona
41
elevates herself to a state of equality with Dylar in her vision of joint rule
and (surrogate) motherhood, but it is clear that Iona has it all wrong.
Tacita asserts the inevitable corruption of such a plan for social progress,
arguing along with the narrative for the stasis of the San Salvadoran
lifestyle and its carefully cultivated principles of organization and
maintenance. "Human life is not a crystallization, but a crucible," she
remarks, replacing Iona's progressive model with another, which
emphasizes human beings as types of containers within which change
occurs according to a pre-ordained plan (197). This atomization and
individual salvation implodes the sense of progress Iona has in mind with
a 'real' idea of inner fulfillment that goes all the way back to the words of
Tacita's (godlike) father.
Tacita disappears from the novel after her marriage, and this is no
great surprise. Since the novel advocates the ideology of true
womanhood, it is clear that once she achieves this status there is nothing
left to be said, since that constitutes the end of her narratability. Yet
having established the principles that surround the primary theory of the
nation, the novel is still left with the anomalous character of Iona, the
radical woman who doesn't fit into the scheme of things, since she will
never be a mother. Given her outspoken personality, it is also clear that
Iona will never tacitly acquiesce to some kind of kinder and gentler role in
San Salvador. Iona must somehow be sacrificed or else her role within
this conceptual scheme will seem possible, or worse, advocated in some
1 way. Iona's slow realization of the affinity of Tacita and Dylar precipitates
42
a long and perilous Dantesque spiritual quest where she attempts to
recover proximity to the spiritual nature she so flamboyantly stomped
under her foot. "There was left in her mind only a vague sense of ruin
and a vague impulse to escape" (203). Her journey includes tireless toil
harvesting wheat and living in the forests that surround San Salvador, all
while wrestling with a soul that was too bent on an earthly focus for her
fulfillment and not enough on inner fulfillment and proximity to God. "She
understood duty and obedience toward God; but an ardent worship of the
whole being, a clinging of the spirit through the sense, she did not
understand. It had seemed to her. .. unworthy" (226). Iona must replace
her sense of the possibility of progress with an idea that progress is not
only negative but unnecessary because of the final Truth of the principles
of San Salvador. This means not only sublimating her ideas about
change for San Salvador, but her own transgression of gender
boundaries which, it is implied, were a result of removal from those
principles.
Iona eventually returns to San Salvador, but leaves again to become
an envoy to the outside world, expressing her reformed nature by her
anguish for the suffering outside San Salvador. She wishes to "see the
suffering face to face" (245). At this point, Iona has modified her more
radical stance to a more easily acceptable social reform mindset, as if
she went from being Susan B. Anthony to being a temperance crusader.
But this is not the end of her story, because in San Salvador even
benevolence is too much activism for a woman. Eventually, Iona dies
43
saving San Salvador from the intrusion of foreigners, blocking a gate
with her body--an action which signals her final conversion as well as
ensuring the safety of the community from the outside (by definition,
corrupting) world. In this religious utopia, Iona is the martyr that must be
sacrificed for the greater perfection whose idea goes on, as unchanged
as it began.
Gendered Meanings . . .or, why Iona had to die
In one way it is easy to answer the question of why Iona had to die.
She didn't fit into the order of things in San Salvador-most particularly
the way gender was conceived. The primacy of motherhood in San
Salvador is clearly represented as not a priority for Iona, who not only
does not have children but causes a picture to be painted of herself
stomping out motherhood. This means, in the language of San
Salvador, that she is an unnatural woman and must be eliminated in
order to preserve the integrity of the realm. Her (dead) body is, then, the
body that didn't express its gender in the way society required. When
Elizabeth Cady Stanton noted the importance of speaking out in the
opening quote of this chapter, she specifically highlighted the fact that
tacit acceptance of the gender status quo precipitated a
misunderstanding of women's lives and experiences. Like Stanton, Iona
spoke out, but within the rubrics of female behavior in San Salvador,
silence equals life and exaltation, while speech becomes certain death.
44
While this formulation might seem like a fictional extreme, gender was
indeed becoming a life and death issue in American society as the
century moved on. Already in 1848 Edward Kent's utopia had made the
statement that the world of 1978 had come about because "nature was
too strong for abstract theories [about change for women]" (70). Fifty
years later an article in the popular magazine Cosmopolitan said
something similar:
It is passing strange that one has again and again to bring
the theorists back to this profound yet simple truth-a truth
which Nature herself has set before us so very plainly that it
ought to be impossible for any one ever to forget it. That
woman is man's equal may, for the sake of argument, be
granted; that she is man's counterpart is utterly and
absurdly false .... Neither physically, nor intellectually, not
temperamentally, nor emotionally, is she identical with man;
and any argument based on a supposed identity must be
wholly worthless; for the falsity of its major premise is known
to every human being. (Peck 333)
That which Harry Thurston Peck felt was known to every human being is
ultimately the physical differences which, for nineteenth century society,
revealed the true meaning of gender. What is even more striking about
this passage is its constant reference to the ’self-evident’ nature of this
proposition-even scientific discourse was not above appropriating the
Jeffersonian model. The differences he cites do not necessarily refer
exclusively to genital differences; one of the ways scientists sought to
prove gender difference in the nineteenth century was in comparative
studies of male and female bodies, focusing mostly on brains. One
scientist was concentrating on the size of various brain centers when he
stated that "the frontal lobes, the seat of highest intellectual faculties, are
45
less developed in woman than in man. The occipital lobes, the seat of
sentiments, are more voluminous in woman." This difference explains for
him why "woman is more given to the life of the heart and man to that of
the mind" (Delauney 186). Other scientists concentrated on weights and
measures of brain size, finding a considerable difference in weight and
capacity of male and female brains, which to them indicated a
corresponding mental deficiency.
If one wasn't convinced of innate gender differences by differences
in cranial capacity, one couldn't deny the ability of women to become
mothers, and it is at this point many scientists rested their cases. This is
partially because of one peculiarity of nineteenth century belief-that a
human being was allotted only a certain amount of 'energy' in his or her
life beyond which it was impossible to extend. "There is a certain general
energy in the organism which may be used in many directions, and may
take different forms, such as for growth, [or] nutrition . .. but its total
amount is strictly limited, and if it is used to do one thing, then it is not
available for another" (Clouston 216). Expenditure of energy by women
toward their own education or any other activity outside the domestic
sphere, then, risked not only the woman's own physical and emotional
well being but the well being of her (future) children, who were to ensure
the social progress of humankind. It is no accident then that many of
these beliefs about women's inferiority focused around puberty as a
crucial moment in a girl's development, a time when "all that is
specifically characteristic of woman begins to appear" (Clouston 220).
46
Clouston lists a whole host of physical and mental changes including
acquiration of 'modesty and diffidence1 as compounding the importance
of this adolescent period where a female became 'sexed.' He argues
against excessive female education because of his view that "if undue
calls are made on the nervous force, or the mental power, or the bodily
energies, the perfection of nature cannot be attained, and womanhood is
reached without the characteristic womanly quality of mind or body. The
fair ideal is distorted" (221). Harry Thurston Peck also highlights
woman's reproductive function as the central focus of woman's 'altered'
state. "That periodical interruption of her activities which she cannot
possibly escape, and that potential interruption of them which maternity
entails; are two great factors that must never be disregarded in
considering the question of her relation to intellectual achievement"
(333).8
Maternity was a special focus of later nineteenth century concern
because of the proponderance of Darwinian theories of evolutionary
progress; woman's special responsibility to her species of bearing
'perfect' offspring was thus compounded. Thus maintenance of woman’s
domestic role was a crucial aspect of maintenance of the integrity of the
currently theorized state of civilization. If one were to argue against the
innate biological incapacities of women as demonstrated by some
8See Thom as Laqueur's discussion of puberty and menstruation in Making Sex: Body
and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press 1990) as an
important turning point in historical thinking about gender and sex. Before the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 'male' and 'female' were considered to be
variations of one sex whose reproductive organs were mirror im ages of each other;
scientific knowledge later rendered the fem ale body as truly 'different' because of its
monthly cycles.
47
scientists, the argument against women could easily take on broader
implications.
The perpetration of the human species is dependent on the
function of maternity, and probably twenty percent of the
energy of women between twenty and forty years of age is
diverted for the maintenance of maternity and its attended
exactions. Upon the supposition that woman’s mental
endowment was exactly equal to man's, the amount
diverted to maternity must be continually subtracted from it,
so that any original equality of intellect would certainly be
lost through maternity .. . thus the development of the
individual woman holds a constantly inverse ratio to the
multiplication of the species. (Hardaker 581-2)
The proper sphere of female power advocated by many of these
scientists, then, was a focus on what was for them a very essential
maternal quality, which they used to justify beliefs about woman's proper
duties in and for society. In this way, this doctrine has implications not
only for women, but for the organization of the nation as well. "Everyone
ought to know that woman was created to make it possible for man to do
this work by bringing him into the world a healthy, normal being, by
rearing him up with all the infinite care, the wonderful patience, the
intuitive knowledge and the clear prevision that none but woman has"
(Peck 334). Thus develops the scientific justification of the dictate of San
Salvador-to rule the state through the cradle. "If [woman] would devote
some of the time in which she struggles to obtain the ballot to rational
reflection on the influence a woman has over the pre-natal life of a child,
and would then consider what a mother may do with a plastic human life
. . . she would then find that ballots are not what women need for the
! protection of their homes" (Foibles 187).
48
Thus if woman were to risk seeking fulfillment outside the confines of
the home and family, she was in danger of becoming unsexed by social
activism, thereby subjecting herself to the possibility of varying states of
moral or physical degeneracy. "When she invades the sphere of man in
the modern business or political world, she departs from the sex-idea
and becomes a sexless substitute for man. She destroys the physical
and psychic elements of womanhood without, however, being able to
create the things that are supposed to take her place. She descends
from a higher to lower physiological level and soon shows the evidence
of biological retrogression" (Haller 79). James Weir Jr. went so far as to
call this 'viraginity' or "masculo-femininity--a state of psycho-sexual
aberrancy." For Weir viraginity could take many forms:
We see a mild form . . . in the tom-boy who abandons her
dolls and female companions for the marbles and
masculine sports of her boy acquaintances. In the loud-
talking, long stepping, slang using young woman we see
another form, while the square shouldered, stolid, cold,
unemotional, unfeminine android (for she has the normal
human form, without the normal human psychos) [is
another], (820)
The most extreme case of this affliction Weir calls 'gynandry,' or the state
of not only feeling male desires, but also having the form and features of
a man. What is so interesting about this non-gendered (perhaps overly
gendered?) extreme is the extent to which Weir is willing to go in his
'diagnosis' of this particular gender pathology. Weir sees the existence
of this type of physical degeneration in woman as the first indications of
total social chaos. "The longer woman [lives] amid surroundings calling
49
for increased nervous expenditure, the greater would be the effects of the
accruing degeneration on her posterity" (823).
Weir casta suffrage as degenerative instead of progressive by pulling
out the trump card of nineteenth century science-evolution. Woman's
deficiencies and limitations (and thus her responsibilities) were justified
as a logical outcome of evolutionary progress, an idea that comes from
Charles Darwin's own statements about the inherently biological basis
for gender differentiation. For Darwin, "the chief distinction in the
intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a
higher eminence in whatever he takes up than can woman" (Darwin
873). His laws of sexual selection are based on the belief that man's
physical capacities were a logical outcome of his historical role as
protector and provider. Women, on the other hand, develop
characteristics exclusively designed to attract men like beauty or musical
skill. This doubly natural (both physical and evolutionary) male
supremacy was modified in various ways by various scientists to further
justify itself. W. K. Brooks believed that the more specialized the species,
the more of a distinction between sex roles; specialization leads to longer
life and thus more of a capacity, he said, for social progress. This he
called the "law of physiological division of labor, the principle that an
organ or organism, like a machine, can do some one thing better and
with less expenditure of force when it is specially adapted to this one
thing than when it is generally adapted for several functions; [this leads]
to the preservation by natural selection of any variations in the direction
50
of a separation of the sexes" (151). For Brooks, equality between the
sexes was something that existed only in the very distant (uncivilized)
past, a phenomenon observable today only in such (uncivilized)
organisms as insects or simple plants. These undifferentiated organisms
obviously hadn't made the social and technological strides that humans
had, so their structural organization was seen as simple and
unspecialized--low on the evolutionary scale. Female inferiority was,
then, not only biologically natural, but also the crux of the idea of the most
properly functional (and stable) state of civilization. Progress, in these
terms, is exactly the peculiar stasis of San Salvador in that it maintains
an already existent chain of being ideology that goes as far back as
Adam's role of naming the animals in Eden. Evolution effectively
silenced claims of the possibility of national or social change by locating
a biological essence that supported the prevailing social organization
and gender hierarchies. But in addition to dictating a definitive story
about the nature of human life, evolution outlined something even more
significant-a definitive story about the nature of progress. In this way, it
eclipsed anyone else's utopia with its own doctrine of truth, supported by
the authoritative voice of science.
Mrs. J. Wood's Pantaletta: A Romance of Sheheland (1882) makes
real what nineteenth century science condemned in the woman suffrage
debate.9 Our narrator, Captain Icarus Byron Gullible, finds himself in a
j 9 Nothing seems to be known about the author of this text, but its virulence suggests to
me that 'Mrs. J. Wood' might be the pseudonym of a male author. In his introduction to
51
remote land where gender roles are not just modified, but completely
reversed. A male member of the underground opposition to the female
regime in Petticotia tells Gullible that the instigators of the social
revolution that caused such changes were not just ordinary women.
"They bore the outward semblance of women, but were endowed with
masculine minds-l might almost say masculine natures. Poor spirits,
unfortunately housed, they were devoured by a perpetual desire to
assume the character of a man" (128). Wood locates the nature of the
women's revolutionary impulse in an organic sex disorder along the lines
of James Weir's argument previously described, where men's spirits
found themselves housed in female bodies. These old maid
revolutionaries are described as having "quite flat [chests], and, had it not
been for their insignificant physiques, they might have passed for a
species of second-rate old men" (61). The combination of differently
gendered mind and body has produced the overall deterioration into
Weir's disdained ungendered status where two opposites--male and
female-cancel each other out. What these odd leaders have perpetrated
on the land of Petticotia increases the sense of absurdity. The language
of gender has been changed so that men are referred to as 'heshes' and
Mizora: A Prophecy. Stuart A. Teitler suggests that Pantaletta might be a response to
Mizora, which was published the year before Pantaletta. This seems possible,
considering that both concern all-female utopias, however the utopian them e of
imagining women in total or near total control of society was not an unusual one during the
period, as the assertion that one was a response to another implies. See also "A Divided
Republic: An Allegory of the Future" by Lillie Devereux Blake, part of the collection A
Daring Experiment and Other Stories (NY: Lovell, Coryell & Co., 1892); Man's Rights: or.
How Would You Like It: Comprising Dreams by Annie Denton Cridge (Boston: Wm.
Denton 1870); and "A Divided Republic, an Allegory of the Future" by Lillie Devereux
Blake, in A Daring Experiment and Other Stories (New York: Lovell, Coryell and Co.,
1892), all of which posit societies split along gender lines.
52
women 'shehes,' and men are made to wear women’s clothing and
makeup. Women wear pants and are in charge of the day to day
maintenance of society and the government. This role reversal is cast as
a ridiculous and chaos-producing change in terms and Captain Gullible,
by the end of the novel, is ready to lead a campaign to make things 'right'
again.
Captain Pantaletta represents the ultimate price woman must pay for
tampering with nature. She has been involved all along in the struggle to
create and lead Petticotia, and thus might be considered one of the main
perpetrators of the gender reversal. Not incidentally, throughout the
novel she is prone to strange fits where she talks to herself in incoherent
fragments. At one point, she mumbles words heard from her mother as a
child: "Pantaletta, Pantaletta, would to heaven that you were a boy . . .
you have a boy's nature and it is hard to make you girlish and
womanlike" (36-7). These fits are portrayed as the last stages of mental
degeneration of a (woman) who went against the laws of nature, and
culminate in Pantaletta's forced commitment to an asylum. What is even
more interesting about these fits is that they seem to be precipitated by
the presence of Captain Gullible. Upon his arrival in Petticotia, Gullible is
captured by Pantaletta and her army, including one Captain Pouter. A
fight ensues between Captain Pouter and Pantaletta for the affections of
Gullible-as if, when a 'man' appears wearing 'regular' man's clothing
(Gullible), the terms of the new social world the women have constructed
would immediately fall apart and 'natural' biological attractions would
53
surface. Thus the terms of gender in Sheheland are revealed as
ridiculously reversed, much the same way as Jane Sophia Appleton
reversed the terms of Edward Kent's claim to authority. In Pantaletta,
however, the effect of the revelation is a re-establishment of the old order.
This appearance of a 'truly' gendered man causes a sudden reversion to
type on the part of the women, who fall in love with Gullible instantly and
then fight each other for this attentions. This is cast by the text as a more
'natural' reaction vs. the artificial construction that the women have
attempted to effect.
Less far gone than Pantaletta is another rival for Gullible's affections,
Lillibel Razmora. As the current ruler of Sheheland she has unlimited
access to this prisoner of the state, (who was convicted of upholding the
'obsolete distinctions of man and woman’) and as one might expect, she
takes full advantage of it. First, she commutes his sentence of execution
at the last moment, then she visits him in his cell dressed in man's
clothing. But in Petticotia this means dresses and wigs and makeup, so
that Lillibel is in fact wearing what would be, for the reader, women's
clothing. Her transgression of the rules of the land is not cast as a great
revolutionary act; rather, it is a return to normalcy on the part of Lillibel,
who expresses her great relief at taking up this clothing and turns out, of
course, to be dying for the affections of Gullible. The vehemence with
which she seeks the affections of Gullible increases as the novel
progresses, as she sends him countless notes and presents begging his
attention, neglecting her administrative duties and fighting with Pantaletta
54
who is still after Gullible herself. In effect, Wood asserts that though
woman's rights advocates have attempted to recast the terms of gender,
all it amounts to is a silly game of cross-dressing— though this game is
certainly tittilating enough to stretch out into a whole novel. The message
is that it's what's underneath that counts, and "although in a certain
sense one human being is a peer to all the rest, conditions and
limitations exist-such as natural capacity, education, wealth, poverty,
ignorance— which in reality place more than one half the race beneath,
even at the mercy of, the other" (133). The attempt is to recast the parody
of denaturalization and defamiliarization in a different light, by revealing
the true, inescapable gender that lies underneath, the self evident self
that we 'knew' all along, corresponding to biological configuration and
the complementary gendered behaviors. Thus Wood demonstrates that
it was not parody at all that suffragettes were effecting, they were fooling
themselves because nothing essentially changed; in fact, it was not
possible for anything to change. The essential is affirmed as taking
precedence over the social as a basis of meaning, and what the
Declaration of Sentiments affirmed as revolutionary progress in the
'course of human events' is cast as devolutionary rather than
evolutionary.
Wood's novel portrays the achievement of women's rights as ushering
in the establishment of a repressive dictatorial regime; this scheme
allows (her) to cast men as defenders of the progressive declaration of
the American revolutionaries, fighting against this perversion (not
55
progress) wrought by women. On the surface Pantaletta looks like a
novel about gender parody, but as the Declaration of Sentiments
emphasized, nationalism surfaces as the real source of concern of those
against change. Contributing to this subtext is the fact that all throughout
the novel, Gullible defies his accusers by asserting that he is a citizen of
America, thus not responsible to the authority figures of this strangely
gendered landscape. Sheheland's history mirrors that of the United
States almost exactly, all the way down to its being an immigrant haven
for the oppressed all over the world seeking to escape 'pitiless
monarchies.' Along with the accumulation of these various people came
a mysteriously defined 'worship of progress,' which led to the downfall of
the order of things as they were (126). In this way, Gullible's character
takes on the familiar role of saviour and restorer of the ideals of the
(American) republic. This role mimics the role of the original American
revolutionary fighting against the evil tyrant King George III for control of
the New World landscape; Gullible is empowered by historical precedent
to restore American (gender) ideals first outlined in the Declaration of
Independence. Pantaletta is a broad, deliberately overdramatized
attempt to convey the author's idea of the negative effects of gender
change. The spectacular characteristics of the narrative, however, can
also be read as a near-hysterical defense of established norms,
demonstrating deep anxiety over the possibility of changes in gender
roles.
56
The Uninvited Guest
One of the strangest passages in any of the utopias covered in this
study occurs at the end of Jane Sophia Appleton's "Sequel to Th e Vision
of Bangor in the Twentieth Century'." While for most of her short piece
she discusses the new smoothly functioning society existent around a
change in women's roles, all at once on the last page we are presented
with a startling image:
At this moment my eye was caught by a strange looking
object in a corner, examining a picture through a quizzing
glass, with most grotesque contortions. His hair was
brushed perfectly upright on the crown of his head and
trimmed very precisely in points, while from the crown to the
neck it fell in elaborate ringlets, powdered and perfumed
with the art of the friseur. His whiskers were abundant, and
finished in points like his hair. . . . An immense moustache
"cultivated" into ringlets at the ends, adorned his upper lip,
and a delicate goatee his under. (264)
The fascination of Appleton's narrator goes on for several paragraphs,
detailing this (man's) dress, (his) diminutive hands, fingernails, and
delicate shoes. At length, the narrator confesses, "I cannot decide. Is he
a man? [A]nd if not, to what title can he lay claim?" (265). The guide
replies to this narrator that "I suppose he must pass for a man . . . he is
one of the exquisites of the day." The shock expressed by our narrator is
quite ironic considering his (her?) own relative gender position. Early on,
Appleton made a point of describing her 'entrance' into Kent's male
narrative; the juxtaposition of genders within the character of the narrator
works along with the narrator's enlightening encounter with the New
i
j Woman to highlight the social inequality that Appleton seeks to address.
57
The ambiguous position of the narrator raises many questions-is it a
woman going around in a man's body as a sort of pre-surgical
transsexual? Or is this narrator in fact a man, spiritually directed by a
woman's voice? Or is it a woman only dressed as a man? Or is it a man
dressed as a woman dressed as a man? Along these lines, we could
associate the exquisite with Bakhtin's idea of the carnivalesque or
grotesque body, a body which, through its excess, replicates, duplicates
and exceeds cultural liminality. The carnivalesque body is essentially a
utopian or transformatory body because, as Mary Russo points out, it is
"the body of becoming, process and change” (219). I think what is
happening here at the end of Appleton's piece is a (for her) horrific
confrontation with the potentiality of her narrative move early in the text.
Not to be able to distinguish the gender of this 'exquisite' is precisely not
to be able to distinguish the terms of her narration; having exploded the
boundaries early on, Appleton's narrative is eventually confronted
directly with the implications. What happens as a result of this encounter
is even more interesting.
[The exquisite] was laughing, as near as I could judge by
the singular contortions of his body, although the sound I
never should have recognized as that of mirth, it being part
squeal, part cackle, and part a suppression of both. It is
said laughing is infectious. However this may be usually,
his most assuredly was, and accordingly my friend and I
began to shake in unison, then to laugh audibly, and finally
to roar. Our unearthly noises seemed strangely to agitate
our "surroundings." The walls began to totter. The flame of
the lamps waved hither and thither. The furniture rocked.
The floor rose and fell like the sea in a storm. (265)
58
Thus ends the sequel to a vision, a sequel so powerful that it doesn't just
end, it collapses. Appleton is unable to narrate what amounts to a
complete breakdown of reality which began with the narrator's inability
to distinguish the newly/non-gendered exquisite and soon fed into a
complete loss of usual cues to spatial relationships, leading to a literal
shaking of the room(s). There is nothing left to call this rapidly
deteriorating sense of reality other than 'unearthly'; Appleton places the
word surroundings in quotes, as if it was difficult to explain what was
happening in regular language. She ends this lapse into total chaos by
the familiar narrative trick of waking up from the dream, but this choice
replaces the narrative of originally entering Kent's escritoire; rather than
leaving it, Appleton chooses to drop what was initially an alluring
possibility of redefined desire, now that she (he?) has been confronted
with the (possible) consequences.
Appleton's narrative shakes social rubrics to their very foundations,
I which results in a total breakdown of control. This is the space of the
non-narratable which cannot be approached by language because
language arranges itself in certain ways, bases itself upon certain
binaries like the gender binary which I have shown was viewed as
central to the idea of civilization. Removal of these binaries takes us into
something like another dimension. What I see happening here is
Appleton's narrative thinking about the statement made by the
Declaration of Sentiments in the same year--"all men and women are
, created equal." In fact, if all men and women are created equal, then
59
what do we have to base gender upon? What, then, is society? What,
then, is the American nation? Perhaps the fear embodied in the
exquisite is--how would we tell who was who; this is in fact a way of
asking what would identity be based upon, if not gender? Pantaletta
asks this same question, though the answer is very different. I think the
greatest horror not directly expressed in Appleton's piece is-what if this
exquisite is a woman? Appleton sees herself in a mirror by looking at the
possibility embodied by the exquisite, realizing that these are the
implications of hdr actions early in the text.
If we look back at the first paragraph of this chapter we see a group of
women searching for a means of revolutionizing the social order. Yet in
organizing the Seneca Falls convention, we are told that they felt
'helpless and hopeless' in deciding just how to do it. So, they modeled
their manifesto after that omnipresent 'masculine production,' the
Declaration of Independence. Jane Sophia Appleton does the same
thing in her appropriation of Kent's text. In order to get at the significance
of her surprise ending I want to backtrack a little bit to talk about why
these and other women began their own texts in a framework of existent
male-authored documents. While they might be criticized for not
recognizing the extent to which this re-enveloped them into the very
discourse of oppression they were attempting to work out of, I think it was
the only practical move they could have made. Seizing the reigns of
power in order to take control and posit a radical female order-of-things
would simply replicate the same rhetoric of oppression these women
60
were fighting against. This is the message of a more sympathetic
reading of Pantaletta-that a simple reversal of gender roles and power
stakes wouldn't accomplish much, couldn't accomplish much (even
though Mrs. J. Wood's appeal to an organic essence is unpalatable). A
more effective approach, then, might be to attempt to break down the
logic of the system of power relations which created the situation of
gender in the nineteenth century; this is what I see happening in the
Declaration of Sentiments. Luce Irigaray's take on the concept of
mimesis might be useful here to describe the way in which the
Declaration of Sentiments pulls apart the language of the Declaration of
Independence. For Irigaray, to posit a direct challenge to a male voice,
thinking that new voice would somehow become equal to his, would be
repeating what she calls the 'onto-theo-logic(al)' model of meaning
within which language is based. Mimesis is a particular strategy
necessary because women find themselves operating within an
'economy of the Same,' the way Irigaray describes the way women are
thought in Western dominant culture as lack, that-which-is-not-man. This
position of mastery is attacked in the mimetic act, in which women
"resubmit [themselves]. . . to 'ideas' in particular about [themselves] that
are elaborated in/by a masculine logic, but so as to make 'visible' by an
effect of playful repetition, what was supposed to remain invisible" (This
Sex 76). By starting with the Declaration of Independence, the women at
Seneca Falls were attempting to break through the unchallenged claim
to natural and final authority made by Thomas Jefferson and his friends,
61
uncovering the subordination of women inherent in the line "all men are
created equal." This is a way of holding up a mirror to man and saying-
you decry the tyranny of King George III but look at your own. This points
out the gap between the idea of utopia expressed in the Declaration of
Independence and the reality of tyranny and social chaos so obviously a
part of nineteenth century reality in the United States, the gap covered up
by the appeal to, and trust in, self evident Truths and the creation of an
idea of a nation that would embody that idea. By rupturing this claim to
meaning, women attempted to recover a space that allowed them to
represent themselves apart from the logic of the Same, to stop being the
literal embodiment of the American utopia/nation themselves. This
mimetic act is much the same as Judith Butler's idea of parody I
discussed earlier; in Irigaray's terms we have "jamm[ed] the theoretical
machinery itself. . . suspending the pretension to the production of a truth
and of a meaning that are excessively univocal" (This Sex 78). In this
way masculine discourse would no longer be All, it would exist as one
possibility along a continuum where the language of other political
groups would have equal status as meaningful.
What emerges, then, is the possibility of self-definition for women, and
this takes me back to Appleton's exquisite. His/her ungendered status is
a figure of possibility that emerges as a result of this mimetic process.
The character of Pantaletta represents the prevailing discourse's attempt
to re-incorporate that possibility by figuring it as madness-as
(un)meaningful. What makes the exquisite different than Pantaletta is
62
that s/h e appears out of a different (and confused in terms of a gender
hierarchy) textual voice. Mrs. J. Wood creates a world of female 'power'
which replicates the same logic of power and subordination; no wonder it
is on the verge of falling apart by the end. Appleton's exquisite has
slipped out of her text as an embodiment of possibility (whether positive
or negative depends on one's perspective), representing an ultimate
utopia because s/he exists in a space not just beyond the boundaries of
imagination like Pantaletta, but beyond the logic that governs
imagination, the logic of language. The difficulty in describing a
nineteenth century feminist utopia is precisely the difficulty in articulating
a space beyond the constraint of meaning, not just beyond the
constraints of political reality. The Declaration of Independence is an
idea about a well ordered society. Its textuality articulates not just social
rubrics, but a logic of representation and simultaneously an exclusive
claim to the authority and finality of that logic. By the logic of
representation I mean the logic of utopia and the exclusive claim to
rebellion and revolution and the resultant final perfect utopian space.
This logic effectively eliminates the validity of any other claim to change
and thus both creates and enforces a restrictive set of power relations.
The Declaration of Independence is a document that teaches citizens
how to mean anything significant in America, and it claims utopia as its
own. Nineteenth century women activists were attempting to deconstruct
this claim of the finality of notions of Home and Sex and Progress that
63
precipitate out of this logic; ultimately, they were attempting to recover the
possibility of utopia itself.
64
II
Racing Tow ard Freedom (s)
/ was a woman before I was an abolitionist.
Lucy Stone
A'n't I a Woman?
Sojourner Truth1
Perhaps an even more significant moment in the history of nineteenth
century women than the gathering at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848
occurred at the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in
1833. Lucretia Mott, a Quaker woman concerned about slavery issues,
was present at the meeting in which the AASS formulated its own
Declaration of Sentiments. As the story goes, the proceedings went on
until Mott found a difficulty in the wording of the Declaration. Because
women were allowed equal participation in meetings in the Quaker
tradition, Mott rather automatically stood up and asked to be recognized
in this roomful of men. According to some, she checked herself upon
recognizing this social faux pas but was encouraged by the gathering.
Eventually the change she proposed was approved, though Blanche
Glassman Hersh notes that it did not occur to Mott or anyone else that
1 Stone quoted in Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex : 39; Sojourner Truth in
Stanton, Ed., History of Woman Suffrage 1:116.
65
any women present should sign the document along with the men upon
its ratification (14).2 I'd like to use Lucretia Mott's involvement in the
composition of both the Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-
Slavery Society that launched an organized discussion of national
abolition and the Declaration of Sentiments that initiated a nineteenth
century woman's movement as a point of departure emblematic of the
complex knot that inextricably linked the questions of race and gender in
the nineteenth century United States. If we ask why a certain number of
white women should have suddenly formulated the idea to hold a
meeting at Seneca Falls, we must inevitably realize that they formed and
honed their activist and organizational skills in the abolitionist
movement.3
Initially, white women activists were involved as auxiliaries to the
'official' anti-slavery organizations that sprung up, mostly in New
England, early in the nineteenth century. This followed the pattern of
gendered involvement of traditional benevolent societies, where men
created policy and women "[held] sewing bees and bazaars and . . .
2For accounts of this moment see (for example) Blanche Hersh The Slavery of S ex:
Lawrence J. Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism
1830 - 1870 (NY: Columbia Univ Press 1982); Margaret Hope Bacon, Valiant Friend: The
Life of Lucretia Mott (NY: W alker and Co. 1980).
3See Ellen DuBois, "Women's Rights and Abolition: the Nature of the Connection" in
Anti-Slavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists Ed. Lewis Perry and
Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State Univ Press 1979), for an
important discussion of the nature of the connection between the two movements; as
DuBois points out, to create the sense that there was some kind of sudden movement
into abolitionist activism by women, and then a subsequent decisive turn to women's
concerns is oversimplifying the case. W omen in fact were quite active in social and
benevolent causes before abolition becam e an organized movement; DuBois contends
that abolition gave form and direction to involved and already active women, thereby
facilitating a woman's movement.
66
roles supportive of the men" (Friedman 130). In this way one of the most
prominent of women’s abolitionist societies, the Boston Female Anti-
Slavery Society, was formed in 1832 as an auxiliary to William Lloyd
Garrison's fledgling New England Anti-Slavery Society (a precursor of
the eventual AASS). These women organized the first anti-slavery fair
where they sold needlework and other crafts and raised considerable
amounts of money; fairs, indeed, became a popular means through
which Female Anti-Slavery Societies contributed to the abolitionist
cause. Women of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society took a
different route when they began to investigate and attempt to provide for
the monetary and educational needs of the local impoverished free black
population. In other cases, women collected signatures on anti-slavery
petitions. So, while women were certainly active in the abolitionist
cause, the basic separation of activities and occupations by the
traditional gendered sphere reigned supreme, since they remained
outside the policy making circles of abolitionist organizations. Their early
support role fit nicely into categories of proprietous activity for women.
But as time went on, the question of just what constituted proper
involvement for women grew to become an issue of its own. Two women
who were perhaps most responsible for bringing this issue to the fore
were the Grimke sisters, Angelina and Sarah. Originally from a southern
slave owning family, the Grimkes renounced their plantation ties and
moved north to join the abolitionist cause. Angelina Grimke soon
became one of the most sought after public speakers on the slavery
67
question, perhaps because she was a woman, perhaps because she
was from the south and so spoke from experience, or perhaps because
of the universal acclaim for her oratorical skills. A speaking tour of New
England in 1837 found both sisters addressing large mixed (male and
female) audiences, causing concern in the minds of some about whether
or not the prominence of these women was 'right.' The Grimke's fame
called attention to the large numbers of active female participants in
various abolitionist reform efforts, forcing discussion about the
increasingly greater scope of women's involvement. The proper
resolution to the debate was quite clear to some, who harassed female
abolitionists by going out of their way to shout at them on the street,
abused them in newspaper columns, sent hate mail, and on a larger
scale, threw rocks and started fires at forums where the women were
speaking. It was not long before the hostility about women's participation
was venting itself inside abolitionist meetings as well as outside;
eventually, the debate facilitated a split within the movement. By 1837
the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women had met, further
highlighting the already divided movement's male and female
categorizations. By the time the William Lloyd Garrison-backed women
were allowed to speak at the 1838 AASS convention, some men wanted
to resign, and in 1840, when Abby Kelley was appointed to a committee
of the AASS, a whole faction of members actually seceded from the
society (taking the prominent and wealthy abolition benefactor Lewis
Tappan with them) and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
68
Society. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were not allowed to
participate in the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, yet
Stanton describes the time spent there as not having gone to waste: she
and Mott determined that as soon as they returned to the United States,
they would hold a women's rights convention. "The movement for
woman's suffrage," as Stanton and her co-authors noted in The History of
Woman Suffrage, "both in England and America, may be dated from this
World's Anti-Slavery Convention" (62).4
In addition to its obvious misogyny, the split within the abolitionist
ranks due to the involvement of women represented fundamental
differences over how best the anti-slavery battle was to be fought. Was it
important to keep to a strictly single issue campaign, or did it make sense
that fighting for slave's rights meant fighting for the rights of all humans
(including women) to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? This
amounts to the conceptualization of slavery either as an instance of
widespread oppression or as a specific situation concerning the
maintenance of Africans in bondage against their will. From the point of
view of the female abolitionists, it was quite a contradiction to be fighting
for the rights of the slave to what orthodox abolitionists asserted as
essential human freedoms, while at the same time asserting the timeless
dependency of woman to man. Abolitionist doctrine's adherence to new
revivalist ideas of human perfectionism-the inherent ability of the
[ 4See also Elizabeth Cadv Stanton as Revealed in her Letters. Diary, and Reminiscences
Ed. Theodore Stanton and Harriet Stanton Blatch (NY: Harper and Bros 1899): I: 79.
69
individual (and by extension, society) to 'self-regenerate' or repent-
seemed hypocritical to these women if attention was not directed toward
themselves as group experiencing equivalent social repression
(Fredrickson 30-1). As a result, women began to direct energy toward
blaming slavery on Man because, as they saw it, He had taken his role
too far. If the male sphere was defined against the female as one of
action, aggression and natural domination, these negative behaviors,
they reasoned, had caused irreparable harm to the Africans brought over
against their will and were in turn threatening to tear apart the nation.
These same behaviors were being used against women in order to
silence them as well. The solution to the problem of slavery, then, would
be to change the social structure which sanctioned such behavior on the
part of the (male) slaveholder/husband as normal, and even encouraged
and rewarded it.
Mrs. Sarah J. Hale's Liberia; or. Mr. Peyton's Experiments (1853)
approaches the question of slavery in precisely this fashion. Liberia is
part domestic novel, part utopia, part history, and in that curious mix of
genres is its uniqueness as a utopian text that wishes to convince the
reader of the final truth of its message.5 For Nina Baym, Hale's oeuvre is
marked by its "discernible nationalist purpose"; what I'd like to add to
Baym's assessment is a look at just what components make up Hale's
5One of the more interesting ways Hate works on the perceptions of the reader is by
claiming to have edited the book rather than authored it. In passing her work off as a
documentary of actual events, Hale attempts to convince by representing the fiction she
hoped would come true as truth itself. The anxiety this reveals is, I think, a displacement
of anxieties about race and gender problems as they play themselves out and are 'solved'
in the novel.
70
nationalism (181). In the opening paragraphs of the novel, we find
ourselves within the confines of the Peyton plantation Cedar Hill in
Virginia. This is a plantation that is definitely on the decline, however,
since its owner Mr. Peyton, his eldest son, and his daughter’s husband
are all dead by page three, and the only remaining son, Charles, is newly
married and deathly ill. Mrs. Peyton, the widowed daughter Margaret,
and the new bride Virginia, then, are the main characters in this early part
of the novel, nursing Charles' seemingly hopeless case. This quite
(overly) dramatic crisis of patriarchal authority is heightened by the
revelation that, in the midst of all this illness and death, "the negroes are
rising all through the country" (14). Rioting causes the matriarchy and
other families in the vicinity to flee to the nearest large town for safety.6
Yet the ailing Charles is no ordinary young man. We learn of his early
virtue in the treatment of one female slave named Keziah, purchased
when he was fifteen years old in order to save her from the harsh
cruelties of a brutal master. Hale treats this act as demonstrative of a
most profound virtue, given that Charles had originally wanted to
purchase a new horse instead of Keziah. At that age, he "had had little
opportunity in his life to cultivate the Spartan virtue of self-denial, the
cornerstone of so much that is noble and elevated" (29). Charles is
portrayed as a new generation of slaveholder, concerned for the welfare
insurrections such as these were not uncommon occurrences in the antebellum South;
Nat Turner's rebellion of 1831 is the most famous of these rebellions. Perhaps more
common was what George Fredrickson calls, in The Black Image in the White Mind.
'insurrection panic' on the part of slave owners.
71
of his charges and troubled by the institution, in contrast to the evils
perpetrated by his father’s generation most literally on the (female) body
of Keziah. What is interesting about the figure of Charles is that instead
of dying a sacrificial martyr as Little Eva did before him, he survives,
rallies, and prays as the family makes its way away from the old style
Plantation and the rioting spawned by traditional viewpoints. The dawn
of this new day fills the skies about them, and Charles hopes that he
might survive and be able to change the awful institution of slavery.
Charles' transformation, a (symbolic) reshaping of the patriarchy, is
validated by Hale in several ways. He goes through a state of complete
helplessness, and "having no power to do anything for himself, he . . .
placed himself, and all those who were dear to him, in [God's keeping]"
(32-3). This more ’proper' sense of masculine identity reigned under
control, properly humbled, and clearly marked by female influence
stands in sharp contrast to the masculine identity which was responsible
for the brutal beating given Keziah. Hale here represents a broadened
idea of the proper boundaries of gender concerns, specifically calling for
the expansion of women's role as moral exemplar for the family as the
only way to reform society. Charles' (patriarchy’s) potential raging
masculinity (and its logical extension, social chaos) is tamed by the
superior moral influence of woman.
When the family finally returns home after several weeks, the loyal
slave aunt Abby (Hale's spelling) recounts how she maintained order
around the house--"l jes' lock all the do's Miss Margaret, and I ses,
72
nobody but me and Nathan is to come about the place. . . I knows what I
am (I ses), but I don't know who you are; so get away with you" (44).
Despite her careful recreation of gender relationships, here Hale
distinguishes between superior and inferior groups of blacks, the
cultured and 'civilized' versus the uncivilized brutes. Charles himself
reflects that the reason his own slaves did not riot like so many others
was that "the principal ones among them were, without exception,
persons of tried integrity, fidelity, and Christian principle. There is
nowhere a more sympathetic or imitative race than the African ...."; in
other words, he is convinced that his family's superior moral example
made the difference (45). Determined to repay the slaves for their
kindness in preserving his family and property during the unrest, he
contemplates a plan to relocate them to an available piece of land he
owns, to start on their own. His concern about the worthiness of this
endeavor, however, centers around the relative ability of the freed blacks
to survive. "To place them in a situation where the superior position and
cultivation of the whites will not react upon them, [will] deprive them of the
hope, and with it, the wish to elevate themselves" (47).7
This perspective is revealing of the way in which Hale conceptualized
race and gender concerns. For her, the slavery problem was ultimately a
7T he text alternately strongly asserts and backs away from this point-early on Hale is more
didactic about reinforcing ideals of racial type, yet as the text goes on she becomes
apologetic, asserting that "with every earthly aspiration crushed out of (the slave's) heart
by the overpowering superiority of the white man in social and political advantages, it is no
wonder he improves so slowly, or displays so little desire for intellectual cultivation" (68).
Obviously, this still assumes a basic inequality of 'civilization' even as it soothes the
harshness of her earlier statements about an assumed innate inferiority.
73
gender problem, in that she held the baser nature of males responsible
for its inception and perpetuation. In fact, focusing on woman's
traditionally celebrated superior moral character necessitated treatment
of the converse; in order to hold up the need for recognition of this female
role, Hale had to portray the opposite gender as the cause of social
chaos. Once a proper family structure could be restored and the
woman's moral influence spread while the man maintains control of the
household, she implies that things are much closer to what is 'right.' It is
for this reason that I would not quite agree with Nina Baym's assertion
that Liberia is "not about women" (176). On the one hand this is certainly
the case~the text is not driven by a marriage plot; on the other hand I
think this text most emphatically is about women, to the extent that their
status as representative of the stable home front is a crucial component
of the race narrative as it plays itself out here. The nationalism that Baym
points out as so central to Hale's text is more than a monolithic discourse;
it is formed of careful alignments of race and gender categories which
are components of that idea of nationhood. While something of a change
in gender roles is necessitated, Hale does not allow the same fluidity with
racial spheres, clinging quite tightly to a racial hierarchy between both
whites and blacks and among blacks themselves. So while a notion Of
'slavery' might apply to gender as well as to race, the equation does not
work the other way around--for Hale, differences in gender were not
equal to differences in race. Hale implies that the maintenance of this
newly cast (white) American family requires the continuing separation of
74
equal to differences in race. Hale implies that the maintenance of this
newly cast (white) American family requires the continuing separation of
the races, as if the mere presence of Africans might tempt men back into
their old familiar roles. Where the behavior of white males, the
slaveholders, initially threatened civilization because it created the
conditions for riot and rebellion, later in the novel the conditions for social
and domestic tranquility are assured except for the presence of the
slaves. Despite reforms, they still constitute a threat because of
unresolved racial difference. Hale's newly transformed society maintains
an economy of hierarchy and exclusion, though a certain few of those
terms have been rearranged.
Charles spends much of the text giving his slaves various
opportunities for freedom. But in providing opportunities outside the
slave economy inevitably fail; these failures are attributed to the fact that
the slaves "had tasted the pleasure[s] of an indolent life [outside the
plantation], and were not inclined to resume their old habits of active
exertion" (58). As the slaves put it to Charles (through the pen of Sarah
Hale), "Laws! Mas'r Charles, a nigger can't be anything but a nigger"
(67). Charles frees some to a life in Philadelphia, only to find them in
ruins a year later, and others go to Canada only to suffer the same fate.8
8 These varied attempts to create societies for freedmen finds its basis in history. Frances
Wright's Nashoba, a Tennessee utopian colony she founded in 1825, failed miserably but
was ostensibly an attempt to create a smoothly functioning multiracial society. See Black
Utopia: Communal Experiments in America (Madison. Wl: State Historical Society of
Wisconsin 1963), for brief information about colonies of freed blacks formed by whites
and blacks in the Midwest, Canada, and South Carolina's S ea Islands. See also tam m erlin
Drummond, "A Lost Horizon" Los Angeles Tim es November 17, 1991, which recounts
75
It is at this point that the fictional part of the book begins to blend with the
historical, as Charles Peyton attends a meeting of the American
Colonization Society. This society was an actual one, founded in 1816 to
further one idea of a solution to the problem of slavery-return the slaves
to Africa. Eventually the still existent country of Liberia was founded due
to their efforts.9
The narrative of the new land as it becomes colonized by slaves reads
remarkably like William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, down to
conflicts between the colonists and the uncivilized native population, and
their later attempts to convert the people of the surrounding regions to the
Christian religion. This repetition is no accident; by picking up the reigns
of the puritan narrative, Hale covers over what is essentially a story of
American imperialism and domination by converting slavery into a
problem of the degeneracy of the African race. In this formulation, (evil)
African kings sold off their own people to white slave traders to assuage
their greed and uncontrolled appetite for wealth and comfort.10 By the
end of the novel the freedmen of Liberia consider themselves lucky to
have felt the 'civilizing' hand of the white man. One of Charles' former
slaves, Junius, finds slaves in the interior of the African continent whose
the history of the still existent town of Allensworth, California formed in 1908 as a haven
for former slaves.
9S ee for example Early Lee F o x , The American Colonization Society 1817-1840 (NY:
AM S Press 1971 (originally 1919)). In The Black Image in the White Mind. George
Fredrickson notes that colonization fervor experienced a revitalization in the 1850's, long
after the initial colonization efforts had passed; it is probable that it was in this context that
Hale's text was created (115).
j 10See Polydore's account of his own capture, beginning on p. 134, alongside chapter
1 IX’s account of Junius' travels into the African countryside and the customs and practices
he encounters.
76
"condition was indescribably worse than any thing that he had ever seen,
or heard, or imagined before . . . [they] were in a state of the most abject
servitude to masters, who, without the slightest compunction, would inflict
on them the severest punishment. . . " (235). This is a morbidly comical
sentence given the multitudes of contemporary accounts of astounding
cruelties recounted by slave narratives and mentioned by Hale herself
earlier in the novel; a woman of Hale's class and status certainly would
have at least been familiar with Frederick Douglass's Life of An American
Slave, which was published in 1845. In Liberia, she asserts that slavery
was ultimately the slave's own fault, at the same time surrounding the
story of slavery with the story of the founding of Liberia as if it were the
founding of another America, a newly democratic, newly civilized land.
Hale seems to be creating a utopia for slaves (who didn't want one in the
first place), but the utopia here is not Liberia, it is the transformed
American landscape, free of its slave concerns. Even more importantly,
Hale frees the United States from guilt over slavery because time spent
in bondage by the Africans is cast as redemptive, as preparation for the
inevitable and more perfect American ritual of colonization as civilization
which took place in Liberia. America acquires a new and improved,
more cleansed state of social purity without the slave problem, not to
mention that Africa will be better off because of its baptism in the
'freedom' that was slave bondage. And finally, specifically because of
this rearrangement, men and women will get along.
77
Gender Slavery
The importance of Sarah Hale's text is enhanced if we consider the
profound influence she had upon the population of American middle and
working class white women through her position as editor of Godev's
Lady's Book, one of the most popular periodicals of the time. Her fashion
plates dictated the styles of the land; could her opinions on slavery
matters be far behind? Yet Hale represents a more conservative
approach to race matters than many of the women who were directly
involved with the abolitionist movement. In Hale's novel, the female
influence remains behind the scenes, and doesn't alter the boundaries of
a woman's sphere very significantly; rather, it highlights and enriches the
importance of what women already did~that is, rear the children and
maintain the home. This is much the same way that Catherine Beecher's
Treatise on Domestic Economy cast the place of woman as domestic
homemaker. Both women might have said that, while woman's influence
is crucial to maintenance of social order, this is true only when following
the rules (made literal in Beecher's Treatise as well as in Godev's Lady's
Book) of behavior of the true woman; influence must be exerted with
humility and self sacrifice. In fact, the initial Peyton matriarchy in Liberia
disappears quite quickly along with the slave rebellion, as Charles-the-
New-Man eventually rallies to save the day. Hale is saying that there is
no need for the slavery issue to cause such social upheaval; racial
i
1 problems could be solved by sending the slaves back to Africa. And if
78
and only if segregation is effected, traditional gender roles could be
properly maintained. This is a particularly self-serving brand of
abolitionist activism which uses the slavery issue as a tool to further other
agendas. In Liberia. Hale makes the remarkable assertion that through
deeper involvement in the home and with the proper upbringing of the
children, the slave problem could be both reversed and forgotten.
For other women activists, domesticity was a disappearing act that
would only heighten their sense of confinement within arbitrary principles
imposed from the outside. Already breaking rules by speaking in public,
knocking on doors and otherwise making themselves visible, the solution
to the 'woman question' would hardly seem an enhancement of the value
of old (regressive) roles and behaviors. Through the actions of women
like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony or the Grimke sisters, the
irony of women's involvement in the abolitionist movement was revealed,
for while their activity was restricted, it nevertheless took some women
out of their homes and involved them with a vast complicated social
landscape with other women; what began with perfect propriety ended
up a movement of its own. The effect of this was a slowly expanding
sphere of proper women's roles that was beginning to extend outside of
domestic duties and into the realm of social reform which I discussed in
chapter one. The world was fashioned as a large scale home that
women as moral exemplars were responsible for 'cleaning up,' just as
they might sweep the dust from the corners of their living rooms. Thus it
is really not that surprising that those (usually white) women who
79
continued pushing the boundaries of propriety through public
involvement began to compare their own felt oppression to that of slaves
rather than dissociating themselves from slaves as the more conservative
Hale did. The desired effect of this appropriation of a slave identity was
to force an expansion of the true womanhood cult-exposing the
perpetrators of this myth of confinement by comparing them to those men
who would continue to justify the keeping of slaves. Instead of casting
the slavery question as a gender question and thereby advocating
maintaining the gender status quo, groups of more activist women began
to cast the newly emergent gender question as a slavery question.
* * ★
"The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human
history." So begins the Introduction to the six volume History of Woman
Suffrage, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and
Matilda Joslyn Gage (I: 13). Note the double construction here; not only
are the women compared to slaves, there seems to be a hint of
competition about who has the worst (or darkest) problem, women or
slaves.
Emily Collins recounts in her "Reminiscences" (accounts of this type
make up much of the History of Suffrage): "All through the Anti-Slavery
struggle, every word of denunciation of the wrongs of the Southern slave,
was, I felt, equally applicable to the wrongs of my sex. Every argument
80
for the emancipation of the colored man, was equally one for that of
woman; and I was surprised that all Abolitionists did not see the similarity
in the condition of the two classes" (I: 89).
At an 1850 Constitutional Convention in Salem, Ohio that took up the
Ohio state constitution's omission of women, a memorial was presented
that began, "We believe the whole theory of the Common Law in relation
to woman is unjust and degrading, tending to reduce her to a level with
the slave, depriving her of political existence, and forming a positive
exception to the great doctrine of equality as set forth in the Declaration
of Independence" (Stanton I: 105).
The Ohio memorial goes on to compare the lot of women and slaves
so far as to invoke a metaphorical 'beating' by the oppressiveness of the
laws: "Women of O hio!. . . with these marks of inferiority branded upon
our persons, and interwoven with the most sacred relations of human
existence, how can we rise to the true dignity of human nature .. . ?"
(Stanton I: 108).
Mary Upton Ferrin, in her address to the Massachusetts Legislature's
Judiciary Committee concerning women's enfranchisement, asserts,
"But, says one, 'Women are free.’ So likewise are slaves free to submit to
the laws of their masters .... Though man can not beat his wife like a
horse, he can kill her by abuse-the most pernicious of slow poisons;
and, alas, too often does he do it" (Stanton I: 212).11
11 These are just a few of the multitudes of examples of the use of this comparison in the
History of W oman Suffrage: the History of Suffrage is, in turn, one of a multitude of texts in
81
★ ★ ★
Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) is perhaps
the most sustained example of this woman-as-slave formulation.
. . . [T]here exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling
toward women as toward slaves, such as is expressed in
the common phrase, Tell that to women and children'; that
the infinite soul can only work through them in already
ascertained limits; that the gift of reason, Man's highest
perogative, is allotted to them in much lower degree; that
they must be kept from mischief and melancholy by being
constantly engaged in active labor. . . . (33-4)
Fuller begins by envisioning the age when "men have said the gods
themselves came down to dwell with [men]; that the All-Creating
wandered on the earth to taste, in a limited nature, the sweetness of
virtue . . . that heavenly genius dwelt among the shepherds, to sing to
them and teach them how to sing" (18). The beauty of this perfect
pastoral landscape has shifted, however, since "soon the lower nature
took its turn." Since that occurrence, (which Fuller does not detail), "man
[is] still a stranger to his inheritance" (18-9). Woman in the Nineteenth
Century is partly a dystopic vision of the degeneration of the human race;
one of the things that degeneration has precipitated is the oppression of
women, and Fuller's call for freedoms for women is couched in this
framework. "We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as
which women use slavery as a metaphor. S ee Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery ot
S ex for more accounts, as well as Karen Sanchez-Eppler, "Bodily Bonds."
82
to Man. Were this done . . . we should see crystallizations more pure and
of more various beauty [resulting in] a ravishing harmony of the spheres
. . . " (37). Fuller continues to invoke her otherworldly utopian vision of
harmony throughout the text, "[like] the tenor and bass in music," that
would result if man's treatment of woman was reversed (171).
Fuller's text makes clear that the invocation of the trope of the slave
was a very significant move because it constituted an initiation into and a
repetition of the method of representation with which the United States
was beginning to form its own identity-that is, by the process of
experiencing repression, forging rebellion, and finally reveling in
unfettered freedom from the old, the oppressively corrupt, the ancien
regime of the feudal European empire. Whether or not most women had
Fuller's spiritual harmony specifically in mind as their utopian future, I
think that each invocation of the slave metaphor can be read as an
implicit recognition that credibility as a person or group could be
effectively won through this specific process of identity-formation, since it
would associate them with this nineteenth century new and improved
world order. The process is more complicated than being a simple
matter of women jumping on the revolutionary Enlightenment
bandwagon, however. This was a two part discussion that cast the
leaders of the abolitionist movement— the white male property owners to
whom the Declaration of Independence was addressed--as post
revolutionary possessors (no longer in the process of gaining) of
American identity. When the women sought to portray themselves as
83
slaves, the effect was one of placing themselves in the role of victim to
the men's role of tyrant and oppressor, King George to their Puritan. This
implied that while white men might like to think that they were operating
under new and revolutionary philosophies of human freedom and hatred
for oppression and ancestral hierarchy, they were in fact repeating the
same mistakes by keeping slaves and requiring women to aspire to true
womanhood. "This country is . . . surely destined to elucidate a great
moral law . . . Margaret Fuller wrote, "though the national
independence be blurred by the servility of individuals; though freedom
and equality have been proclaimed only to leave room for a monstrous
display of slave dealing and slave keeping ..." (Fuller 25). In effect,
they were saying that the revolution had never really happened and that
this United States was no utopia. In this way, Fuller's rhetorical
maneuver in 1845 could be read as a precedent for the Declaration of
Sentiments in 1848, modeled as it was after the Declaration of
Independence, dependent as it was on the same reversal of the terms of
utopian narrative.
Identification with slavery was a radical and risky strategy. On the one
hand, there were certain parallels between the oppression of women and
of slaves; the 'non existence' of each under the law being the most
obvious. It could be seen as serving a useful rhetorical purpose, since
slavery concerns were becoming more and more of an issue to the entire
country as each new state sought admittance to the union; the reform
impulse was in the air. Since abolitionism was so closely linked to an
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idea of national moral reform, women could argue that this call to social
change required their skills as traditional repositories of moral good; in
this way gender reform looked like a simple, practical necessity. At the
same time, the slavery comparison required a declaration of victimization
that replaced the more positive notion of woman as the world's moral
exemplar. If woman was as oppressed and downtrodden as the slave,
how could she provide moral guidance, a traditional female strength?
Sarah Josepha Hale deployed the strengths inherent in the traditionally
female role toward what she perceived as woman's advantage; if woman
would only deepen her involvement with the home and family, Hale
would say, her influence would be felt even more profoundly by the
whole world. Since tradition already dictated this as an important and
valuable female strength, using it to woman's advantage would be
difficult for anyone to argue against. Of course, one has to decide
whether or not Hale's model of emancipation really changes much. On
the other hand, declaring themselves victims just like the slaves is quite a
reversal of the model of the American Revolutionary I think they were
attempting to approximate. This courted failure, since all the way up to
the 1960's and beyond citizens of the United States proved that they
were/are in no way ready to accept emancipated slaves as equally
human, despite post Civil War constitutional amendments. To equate
themselves with slavery could just as easily reinforce a social
conceptualization of the permanence of women's inferiority over and
85
above awakening attempts to change this status; if society viewed wives
as slaves, they might be more inclined to mistrust them rather than less.
There is yet another part of this complicated strategy to unravel. While
seeking to unite with slaves in a giant bloc of combined oppressions,
what these women really succeed in doing is just the opposite; that is,
they appropriated the particularities of slave experience metaphorically
as their own. As Karen Sanchez-Eppler has discussed, the difficulty with
this deployment of slavery rhetoric is in preventing moments of
identification from becoming acts of exploitation (31). Frances Gage's
memories of Sojourner Truth at an 1851 woman's rights convention in
Akron, Ohio are quite revealing here. While this is the source of the
famous account of Sojourner Truth's charismatic speech, it is not usually
discussed in its full context.12 Gage, who was in charge of the meeting,
recalls how many times she was asked to not allow Truth to speak: "Don't
let her speak, Mrs. Gage, it will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will
have our cause mixed up with abolition and niggers, and we shall be
utterly denounced," exhorted one voice (Stanton 115). When Sojourner
Truth rose to speak, she was greeted by "a hissing sound of
disapprobation above and below" (116). Truth rants powerfully against
the arguments of the previous speakers who have demonstrated in
12Even in Olive Gilbert's (auto)biographical Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1875), the
account of this famous speech is Gage's. Olive Gilbert was herself a white woman who
'took down' Sojourner Truth's narrative of her own life, so our knowledge of Sojourner
Truth is for the most part a creation of two white women who had complex motives like the
ones I suggest for their use and representation of her. See Donna Haraway, "Ecce
Homo, Ain't (Ar'n't) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post Humanist
Landscape," Feminists Theorize the Political Ed. Judith Butler and Joan Scott (NY:
Routledge 1992): 86-100, on 'translations’ of Sojourner Truth.
86
various manners women's inferiority. "Look at me! Look at my arm! (and
she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous
muscular power). I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns
and no man could head me! And a'n't I a woman?" (116). By the time
her speech was through, the crowd was cheering wildly. I wonder if
Sojourner Truth here represents an awful (as well as alluring) caricature
for these white women, who would be horrified to be seen in public, let
alone in front of a large audience, with their arms bared to the shoulder,
and had no intention of plowing or planting when emancipated. They
cheered for her words, which supported their cause and laid to rest the
arguments for women's inferiority, but as Gage relates, many would have
rather not heard her speak at all and were in fact quite uncomfortable
with the literal linkage of slave and women's concerns. White women
were happy that Sojourner Truth had successfully slayed the (male)
dragons for them, while they retained their modesty. Thus the slurs and
hate could be directed at Truth, not them. Sojourner Truth remained,
then, in another sort of bondage.13
13Here the significance of the contemporary use of the terms like 'Woman Suffrage' and
'W oman Question' becomes evident-groups of predominantly white middle class women
proclaimed themselves and their experience as exemplary of and pertinent not to women
but an abstract Platonic 'Woman', who was a projection and idealization of themselves.
87
Colorphobia 14
Much of the effort being directed toward woman's concerns came to a
halt once the Civil War began in 1861. National attention was riveted on
the secession of southern states and the prospect of the breakup of the
nation/utopia; whether or not women had rights became the least of a
whole complex of national concerns which were being played out on
battlefields with muskets and cannons. But while thie war did re-direct
effort being channeled toward women's emancipatory concerns, it didn't
stop women from being involved. In fact, the war probably increased the
numbers of women involved in a larger social sphere; women who were
either too politically conservative or constitutionally modest for abolition
work found plenty of non-controversial duties tending to soldiers and
rolling bandages. Ironically, the war might even be spoken of as another
large scale event that, along with abolition, brought women together in a
place outside the home and involved them in socially significant duties.
Through organizations like the Sanitary Commission, women all over the
North provided food and medicine to Union soldiers, maintained
hospitals and convalescent care centers and provided assistance to
14This is a nineteenth century term which occurs fairly frequently in issues of The
Revolution, a suffrage newspaper put out for a time by the National Woman Suffrage
Association (NW SA). In most cases it is used to express outrage at the mistreatment of
freedmen; for example, one issue (March 31, 1870) recounts the need to change the hall
where the anniversary meeting of the NW SA was to be held because the owner of the hall
would not allow black men and women into the building. (S ee also April 21, 1870) Here I
am using the term ironically because while on the one hand white women had been
fighting for freedom for slaves and could be expected to be outraged at such obvious
prejudice, on the other, as I will show, they were themselves quite implicated in that sam e
prejudice.
88
relatives, in addition to raising money to fund these enterprises--some
fifty million dollars (Flexner 107). On the other hand, no one seemed to
notice that this marked a shift in the debate over women--here was a
socially sanctioned almost-national association involving women in an
organized institution. And in addition to this extension of their
involvement, women, left by their husbands and sons who went into the
army, were also finding themselves suddenly in charge of homes,
businesses, farms, and manufacturing jobs which needed attention while
the men were at war. This formed another important avenue of
involvement in the world that functioned outside the boundaries of the
home. The History of Woman Suffrage also details stories of women who
actually fought in the war, both on land and at sea, usually disguised as
men; some used their female persona to hide the fact that they were
spies carrying messages between generals (II: 18-22).15 Even women
whose situations otherwise remained the same were certainly affected by
the need to ration food or to conserve metals necessary for the
manufacturing of guns or bullets. The Ladies' National Covenant of 1864
was organized to encourage home conservation and manufacture during
wartime; its pledge of initiation included a promise not to buy imported
15Barbara W ertheimer estimates that "[a]t least four hundred women fought as soldiers [in
the Civil War]," (132) and also documents one woman who fought in the Revolutionary
war dressed as a man (43) in W e W ere There. She also describes Harriet Tubman as "the
only woman in American history ever to have led troops into battle," for her exploits
| leading three hundred black soldiers on an expedition to free slaves (117). In Beneath
the American Renaissance (NY: Knopf 1988), David Reynolds mentions that the novel
Dora... the American Amazon (1864) chronicles the exploits of a Civil W ar hero(ine) in
disguise.
89
goods (Stanton II: 40). Thus was the domestic homefront constantly and
materially implicated in a larger sovereign conception of home/nation
whose boundaries were in jeopardy.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and other
women already involved in woman's rights concerns, formed the
Woman's National Loyal League in 1863, an organization whose efforts
were directed toward helping secure Union victory and emancipation of
the slaves.16 Elizabeth Cady Stanton's call for the organization of this
group specifically cites the importance of women during the nation's hour
of darkness: "When every hour is big with destiny, and each delay but
complicates our difficulties, it is high time for the daughters of the
revolution, in solemn council, to . . . lay hold of their birthright of freedom,
and keep it a sacred trust for all coming generations" (Stanton II: 53).
While one of their main goals was to circulate a petition of one million
names urging Congress to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning
slavery, the issues discussed during meetings of the League centered as
much around women's rights as they did the emancipation of slaves.
This organization was short lived since the war ended only one year
later, but is important because it might be called the first real attempt at
national organization furthered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
16For a more complete historical documentation of the woman's rights movement during
and immediately after the war, see Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The
Em ergence of an Independent W om en's Movement in America 1848-1869 (Ithaca.
Cornell Univ Press 1978).
90
Anthony, who held a series of women's rights meetings after the 1848
convention but still had no formal national association by the 1860's.
The continued activism of this core group of women and the linkage of
slavery and women's concerns came to a crisis point with the passage of
the post war constitutional amendments thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen.
Suffrage might not have been the focal point of the women's movement
for the next sixty years, had it not been for the fourteenth amendment
which first specifically introduced gender into the Constitution, and the
fifteenth, which prohibited woman suffrage by omission:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
(Amendment XV)
Before this amendment, exclusion of women had been effected by the
silent observance of traditional customs and habits and the assumption
of a natural link between masculine gender and governmental power; for
this reason, earlier arguments for women's rights centered around the
'real' meaning of natural rights and democracy and just who constituted a
citizen. This made it a logical move to link women's concerns and
slavery concerns, since both were involved in breaking the monolithic
conceptions of white male power which dominated both the domestic
home/plantation and the social American home. While not explicitly
articulated, women activists had clearly assumed that the Emancipation
Proclamation would eventually lead to women's rights as well as the
freeing of slaves. When this did not happen, they mobilized to avoid
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what one woman called "the very lowest depths of political humiliation"
(Cozzens 292). Petitions were sent to Congress and prominent male
abolitionist leaders were enlisted to support woman suffrage, now that
abolition was as good as accomplished. Yet Horace Greely, William
Lloyd Garrison, and other prominent male abolitionists were not very
willing to give up their prize. The conflict was in effect an extension of the
one that had already torn apart the abolitionist movement years earlier;
increasing numbers of men and women simply were not ready to give up
the freedom and enfranchisement of slaves just because of the attempt
by others to link women to the same Amendments. These people were
portrayed by the History of Woman Suffrage as content with a lesser
compromise, having "lost sight of the true philosophy, that justice is
always in order, and the fact that 'universal suffrage’ was the one reform
that belonged specifically to the period of reconstruction" (II: 320). Those
in favor of suffrage, then, were seen as more firmly adhering to the
highest principles of democracy, in effect continuing abolitionist tenets of
perfectibility. Women's rights advocates were in a difficult position at the
end of the war, since opposing the huge national sentiment toward finally
solving the slavery problem after four years of devastation on both sides
was almost impossible.
Two profound changes occurred in the women's movement after the
passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments: women
immediately focused their campaign on the right to vote, and abruptly
dropped their association with abolition/slavery. While the prospect of
92
opposing something so solid and permanent as a Constitutional
Amendment opened up a tremendous amount of work for women stilt
willing to fight for their rights, at the same time it served to focus and
direct the movement with a momentum it had lacked before. However,
this put activist women in a precarious position in relation to their former
association with abolition. The abrupt change in the status of (male)
slaves after the Civil War changed the terms of utopia as dictated by the
Constitution by expanding the notion of citizenship to include black men.
As I have already discussed, women activists were heavily invested in
connecting the plight of slaves and women as a means of dictating the
terms of a more perfect union. Continuing to assert that need for a more
perfect utopia, the crucial component of the logic of representation set up
by American revolutionaries, meant that women were essentially forced
to reverse their former association with slaves. In order to maintain their
focus on women's rights, then, women activists painted Reconstruction
as regressive instead of progressive, since total enfranchisement of all
citizens was not involved. "Has not the time come," Elizabeth Cady
Stanton reminded men and women, "to bury the black man and the
woman in the citizen, and . . . in the broader work of reconstruction? They
who have been trained in the school of anti-slavery . . . are the true
statesmen for the new republic .... Any work short of this is narrow and
partial and fails to meet the requirements of the hour" (Stanton II: 174).
The effect of this was to resurrect the need for utopia since for some
(especially abolitionists), utopia was about to be realized.
93
In this way, the rhetorical association between white activist women
and slaves turned into a marked and blatant dissociation. This process
of differentiation is evident in the History's description of women's
disappointment in not winning the vote after the Civil War. "[Women] saw
that with the incoming tide of ignorant voters from southern plantations
and from the nations of the Old World, that the Government needed the
intelligent votes and moral influence of woman to outweigh the ignorance
and vice fast crowding round our polling booths" (II: 316). The
appropriation of blacks by women in the early days of the movement was
revealed, as women cast them off with a vengeance. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton lashed out— "It is sufficiently humiliating to a proud woman to be
reminded ever and anon in the polite world that she's a political nonentity
. . . but to hear the rights of woman scorned in foreign tongue and native
gibberish by everything in manhood's form, is enough to fire the souls of
those who think and feel, and rouse the most lethargic into action" (II:
334). Later she went even further: "Think of Patrick and Sambo and
Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the difference between a
monarchy and a republic, who cannot read the Declaration of
Independence or Webster's spelling book, making laws for [women]" (II:
353). An 'S.P. L.' in the January 20, 1870 issue of The Revolution
remarked that "The polls do not represent the sentiment of the American
people. They are compounded of a heterogeneous mass of foreign
elements, which are fast leading our true born citizens into the wake of
94
ruin" (36). Alliance with the rising tide of white nationalism was an
important turnaround in suffragist strategy.
Mary E. Bradley Lane's Mizora (1880) is a utopian novel that reveals
much about this increasingly ambivalent relationship between women
and slaves within its remarkably homogeneous community. While it has
been little noticed by scholars, like so many nineteenth century utopian
novels by women, those who have discussed it focus almost exclusively
on the 'remarkable' status of Mizora as an all-female society. Barbara
Quissell, for example, remarks in passing on this 'absolute matriarchy'
where Princess Vera Zarovitch finds herself (36), and Stuart Teitler's
introduction to Mizora calls it an "absolute feminist utopia" (v). What is in
fact so interesting about the land of Mizora is that it is explicitly an all-
white society as well. What is so 'absolute' about this utopia is race as
well as gender, and it is precisely the rhetorical intertwining of woman
and slave which I have been discussing which produces the imagined
community Lane defines. As readers,we may be overly alert to the
gender defamiliarization in Mizora. which is not a surprise, considering
that the question "Where are the men?" is Princess Vera's continuing
refrain. Yet if we allow ourselves to be led by this emphasis, we fail to
notice the complexity of the gender theme as it intertwines with race
purity in this novel.
Princess Zarovitch enters the land of Mizora in a drifting boat via a
dreamy sequence where she passes through a green mist and notices
simultaneous bursts of color and flames as her boat is sucked into what
95
she feels must be some sort of whirlpool. This is a state of transition
similar to the ending of Jane Sophia Appleton's "Sequel to Th e Vision of
Bangor in the Twentieth Century1 ," which I discussed in chapter one,
where moments of disorientation indicate suspension of rules and beliefs
held as normal or True. Her boat drifts toward the shore of an elegant
classical city with luxurious lawns, statues and an austere silence. The
women of the land are "all blondes: beautiful, graceful, courteous, and
with voices softer and sweeter than the strains of an eolian harp" (17).
The Princess imagines this to be some kind of female seminary, and the
character of the place is a highly romanticized version of a serene and
quiet yet bountiful retreat.
She soon is discovered, accepted, and educated in the workings of
this strange land and its unfamiliar language and culture. Mizorans
prove to have an extensive system of education that is free for all; in fact
education is one of Mizora's prime concerns--"[t]o be a teacher in Mizora
was to be a person of consequence," Princess Vera remarks, "they were
its aristocracy" (23). Among all the important themes of the novel,
education is one that Lane continually stresses. In particular, scientific
education is stressed as that which had enabled the Mizorans to develop
such an advanced state of existence. For example, the Mizorans had
developed a system that synthesized all the food (except fruits and
vegetables) they ate so that absolute purity could be assured; thus could
supply and quality be regulated. Their insights into properties of water
enabled them to use it for fuel, and through a peculiar 'magnetic1 process
96
are able to fly airships to points all over their country. Like all discoveries
and developments, these processes were controlled by the government
for the good of the whole nation, so, as is the case with many other
utopias of this period, Mary E. Bradley Lane envisions a quasi-socialist
society where every citizen is provided for.
Princess Vera slowly acquaints herself with the finer points of Mizoran
society. Yet all along she is preoccupied with one nagging question-
"Where are the men?" Every visit to every household and every
institution finds her searching for clues in portraits or books to this unique
puzzle. A Preceptress finally answers this question by ushering Vera into
a secret gallery of portraits of persons who represent the history of
Mizoran culture. This is one of the most remarkable images in the novel,
where hundreds of faces, dark and light complected, with dark eyes or
light hair stare down upon the two of them. Princess Vera weeps with
recognition because she is relieved to see faces so like those she is
used to from her own home. The existence of these ancestors of the
blonde, rosy-cheeked female Mizorans might not be all that remarkable
except that they represent a time 'far back in the darkness of civilization'
for Mizora, a time whose strife torn history is, of course, exactly parallel to
that of the United States, down to slavery and the Civil War. Princess
Vera remarks on the absence of these races in the current Mizoran
society, and receives this reply: "We believe that the highest excellence
of moral and mental character is alone attainable by a fair race. The
elements of evil belong to the dark race." Princess Vera asks, "What
97
became of the dark complexions?" and the Preceptress replies, "[w]e
eliminated them" (92). It is remarkable that this novel could be read
without some attention to the absoluteness of this assertion.
The Preceptress proceeds to tell of a time when both men and women
inhabited Mizora, yet the land was finally torn apart because of slavery.
A Ulysses S. Grant figure became president and tried to turn the republic
into a monarchy, crowning himself King. Chaos ensued, and while the
men were occupied fighting, women (who had not normally been
involved in such affairs) took over the government. This occupation of
government by women was originally designed to last for one hundred
years. But, significantly, "At that time not a representative of the [male] sex
was in existence" (101, Lane's emphasis). Men slowly disappeared as
the reforms put in place by women changed society. In effect, Mizora
offers us the same explanation for the world's ills as did Sarah Josepha
Hale; that is, the problems of the United States could be directly traced to
the innate depravity of ruthless and aggressive men. As a result, Mizora
had remained an all female society for three thousand years.
The gender ’male’ was extinct, yet so, too was any other race besides
the Caucasian, and the supreme advancement of the women of Mizora is
i
specifically linked to the elimination of both. Once these hindrances
were out of the way Mizoran women had gone about creating the
supreme achievements of technology and biology that characterized
their existence. It is these supreme race achievements that I think this
novel is really about, along with the scientific progress that makes it
98
possible. "We are a people who have passed beyond what was once
called Natural Law . . . we have become mistresses of Nature's peculiar
processes. W e influence or control them at will," says the Preceptress
(90). "Would not your own land be happier without idiots, without lunatics,
without deformity and disease?" she continues later (104). Essentially
Mizorans have taken control of the process of natural selection and sped
it toward its logical conclusion-the 'perfect' human society. This is
accomplished through control of the process of reproduction, the details
of which are not specifically outlined. The Preceptress takes Princess
Vera to the laboratory, where she views 'the germ of all Life' under a
microscope. "Know that the MOTHER is the only important part of all life.
In the lowest organisms no other sex is apparent" (103).
The effect of this revelation is not so much to advocate an all female
society, but to say that in a highly advanced society, the importance of
motherhood (and with that, the importance of Woman) is not only
recognized, but scientifically validated. The importance, even superiority
of women in relation to Darwinian notions of race progress is asserted as
a response to the proliferation of contemporary scientific theories, like
those I outlined in chapter one, 'proving' women's inferiority. The
progress of the white over the dark is simply assumed as a logical part of
the process of 'discovery' and 'advancement,' so natural that there isn’t a
need to justify it or even discuss it very specifically in the novel beyond
the 'elimination' I quoted earlier. Advancement assumed purity, which
assumed whiteness. Both men and other races were eliminated via the
99
scientific harnessing and social application of the laws of natural
selection.
Mizora takes the logic of woman’s status as moral exemplar to its
logical conclusions-given woman's exalted status, would not a society of
only women be the most perfect of all? This parody-thesis would not
ostensibly seem to require Lane to discuss race matters at all, yet race
precipitates out of the question of woman's role. Why? Because men
justified their superiority on the basis of being the gender most suited for
progress and advancement, and this notion of progress and
advancement became specifically linked in the nineteenth century
imagination to the survival of the fittest doctrine, scientifically justified by
Darwin. Advancement of the human race in these terms could only mean
white, 'civilized' progress. While this led to a dramatic reversal of earlier
positions when women activists associated themselves with slaves,
clearly the rhetoric of the abolitionist movement had always contained
the same racial prejudice. As Fredrickson points out, "for many
abolitionists [the doctrine of] human perfectibility meant little more than
the attainment of middle class attributes" (37). Focusing on the
environmentally influenced depravity of the slave and the need to end it
directed attention away from what formed that environment— the prejudice
of whites. His discussion continues by noting the extent to which the rise
of individualism and egalitarianism (to which abolition owed a huge debt)
came to fruition in an increasingly industrialized society based on
competitiveness. This formed what he calls 'status anxiety' among
100
whites concerned about guaranteeing their place in a competition based
free market society. The anxiety only deepened with the increasing
numbers of freed slaves and immigrants making their way into the United
States as the century went on. In Mizora. Mary E. Bradley Lane attempts
to join women to this same notion of progress, rooted as it is in the
founding of the nation and the new (capitalist) individualism. This was a
powerful strategy given the state of anxiety the United States was
enduring concerning its self identification; linking womanhood to the
stability of acceptable concepts like (white) progress could only further
the (white) women's cause. Obviously, alliance with this notion of
progress could only be accomplished through embracing some of its
racist implications, and in many cases this ended up an explicit
advocation of race superiority.
Natural Affection / Natural Selection
The famed nineteenth century heredity researcher and inventor of the
term 'eugenics,' Francis Galton, would have had no problem fitting into
the Mizoran world order, except for the fact that he was male. According
to Galton, "[tjhere is nothing either in the history of domestic animals or in
that of evolution to make us doubt that a race of sane men may be
formed, who shall be as much superior, mentally and morally, to the
modern European, as the modern European is to the lowest of the negro
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races."17 This attitude formed the basis of an international conversation
concerning the relative superiority or inferiority of racial groups prevalent
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The rise of the
eugenics mindset that so permeated the time period is particularly
interesting here because of how easily it melds with already ingrained
notions of American progressiveness and superiority. Postbellum
American society was particularly receptive to eugenics doctrine— four
long years of destructive warfare was only part of an increasing climate of
anxiety and distress about the future existence of the nation. This
estimate is also a reflection of the increasing numbers of German, Irish,
Italian and other immigrants making their way to America, the same
immigrants viewed with suspicion by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This crisis
of identity in a country used to envisioning itself as descended from
British colonists was also, of course, precipitated by the sudden inclusion
of hundreds of thousands of freed slaves into citizenship. Though they
had been on American soil for generations, their status as slaves had
alleviated the need to account for them as a functional citizenry, a part of
the national identity. Expansionism and the idea and possibility of
territorial conquests in Mexico, Central America, and the Phillipines
played its part as well. This historical context, together with the
rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's pioneering genetic research in 1900 and
Herbert Spencer's social darwinism all worked together to complement
and complete the widespread belief in eugenics--"a science which
17Galton quoted in the Journal of Heredity. March 1914, p. 121.
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attempts to improve the physical development and mental equipment of
the individual in so far as this may be possible by heredity" (Cofer 170).
In the same article, Dr. Cofer details at length the persons excluded
from entering the United States:
The following classes of aliens are excluded from
admission into the United States: Idiots, imbeciles, feeble
minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, persons who
have been insane within five years previous, persons who
have had two or more attacks of insanity at any time
previously; paupers, persons likely to become a public
charge; professional beggars, persons afflicted with
tuberculosis or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious
disease; persons not comprehended within any of the
foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are
certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or
physically defective, such mental or physical defect being of
a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a
living. (172)
While these immigration policies ostensibly reflected concern for entering
persons who might drain local and national resources, they reveal that
the United States had Mizoran delusions of its own in the rush to justify
such exclusions. The process of exclusion, in turn, was justified on the
basis of a scientifically 'proven' idea that immigrants and foreigners
carried defects which would hopelessly contaminate the nation. It is this
period in American history that produced laws requiring such things as
blood tests before marriage and IQ tests for children and immigrants.
Surgical techniques like vasectomy for men and tubal ligation for women
were also invented during this time period, originally designed to sterilize
criminals and those classified as feebleminded.’ In creating a series of
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definitions of what constituted undesirable characteristics, science
contributed toward defining a defect-free American national identity.
It wasn't long before women's newly defined roles as worker, college
student and scholar were added to the list of perceived threats to the
character of the nation. This scientific blacklist recalls earlier scientific If
we recall the way in attempts to justify female subordination like those I
discussed in chapter one. The title of this article— "Marriage Selection:
Contribution of Superior People to the Race Much Diminished by Present
Educational System— Men Must be Made Independent Earlier and
Women's Colleges Made Co-educational—Motherhood Should Receive
Greater Honor and Cynical Sex Teachings Should Be Avoided"~sums
up this new and improved view in a nutshell. As potential mothers,
women held the responsibility for the race in their bodies, and tampering
with this sacred trust (by education, for example) was one possible cause
of the impending doom threatening the United States. Professor
Johnson observed "an unprecedented number of unmated individuals,"
which he felt was problematic because "the innately mediocre individuals
are most numerous, and . . . both the markedly superior and inferior by
nature are far less common" (103). The point was, of course, to increase
the propagation of those innately superior ones. Johnson sees the keys
to solving the 'crisis' through a solidification of sex-role definitions; this
meant, in part, "holding up the role of husband and father as particularly
honorable" (104). But the primary focus of the article is on the surprising
numbers of single women, who due to attendance of college and
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involvement in various professions, have not married. "In appreciation of
wifehood and motherhood by misguided feminists must cease, and
greater honor and appreciation must be meted out to mothers," Johnson
requires (106). Also, women's colleges must become co-educational,
since "Women professors tend to foster celibate career hunting" (107).
Robert J. Sprague is more serious in "Education and Race Suicide"; his
concern is that "women's colleges have heavy responsibility for
disappearance of old American Stock in the United States" (158).
Statistics gleaned from Vassar, Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley and Bryn Mawr
that relate number of graduates to number of marriages leads him to
state that these colleges are "forces which are drawing off the best blood
of the American stock and sinking it in a dry desert of sterile intellectuality
and paralytic culture" (160). Women who graduated from college tended
toward professions rather than marriage, a situation which Sprague
viewed as synonymous with a decline in domestic values which meant a
decline in birth rate-what he would call 'race suicide.'
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this eugenics dystopia of
women's independence and the resultant racial decline is that it reveals
assumptions about the nature of the connection between women and
i national identity. F. H. Hankins comes right out and says it: "It is a self
evident fact that when death-rates begin to exceed birth-rates in any race
or nation it is only a matter of time until that race or nation is supplanted
by another in which there is an annual increase in numbers" (Hankins
361). The fear of being taken over by immigrants dominates these
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articles at the same time as they urge women to have more children and
return to the domestic homefront. Again and again, the interplay
between race and gender surfaces; this time science focuses on race
commonalities as the underlying core or source of American identity
while gender is portrayed as an issue that has been politicized to the
point of threatening that basic humanity. The possibility of revolution and
social chaos is held up as an implicit threat/outcome of women's
education; in effect women are blamed for the social chaos manifesting
as labor strikes and social unrest in urban centers that so dominated late
nineteenth century America. This makes it an interesting counterpart to
views espoused by women like Sarah Josepha Hale which blamed men
equally vehemently for such social ills. Blaming women was, of course, a
jab at women who would transgress traditional gender roles and
responsibilities; at the same time, the connection between (white)
womanhood and national identity is highlighted as the most important of
duties. This is an interesting development of woman's role as 'moral
exemplar' as it was observed earlier in the nineteenth century and a
(literal) deepening of the stakes of the gender game. Morality becomes
biology becomes destiny in the equation where national existence
depended on a specified female role.
Margaret Sanger's crusade for birth control during the same time
period might be viewed as a philosophy diametrically opposed to the
beliefs of such wise men as those I have just cited. She advocated
population control and places the source of this control in the hands of
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women, where Johnson and the other scientists advocated population
growth and the propagation of superior races that would result from a
return to more traditional gender roles. Ellen Chester, in her biography of
Margaret Sanger, confirms that prominent eugenicists were vocal
opponents of the birth control movement (217).18 Yet if we look at
Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920). it is interesting to observe
just how parallel these two arguments are. Sanger's basic premise is
that via birth control the world will change: "[woman] may, by controlling
birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a voluntary, intelligent function, and
remake the world" (1). She follows the rhetorical strategy of Margaret
Fuller by citing the chaos her current society exists within-large families
with parents unable to support them, the propagation of prostitution,
pauperism, and demoralization of both mothers and fathers. "My baby is
only 10 months old and the oldest one of four is 7, and more care than a
baby, has always been helpless. We do not own a roof over our heads
and I am so discouraged I want to die if nothing can be done," wrote one
woman to Sanger (78). These cries of despair provide a powerful basis
for Sanger to advocate access to birth control information for women.
But the reason Sanger advocates birth control is closely linked to the
race question, as the title hints. "Within her is wrapped up the future of
18S ee particularly chapters nine and ten of Chesler's Woman of Valor for Sanger’s
relationship to contemporary eugenics issues. For Chester, "the fierceness of (Sanger's)
attachment to the superiority of a sexual ethic governed by science, rather than by
ignorance and fear, blinded her to troubling questions about the rights of the individual to
reject the behavior she prescribed" (196). Som e groups were opposed to Sanger's birth
control crusade because of a belief that Sanger wished to make immigrant races extinct by
her efforts rather than to help them succeed, as w as her expressed goal.
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the race--it is hers to make or mar," she writes. The helplessness of
woman under the tyranny of male control has in part produced the mess
that she views society to be in; the reason this chaos had occurred was
because gender oppression had taken precedence over race concerns.
"An abused motherhood has brought forth a low order of humanity," she
explains (234). Sanger justifies woman's rights because of its
contribution to the greater goal of furtherance of the race; surprisingly,
race becomes a more important concern than gender in this text.
If we are to develop in America a new race with a racial
soul, we must keep the birth rate within the scope of our
ability to understand as well as educate. W e must not
encourage reproduction beyond our capacity to assimilate
our numbers so as to make the coming generation into such
physically fit, mentally capable, socially alert individuals as
are the ideal of a democracy.
The intelligence of a people is of slow evolutional
development--it lags far behind the reproductive ability. It is
far too slow to cope with conditions created by an
increasing population, unless that increase is carefully
regulated. (44)
This 'new race,' the 'racial soul,' members of the envisioned 'democratic
ideal,' becomes Sanger's utopia. Freed from bondage, woman could
more properly carry out voluntary motherhood, which would enable her
to spend the proper time and effort necessary to raise healthy, happy
children. She herself would "become a full-rounded human being" (227).
The ability to select a husband by 'natural affection rather than natural
selection' would result in a happier, healthier family unit. The happy
t family would have a limited number of children, resulting in fewer bodies
entering the workforce, easing the labor crisis and eventually increasing
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productivity and efficiency. And, among these new children, "another
Newton will come forth to unlock further the secrets of the earth ....
There will come a Plato who will be understood . . . and a Jesus who will
not die on the cross" (234). Old mistakes, rectified by gender revision,
will usher in a new era of equality and freedom-accessible by the
resultant purified population. Sanger uses the race rhetoric of eugenics
to highlight the importance of women's right to control of their bodies
rather than the opposite tactic used by scientists. In this way, Sanger
flipped the question around and recast the gender question as a race
question again, in the tradition of conservative antebellum feminists like
Sara Hale.
Margaret Sanger's utopian vision is not very far from one of the most
discussed utopian texts by women of this time period, Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's Herland (1915). Like Mary E. Bradley Lane's Mizora, Gilman's
novel is usually read as primarily remarkable for its all-female society.
Much of the novel's plot operates around the various disjunctions
between the gendered expectations of the men who discover Herland
toward the women who live there (passivity, inability to operate without
men) and the realities of the smoothly functioning and productive society
(see especially chapter six~"Comparisons are Odious"). What I'd like to
suggest is that as was the case with Mizora, Herland creates its female
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utopia based on a rhetoric of race purity which must be factored in to our
interpretations of this text.19
Vandyck Jennings and his companions 'discover' Herland and are
slowly educated by its female inhabitants about its methods and its past.
Each of the men represent a traditional male stereotype-Terry the highly
aggressive woman-chaser, Jeff the chivalrous gentleman, and Van the
most objective of the three, the sociologist/scientist and all-around
sensitive guy. By narrating her novel through Van, I think Gilman
accomplishes several things. First, through him she directs a
sympathetic reading of the text, hoping it might be more acceptable if
narrated by a male voice. Second, it is significant that Van is the scientist
of the group--the implicit statement being that if humanity could
conceptualize itself with the scientific detachment and objectivity that Van
is capable of, we might be able to understand each other better.
It's precisely this science theme that I want to follow through Herland.
because, like Mizora. it leads us to the central argument of the novel.
The history of Herland is, as usual with many utopias, parallel to that of
the United States. Various stages of monarchy, capitalism and
slaveholding were put to an end by a volcano blast, which sealed off the
area and all possible contact with the outside world. As was the case in
19See Robert S. Fogarty, All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements
1 8 6 0 -1 9 1 4 {Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press 1990), and his discussion in chapter two of
the founding of the 'Women's Commonwealth1 in Texas by Martha McWhirter in 1866.
The 'Sanctified Sisters of Belton' were an all fem ale collective which owned and operated
a hotel and laundry business and provided many women with means to leave tyrannical
family and marital situations. The collective lasted over thirty years, longer than many
utopian experiments.
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the land of Mizora, women took control of the chaotic situation resulting
from the death of so many men; the rule of anarchy was in turn fueled by
newly freed slaves. There were no men left after women restored order.
Yet despair reigned among the women left after this victory, since it
seemed as if the women were left with a fruitful landscape but without the
possibility of continuing their collective existence beyond the lifespans of
the currently living women. Then a miracle occurred, and one of the
young girls in the group bore a child mysteriously; this initial
parthenogenesis (growth of the egg without fertilization) eventually
became the norm. In essence, a new race was founded in Herland,
genetically capable of reproducing itself without the need for men. These
'new women' become the inhabitants of Herland who Van, Terry and Jeff
meet on their visit so many years later.
This is the primary utopia Charlotte Perkins Gilman has in mind; the
racially purified women who are explicitly identified as "Aryan" (p. 54)
are, because of this genetic transformation, supposed by Gilman to be
spiritually, physically, and morally capable of creating a perfect society. It
becomes the focus of what Van might call a 'cult of motherhood' that
reigns supreme over all else in Herland. "Mother-love with them was not
a brute passion, a mere 'instinct,' a wholly personal feeling; it was--a
religion" (68). The 'religion' of motherhood/womanhood that Gilman
places within this imaginary landscape is in turn responsible for the
remarkable changes and improvements in social existence. This religion
I
of motherhood is, in fact, frighteningly close to what Roswell Hill Johnson
Ill
had in mind. As Van notes, for these women, creating the perfect society
meant not being "completely wrapped up in her own pink bundle of
fascinating babyhood," but working together "Making People"--the race
(69).
The first principle of this newly derived landscape is population
control, leaving us with a landscape that Margaret Sanger might have
imagined. This first principle of Herland existence is not dwelt upon in
the text; its practice is so natural, and its effects so obviously positive that
there is no need to focus on it further as a doctrine per se. Motherhood is
permanently deferred by some of the Herland women so that the
population of the land remains at a constant level, "so that the country
furnished plenty for the fullest, richest life for all of them: plenty of
everything, including room, air, solitude even." The result? Among other
things, "Physiology, hygiene, sanitation, physical culture--all that line of
work had been perfected long since [and] sickness was almost wholly
unknown" (71).
The marked contrast between the idyllic lifestyle in Herland and the life
the reader and three men know (social upheaval, racial strife, the
impending world war Gilman herself experienced as she wrote the
serialized novel) is characteristic of utopian texts, which point out the
wrongs of the existent society by contrasting them with the fictional
perfectly functional world. But while it is easy to read this text as pointing
out negative gender assumptions, it is important to notice that Gilman
balances the scales of gender on the back of race, thereby joining a long
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tradition of women activists. Supreme motherhood in Herland is most
emphatically white motherhood. In fact, the all female community is not
at all intended as an end in itself; at the end of Herland. Van and his
partner Ellador are thinking of embarking on a trip back to Van's
civilization. This is approved by the Herlander elders, who see an
ultimate necessity to return to a 'bi-sexual' society. The ideal here is the
application of Herland’s perfected principles of human existence to the
society of Van/the reader. In Herland's sequel, With Her in Ourland
(1916), a child is born--l think the child is representative of Gilman's
ultimate utopia, a 'purified' nuclear family, hidden in this lesser read
work. So it is difficult to support the notion that Herland is strictly a
gender-focused text if seen as a whole, and in context with its sequel.
While it is certainly the case, as Joseph Boone notes, that Gilman has
"unfolded an attack on her age's assumptions about gender and its
relation to love, courtship and marriage," I would stop short of claiming its
place as fully 'counter-traditional' (318). I'd argue alternatively that
Herland (like so many works) needs to be considered in terms of the
history and complexity of the age. We must notice that before the woman
centered landscape of Herland was possible, (white) women had to
desperately wrest control from riotous newly freed slaves; in this way,
Herland hasn't come much farther than Sara Josepha Hale's similarly
threatened plantation. Gilman provides this textual excuse for her Aryan
landscape, and the implication is that perfection can only rise out of the
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elimination of foreign populations.20 Colorphobia clearly haunts the
margins of the Herland landscape. Charlotte Perkins Gilman ended up
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century casting the gender
question as one part of a larger and more important race question, in the
end producing an Aryan ideal of gender parity.21
In chapter one I discussed the logic of representation used by
woman's movement in many of the texts I've discussed-the way in which
activist women attempted to cast themselves as revolutionaries, worthy of
possessing the American spirit of rebellion that founded the nation. Race
had always been a part of that 'American spirit' as it was codified in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; this is perhaps most
strikingly obvious in Article one of the Constitution where black men were
counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of determining
representation, amidst the constant refrain 'excepting Indians not taxed.'
20This reflects a common contemporary belief that after emancipation, the superior white
population would supersede the black in all areas, causing the racially inferior black
population to die out. The black population, it was reasoned, would surely not be
'naturally selected' because of innate inferiorities (see Fredrickson, The Black Image in
the W hite Mind, chapter eight).
21 See Ann J. Lane's biography To Herland and Beyond: the Life and Work of Charlotte
Perkins Gilman (NY: Pantheon 1990), for extensive discussion of how race and eugenics
issues intersected in Gilman's own life; Lane attempts to contextualize Gilman’s notorious
anti-semitism and beliefs in eugenics as part of early twentieth century culture's own
fascination with the subjects. Like Lane, my attempt is not to attack Gilman per se, but to
expand the contexts in which w e read her work. With this reading I'd align myself with
Susan Lanser's similar reading of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" in "Feminist Criticism,
The Yellow Wallpaper, and the Politics of Color in America," Feminist Studies Vol 15 No 3,
Fall 1989: 415-441. For a dystopia that centers around race issues, see Agnes Bond
Yourelf, A Manless World (NY: G. W. Dillingham 1891), which details the literal destruction
of American society along the lines of Ignatius Donnelly's Caesahs Column. Yourell's is a
remarkably anti-semetic text which details the spread of a mysterious disease. Jews are
perceived to take advantage of the resultant chaotic social situation and are eventually
exterminated by the 'American Alliance'; yet perhaps her work is somewhat egalitarian in
that by the end no one survives.
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Expansionism, the Mexican Wars in the 1840's, and the debates over
potential national contamination by immigrants formed yet another part of
the ongoing conversation. That the nation was founded and
conceptualized as a domain of wealthy white male property owners is
fairly apparent. What I hope to have shown here is in what way the
attempt to approximate these revolutionaries by approximating their
rhetoric involved the woman's movement in these same complexities of
self representation. One could probably go so far as to say that the
woman's movement was eventually successful in securing suffrage
precisely because of its internalization and appropriation of race issues;
what white male of whatever class would have not rather seen his (white)
wife vote rather than the 'hordes' of Italian, German and Irish immigrants
or freed slaves? Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Margaret Sanger and others
probably roused more sympathy for their cause by casting women's
rights as helpful to the 'race' than they would have arguing based on
women's abilities, given the contemporary climate. In fact, by focusing on
the race question, Gilman and Sanger elided scientific criticisms based
on woman's innate inferiority and weakness. And, the way in which
women appropriated this scientific means of self representation through
eugenics rhetoric reflects another means of gaining social credibility.
Science and scientific investigation, after all, were not considered
traditional female fields of knowledge or involvement, so to link gender
concerns to science concerns was a way to further insure the veracity of
the women's movement in an age where science equaled final truth.
115
Who, after all, could have argued against Darwin or Galton? We might
even call these men nineteenth century equivalents to Thomas Jefferson
or George Washington-these revisionists of biological history made a
profound impact on methods of American self definition (as well as that of
the Western World) when they pinpointed the essence of behavior in
species or gene. Thus could an 'essential' American be conceptualized
and defined, and this definition justified and shored up by the existence
of an inferior Other.
And it is precisely that new national essentialism-perhaps best
expressed in the contemporary term 'nativism'--that I want to reinforce
here as a crucial component of what I've already called an American
'logic of representation.' Michel Foucault's The Order of Things is helpful
in bringing out just what I mean. For Foucault, there was a marked
conceptual shift between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; where
the former was a century of 'denomination,' of naming and classification,
the latter is a century that posits a "profound, interior, and essential
space" (Order 231). This mirrors the American revolutionary spirit I've
been discussing. We might call Old World Europe, in this formulation,
representative of Foucault's eighteenth century realm of classification,
where what’s in a name is precisely what determines one's station in life.
In attempting to determine its own national identity and wrest free of this
determinism, revolutionary America forged farther; science in the form of
Darwin and Galton and their predecessors contributed their share and
one result was American eugenics, at once an obsession with new
116
biological discoveries as well as reflective of deep cultural anxieties
about what exactly should constitute the American nation. An organically
defined Truth replaced arbitrary meaning and filled up the interior space.
The positing of a genetic essence of perfectibility based on so-called
unbiased, objective observation creates the perception of an
unchallengeable Truth, a finality of meaning~in this case, an
unchallengeable reason for American superiority. Still, this organic
perfectibility was spoken of as a yet unreached endpoint, by implication
achievable in and through various forms of regulation of immigration, or
gender control. Truth was at hand, yet truth was still unstable. It is
precisely that instability that I think the woman's movement was able to
take advantage of to further its own ends, instability not so profound nor
so widespread in the earlier days of the movement.
It is in this context that I'd like to view the woman's movement and its
complicity in the race/eugenics conversation of the period. The shifting
conceptual reality outlined by Foucault becomes what we could imagine
as a space, an atmosphere of potentiality, that women took advantage of.
This was the moment when the stability of the colonial world order began
to be replaced by Jacksonian democracy, the rise of industrialism which
changed Americans relationship to their government forever, the ever
increasing waves of immigrants eager to catch a piece of the American
Dream. Following the American logic of representation meant
partnership in the aggressive utopian search for alternative (stable)
meanings. Indian wars, the Civil War, Charles Darwin and Herbert
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Spencer all simultaneously contributed to the way in which the 'new'
American age based its definition of identity on an idea of species and
biological essentialism. The extent to which gender essentialism
became less of a prominent concern than the hysteria surrounding
feebleminded immigrants and blacks is indicative of the way in which
women successfully rode the wave of nativism to further their own ends.
Race in some ways relieved women of the onus of being portrayed as
women; instead they could cast themselves as Americans and
successfully played on prevailing public sympathies. In this way, they
could guarantee the social acceptability of their cause. Though highly
problematic, this does mark a significant change; we've come a long way
from the struggles for more basic recognition of social presence endured
by Sarah and Angelina Grimke and their generation. Citizenship in the
form of the vote brought all women-whether Anglo Saxon, German, Irish,
Jewish, Chinese or African-American--to a place in American society
they'd never fully experienced, and solidified this new status in that most
Utopian of documents, the Constitution. The further challenge of
incorporating all women into a truly inclusive 'women's movement' the
fold is one feminism still struggles with today.
Ill
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Modesty + Religion = Activism
Heal the Sick— Raise the Dead-Cleanse the Lepers-Cast out Demons
Christian Science slogan
Religion has played a central role in the formation of American identity
since the first Puritans embarked toward the New World. The New World
was, of course, attractive to these religious dissidents because its
landscape offered conceptual refuge from the constraints of Continental
Protestantism. But the early days of colonization were more than just an
escape. The Puritans arrived on the shores of the New World convinced
that within their lifetimes, the sanctified 'primitive church' they were
forming, apart from the corruption of the Old World, would create the
conditions for a literal and immanent apocalypse. The script was
predetermined from start to finish; the role of the settlers was simply to
maintain themselves until that crucial moment of revelation came, when
the angry and jealous God would punish the brutal repressors in
England who had cast them out, and cause the New World settlers to be
handed up to a greater Glory than anyone else.
This utopian vision, which guided the formation of the American
colonies, set a precedent for succeeding conceptions of American
!
j identity; the rhetoric of rebellion, purification and hoped-for-redemption
has become a standard for expressing political and moral ideals
119
throughout American history. The Declaration of Independence repeats
this formulation in its rejection of the values of England and King George
III and the simultaneous construction, via the Constitution, of a
republic/utopia. Thomas Jefferson's appeals to self-evident truths and
"the laws of nature and of nature's God" make it clear that the founding
fathers assured themselves of the veracity of their actions by grounding
their reasoning in the authority of final Truth, continuing the Puritan
tradition. In chapters one and two I discussed the significance of this
logic of representation in terms of the way activist groups, such as
woman suffragists, strategically deployed its rhetoric. What I want to
highlight here, however, is the influence of religion in determining the
parameters of this American logic of representation. This means looking
at not only how religion shaped America's idea of itself, but also how the
authority to conceptualize American ideals was distributed according to
religious mores.
Historical changes in the dominant Protestant religion worked to
shape the logic of representation as it necessarily shifted away from the
colonial sense of immediacy-after all, the apocalypse didn't occur. Two
surges in religious fervor known as Great Awakenings, one in the late
eighteenth and the second in the early nineteenth century, played an
integral part in the redefinition process. These 'awakenings' are perhaps
best described as swings of social ideology promulgated by actual
religious revivals. Much of the American population was exposed to
these revivals in one way or another; the first Great Awakening, for
120
example, formed the environment which nurtured the founding of Baptist
and African Methodist Episcopal churches among free blacks.1 Because
of this widespread influence, I think that the awakenings represent a
potentially vital and diversifying (to some, disruptive) force in late
eighteenth and early nineteenth century American history. I think it is
also no accident that these so-called awakenings took place on the heels
of the American Revolution, itself a crucial moment of self-definition for
the nation. Resurrecting the originary religious fervor surrounding the
founding of the colonies solidified a sense of national cohesion which led
to the envisioning and creation of an independent landscape over 100
years later.2
For Sacvan Berkovitch, the first Great Awakening, a national revival
occuring during the 1780's, removed the terms of immediate and
immanent apocalypse and pushed them farther into the distance. This
meant that the great apocalypse was still on the horizon, but much work
needed to be done to achieve the proper state of existence necessary for
its realization. Jonathan Edwards, one of the most influential Protestant
^See for example Gayraud Wilmore Ed., African American Religious Studies: An
Interdisciplinary Anthology (Durham: Duke Univ Press 1989); Edward D. Smith, Climbing
Jacob's Ladder: T h e Rise of Black Churches in Eastern American Cities 1740-1877
(Washington DC: Smithsonian Institute Press 1988); Milton Sernett, Black Religion and
American Evangelicism: White Protestants. Plantation Missions and the Flowering of
Negro Christianity (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press 1975); or David E. Swift, Black
Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy Before the Civil W ar (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
Univ Press 1989) for information on the organization of black religions in the eighteenth
and nineteenth century United States, and the influence of the Great Awakening in this
process.
2See Carroll Smith-Rosenberg on this point in "The Cross and the Pedestal: Women,
Anti-Ritualism, and the Em ergence of the American Bourgeoisie" in Disorderly Conduct.
See also Sacvan Berkovitch The American Jeremiad, chapter five, or William G.
McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings and Reform.
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evangelists of the period, preached that the work of Redemption was very
nearly done, but not yet complete-thus introducing the concept of
individual improvement. Fate was no longer pre-determined, and each
person had a social responsibility to create the environment within which
final glory could occur. A sense of future replace immediacy, and the
necessity of self-consciousness in relation to one's deeds and behaviors
became a crucial part of maintaining a sense of both personal and
national possibility. The Second Great Awakening, early in the
nineteenth century, built upon this sense of cohesion and purposefulness
during a time of great uncertainty. Post-revolutionary America was intent
on solidifying and expanding the sense of missionary purpose gained
from its successful revolution. Left without an evil empire to defend itself
against, multi-denominational religious fervor took increasingly secular
and progressivist roles as America began to formulate an idea of
Manifest Destiny which justified its rapid westward expansion.
As a way to begin to unravel the various influences this expanding
American religious rhetorical orthodoxy had on the nineteenth century
woman question, I'd like to re-read Sarah and Angelina Grimke's
abolitionist activism which I first discussed in chapter two. Understanding
the full significance of the Grimkes' early activist role means recognizing
that they justified their actions through their deeply held religious beliefs.
Angelina Grimke's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836)
functions both as an abolitionist tract and as a model of the way in which
nineteenth century religious doctrine began to be deployed as moral
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justification for female activism. While Grimke is concerned in this text
with arguing against the institution of slavery itself, what interests me is
the effort she expends exhorting her 'Christian women of the South' to be
unafraid to speak out, to stand up, to propel themselves into abolitionist
activism. "I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are
the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do, and if
you really suppose you can do nothing to overthrow slavery, you are
greatly mistaken" (16, Grimke's emphasis). Grimke goes on to urge
women to be unafraid of persecution or even prison by neatly connecting
these possible horrors to the religious oppression felt by the Methodists
or Presbyterians in England. ". .. [T]hey dared to speak the truth, to
break the unrighteous laws of their country, and chose rather to suffer
affliction with the People of God" (20). Precedent also lies in various
biblical passages which show heroic women like Esther standing up for
their beliefs. "Who was chosen to deliver the whole Jewish nation from
from that murderous decree of Persia's king, which wicked Haman had
obtained by calumny and fraud? It was a woman, Esther the Queen; yes,
weak and trembling woman was the instrument appointed by God, to
reverse the bloody mandate of the eastern monarch, and save the whole
visible church from destruction" (21, Grimke's emphasis). This call to
I activism is really quite revolutionary, considering the constraints placed
upon women's social role in the nineteenth century. But what at first
looks like social transgression metamorphoses neatly into justifiable
moral activism, legitimated by the heroic (religiously motivated)
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precedent of the founding of the United States. In this case, the
revolutionary call to action falls on women.
The fact that women's activism had to be justified by Grimke indicates
that this was not previously an option for Christian women of the South;
as I've mentioned, Grimke's own speaking tours were originally
considered quite shocking breaches of propriety. The effect of Grimke's
call to action is to expand a sense of female identity and thus involve
women in the abolitionist cause, but Grimke has a different emphasis in
inciting women to activism than Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her later
generation. Grimke chose to cast the slavery issue as a moral problem,
as an issue of religious right or wrong, rather than a political or social
problem. This had the effect of drawing white activist women (including
herself) into the debate almost automatically, since moral virtue was
considered a suitable female concern. In this values-and-morals realm,
women could justify their involvement because of the clarity and certainty
of this greater and more divine purpose; doing so firmly grounded them
in Angelina Grimke's long list of biblical precedents. Of course, it is this
very trend toward redefinition that led to fissures in the abolitionist
movement over the issue of proper gender roles, and which played a part
in the later formation of a more specifically gender focused movement.
This set the stage for succeeding female activists groups to manipulate
the slavery issue to their own advantage. Following this lead, Sara
Josepha Hale could declare that slavery was a gender problem, in that
men couldn't control their behaviors, as I discussed in chapter two. More
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left-wing women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton pursued another line of
reasoning when they compared women's (gendered) lives to slavery.
Grimke's questioning of cultural norms of female behavior makes her
text as rebellious as the Declaration of Independence, which thrust
colonial inhabitants into a similar state of imagined possibility. Her
appropriation of the logic of representation initiated by colonization and
later codified in the Declaration, had the effect of aligning women with
that sense of progressive nationalism that was so much a part of post-
Revolutionary War America. Her call to initiate upheaval, to interact with
instead of listen to biblical phrases and interpretations of the past is most
radically what Grimke offers her readers. She expounded a sense of the
possibility, even necessity of action for women, offering the utopia of a
slavery-free, morally purified utopian society as a reward. By
encouraging women to become active in the abolitionist cause, Grimke
calls attention to women's superior moral 'sense' as it was melding with
contemporary Awakening doctrines of human perfectibility and purpose.
Her comparison of women activists and the founders of the nation further
forges the link between nationalist and feminist/religious projects. But
this is not so much adding a religious 'layer' of meaning on top of a
political one; rather, it is a revival of its own, promoting the religious roots
of what had already transformed itself into the political and nationalist
agendas of the American nation. Re-connecting biblical precedent to
nationalist rhetoric grounded a specifically female political activism in
final and moral Right. The implication becomes not only that women
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belonged in the center of the abolitionist debate, but that they would also
be better suited to solve the problem because of their superior moral
judgment. In this way, Grimke walked a difficult tightrope between
jumping on the contemporary Awakening bandwagon (since its
democratizing potential was beneficial to gender concerns) and aligning
herself with the problematic authority religion represented in American
history. In positing her religiously motivated, slave-free utopia, Grimke
essentially aligns herself with the Puritans and offers a more
fundamentalist, strictly religious/Protestant version of American
nationalism. Rather than reaching forward like the Declaration of
Sentiments, beyond the founding fathers to another alignment of
authority, Grimke looks back toward the authority of G od-and another
idea of a 'primitive church'-as her guide.
Grimke's religious nationalism is the logical outcome of her appeal to
religious precedent as a way of solving America's nineteenth century
slavery crisis. Since religion was a socially accepted sphere of female
power, alignment with this position clearly had potential gender benefits-
but the benefits must be viewed alongside the difficult implications of
Grimke's work. One cost of this position is the reinforcement and
solidification of a particular idea of true womanhood; this means, in part,
valorizing the separate spheres gender ideology, creating a
questionable climate for gender reform. It is also important to realize that
her particular 'Christian woman of the South' was implicitly a devoutly
religious white woman who was the wife or daughter of a plantation
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owner like herself-Grimke is clearly not speaking to female slaves of the
South, for example, many of whom would have considered themselves
Christian. In this way, the activist womanhood Grimke advocated was
specifically reinforced as a cult of white, moral, non-threatening
womanhood. Female activism would have been, of course, supremely
more palatable to mainstream American society if painted in these terms.
But the effect was to add to momentum which made the later movement
for women's rights and suffrage a white, middle and upper class concern,
to the detriment of African-Americans or European and Asian immigrants
who also happened to be women.
Mary Holland Kinkaid's Walda: A Novel (1903) takes up issues of
gender and religion as they impact the small utopian community of
Zanah.3 It is clear that this so-called utopia is not where the reader's
sympathies ought to rest, however, since it is a strictly religious
community which eschews such 'vices' as dancing, art and even
marriage. Steven Everett is an outsider who visits the community on the
pretense of hoping to procure an old Bible in their possession. The focus
of his visit changes quickly, however, after his first encounter with Walda.
Walda occupies a unique position in the community because she is
being groomed for what they call 'prophetess' status, an exalted state of
3See also Rebecca Harding Davis, "The Harmonists" Atlantic Monthly Vol XVII, M ay 1866:
529-538, for another account of a Germ an utopian community sadly lacking in the spirit or
love it purported to embody. A W oman of Yesterday by Caroline Mason (NY: Doubleday,
Page and Co. 1900) also follows the plot of the difficulties of utopian idealism and the
predicament of the devoutly religious heroine, as does Eva Wilder McGlassorl's Diana's
Livery (NY: Harper & Bros. 1891).
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saint-like transcendence which means Walda will be literally and
spiritually inaccessible for the rest of her life. The story follows Steven as
he tries to woo Walda away from the ties of the small community within
which she resides.
Zanah's backward ways make Steven's journey look like time travel
between his industrial landscape and a tranquil, more pastoral era. This
novel is not interested in recovering the mores of the past, however; the
strict religious setting must have reminded the early twentieth century
reader of Puritanism's reputation for harsh, strict beliefs in such finalities
as infant damnation. While these beliefs give the inhabitants of Zanah a
sense of proximity to spiritual salvation, they read in the novel as
burlesque attempts at self-immolation. Steven represents the 'new'
world, the industrious young man full of progressivism and shocked at
the stodgy old values of the community he is visiting. Yet his hope to buy
the old Bible from the community is emblematic of a search for 'truth' and
values lacking in his own society. Because Walda is highly venerated in
her community, and Steven is interested in Walda, I think she comes to
represent the lost truth-a nostalgic model of ideal womanhood which
Steven is unable to find in his own society. Interestingly enough,
searching for truths is not presented in this novel as a matter of intense
personal growth or spiritual renewal for Steven. Instead, Steven pursues
Walda and her specifically celebrated spiritual connection to those truths
and values; she becomes a cipher for those values, a middle term. By
recovering gender 'truths,' Steven recovers moral values as well.
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Steven is not portrayed as the adventurous and destructive outsider
who is intent on ruining a good thing; rather, the community is portrayed
as (mostly) regressive and Steven is the saviour who rescues the core of
truth out of the pit of Zanah's perversion. His transformatory role
becomes foregrounded when he is enlisted to take care of Walda's ailing
father-Steven just happens to be a physician. This allows him more
access to Walda, who is otherwise loath to the presence of outsiders.
Steven goes further and prescribes her presence at her father's bedside,
ostensibly for her father's benefit, but also for his own. The authority of
science over that of natural healing or faith in God's own cures as
practiced in Zanah reinforces the idea that this community has suffered
because of its isolation. Steven later begins to talk (gingerly) to Walda
about biology. This is a risky move for her, since community members
are allowed to know nothing about the outside world, much less what
goes on inside of their bodies. Steven manages to convince her to listen
by arguing that science should increase her wonder in God, not detract
from it.
But this is not only a case of the narrative of science and industrialism
replacing that of 'old' and outdated religion. Steven also expresses that
he, an outsider, has been changed by living in Zanah-that he has found
a meaning he had never had in life. Of course, he means he has found
Walda. In this way the novel is a typical marriage plot where the reticent
woman is finally wooed and won by the ever diligent man. In addition to
being hopelessly out of touch on other levels, the community of Zanah is
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represented as misunderstanding the idea of love, warping it to the
extent that marriage is not even possible. This is most effective in driving
home the sense that the ways of the Old World religion are hopelessly
out of date--Zanah is a world without a marriage plot and Walda's only
'marriage' will be with God. But the strength of these human emotions
surfaces at the end, as a frantic young man and woman declare their love
for one another despite community norms. Gerson Brant, maker of the
Bible Steven seeks to buy, realizes in a moment of what the novel
expresses as clarity that he had originally made the Bible out of love for
Walda. The confession becomes a pitiful remnant of human emotion, left
to finally awaken in this desperate expression; the marriage plot could
not be suppressed after all.
The suppression of 'love' (heterosexual marriage) in the novel has the
effect of reinforcing the primacy of closely defined gender roles. Look
what happens when you try to change what is 'natural' about gender
roles and relationships, Kinkaid seems to say. Rather than assert the
finality of gender roles outright, Kinkaid does so by negation; she shows
a world without a 'proper' gender alignment in order to demonstrate the
need for it. In doing so, she reveals the problematic nature of the
connection between women and morality-that it rested on a definition of
permanent and detrimental gender difference. This becomes clearer
when we look at the relationship of Walda and Steven. Since Walda is
viewed as the impending prophetess by her community, she already
exists in an exalted state. Steven recognizes that kind of exalted woman
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because she mirrors precisely the kind of woman that the cult of true
womanhood valorized. In Walda, one couldn't find a better
representative of the properly moral, upright woman of the nineteenth
century. Maybe she has a few things to learn about factories and
laundry, but as a moral caretaker of Steven's/the nation's House one
couldn't do any better. Not much will need to change if Walda were to
make her way into the larger society; one can imagine her as a stalwart
for Christian education and moral reforms of all sorts in her life in the
'real' world as Steven's wife.
But there are specific terms to this goddess/worshipper relationship as
it exists in Stephen's society; they become evident near the end of the
novel when Steven finally can take the pursuit no longer. He demands
that Walda accept him: "Walda, I mean to take care of you always .... I
shall never let you go. Cannot you understand that it is meant that you
should belong to me?" (221). Steven's sense of possession forms quite
a contrast to Walda's independent power in her position as prophetess.
In Steven's revised terms, his exalted bride becomes part of an
ownership deal he has made with the community of Zanah, plucking her
out of her context as a pretext for a paternalistic caretaking role. Walda's
future of 'belonging' to Steven is the flip side of beatification in the
industrial landscape where she is headed. She will still be an exalted
article, yet in the so-called modern (in this novel, utopian) world, she
becomes an article of exchange between men like the Bible that follows
her. Essentially, the very powerful goddess role Walda would have had
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in Zanah is (and must be) completely domesticated to fit into Steven's
ideological landscape.
While the doctrine of the nineteenth century woman's 'sphere' dictated
the moral and spiritual caretaking role capitalized upon by Angelina
Grimke, this role was defined in careful opposition to men's dominant
social values.4 The Second Great Awakening, while a mechanism of
profound and sometimes exciting changes, also inculcated the values of
the proper (and in some ways debilitating) sphere of the true woman
(Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct 153). In other words, moral
caretaking and religious exaltation was no easy path to equality. It is in
this context that I'd like to read Sarah Grimke's Letters on the Equality of
the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838), since she more
specifically directs her efforts toward negotiating the terms of women's
role as moral leaders. She explicitly attacks and re-adjusts foundational
religious beliefs not addressed by her sister, so that new truths and roles
for women might be possible. It is an operation of ripping apart walls as
well as constructing new ones in which the sisters’ texts complement
each other; together, they are as important a pair of evangelicals as the
4This point is perhaps even clearer if we consider the loud oppositionary voices to the
Grimke's sentiments, like the venomous "Pastoral Letter" written by Massachusetts
clergymen about the Grimkes (which Sarah Grimke addresses directly in Letters on the
Equality of the Sexes), or Angelina Grimke's published exchange of letters with
traditionalist Catharine Beecher—Letters to Catherine E. Beecher by Angelina Grimke,
(NY: Arno Press 1969 (originally Boston: Isaac Knapp 1838)). Beecher and the clergymen
both accused the Grimkes of impropriety and immorality, revealing the carefully regulated
boundaries of the cultural definition of gender and the powerful effect of religion in
I shaping these boundaries.
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male ministers that are usually cited as influential in the Second Great
Awakening.
Sarah Grimke attempts in this text to transform the image of an exalted
(but ultimately, like Walda, domesticated) nineteenth century religious
woman into an image of real power. "I am in search of truth," Sarah
Grimke says in her first letter, "I believe the welfare of the world will be
materially advanced by every new discovery we make of the designs of
Jehovah in the creation of woman" (3). And like her sister, her operation
consists of re-interpretation.
I believe almost every thing that has been written on
[women] has been the result of a misconception of the
simple truths revealed in the Scriptures, in consequence of
the false translation of many passages of Holy Writ. My
mind is entirely delivered from the superstitious reverence
which is attached to the English version of the Bible. King
James's translators certainly were not inspired. (4)
These biblical arguments, before the advent of the authority of science,
were a primary means by which people understood and implemented
gender hierarchy. Any movement for women's equality would obviously
have to oppose these religious arguments-not an easy task. Grimke
goes about this not by disputing the supremacy of the bible, but rather by
disputing what she calls faulty interpretation. Her goal becomes to
replaces those faulty ideas with their own truthful ones.
The significance of Sarah Grimke's discussion of these foundational
beliefs seems to me profound, as if one were to today attempt to
understand 'life' in terms other than DNA replication. But as I've
indicated, the social context played an important role in creating the
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conditions for explorations into reformist alternatives. The primary
argument against women was simply that Eve had been created from
Adam; in addition she made a fatal mistake in the Garden experience, so
these two strikes were justification for woman's social identity as less
than man's.5 Sarah Grimke discusses the original creation of Adam and
Eve, focusing not so much on the fact that Eve was said to be created
from Adam, but that the female companion thus created was supposed
to be "in all respects his equal; one who was like himself a free agent,
gifted with intellect and endowed with immortality; not a partaker merely
of his animal gratifications, but able to enter into all his feelings as a
moral and responsible being" (5). Tougher to argue against was the idea
that Eve was responsible for humanity’s expulsion from the Garden;
Grimke reads the fruit-eating episode as one of mutual responsibility,
where "there was at least as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by
Eve," since Adam could have refused Eve's entreaty to partake (6). More
problematic is the biblical phrase, spoken by God to Eve, "Thou wilt be
subject unto thy husband, and he will rule over thee,"--no more clear
statement of women's subjection could there be (7). For Grimke, the
problem here is inherent in the translation, which was wrought by
translators "having been accustomed to exercise lordship over their
wives, and seeing only through the medium of a perverted judgem ent. . .
translated it shall instead of w ill..." (7). Grimke maintains that this
5See also Elizabeth Cady Stanton's re-telling of the Adam and Eve story in The Woman's
Bible (NY: Arno Press 1972 (originally NY: European Publishing Co. 1895)) part one,
"Comments on Genesis"; or, from a different perspective, Mary Baker Eddy's re-telling in
Science and Health, in the chapter titled "Genesis".
134
phrase was intended as prophecy (will) instead of a rule of behavior
(shall). Finding the clue to misunderstandings of gender norms in the
translation is the same way Angelina Grimke explained away the
supposed biblical precedent for slavery by creating a distinction between
'servant' as she felt the term was used in the bible, as distinct from
'slavery' which was the situation of blacks in the South.
What is most interesting to me about each Grimke-produced text is the
way in which at particularly difficult moments, each centers the focus on
the intent of the passage, particularly whether or not it was intended as
law or prophecy. Angelina Grimke makes a similar move in the Appeal
when she discusses a problematic biblical passage that curses the
posterity of Cain to servitude. "I do not know that prophecy does not tell
us what ought to be, but what actually does take place . . . I am well
aware that prophecy has often been urged as an excuse for slavery, but
be not deceived, the fulfillment of prophecy will not cover one sin in the
awful day of account" (3). Similarly, for Sarah Grimke, the question of
whether or not woman is subject to her husband becomes less the focus
than whether or not this pronouncement was intended as law or
prophecy. This focus allows both to maintain that the bible forecasted the
oppression of women or blacks-a powerful enough tool in itself, not to
mention the effect it had of reinforcing an aura of a very close relationship
between the Bible and the lived experience of nineteenth century
audiences. And a sense of this close relationship would heighten the
sense of the morally sanctioned significance of women's (or the
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abolitionist's) new activist role, while simultaneously destroying the
constraints imposed by the Creation story. The Grimkes' genius is to
work with the words themselves, transforming what had been interpreted
as fixed past tense finality into a contemporary foreshadowing of their
particular concerns. The implicit utopia these prophecies of female or
African oppression suggest would be the pure state of being lacking
these oppressions. This becomes the goal toward which the abolitionists
and early feminists directed their efforts, and the means by which they
justified them. This is significant because it mimics the shift undergone
by the nation between a sense of immanent apocalypse and a sense of
more distant yet specifically approachable salvation. It is precisely this
idea of a less tangible goal that translated into the sense of positive work
needing to be done to achieve perfection, which so characterizes
America's/women's progressivism in the nineteenth century. In this
sense, I see religion operating as a baseline rhetoric, a mode of speech,
which aided in making changes in the conceptualizations of gender and
race outlined in chapters one and two possible. Women activists could
justify their new sense of power within a framework of future perfectibility.
The paradox of this world view is, of course, that the perfected future
was farther off and much harder to specifically ascertain. These are the
same (somewhat vague) futures both Grimkes invoke, futures of gender
and racial equality. The work to be done to achieve these futures is the
social activism the Grimkes advocate. In chapter two I discussed the way
in which I see women activists increasingly casting the slavery question
136
as a gender question; what I mean to say here is that casting the slavery
question as a gender question is another way of expressing a particular
religious/moral world view. This world view is one simultaneously
comprised of the context of the American vision as it progressed from the
original Puritans, through the various schisms and revivals, along with
the profound sense of manifest destiny or mission which began to
characterize the nation in the nineteenth century. For the Grimkes to
advocate abolition and women's activism they had to be possessed with
the spirit of progress and a sense of mission, a need to make things
better. This is the crucial (and problematic) element that the context of
religion in the nineteenth century provided them.
Acting Out, Dying Young
Religion was one of the steam engines that drove a multi-faceted
transformation of women's roles in the nineteenth century. Abolition and
suffrage are two specific ways in which women began to do the dirty work
of idealism and implement the actual terms of the Grimke's rhetorical
foundations. The widespread ideology of female benevolence was one
of the results of these changes; benevolence became a movement which
grew into large numbers of groups and organizations which used the
ideology of woman's moral divinity as the key to social perfection. This
central core concept of benevolence work was more tenable to women
less ready to commit to the ostracism often resultant from joining a more
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radical cause. Barbara Epstein makes this distinction when she says that
"popular women's culture should be distinguished from feminism, though
by the late nineteenth century [the two] . . . overlapped to a considerable
degree" (9). While expressly differentiating themselves from more radical
suffragists, these other women activists also formed groups and
organizations that, while not directly addressing gender issues,
specifically justified their activism with a belief in their own specifically
gendered moral authority.
The many benevolence movements of the nineteenth century existed
in part because the system of gendered spheres of social responsibility
created a sense of community among women. The role of moral
caretaker as an ideal was surely a powerful motivator, however closely
women of various classes and races were able to approximate it. And
the sense that across class and race barriers (however tenuous the
actual ability to cross these lines) women had a sense of a religiously
based common duty and purpose toward society as a whole was part of
what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg calls a 'ritual of cohesion' among women,
forging bonds as a result of the conceptual ideal (Disorderly Conduct
138).6 The incredible feats of organizing undertaken by Susan B.
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the women's movement, or
Frances Willard in the Women's Christian Temperance Union are bold
6See also her crucial essay "The Fem ale World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between
Women in Nineteenth Century America" in Disorderly Conduct for a rich development of
this concept. Also see Lori Ginzberg's W omen and the Work of Benevolence, and Lillian
Faderman's Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between
W omen from the Renaissance to the Present (NY: William and Morrow 1981), especially
part II, on various aspects of community-formation.
138
examples of women reaching beyond regional and class barriers; thus
could a totalization of woman's 'sphere1 be viewed as positive, as well as
problematic. This expansion of the notion of the domestic sphere to a
global Home, then, created a moral imperative of a clearly defined group
toward attempting to solve the problems of the newly burgeoning
industrial society quickly overtaking the American landscape.
One of the most prominent examples of benevolence activism can be
found within the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), founded
in 1890. The GFWC brought together literally hundreds, even thousands
of disparate women's formal and informal local gatherings and bureaus
under the slogan 'Unity in Diversity.' Karen Blair estimates that by 1902
the New York State Federation alone had upwards of three hundred
thousand members (97); the organization's history claims over one
million members by 1912 (4). No doubt the successful and powerful
influence of the Women's Christian Temperance Union played a role in
the formation of this alliance. While the GFWC united many different
clubs under one banner, the very diversity the slogan highlights is
testament to the widespread deployment of women's activist energies.
Education reform, social hygiene, prison reform, and prostitution were
among the special concerns of its members. The formal History of the
General Federation of Women's Clubs specifically expounds the intent
and focus of the group in this way:
The one motive, behind and beneath the multiple and multifarious
activities of the woman's club, is set forth in the one word, Service.
This desire to be of service, whenever, wherever and however
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needed, is the one bond of union which holds [together] the
women of the North, South, East and West, both in America and
abroad . . . the Women's Club movement. . . is in truth a part of the
evolution of the race, a twentieth century manifestation of the
destiny of woman as the helpmeet of man, in the onward march
throughout the ages. No phase of evolutionary study is of more
interest than that which marks the persistence of the Divine plan
which ordained in the beginning that the functions of man and the
functions of woman should remain unchanged amid the ever
varying and constantly changing scenes of occupation and
environment. (4)
Perhaps most interesting is the way historians and critics have come
to talk about the 'service' as expounded by the GFWC. Karen Blair calls
these women both 'Domestic Housekeepers' and 'Municipal
Housekeepers'; Ruth Bordin's term for their work is 'maternal struggle';
and Nancy Wolloch's term for these women is 'social housekeepers.'
These 'oxymorons' reflect the contradictions inherent in the lived
experience of these women. On the one hand they were living explicitly
modest, feminine lives, actively differentiating themselves from suffragists
and other radicals by not joining the National Women's Suffrage
Association, as well as by emphasizing the permanence of gender roles
as above. On the other, their specific use of the ideology of their own
moral perfection to justify their activities was obviously concerned with
stretching traditional gender definitions.7
What I'm interested in here is the seeming conflict between the
professed conservatism of women involved in benevolence and the
7 It is important to notice that the slogan 'Unity in Diversity' does not have any relationship
to an idea of the diversity of the G FW C's members. The professed goal of including the
membership in the active 'evolution of the race' foregrounds the close link between
benevolence and racism which I pointed out earlier as an integral subtext of the Grimkes'
work.
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radical ideals they hoped to realize. Memoirs of a Millionaire by Lucia
True Ames fantasizes about female activism through its central character,
Mildred Brewster. Brewster is a white middle class woman who suddenly
inherits 30 million dollars; the book details the processes that she goes
through in rationalizing and parceling out her money in the best possible
way. True to the spirit of the time, she does not even think twice about
keeping the money for herself to amass a personal fortune; having been
given money by a stroke of luck, she instantly determines that she wishes
to reform society. But this was not a surprise. Before Brewster inherits
the money, we see her admonishing a group of rich men at a dinner she
was attending, as they laugh about the responsibility of voting. Brewster
insists that by being idle they are more to blame for society's ills, and
reveals herself as a fighter even before she has money to back it up.
She is the epitome of the concerned club woman, recognizing social
degradation and making it her personal duty to address the wrong.
This book combines the rhetoric of benevolence with the rhetoric of
capitalism, for when Brewster inherits the money, she becomes a force to
be reckoned with. No longer just the blushing dinner guest, many now
solicit her advice, comfort and money. Her potentiality as a force of
change is increased markedly; one thing this book suggests is that a
simple and mysterious female power is not enough, one must have
practical resources to back it up. Lori Ginzberg establishes an important
point in Women and the Work of Benevolence when she exposes the
extent to which female benevolence, despite its rhetoric, was very much
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involved in business-from fundraising to lobbying to doing the day to day
work, women increasingly realized that social change was more possible
through political influence, not just moral suasion. This becomes obvious
when reading a first-person account of such benevolence work like Jane
Addams' Twenty Years at Hull House. Yet by setting up the opposition
between 'degraded' men and the blushing but earnest and sincere
Mildred Brewster, Ames taps into the cultural milieu by giving us a female
character who is clearly more fit because of her gender to go about
reform than the men at the table who already have access to social
institutions of power. Her character is a cultural code for this type of
social reform.
Brewster's enthusiasm is clearly linked to an evangelically influenced
religious fervor. In a letter to a friend, she remarks about her conversion
to what she calls a 'New Theology': "I have given up Sunday School
work. Not that I disbelieve in it, but I find myself less and less able to
adapt myself to the requirements of superintendents . . . my conscience
now forbids me to teach what I could once repeat so glibly and
confidently." She expresses frustration at being able to "make the Bible a
living book to them" (24). The sentiment relates to a feeling that society
found it too easy to separate moral precepts from lived experience; what
one read about in the bible remained suspended in a formless idea of
right thought and action, but nothing more. Forging the connection and
making the bible 'real' is for Brewster a vital means by which society can
change its course; this is similar to the Grimke's concern for applying
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biblical precedent to lived experience. When millionaires can feel
themselves justified in their idleness and fail, in her terms, to recognize
their (biblically dictated) responsibility to help the poor, then is society
feeling a sharp chasm between its principles and its realities. Brewster
makes it her responsibility to bring the two together; she is truly a
missionary the Grimkes would have appreciated in her fervor to actively
change what she perceives as profound social wrongs. A belief in the
degradation of religious belief/fervor (and the vital importance of such
foundations for a healthy society) forms her justification for action-
justifications so strong that they outweigh social messages about
feminine modesty and delicacy and weakness.
Up to this point, the direction of the book looks fairly straightforward;
Mildred Brewster seems apt to go on her merry way, distributing money
where it is needed and, perhaps if the writer is really optimistic, her
actions will usher in this writer's approximation of a perfect world. That
this does not happen is most interesting to me; instead of glorious
conversions of millions of dollars into happy lives, a few libraries are
established and a few people are helped before Brewster dies and the
'writer' of the memoir we are reading, Ruby, is left to wallow in the
memories. What happened? This book isn't entirely dystopian because
it does offer hope at the end. The young and dissipated millionaires
have become adamant reformers, for example, and Ruby tells us (though
not very enthusiastically) that Brewster's death is "Not the end, but the
143
end of the beginning" (325). Nevertheless, the decline of Mildred
Brewster is quite surprising.
One approach to understanding this plot could be that it reveals the
practical difficulties in deploying any sweeping reform plan; the examples
of reform Ames gives us are small and rather the opposite of Brewster's
dreams. On a train, she encounters a woman whose husband has died.
While she vows to help this woman, the train later wrecks and the woman
is killed. Mildred Brewster does set up a missionary fund for people to
minister aid to other countries, but this reform is vague and far fetched
and doesn't do much to render her more immediate surroundings better.
At another point, a man visits Brewster and asks her for money by making
up a story about a past contract; he eventually attempts to take her
hostage. These stories provide a more true picture of what must have
been day to day benevolent life, not all glorious victory but daily hard
work.
Mildred Brewster has actually spent most of her time agonizing over
how best to use her vast resources and talking to friends and prominent
leaders. Probably her biggest plan is to construct tenement houses; the
novel even 'excerpts' some architects' drawings of plans for these
houses, perhaps Ames' idea of giving readers access to specific
information about ways they could change their society.8 This focus on
housing forms a neat connection between housework as viewed as the
8Note the similarity between this narrative device and Sarah Josepha Hale's attempt in
Liberia (discussed in chapter two) to claim that she 'edited' the novel rather than authored
it.
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proper arena in which women should direct their energies, and
Housework as magnified to include social activism. But as she
proceeds, it becomes clear that Brewster's feelings of benevolence have
become rather hardened. The tenement houses are viewed by Brewster
and her circle as a way to "Americanize the foreign element" (24). This
means that decent housing (as opposed to the squalid conditions so
prevalent in the tenement housing in large cities) would form a means
through which foreigners could begin their process of assimilation into
the American dream-and stop messing it up for others by creating all the
problems of inner city life. This focus on civilizing foreigners is all too
reminiscent of the binary oppositions set up by female abolitionist
reformers I outlined in chapter two; Brewster's benevolence--like the
G FW C's-is also a source of race power and social/capitalist
acceptability. The result is a conception of those being aided as
uncivilized or somehow less-than-human, a conception that reinforces
social stratification rather than assuaging suffering. In other words,
Mildred Brewster's benevolence maintains social stratification by race
and class under the pretense of 'solving' it. The benevolence movement
served not necessarily to raise up the less fortunate, but to displace
anxiety generated by the benevolent woman's own transgressive gender
position. Once Brewster embarks upon her reform efforts armed with
masses of cash, she loses the initial idealism which seemed to
characterize her sentiments and instead takes up a model of the myth of
individual effort and hard work (and the resultant hierarchization) so
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common to the belief in capitalist success. "I am perfectly aware that I
may 'give all my goods to feed the poor' and do more harm by it than if I
threw my offerings into the Charles River," she says (49). This does not
sound like something the Grimkes would say, however, they didn't
encounter the complications of benevolence later in the nineteenth
century, either. Still, Mildred Brewster is no Jane Addams and would
never go so far as to live a day to day existence among the citizens she
was (supposedly) trying to aid.
Even so, the novel could very easily have sanctioned this dictatorial
benevolence by formulating a story line which fed into it, creating, say, an
immigrant family eternally grateful to Brewster for taking them out of their
poverty. Where the whole thing falls apart, I think, is that Brewster is a
single woman. Not widowed, not engaged, but (alarmingly) single, with
Ruby in tow. As the novel passes the halfway point, the relationship
element is introduced as the long lost love Ralph Everett. Not
surprisingly, this point also marks the slow decline of Brewster and her
reformist fervor. The way she meets Ralph is transparent: she is involved
in a train wreck and injured—Ralph Everett just happens to be her
rescuer. The message has several layers, perhaps the most important
being that Brewster is much too vulnerable to be traveling alone, doing
so much work, exerting herself so much.9 It is true love, etc., and in the
throes of what she believes to be her deathbed, Brewster weds Ralph.
9This is despite the long hours, days and months of travel and grass roots organizing
undertaken by women actually involved in the suffrage movement, the abolitionist
movement and the tem perance movement, among others. This element of the plot
offers an implicit criticism of the 'womanhood' of those who would so exert themselves.
146
What would seem to be the end of the novel then transforms as she
miraculously recovers~now having something worthy to live for.
Brewster and Ralph decide to go abroad so that she can rest (not
previously a problem), and Brewster's benevolent fervor has degraded to
the extent that she is only interested in writing a book called
'Suggestions' about what millionaires should do with their money to aid
society. The connection between real life and principles that was so
important to her early on has been altogether dropped, as Brewster
seems content to live one type of life-independently wealthy, married, in
love, not actively working for change-and espouse another in her
proposed book. She doesn't seem to realize that she herself is one of
those millionaires with money; perhaps she rests easy knowing she has
tried.
I have until now ignored Ruby for the most part, but as I suggested
earlier, she is the one who is 'writing' the text of Memoirs of a Millionaire.
She meets Mildred Brewster at that first dinner with the rich men and is
transformed by her. "The night after I had first seen Mildred Brewster. . . I
lay awake for hours, feverishly tossing upon my pillow . . . I then made
one resolve. I would try to win the friendship of this woman who had
| touched me, who had moved me in a way that no one ever had done
!
before" (74). This sort of worshipful tone is consistent throughout the
novel, as Ruby becomes Brewster's companion and aids her efforts.
"What romance has ever been written that tells of a woman's love for
woman? And yet the world is full of it, despite the skeptics, and the
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Davids and Jonathans find their counterparts in the thousands of the
unwritten lives of women" (75). The relationship between Brewster and
Ruby parallels the 'female world of love and ritual' resultant from the
marked distinction between social spheres in the nineteenth century.
Women were thrust together, either in activist organizations, or perhaps
more simply in sewing circles, later in women's col leges--where bonds
were formed. Letters, diaries and reminiscences of the time period show
young women quite romantically enamored with one another.10 You
may also recall, however, some of the scientific literature I cited in
chapters one and two about the social fears that resulted from the new
interests of these independent women, particularly the fears of a
diminished (white) population, because of the lack of will to reproduce by
the new crop of college educated women. Whether Ruby's presence
suggests female bonding or 'the love that dare not speak its name,' this
novel, like the society which produced it, found it difficult to go beyond the
romance plot which formed a crucial part of lived experience for women
in the nineteenth century. The extent of the love Ruby feels for Mildred
Brewster has the effect of threatening an ambiguous conclusion. Given
10See especially Carroll Smith Rosenberg, "The Fem ale World of Love and Ritual" and
Lillian Faderman, Surpassing the Love of Men on the issue of romantic friendship
between women. Ruby's enamored tone throughout the novel is not always reciprocated
by Mildred. The extent of Brewster's feelings for Ruby are expressed when she remarks
at how much Ruby reminds her of her dead sister, whom she very much loved. In fact, the
narrator's nam e is not Ruby, yet this is what Mildred calls the narrator-fh/'s was the nam e of
her sister. Brewster's separation from the deep sentiment clearly expressed by Ruby sets
the stage for her later marriage to Ralph. See particularly p. 257, when Ruby overhears
Mildred and Ralph expressing their love for one an o th er-a moment reminiscent of the
plot of Henry James' The Bostonians. Significantly, it is a moment when Ruby is physically
unable to speak.
148
the momentum of the novel before Ralph appears, what would or could
happen? While some women in the later nineteenth century were
certainly answering this question by living with and/or loving other
women, or by simply not marrying, the writer of this novel intends to drive
a different point home. Lucia True Ames finds that question
unanswerable . . . or, perhaps I could say that she answers it by
suggesting that the story would be incomplete without Brewster’s
marriage. Unfortunately, along with marriage goes the moral force of
benevolence-benevolence is punished through marriage. Another way
of understanding this might be to say that this is precisely what
benevolence implied all along. What I might call a 'benevolence plot'
(based upon a certain sense of female independence) runs head-on into
gender anxiety, and the effect of the ending is to ’right’ everything, with
some lip service being paid to the importance of good works. The
question becomes--was benevolence possible (in an ultimate utopian
sense) within the strictures of nineteenth century gender roles? Or, was it
possible for the culture to imagine women's power outside of a carefully
circumscribed benevolence rubric? Not being able to create a
sufficiently real portrait of such a radically changed Mildred
Brewster/Woman, Ames simply has her die at the end of the novel. The
i
possibility of prophetess status (and all the power and glory
accompanying it) that Walda might have had in her isolated community
wasn't possible once she married Steven, nor is it achievable for Mildred
Brewster here.
149
Religion provided a safe, socially sanctioned base from which women
could direct independent activist and benevolent impulses, but the
specific messages it also contained regarding gender roles formed an
equal and opposite boundary which controlled or even thwarted the
strength of the activism. However much Sarah Grimke and others might
have attempted to dispel the myth of gender roles originating in the story
of Adam and Eve, the staying power of that belief reveals itself in novels
like Memoirs of a Millionaire, where popular notions of roles and
behaviors are reinforced in an atmosphere of activism and benevolence.
And, if female activism and the capabilities it revealed did in some sense
deconstruct the doctrine of the spheres, new doctrines of scientific
justification, like those outlined in chapters one and two, formed
replacement philosophies. In other words, if the force of biblical
statements of truth about gender roles wasn't sufficient, the argument
based on Darwin's doctrine of evolution would certainly substitute, or the
eugenics-based idea that the population was headed for extinction if
women were to become educated. These shifts reveal a profound
secularization of belief as well as they reveal the deep rootedness of
gender role stereotypes. Activist women could play upon their domestic
role to justify an expansion of that same role, but the inherent
contradictions could also return to haunt them.
There is a moment in Memoirs when Mildred Brewster talks about her
frustrations with teaching religion, and the inability of her stqdents to feel
150
the connection between their lives and the scriptures. She says that
"they looked at me with cold, critical glances when I tried to spiritualize
their 'Gates Ajar' idea of heaven" (24). This is a reference to a series of
novels written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a popular novelist of the
period, with titles revolving around the theme of a gateway between this
world and the next-The Gates Ajar. The Gates Between. Within the
Gates (a drama), and Beyond the Gates.11 Mildred Brewster, the
independent activist persona created by Lucia True Ames, might well be
annoyed with the more typically sentimental style of Phelps, who seems
to delight in imagining a syrupy sweet heaven in varying levels of detail.
These are novels of consolation that provide a very clearly drawn picture
of the reward that will be received upon the entrance of the 'true woman'
into heaven.12 In that way I think they can be read as actively enriching
the social concept of specifically gendered spheres of activity and
behaviors.
Beyond the Gates (1883) provides the most detailed picture of
heavenly life of all the novels, and in that detail it is most revealing. The
narrator of the story is a woman ill with some kind of 'brain fever'; she is
so ill there is a question of whether or not she might survive--note the
recurring theme of illness and debilitation in these novels as a 'natural'
11 The Gates Ajar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1868, rpt Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press
1964); The G ates Between (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1887); ''Within the Gates"
serialized in McClure's May--July 1901.
12See Carol Farley Kessler, "The Heavenly Utopia of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps" W omen
and Utopia: Critical Interpretations Ed. Marleen Barr and Nicholas D. Smith (Boston:
University of America Press Ltd. 1983), on this point.
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indicator of moral waywardness. We don't know much about this woman,
though she assures us that she has lived an 'outward' life, is middle aged
but unmarried, and Christian but not fanatically so. The extreme crisis
point of the illness seems to turn into her own death, as she wakes up
into what we find out is heaven itself.
It is significant that the narrator is an independent woman, because
the novel's course is one of increasing glorification of quite the opposite
role. This begins most obviously when, as she dies, her (dead) father
transports her to heaven. This is a quite profound reversion to infancy, as
becomes even clearer when the narrator must 'relearn to walk' in this
new world, and relearn to talk as well. "[Father] led me like a child and
like a child I submitted," she says (25). The narrator is confused by all the
strange newness of the environment in this land of limbo; the proper way
to get into heaven, she learns, is to accept the ways of surrender and
submission. Her father, though he is dead also, has quite a different role
in the heavenly scheme of things. He has connections to a mysterious
force (God) who he consults about the progress of his daughter. The
boundary between paternity and Deity is not easy to distinguish because
both wield profound authority over our narrator. And, since this is heaven,
we know that for Phelps this is the way it should be, now and forever.
The narrator's father transforms into the Father, who talks with her about
her fears. This whole preliminary ritual of submission is ultimately
preparation for entrance into what Phelps would call a glorious afterlife.
152
Once the narrator has made the transition to what is actually heaven,
she finds that the environment is much like the landscape she was
familiar with on earth. Why, there's her father's house, with a friendly dog
out front! The narrator continues to have trouble distinguishing between
paternal and final authority; at first she thinks her father's house is itself
heaven and that the man who owns the house is God. In fact, the two
voices are practically indistinguishable anyway. Her father/Father
reassures her that Home really is the seat of all goodness--the presence
of actual homes in heaven confirms the ideal. This domestic consolation
narrative is reinforced when the narrator finds that in this heaven, worldly
achievements don't matter much. A famous writer is ignored by heaven's
populace, while a 'household saint,' never honored while on earth, is
celebrated in heaven. The narrator's experience confirms that self denial
is the highest virtue on earth, and it will be richly rewarded. Earthly
experience, both in terms of social achievement and simple sensory
perception are cast as mere shadows of more glorious realizations
possible in heaven-heaven for Phelps is an ecstatic immersion in
Platonic forms. "The soul of a sense is a more exquisite thing . . . than the
body of the sense as developed to earthly consciousness," she realizes
(151). The world of men--politics, commerce, fame and riches-is
completely separate from 'real' values that are lived out to their fullest
extent in heaven. The importance of marriage to a completed sense o f
Final Perfection his highly stressed.
153
Still, the domestic circle of the narrator and her father isn't complete
and only becomes so when her mother dies and joins them in Heaven.
This proves to be a less than joyous occasion for the narrator, however,
who feels desolate with loneliness. This is not a surprise, since the
implication becomes that her (married) parents are the ultimate heavenly
ideal. It is at this moment that the novel reveals where it has been
headed all along; the terms of a final realization of heavenly bliss and
perfection is marriage, which should also be read as a restoration of
traditional gender roles. This state is, of course, something that our
narrator hadn't yet achieved. Leaving her parents' house, she wanders
through a big field and (accidentally) meets a long lost beloved. This
meeting is eternal bliss and a symbolic marriage blessed by God himself,
but is also an odd game of power and submission where the man speaks
harshly to the narrator in exclusively sharp, declarative sentences
demanding her obedience to him, much like Steven's frustrated outbursts
to Walda. Upon their marriage, the narrator wakes up, and we realize
that she hadn't died, after all.
The sudden ending creates a question of just what the message of this
novel is. Clearly, the heavenly sequence was a fantasy, but was it? A
nineteenth century (female) reader might have hoped that the narrator, in
the throes of sickness, was able to get past a sort of time warp and see
the great beyond for what it was; in this way the text could function as
divinely inspired prophecy from the pen of Phelps the evangelist. Like
Memoirs of a Millionaire, a marriage takes place at the end; in both
154
novels I think the marriages function similarly. In Beyond the Gates the
marriage is the final layer of meaning added onto a narrative that at every
turn fantasizes about female submission. The narrator's dream, whether
seen as fantasy or as real, functions as an authoritative and alluring
message about an idea of the proper scheme of things. In doing so, it
causes the narrator to view herself in relation to this 'proper' scheme.
Learning to submit to her father/the Father, to a new language and new
sensory experience, leads her to the reward of the love that eluded her in
real life. The implication is that the outward and somewhat independent
life the narrator had led until the onset of brain fever was inadequate
compared to the simple life of the housewife who received such
accolades when ascending into heaven. It points most explicitly to an
idea that marriage is a crucial threshold over which one must pass for
such praise to be achieved. Phelps' world view is much like that of the
early Puritans, where a perfect existence would mean only waiting for its
otherworldly realization rather than actively pursuing reform. But here,
the submission required of a woman in her religious faith is equal to that
required of her in Phelps' idea of marriage, and Father = God = Husband,
in Phelps' terms. While her parents form the picture of perfect heavenly
life, the narrator's life comes up short.
i
These two novels seem very different. Ames' novel is about action
and activism, working very directly with the idea (at least for awhile) th&t
the world is clay in women's hands, and it is their job to perfect the
shape. Phelps' focuses on spiritual perfection through self-abnegatlSft;
155
the world is ultimately useless anyway, it's how your inner life functions
that is important in her cosmos. What is surprising, then, is the extent to
which these novels have similar plots and similar outcomes. What I want
to focus on in particular is the importance of death in these two novels,
and connect it back to the woman-as-moral-saviour paradigm. Barbara
Welter has pointed out the way in which changes in religion through the
periods of awakenings and revivals in the eighteenth and nineteenth
century precipitated changes in interpretations of the character of Christ.
The same sort of new qualities he was supposed to have--sacrifice,
humility, forgiveness--were precisely the same qualities valued and
upheld in the characters of women. Women thus had a "special
identification with suffering and innocence"--and, I might add, death
(Dimity Convictions 88). One nineteenth century preacher offered a
portrait of the ideal woman's existence which provides a sort of
theoretical backdrop for Phelps' novel:
Some of you (women) will have no rest in this world It will
be toil and struggle and suffering all the way up . . . . But
God has a crown for you. He is now making it, and
whenever you weep a tear He sets another gem in that
crown; whenever you have a pang in body or soul, he puts
another gem in that crown; until, God will say .. . the crown
is done; let her up, that she may wear it. [AJngel will cry to
angel, "Who is she?" and Christ will say, "... she is the one
that came up out of great tribulation .... She suffered with
me on earth, and now we are going to be glorified together
(DeBerg 48)
Both of these novels, whether appealing to the more independent
woman or the sentimental novel reader, revolve around the central
concept of a martyred death as an ultimate achievement of the existence
156
of women. The irony is that this death fantasy reveals a problem with the
whole theology of activism which women used to justify their changing
roles. By the logic of women's particular fitness for the moral sphere, the
ultimate female activist should not have to do anything at ail; her mere
presence as an exalted example should have been enough to turn
society around. The ultimate benevolent woman was (or should have
been) a Virgin Mary icon figure, completely static-apocalypse embodied.
In effect, the most supremely successful activist was no activist at all. Ann
Douglas has suggested that the proliferation of death imagery in
nineteenth century 'sentimental' novels is "an attempt to . . . exaggerate
the value of apparently insignificant lives . . . if insignificant could appear
to be significant. . . women could establish a new balance of power"
(202).13 While this is clearly the attempt in Phelps' novel, the inertness
and inaction inherent in a state of non-existence (whatever one imagines
an afterlife to be) undermines any power possibly gained from such
posing. The irony is that these novels don't extend beyond the morbid
finality of death; the logic of women's exalted existence as moral
examplars did not call for women to enter professions in large numbers,
or become senators, or army colonels, or whatever, so where was the
plot to go? What could it mean to be a female hero, then, except to
become exalted in heaven? When looked at in this way, the biblical
13See chapter six, "The Domestication of Death" in The Feminization of American Culture
for Douglas' in depth discussion of the issue, including a discussion of changes in rituals
of burial and the proliferation of cemeteries during the nineteenth century. Douglas
attributes the changing rituals surrounding death in part to the masses of dead that
resulted from the Civil War.
157
heroines called up by Angelina Grimke suddenly seem drained of
possibility. True womanhood funnelled women into fantasies of
surrender as the pinnacle of moral achievement, right alongside the
supreme example of this sort of exalted surrender, Little Eva of Uncle
Tom's Cabin. Little Eva mirrors, of course, the highly exalted suffering of
Christianity's Jesus Christ. The constraints of moral perfection show
themselves quite markedly in these two texts; while certainly religion
allowed women a means of expanding their roles as I've suggested,
these terms brought with them heavy burdens of old myths of female
inferiority and complicated the forward thrust of reform-energy directed
toward solving society's problems. The tightly joined forces of femininity
and morality supplied a language of conformity with respect to gender
roles and sexual behavior (Ginzberg 34).
Luce Irigaray has discussed these old myths as rituals of substitution
in a (Western) culture that requires some form of sacrifice for self
justification. Women are thought of as Christ-like sacrificial victims in a
system dependent on victimization, toward assuring itself of its own right
to exist. This dynamic is clearly seen, for example, in Mildred Brewster's
anti-immigrant sentiment, quite representative of profound anxieties on
the part of the white middle class as America experienced massive
immigration in the late nineteenth century. By cloaking immigrants in the
rhetoric of degradation, Brewster provides the logical basis from which
she can direct her own (superior, female) reformist energies. In criticizing
immigrants, a need for change is established, diverting attention from the
158
question of propriety and gender boundaries. This "order of the
sacrificial superimposes upon natural rhythms a different, cumulative
timescale which makes it unnecessary or impossible to be attentive to the
present" (Women 8). While it is unclear just what these 'natural' rhythms
are, Irigaray points out the important way in which the Christian myth of
suffering and death for the sins of humanity sets up a whole system of
suffering, guilt, and constant forward looking need to improve, to confess,
and perfect. The connection between religious rubrics and consequent
perceptions of lived experience is thus profound. The logic of
representation which promises future perfectibility for all Americans thus
reveals itself as a complex and constantly shifting system of power and
dominance.
I think we can read women's position in nineteenth century America,
especially as manifest in these two novels, in a similar fashion. The
social ideal of feminine perfection (whether or not achieved in any actual
sense) placed women on a stationary pedestal for men to look at. While
this position displayed Woman as an exalted example, it also rerouted
her interaction with the world around her by not allowing that action to
mean anything, thus effectively reinforcing society's conception of her
practical inferiority. In this way benevolence could be seen as busy work
by men doing the 'real,' muscular, manly utopian work of financial
speculation and Westward expansion. She was still the object of the
gaze, not the instigator of it. Having the ideal monument to look upon
was an integral part of the atmosphere of nineteenth century
159
progressivism. The forward thrust of industry and aggressive competitive
free market technology (coded as masculine realms) could assuage the
guilt of transgressing moral values by assuring itself that morality was
present in its totalization of the role of Woman. The particulars of what
was accomplished in the present were not as important in and of
themselves; the real importance lie in what the goals were and what the
future ideal was.
Raised Voices
It is in this context that I would like to read the activism of women who
went in another direction in interpreting a changed female role. These
are women whose voices reached out to disaffected worshippers in the
nineteenth century; the difficulties of a more secular benevolence could
be overcome by attempting to change its terms more direct!y-by literally
preaching a new religion to the masses. The expanding numbers of
women preachers and evangelists during this time are in part due to the
anti-authoritarianism characteristic of the Second Great Awakening,
intimate as it was with the anti-authoritarianism of the founding of the
United States itself. The late eighteenth and nineteenth century in
America saw literally hundreds upon hundreds of newly created
churches, from various Baptist sects to Seventh Day Adventism to
Unitarianism to Christian Science. I see this growth in the numbers of
women actively involved in religious expression as a particular
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manifestation of the activist benevolence impulse which sought to
address social problems in a non-secular fashion by addressing spiritual
concerns directly. In calling this female 'awakening' benevolence I also
mean to suggest specifically that it grew out of the sense of personal,
female moral responsibility for moral reform; women with deeply held
religious convictions preached not only as reformers but as female
reformers with special powers, abilities and/or access to the processes
which could bring about a state of moral perfection.
Janet Wilson Jones makes an important point about the nineteenth
century's women preachers when she says that "[they] promised . . .
direct inner spiritual experiences without the mediation of a clerical caste
of educated males-indeed, they sometimes questioned whether God
was masculine and made woman a priest or messiah" (8). Like the
Puritan's belief in their 'primitive church' more proximate to God's
intentions, and in the tradition of the Grimke sisters, these women
charismatics appealed to contemporary anti-authoritarianism by their
uniqueness as women in traditionally male positions of spiritual authority.
Their presence suggested that since contemporary social belief located
women's behavior and experiences closer to the moral and spiritual
realm, their words and beliefs were especially close to God's intent-a
position of real power in a nation whose motto is 'In God W e Trust.'
Jarena Lee felt the call to preach during the height of the Second
Great Awakening. Her conversion experience in 1804 was a profound
realization of her own sinfulness; after several years of soul searching
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and reflection she recognized a need to express her convictions to
others. Her attempts to actually carry out this calling were not so easy,
however. She approached Richard Allen, one of the founders of the
African Methodist Episcopal church, for guidance on the matter. He
reminded her that "our Discipline [does] not call for women preachers,"
though he later allowed her to preach in his own congregation (Sernett
169). The thought process which leads Lee through these hurdles of
resistance is much like that of the Grimke sisters described earlier.
If the man may preach, because the Saviour died for him,
why not the woman, seeing he died for her also? Is he not
a whole saviour, instead of a half of one, as those who hold
it wrong for a woman to preach, would seem to make it
appear? Did not Mary first preach the risen Saviour, and is
not the doctrine of the resurrection the very climax of
Christianity--hangs not our hope on this, as argued by St.
Paul? Then did not Mary, a woman, preach the gospel?
For she preached the resurrection of the crucified Son of
God. (Sernett 169)
Lee uses Mary's particular position in the story of Christianity to argue for
the rightness and truth of her calling. It is significant that Lee describes
one of her first attempts at preaching as having occurred in the kitchen of
a friend. "I felt moved to attempt to speak to the people in a public
manner, but could not bring my mind to attempt it in the church" (176).
Lee, the friend and several neighbors gathered around the kitchen table,
where Lee proceeded to preach her first sermon. The event becomes an
initiation ritual, Jarena Lee's entrance into the discourse of religion; the
fact that her first sermon was located within a domestic space and not
inside the formal walls of a traditional place of worship (with all the
162
history and authority built into them) reinforces the sense that religion
was being actively seized by Jarena Lee and women like her.14 Religion
was something to be actively spoken, not listened to or obeyed, and the
fact that the bible was full of strong righteous women like Angelina
Grimke's Esther or Jarena Lee's Mary proved to these women that their
place in religion was not only important, but especially glorified. The
importance of women in black churches, and the role of these churches
in the development of a sense of African-American strength and
community in the nineteenth century heightens the significance of the
achievements of Jarena Lee and African-American religious women like
her (Ruether III: 81). In the same way that white women activists were
deploying the rhetoric of religious righteousness for their own benefit,
African-American women (as well as men) created communities and
forged bonds as a result of the belief in future perfectibility.
Within this same climate, I'd also locate the nineteenth century
religious fad of Spiritualism. This particular take on religion provided
adherents with direct access to the spirit world via spirit mediums, who
were often women. A historical predecessor of contemporary
channeling, Spiritualism began in 1848, the same year as the
Declaration of Sentiments was signed.15 Two girls from upstate New
14Compare this moment to the kitchen scene of the final pages of Louisa May Alcott's
Work, where the fem ale characters gather around a table, formulating their futures: also
the blissful Quaker kitchen scene of Uncle Tom's Cabin that is such a haven to escaped
slaves.
15Note also the proximity of the birth of these two movements; New York State was a
particularly active site of spiritual, activist, and utopian fervor. See Crucible of the
Millennium: the Burned Over District of New York in the 1840's by Michael Barkun,
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York, Kate and Margaret Fox, professed to hear knocks or raps. These
raps could be asked questions, their message being interpreted as a
window into the Beyond. The characteristics of being a medium was
closely identified with female characteristics believed to be inherent in
gender itself; should a man be a medium, he was said to possess
'feminine' qualities (Braude 23-4). Like Jarena Lee's relocation of the
front lines of religion to the kitchen instead of the church, Spiritualism
brought its brand of religion into the home, since seances often were
conducted around parlor tables. "It required not participants beyond the
family, no facilities beyond the home," Braude notes (24). Grass-roots
participation made Spiritualism and new religions like it accessible
across class and race lines, radicalizing this particular brand of
benevolence.
The later nineteenth century saw an explosion in the numbers of
women who actively articulated these spiritual feelings more directly.
Helena Petrova Blavatsky, a Russian immigrant, and Annie Besant
fostered the Theosophy movement, while Aimee Semple McPherson
founded the Foursquare Pentecostal Church-both of these particular
movements claim substantial numbers of adherents to this day.16
Perhaps the most significant, since most widespread, manifestation of
this constantly evolving female religious progressive ethic was Mary
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ Press 1986); also Nancy Hewitt, W omen's Activism and
Social Change: Rochester. New York 1822-1872 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ Press 1984).
16S ee Ruether, Ed., W omen and Religion in America: especially volume three. "Radical
! Victorians: The Quest for an Alternative Culture," for information on other sects and
I religions founded and maintained by women during this time period.
164
Baker Eddy's. While Eddy specifically aligned Christian Science against
Spiritualism, her profession that her religion was closest to Truth in fact
places her right alongside Spiritualism's immediatist impulse.17
Recovery from an accident became a moment of insight into the
existence of divine law itself for Eddy: "... I gained the scientific certainty
that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon"
(Retrospection 24). For Eddy, the central concept of Mind denotes or
describes God, which is ultimate reality— material existence is shadow
and illusion. It is for this reason Eddy’s doctrine of 'spiritual' healing
(manifest in her own recovery experience) came about; for her, the ability
to align herself with Mind produced her cure. This very Platonic notion of
the shadows of material existence compared to an exalted yet intangible
divine 'reality' aligns itself quite closely with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps'
world view expressed in the Gates series. Eddy's resistance to
Spiritualism, however, included a resistance toward the type of
conversion of the divine into material terms that Phelps achieves in her
florid descriptions of Heaven. Still, her description of her initial
conversion experience as akin to the arrival of a bridegroom is quite
reminiscent of both Beyond the Gates and Memoirs of a Millionaire
(Retrospection 23).
Ultimately, Eddy's point was not to imagine spirits or to speak to them,
but to align oneself to the transcendent Mind, a unitary essence of all
things. This development of an ideal, originary essence had the
17See chapter four of Science and Health. "Christian Science versus Spiritualism."
165
additional effect of wiping out the distinctions between religions
themselves, a theme central to Theosophy as well. In this way, old
(male) authority could be cast as divisive compared to the new, holistic
revelations of these women. Eddy's purpose was not specifically to
justify the place of women in religion or in the world in general-in fact,
her beliefs concerning gender were quite traditional. "Be faithful over
home relations; they lead to higher joys .... It is pleasanter to do right
than wrong; it makes one ruler over self and hallows home--which is
woman's world. Please your husband, and he will be apt to please you;
preserve affection on both sides" (Miscellaneous Writings 187). Yet her
ethic of teaching, healing and preaching expanded the woman-as-
medium ideal of Spiritualism to another level; Mary Baker Eddy was a
powerful and active force ready to change the world directly, not just
eavesdrop on heaven. Certainly she benefited from the contemporary
ideology of female moral authority she strongly advocated, as well as the
opposite precedent of transgressive women activists of all types in
establishing what is still a fabulously wealthy and far reaching religious
empire. From this position of secure authority, achieved via divine
revelation (seen as especially noteworthy in a woman), she could both
literally and figuratively afford to dictate traditional values to other
women. In fact, her credibility might have been undermined had she not
advocated such values. Still, from Angelina and Sarah Grimke's first
trembling forays toward speaker's podiums, to Mary Baker Eddy's
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charismatic grasp of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
American mind, American women had come a long way.
What I've described here is a narrative of religiously motivated activism
initiated by the Grimke sisters and developing, growing and changing
into the work of benevolence that so characterizes the nineteenth
century. Central to this narrative is the various deployments of the
ideology of women's (supposed) natural moral power. In Women and
the Work of Benevolence. Lori Ginzberg discusses what she sees as a
shift away from this kind of gender-based justification for moral activism
during this time period; she sees a more 'practical' activism developing
later in the nineteenth century. Women got their hands dirty in spheres
such as politics (traditionally unfeminine) as they realized more and more
that this was the way real change could be effected and resorted less
and less to justifying their actions based on an inherent gendered moral
superiority. "By the late 1840's," she writes, "all but the most ultra of
reformers agreed that moral suasion had failed to transform society" (98).
There was a "growing disillusionment with moral suasion, [which]
corresponded with an increased faith in legislative change" (116). Her
| argument is essentially true in that activist women certainly did begin to
work more and more through legislative channels, lobbying or petitioning
to achieve their various reformist ends. Still, I would focus on a crucial
element of that activism--a latent (or perhaps continually transforming, in
flux) idealism that still constituted a moral backdrop for women's activism.
167
The situation seems to me more complex and less clearly polarized than
Ginzberg would suggest. The novels I discussed earlier by Lucia True
Ames and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps were both written in the 1880's, long
after Ginzberg’s cutoff point, yet are positively dripping with the
philosophy of female moral idealism. In addition, women still used that
basic religious (even if less foregrounded) moral base to conceptually
justify their deeper forays into electoral politics; suffragists were arguing
all the way up until 1920 that they could pool their 'naturally' moral and
upright female resources toward social reform if granted the right to vote.
Seizing the reigns of capitalism or politics is more of an innovation than a
deterioration of the concept of female moral superiority.
I see what Ginzberg outlines as a shift rather than an integral part and
extension of the momentum generated by the Grimkes. I can easily
imagine either of the sisters, fifty years later, penning a similar tract to her
original piece, justifying women's forays into the formerly forbidden realm
of politics-after all, she might say, to what lengths shouldn't women go to
do what needed to be done to make the world a better place? By
advocating women's involvement in abolition in the first place, the
Grimkes were already effecting a certain split between a gendered moral
ideal and social activist (and political) reality, while simultaneously
advocating the direct linkage of the two concepts. This forms the central
contradiction which I’ve traced throughout this chapter. I think the split
Ginzberg notices is more a result of the influence of the rhetoric of
(religious) progress I discussed early in the chapter. Like the Puritans,
168
these activist women perceived that assuming the posture of icons of
purity and righteousness had little effect on standards; the rhetoric of
future perfection was a crucial influence in transforming the ideal of
women's icon status into the ideal of women actively engaged in bringing
about the hoped for perfect state of existence. The point here is that
politics and domesticity, while certainly ideologically separated realms in
the nineteenth century, are two elements of a complex puzzle. Politics
became fair game because it was soon clear, as Ginzberg says, that this
was the only way, in the developing democracy, that social change could
come about.
On the one hand, religion provided a springboard for social activism
for women who had the time and means to do so; on the other, it could be
seen as undermining those same changes by simultaneously dictating
very strict boundaries of behavior for women. Still, rather than assert that
the rhetoric of women's moral righteousness was simply dispensed with,
Ginzberg's ’changes in strategy' should be seen as a development and
further articulation of gender issues by the various activist women's
groups. In Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. Angelina Grimke
begins not by specifically discussing religion, but by discussing the
importance of morality in a democracy. This can be read as a response
to the writers of the Declaration of Independence, who carefully linked
religion to their new enterprise as an attempt to justify the founding of the
nation. "We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
169
rights ..." The nation was constructed as one that would support the
rights that the Creator intended more fully than other nations. It is no
accident that the 1848 Seneca Falls convention constructed a document
closely resembling the Declaration of Independence. These women
recognized and called attention to the close connection between gender,
religion and the state which was literally springing up around them.
In Woman. Church and State (1893), Matilda Joslyn Gage elaborates
at length on the close connection between the three elements in her title.
Her exhaustive historical discussion of western religion throughout
history documents the ways in which she saw Christianity reinforcing
women's secondary position in society. The intricate connections
between the Church and the State forms for her the overall political and
social apparatus which works to establish and maintain gender roles.
Her discussion of medieval Christianity, for example, reveals that a sixth
century colloquium of theologians debated the question, "[d]oes woman
have a soul?" (26-7). The power of the influence of the story of Adam
and Eve to deploy itself in the material existence of women is profound
for Gage, and her text documents the widespread influence of that
originary story. She cites religious laws which preserve the status of
women as physically unclean, or especially heathen for giving birth to
female children. All of these, she says, reinforced a world view that
excluded women from sources of influence and power. The connection
between church and state is rooted here, when religion was more overtly
the dominant spiritual as well as temporal power and formed the rubrics
170
that constituted the social contract itself. In that double function it
formulated and controlled gender roles by dictating both a relative
'uncleanliness' of women, and by parceling out the authority to sanction
and dictate proper gender relations through control of the marriage rite.
Gage calls this control a material step toward the subjugation of mankind.
This forms the precedent for later Canon Law that dictated various
precedents which prevented women from inheriting property-another
way in which women were prevented access to centers of power and
influence. Since secular laws and mores were formed from this religious
core, the connections between church and state are for Gage profound.
But what she points out most importantly is the close connection
between religious authority and legal doctrine. Both claim divine origin,
she says, and both by that authority assume divine right over woman
(239). Since the two ale indistinguishable, or at least integral parts of the
same Ideological State Apparatus, I think that Ginzberg’s historical
insights make more sense than she might allow. Gage's treatment
extends through ages and cultures to establish the crucial role of
Christianity in cultural submission of women. Her ultimate contention is
that "the church of the nineteenth century possesses the same character
as that of the fourth, twelfth, and fifth [centuries]" (210). The effect of the
whole book is to re-orient the time line of history such that progress will
have to be made, in order for a future of gender equality to be realized.
In this sense, Gage repeats the same logic as that of nineteenth century
American Christianity itself, looking toward a future perfection that could
171
be realized through the work of adherents. Gage's view is essentially
that of many suffragists, that while oppression of women was a product of
ancient influences, the nineteenth century offered unprecedented
opportunity for change.18 "Women's new freedom is not due to the
church, but to the printing press, to education and to free thought and the
forms of advancing civilization" (237). Certainly, Gage's interest is in
exposing the basic ironies of women's socially and religiously exalted
status that I've already pointed out. But it is important to realize that in
doing so, Gage removes a tool of justification as well. And either way,
she repeats the American, utopian logic of representation by continually
connecting the status of women to a hypothetical civilized society, saying
that a society's ultimate progress can be measured by its treatment of
women. Gage operates from the view that the surrounding society is
degraded and misguided, and her particular group (women) will or could
play a primary role in bringing about the most reformed and civilized of
all possible worlds.
I think of the progression of ideas from Angelina Grimke to Matilda
Joslyn Gage as one from translation to speech-from Grimke's concern
with the original translators of the Bible as the origin of oppression, to
Gage's outright rage at the construction of social and political reality. The
expressions of Jarena Lee, Mary Baker Eddy, and all of the women
preachers and evangelists of the nineteenth century are also part of this
new Speech, which took up the language of religion directly and
18See page xxvii in the Introduction to Gage's Woman. Church and State, written by Sally
Roesch W agner, for a discussion of this point.
172
reshaped and reformed it for their own varied uses. Religion in the
nineteenth century formed the fluid medium through which gender (and
race) utopias could be imagined because it was the language through
which they were constructed. For Grimke, the true religion (and thus the
most perfect way of living) was there in the Bible, but it had become
hidden behind the centuries of oppressive interpretation. Gage's
historical analysis goes beyond this to reveal the complexity of women's
situation within a religious framework, while simultaneously revealing the
complexity of the way language functions. Like Eddy, Gage finds that the
key to freedom is to bypass established religion itself, or at least to work
on changing its terms. In this way, Gage's idealism is located at a further
distance than Grimke's. Perhaps she, too, could be compared to
Jonathan Edwards, and her book to the Second Great Awakening in the
way that her analysis sets up a historical backdrop and sanctified goal,
inscribing her own American jeremiad.
Angelina and Sarah Grimke were known primarily for their work in the
abolitionist movement, Gage for her involvement with Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the suffrage campaign, and Mary
Baker Eddy for her founding of a religion. Yet all of these nineteenth
century women deployed the rhetoric of conversion and renewal in their
various ways, toward a vision of a reformed society-a testament to the
extent to which religion, race and gender cannot be considered as
discrete issues in the nineteenth century. We could not think about
gender the way we do separately from the history of religion as it has
173
impacted Western civilization, nor could we think of race separate from
religion and its connections to nationalism or imperialism. Just as
religion has played a crucial role in the formation of an American identity
throughout American history, religious history has also influenced the
way women began to conceive their own identity as American citizens.
Religion formed the basis from which activism could be justified by
Angelina and Sarah Grimke; after this initial impulse, others began to
discuss the ways reform was needed not only in society, but in religion as
well. They created new denominations, or changed the way the old ones
were talked about. Defining a new female subjectivity as separate from
established ’otherness' meant setting the established truths into motion.
The irony here is that this ritual of reform and renewal, however
constituted, is religious ideology thus perpetuated.
IV
174
'Factory Amazons' at the Career Frontier
Post-revolutionary America underwent major social and economic
transformations which fueled its emergence as an international industrial
power. Since the American colonies had always been dependent on
European production for supplies and sustenance, the founding fathers'
agrarian utopian ideal was not sustainable in reality for very long, if at all.
After the revolution, economic pressures from already-industrialized
Britain and France threatened to stifle American economic initiative and
re-create the very dependence America had denounced (Kessler-Harris
20). One result of these inevitable changes was the gradual formation of
the category of 'labor' or 'work' as a unique symbolic structure and lens
through which individuals and society as a whole measured and
quantified their existence. The importance of this standard of meaning
could be compared to the way in which, in Europe in the middle ages,
one's relationship to God was a crucial means through which one
understood and conceptualized one's reality. Work became central
because it was simultaneous with survival; rural subsistence was slowly
becoming the exception rather than the rule. By the 1810's, industrial
expansion in the northeast was in full swing; factories and mills were
springing up all over. The resultant increasingly widespread availability
of manufactured goods made traditional home-centered production less
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and less worthwhile as the nineteenth century went on. Like it or not, the
concept of 'making a living' was to become central to the lives of the
people who were beginning to call themselves Americans.
The particular facet of this issue I want to examine here is the way in
which this emerging capitalist narrative intersected with the narrative of
women's increasingly vocal sense of autonomy and self-definition I have
discussed extensively in the preceding three chapters. To discuss or
analyze just what the phrase 'women's work' might have meant in this
capitalist order could be seen as missing the point. The industrial
revolution, some might say, was not an inherently or overtly gendered
revolution, it was about factories and production and money. Still, the
difficulty male soldiers might have had with their daughters, sisters or
wives fighting alongside of them in the American Revolutionary war is for
me an appropriate image of an inherently gendered conceptualization of
nationalism which easily translates to that other 'war,' the Industrial
Revolution.
It is crucial to realize that much like the war of independence with
England, America's industrial revolution was closely tied to explicitly
gendered centers of power. This worked in many ways-from the legal
prevention of women from owning property (an English tradition evidently
not as threatening as the tax on tea which precipitated the Boston Tea
Party), to the institutionalized system of apprenticeships and trade guilds
through which young men (not young women) learned trades, earned
incomes and became self-supporting. If, as I have already pointed out,
176
the Constitution specifically accorded voting rights to property owners (in
early America, white men), then this explicit parceling of power centers
led, for better or for worse, to the simultaneous and equally explicit
deprivation of the power of women, as well as African-Americans and
assorted Others.1 This formed what Charlotte Perkins Gilman derides as
the state of 'sexuo-economic relations' between men and women in
r
Women and Economics (1898)--an interrelationship between gender
roles and economic concerns fundamentally detrimental to women.
Just how, then, did the Grimkes and the Stantons and the Anthonys,
who were active in the simultaneously emerging anti-slavery and
woman's rights movements, connect their conceptualizations of a
specifically female identity to this simultaneous narrative of self-definition
through industrialization and competition? The complexity of women's
relationship to this new idea of work, and its relationship to women is still
a difficult question as I write this sentence, more than one hundred years
after the period I am discussing. An agrarian and essentially barter-
based network of exchange and mutual community support that so
characterized American colonial life was changing into a community
within which the possession of a certain amount of currency enabled one
to purchase goods. The result was that the imperative for many post
revolutionary American families was no longer to produce enough food
to last through the winter, but to produce enough goods or services to
1The validation of industry as simultaneous with social progress certainly contributed to
the nineteenth century campaign to defeat and/or destroy populations of Native
Americans, whose relationship to the land and self-sufficient community production
existed in sharp contrast to the 'progress' of the industrialized nation.
177
sell, in order to be able to procure the currency necessary to then
purchase supplies, to last the family through the winter. While this
oversimplifies the process, the ultimate result of the economic shift was
the necessity to get some kind of 'job' in order to 'earn' the necessary
currency to survive. Women's relationship to the land and to saleable
skills permanently influenced her economic possibilities in this new order
(Kessler-Harris 3). While some women did learn trades informally, early
in the nineteenth century the system of training and apprenticeship which
translated into those saleable skills in a capitalist economy quite
explicitly did not include her. One of the few acceptable ways women
could earn wages was as domestic servants, but long hours and low
wages precluded this occupation from being at all lucrative. The social
system which dictated that women give up all legal rights upon marriage
effectively excluded her, whether rich or poor, from access to whatever
capital or land which might have been another possible entrance into the
economy. Clearly, the emerging economic order heightened gender
hegemony.
On the other hand, women certainly were 'working' in one sense of the
word, since the domestic duties regarded as her role required large
amounts of manual labor and specific skills comparable to any factory or
trade job; housework, laundry and food preparation were truly labor
intensive endeavors without machinery or electricity. Still, whatever the
realities of many women's days in the house, their labor was distinctly
differentiated by society because housework was (and still is) non-wage
178
labor~as not requiring any particular 'skill' in the same way a silversmith
or a carpenter would be said to require one. The effect of this decidedly
non-industrial emphasis was that women's labor was not considered as
productive (nor productivity’s new synonym, profitable), but instead
considered 'natural,' or seen as supportive of the real laborers, the
fathers and sons. Since a husband was legally entitled to any wages or
property possessed, earned or gained by his wife, it is a logical extension
of this state of economic non-existence that women's labor would be
seen as secondary or supplemental in character. This valuation was not
really a surprising development; as Alice Kessler-Harris points out, since
colonists of the New World brought with them their European customs
with regard to gender roles (3). While she describes colonial life as an
interactive environment where women helped in the fields and men
helped with domestic chores, "it would be a mistake," she adds, "not to
acknowledge that domestic work fell low on any hierarchical scale.
Despite the self-evident importance of work done at home, the role of the
wife was distinctly secondary to that of the husband" (7). It is no surprise,
then, that the nineteenth century began to speak of labor in gendered
terms, often referring to industry in terms of masculinity or manliness, and
domestic work as feminine. The effect of the industrial revolution, then,
was to put a new spin on a very old story.
The difference in skin tones between African slaves, whether male or
female, and their white owners made the conceptualization of black
woman's work a different issue both before and after the Civil War. Her
179
ability, as a woman, to produce children made her a more valuable
commodity than her male counterpart in the plantation economy of the
South, making the term 'women's labor' for her grimly ironic. While
female slaves often performed domestic duties like cooking, cleaning or
serving inside the master's house, this did not prevent her from being put
to work at the hard labor of the fields alongside men. In analyzing the
way gender was perceived within relationships between male and
female slaves, Christie Farnham says that "[t]he ex-slave narratives make
abundantly clear that women had responsibility for what has traditionally
been seen as women's work. There is no evidence, for example, that
[black] men engaged in spinning, a job that occupied much of the
women's time in the evenings .... Even husbands in cross-owner
marriages, who saw their wives only on weekends, did not do their own
laundry" (79). Ultimately, since the Southern economy believed in and
was fueled by an idea of the status of African slaves as a lower class of
beings, this meant that social concern for a black woman's status as a
woman (with all the implications of weakness and frailty and emotional
tendencies that would have been implied were the discussion centering
around a white woman) was not an issue. As I discussed in earlier
chapters, these same deeply held beliefs in race hierarchy contributed to
the difficulty white suffragists and female abolitionists had with including
black women in their definitions of female identity. Race concerns took at
least partial precedence over gender in the eyes of whites, revealing that
gender roles were seen as a function of a 'highly civilized' order of
180
(white) beings. This view sets the precedent for differentiation by class
later on. But clearly, the peculiarities of European ideas about gender
divisions artificial to African men and women were to some extent
imposed.
Nineteenth century industrialization had everything to do with the
formation of a collective social idea of a woman's proper 'sphere' of
behaviors and duties. I think it is important to re-emphasize, however,
that the doctrine of the spheres was not a specific creation of the
industrial revolution, but merely another metamorphosis in the cultural
meaning of gender roles.2 While the gradual shift from an agrarian to an
industrial economy was certainly a central part of nineteenth century
America, I want to point out some complexities involved in attributing
gender role ideals to this exclusively. The first complication, which I have
in part discussed already, is that the existence of gender hierarchy was
no great change at all. As Matilda Joslyn Gage pointed out exhaustively
in Woman, Church and State (1893). Christian religious doctrine of many
denominations had for centuries been involved in the conceptualization
of women as secondary, fallen or unclean, using Genesis as justification.
This metaphorical grenade was still used against suffragists and female
abolitionists in the nineteenth century, and continues to be used today. I
think that capitalism's effect was more specifically to re-develop
definitions of women as a way to legislate social roles in an increasingly
2This is what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg refers to as "the bourgeoisie reach[ing] back
systematically into America's past for collective memories into which to place its
experiences, and a familiar language through which to express them," in Disorderly
Conduct (167).
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secular, because capitalist, era. The second complication I see with the
'economic change' story is that simultaneous with this division of the idea
of work into male and female terms, the reality was that women were
working outside the home in jobs, making money. In fact, the definition of
woman as weak, emotional, or inherently nurturing was only sustainable
in reality by a small (but growing) middle and upper class of women who
stayed home, did not work, had servants and raised their children
exclusively. In essence, I am saying that while there certainly was a
change in social emphasis on gender and work, for many women the
achievement of that newly exalted status simply was not possible. In fact,
for them there was no substantial change at all. Discussing the
relationship of nineteenth century American women and work means
looking at the implications of the widespread cultural ideal, rather than
any quantifiable or sudden exclusion/inclusion of women from factories
and other workplaces. On the one hand, there was the social domestic
ideal and its various pressures on wealthy women and so-called 'lower
class' women alike. On the other, there was the reality for many women
of the very real need to work, quite in contrast to the social ideal. Each
group's relationship to work, and thus their relationship to gender
concerns was very different. Ultimately however, whichever group I am
speaking of, I am talking about a contrast between an ideal and lived
experience, and discussing, defining or even disowning the relationship
(or the gap) between ideal and reality forms the core around which I will
discuss women and work here.
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The story "Ely's Automatic Housemaid" (1899) by Elizabeth Bellamy
neatly lays out some of the terms surfacing in the debate about women
and work.3 The narrative revolves around the fictionalized invention of
an 'Automatic Household Beneficent G enius'-a robot which resembles a
domestic servant both in demeanor and capabilities. While this story is
obviously a fantasy about the wonders of technology, the components of
the tale reveal the definitions and assumptions upon which technological
advances must be based. For example, any family so graced with the
presence of the robots is an upper middle class family that has enough
excess income and leisure to be distressed at the bad cooking skills of
previously hired domestics. Clearly, one of the crucial components of the
technological fantasy is the ability to imagine a means of procuring, and
thus affording it. The narrative family unit we see here has come a long
way from the rugged frontier roots of its ancestors who first settled the
land, fought with its original inhabitants to keep it, and expanded its
borders farther and farther west. Another component of this fantasy is the
ability to imagine the need for the technology-expressing itself here in
the form of the unfit household servants Bridget and Juliana. A perceived
gap between real and ideal drives the narrator, Mr. Capitalist Everyman,
to seek solutions in technological promise. In this story, the narrative of
3See also "A W ife Manufactured to Order" by Alice W. Fuller in Arena July 1895, which
has a similar plot line. Herman Melville's story "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus
of Maids" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine April 1855: 670, is equally anxious about
perceived incongruities between women and industry.
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industry/technology basks in its own discursive superiority by defining its
progress against the stereotype of lazy domestic help.
The middle class family, and in particular the narrator/father,
expresses some enthusiasm for the machines and the hope of efficiency
and organization their presence will bring. Once they actually arrive,
however, the family is horrified by their appearance. Our narrator feels
"shock," his wife "turn[s] pale" and the children "hid[e] their faces in [their
mother's] skirts,"-all this at the sight of the lifelike female mechanical
bodies, packed for shipping, "hands placidly folded upon their water
proof breasts" (17). The transformation from the tedious former servants,
hired and fired, into mechanical 'Household Beneficient Geniuses' at first
looks more like the plot of Frankenstein. The transformation of the
original servants is completed when the two robots are assigned the
same names as their human counterparts. In essence, the (bad)
domestics have transformed into good-because-completely-mechanized
beings. These (female?) robots form apt metaphors for the nineteenth
century transformation of woman's labor from the more typical nurturing
and caretaking role to industrialized efficient production, and it is
precisely this change, embodied in the robots, that the family is looking at
as they open the carton. It is no accident that an entire family witnesses
the opening of the boxes; the juxtaposition of the archetypal family unit
with these not-women, who will not have children and will not create their
own families is the ultimate spectre of the tale, not the presence of the
robots themselves, as the plot would suggest.
184
Quite in contrast to the apparent capabilities of their human
counterparts, the new Bridget and Juliana possess an efficiency which
surpasses the family's expectations. But by the end of the story, the
virtues of technology prove to have been overstated by the eccentric
inventor, as we watch the two robots battle each other for possession of a
broom both need to perform their sweeping function. In this instant, the
promise of technology, thrown into question from the moment the boxes
were opened, falls apart completely. The ridiculousness of the (possible)
transformation of women is also evident--no cyborgs allowed here. So
while the story proves to be in part a satire of technology's potential vs. its
limits, the way that message is construed through the transformation of a
specifically female labor is what interests me most, and raises so many
pertinent questions about the intersection of gender concerns and
labor/economics issues in the nineteenth century. The effect of the
ending is to re-affirm the separation of the industrial and the domestic,
and the 'rightness' of already defined gender roles is affirmed by hinting
at the near chaos that might result from any shift of this delicate balance.
In addition to separation by gender roles, Bridget and Juliana the real
human domestics are obviously separated by class from the status of the
narrator, and are separated more particularly from his wife who does not
work. As robots, set to do the master's bidding to a completely literal
degree, Bridget and Juliana reveal the intensity of the power dynamics
inherent in that class separation. The fact that they are no longer actually
'human' assuages the guilt behind the power, and allows the owner to
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have all the slavery he wants without any consequences. In this way, the
story could be read as a fantasy about slavery, connecting old-style
slavery in the South and new-style wage slavery. The joke of this story is
an essentially capitalist one and works because of the stereotype of
household domestic help as lazy and incompetent; what could be more
funny, then, than the sight of maids working so hard that they don’t stop,
and even fight each other to do their work? I wonder, too, about the
precarious position of the narrator's wife in this story. Her continual
skepticism about the robots in one way seems odd; why would she not
be ecstatic about having a way to alleviate the tedium of household
chores? The implied utopia of a complete mechanization of the domestic
sphere brings Mrs. Narrator's apprehension into sharp focus. What will
she do if robots are essentially in charge of the home? Their presence
isolates her from even the relative importance of the domestic child
rearing and family maintenance roles, leaving her with . . .?
From this perspective, the story suggests that the transformed bodies of
Bridget and Juliana are best left untransformed by industry and
technology. Either the two domestics are best relocated back into the
home (though with better training), or perhaps the story could be read as
more extreme, as advocating the necessity for the wife of the narrator to
make more of an effort. This latter sense would be an argument against
women working for wages, even in such traditional capacities as
domestics. This ultimately essentialist argument posits an originary
human/female core as a central characteristic of the Home, one that
186
would or could be threatened by the intrusion of the industrial revolution.
The bodies of the Automatic Housemaids threaten to spread what Donna
Haraway calls 'cyborg heteroglossia'-radical disintegration of social
boundaries of gender and class--and the story is about postulating these
ambiguities in order to recover and solidify the author's idea of 'order.'
As cyborg (or perhaps proto-cyborgs, pre-twentieth century models)
bodies, the Automatic Housemaids are fantastically revealing about the
fears and fantasies of nineteenth century society. Ultimately, the story is
about the potential displacement of the narrator's wife by these robots.
By arguing against technology and against the 'chaos' it might bring, the
tale argues against the obsolescence of a particular and specific
women's work (domestic, family centered), and in doing so asserts the
importance of a clear demarcation between public and private, male and
female spheres.
Unemployment: An Elusive Goal
As I see it, the nineteenth century social discussion about women and
work was pulled in at least two different directions. In one way, women
were caught in a child caretaking and home maintenance role like the
wife of the narrator in "Ely's Automatic Housemaid." At the same time,
there was an increasing economic necessity to procure currency to
support the domestic front, as is clearly the case for Bridget or Juliana. In
essence, the actual historical necessity for wives, mothers and daughters
187
to work raises the issue of just what the implications of this necessity
were. On the one hand, the American industrial revolution perpetuated a
well-defined role for women, coding their leisure as an integral symbol of
'success.' Hard 'work' was essential to the realization of this goal of
achieving the American dream, but it was most emphatically not a
woman's work, traditional or non-traditional, that was crucial in reaching
that pot of gold— it was her husband's. On the other hand, the industrial
revolution c made it practically impossible for all but the wealthiest of
women and families to achieve and/or maintain the ideal of wealth and
leisure. Class divisions, which were increasingly becoming a part of
American society, could thus claim women as one powerful axis of
definition. In this way notions of 'success' and achievement of the
American dream take on gendered implications.
In order to begin talking about women who entered the industrial work
force in various capacities, I want to first outline some of the reasons they
ended up there. Demographics is one important consideration here;
heavy westward migration before the Civil War created a higher number
r
of women in relation to men in the general population (Wertheimer 60).
One 1910 study of working women discusses the proliferation of women
in factories and industry as due to the focus of men's energies in the
more highly profitable field of agriculture and land acquisition which was
an integral part of westward expansion (Abott 48-9). In addition, the Civil
War, with its death toll of over one million men, created a large gap in the
numbers of men vs. women of the total population of Americans. This led
188
not only to the existence of large numbers of single women; it also
precipitated a large number of jobs both during and after the war which
women filled. In any case, the resultant disparity meant that a certain
number of (primarily white) women simply could not count on marriage,
even if they wanted to, as a means of support and sustenance. Thus it
was an increasing inability to access that ideal which forced a certain
number of women out into the workforce as a means of simple survival.
Even before the war itself, the constant economic turmoil of the early
nineteenth century often forced even women whose husbands worked
into the job market. In addition, the freeing of slaves in the South after
the Civil War brought huge numbers of black women as well as men into
the workforce; whether male or female, work was the only foreseeable
means of support and survival for them, as discrimination made wealth
and the American dream distant fantasies. Another major consideration
in talking about women doing non-traditional (non-domestic) work is the
fact that as the nineteenth century progressed, the women who were
working were part of the huge numbers of German, Polish, Irish, Jewish
and other European immigrants, 4.2 million of them between 1840 and
1860, flooding America (Kessler-Harris 46). As in the case of the freed
slaves, inherited or familial wealth was not an option for these
immigrants, so these thousands of men, women and children settled the
f i l l i n g cities and populated the factories
“ these vast changes in the American social landscape seriously
complicated the essential principles of the agrarian American society
189
which had carefully codified its social and gender strata in its Constitution
and Declaration of Independence. Now that industrial productivity and
profit was becoming the goal, the resultant need for labor to populate the
factories made immigrants, women, children and even freed slaves
welcome in a white, male property owner's realm. Social stratification by
economic class, however, created new social hierarchies which
essentially extended and diversified the perpetuation of gender and race
categories. Now, white male property owners owned factories as well as
the land and the vote, made huge fortunes off of the labor of women,
immigrant and black workers, and became the Robber Barons of the
Gilded Age. A woman working in industry was at a double disadvantage.
The very fact that she had to work could be seen as indicative of some
type of inability or flaw on the part of her family or her husband (if she had
one) to keep her out of the workforce. Simultaneously, the fact that she
had to work could be seen as her own failure to catch a man, or to marry
well and keep herself out of work. In either case, social pressure dictated
unemployment as a goal.
Since unemployment was not a practical option for most people,
including the groups of working women I've mentioned, the factory took
on major importance in many women's lives. By the time of the Civil War,
Alice Kessler-Harris estimates that roughly half of all women were
working for wages in some capacity, at some point in their lives. One of
the important examples of women working in large numbers was in the
190
cotton textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts.4 This is a particularly
appropriate location to discuss, since it was in New England that early
American industry began to flourish, a trend which brought with it the
existence of the woman wage earner (Eisler 16). Women were hired in
large numbers at the mills, which first opened in 1823, yet the way in
which their labor was controlled is indicative of problems women would
encounter working for wages throughout the century. For example, the
management set up a boarding house system, where working women
lived while not at work. In the boarding houses, behavior was strictly
regulated. "The company will not employ anyone who is habitually
absent from public worship on the Sabbath," reads one rule (Baxandall
47). Another reads: "The doors must be closed at ten o'clock in the
evening, and no persons admitted after that time without some
reasonable excuse" (48).5 Although men as well as women worked at
Lowell, a clear anxiety about female workers is evident here; the rules
function as a way to preserve female virtue against all the ways it could
be possibly threatened in this overwhelmingly masculine 'outside' world
of industry. The woman worker, even at this very early stage, was seen
4For brevity's sake I am choosing to focus my discussion of women's work in terms of the
sharper contrasts between wage work in industry and traditional domestic labor; it is
important to point out, however, that the transition between a rural agrarian economy and
industrial production included home production and piece work as an important middle
term. This involved large numbers of women in the growing momentum of industrialization
who never actually worked in a factory setting. See for example, Kessler-Harris Out to
Work chapter two. "From Household Manufactures to W age Work"; Wertheimer W e W ere
There, chapter four, "The Transition: 1785-1815."
5See also Benita Eisler's Th e Lowell Offering; Thom as Dublin, E d ., Farm to Factory:
W om en's Letters 1830-1860 (NY: Columbia Univ Press 1981), for more Lowell rules,
discussions about them, and women's reactions to the rules.
191
as needing protection, necessitating what Benita Eisler calls "moral
policing" (26). What makes the Lowell mills such an interesting object of
study is these extensive efforts undertaken to contextualize them as safe,
clean and morally upright. This effort was expended, in part, to create a
utopian industry free of the labor troubles that plagued Old World Europe,
but it was also expended as a specific result of the gender of the laborers
and a perceived clash between gendered spheres resulting from their
employment.
The surprisingly extensive scope of authority weilded by the mill
owner or manager evident in these rules could be justified by
highlighting his interest in the virtue of the female worker. The entire
worker/manager transaction functioned like a marriage, with the
manager/boss becoming the social suitor promising to uphold the virtue
of society's daughters. This takes us back, then, to the issue of the bodily
integrity of Bridget and Juliana so prominent in the story I just discussed.
The shock of disbelief and non-recognition on the part of the family when
receiving their packaged robots is because these robots possess
characteristics not recognizably female; though they look like their
human namesakes something 'essential' has been lost. The implication
is that industry or technology has the (alarming) potential to blur social
categories like gender or race, an enormous threat to centers of power.
In an effort to prevent this same 'loss' and/or transformation, and the
resultant loss of (male) control, owners created the mill rules that were
such a part of the lives of women who worked at Lowell. Constructing the
192
rubrics of marriage assuaged anxiety resulting from the presence of so
many single, independent women.
The necessity for protection from a vaguely conceptualized possibility
of harm goes hand in hand with the similar idea that the actual work
performed by these weak and vulnerable creatures must also be
carefully controlled. Again, the female ideal was used against working
women. While women were certainly working hard at what they were
doing, so-called harder (and, not coincidentally, higher paying) work was
still done by men. Wage discrepancies were, indeed, one primary
reason women (as well as children) were an attractive work force. At the
Lowell mills, men's wages were twice as high as women's (Eisler 15).
Lower wages were in part justified because male workers were
considered to be supporting entire families on their wages, while women
were seen as merely providing 'extra' money for their families. "Survival
was measured in terms of what a woman might expect to contribute to a
household with other wage workers" (Kessler-Harris 59). Whether or not
this was actually the case for many women, they were characterized as a
group and generalized according to an imaginary idea about their
potential marital status. "The [mill owners] trumpeted the word that many
of these [women], through hard work at the looms and Yankee self-
%ehi&l, were helping to pay off a mortgage on the family farm or to send a
brother to college or, failing such selfless ends, saving for a dowry or for
their own further education" (Eisler 16). Mill work was viewed as
transition work for single girls or for mothers seeking extra cash, not by
193
women interested in making a career of it. The imaginations of mill
managers and owners about the potential attrition rate of their female
work force formed a crucial role in shaping a woman's own idea of her
own potentialities and capabilities. As Alice Kessler-Harris points out,
"[women's] wage work [was] judged by whether it enhanced or,
minimally, did not detract from home roles. Idealizing the family forced
women to articulate reasons for working and to formalize a sense of jobs
as instruments for family survival. Self-realization, ambition,
independence were nowhere to be found . . . " (51). Very few if any
women had a mill career in mind when envisioning the rest of their lives,
the fact is that they wouldn't have been able to imagine that anyway.
Women's work in these early stages did in fact function for many as a
transition between family and marriage and 'career' was a shade of
meaning not applicable to woman's wage work, since the idea of
independent living on her own income was itself not commonly
realizable.
The importance of race in American nineteenth century culture
impacted the newly emerging connections between women and labor
profoundly. As I've suggested, the deplorable conditions and harsh
treatment met by both black men and women slaves alike was justified by
society through doctrines of racial divide and superiority, not as
exclusively gender-specific. Here I want to look at another layer in that
process of hierarchization by pointing out the way in which the
194
exploitation felt by working white women could be doubly heaped upon
those perceived as not just less-than-male, but less-than-human. The
experiences of black men and women's work in America are both
separate from, and intimately tied to the giant influx of immigrants from
across the ocean that is such an important part of understanding the
nineteenth century. Both groups formed a large labor pool which quickly
populated the factories of America as the century progressed, and not
coincidentally, both groups were considered to be on the low end of a
racial hierarchy. The rhetoric of race dominance, which assured white
Americans of their own importance, translated into the language of
mainstream culture. The importance of immigration in discussing the
changing conceptualization of American labor cannot be
underestimated; in 1836, 4% of Lowell's working women were foreign-
born; by 1860, that percentage had swelled to 61.8% (Eisler 29).6 Just
as women had provided a cheap and readily available labor force in
Lowell, Massachusetts, so later in the century did blacks and immigrants
function similarly.
In order to understand the complexities of discussing black and/or
immigrant women's labor, I want to return to the powerful image of
Sojourner Truth which I first discussed in chapter two. There I described
how she stood up in front of a hostile audience, bared her arm and
proclaimed, "I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns and
6ln Women and Industry. Edith Abott says that ” ... [in] the Lowell of the twentieth
century, [we find] that only eight percent of the inhabitants are of native parentage . .. the
mills are filled with Irish, French Canadians, Armenians, Portuguese and Poles" (109).
195
no man could head me! And a'n't I a woman?" (Stanton 116). I think if we
look at this image in the context of labor we can understand white fear,
and black woman's labor, in an interesting way. In part, Sojourner
Truth's muscular arm was foreign to Matilda Joslyn Gage and the other
suffragists who witnessed her speech because it was a black arm, so
unlike their own fashionably pale ones. But I think we can also see this
arm as 'other' to these women because its muscles mark the woman who
possessed it as different because of the intensity of labor which the arm
visibly demonstrated. In other words, I see gender confusion as well as
race phobia operant in the scenario-Sojourner Truth's muscular arm
represented work not able to be conceptualized by the women in
attendance because nothing could be further from all the nineteenth
century considered 'feminine' than hard labor, especially that performed
by slaves. Despite the proto-feminist context of the meeting, I don't think
any woman at the meeting was looking forward to hard labor as a result
of the resolution of the Woman Question. While white women were
certainly willing to speak of themselves and their oppression using slave
terminology, at this moment Sojourner Truth turns that usage around,
confronting them with the reality of slave life beyond the fantasized
images. In effect, Sojourner Truth confronts the white women with a
spectre of full participation in the capitalist economy. This profound and
moving utterance of the integrity of a black woman's identity horrifies the
audience not only because Sojourner Truth is baring her arm, but
because precisely at the moment she loudly and boldly proclaims her
196
womanhood, her (working) arm makes her look most like a 'man' to
them.7
This huge gulf between white suffragists and free black women, and
the social context which was its cause, is crucial in understanding black
women's labor in the nineteenth century. In discussing what black
woman's work meant, race separation meets gender separation meets
class separation, and the three become difficult to distinguish because
they were often supplementally deployed. As slaves, black women were
sold, worked to death, beaten to death, and bred like cattle-the operating
principle being that as part of a lower race, black women were to be
'used' to whatever end the slaveowner saw fit. This included field work
as well as use as wet nurses for slaveowner's children and domestic
help. Gendered categories of labor could be construed randomly by
those who considered themselves dominant. While that very
randomness reveals the arbitrariness of the categories themselves, the
overwhelming material power wielded by slave owners usually served to
shore up any challenges. Less well known is the fact that there were
also factories in the South that used slave labor to make them run. Black
women slaves spun wool, processed tobacco and worked at rice milling.
Free black women in the nineteenth century, both before and after the
7ln W e W ere There. Barbara Mayer Wertheimer relates that Sojourner Truth was
sometimes accused by skeptical audiences of being a man in disguise. At one point, she
bared her breasts to a crowd, challenging them, "I will show my breasts to the entire
congregation. It is not my shame but yours that I should do this. Here, then, see for
yourselves. Do you wish also to suck?" (139). The confusion here is due to the
combined complexity of the unclear gender status of an African-American woman, as well
as the gender status of a working woman within a culture whose dominant narratives were
those of the white upper class.
197
Civil War, occupied a space of relative importance in their family
economy because often they were able to procure jobs as domestics or
washerwomen when their husbands and sons could not find anyone who
would hire them (Wertheimer 121). In this way, the labor and capabilities
of black women became vital to their families' survival in a manner quite
different than the white family.8 The difference with which society viewed
their labor is obvious when we look at the experiences of these black
female factory workers next to those of the Lowell female mill workers,
who were comparatively pampered, coddled and fretted over. Black
women's slave labor, like all slave labor, was completely controlled and
always unpaid. Sojourner Truth demonstrated the extent to which the
labor of a black woman was shut out from, and thus defied, the gendered
social categories ascribed to the labor of white men and women. In that
very ambiguity, she finds her freedom. Her bared arm is a powerful
image of female independence, and it continues the theme of possibility
suggested by the existence of the Automatic Housemaids; Sojourner
Truth, America's first cyborg. The mixture of fear and fascination with
which white spectators viewed that moment only shows how far they
were from transcending the very gender roles they were arguing against;
8See Christie Farnham's "Sapphire?" for a discussion of the historical significance of
woman-headed black families, relationships between these families and matriarchal
systems in African culture, and the ridicule and scorn black women have been subjected
to because of this historically strong role. For more specific information on black women's
work, see especially Robert Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (N Y : Oxford
Univ Press 1970); Dolores E. Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied: Race. Gender and Class in a
New South Community (Philadelphia: Tem ple Univ Press 1985); in addition to Jacqueline
Jones, Labor of Love. Labor of Sorrow.
198
like the family upon opening the box filled with robots, the audience is
thrown into confusion.
As I've described in the contexts of suffrage activism or benevolence,
white women activists were often caught between the contradictions of
asserting their independence on the one hand, and shoring up their new
position by simultaneously embracing damaging race and class
hierarchies. For Sojourner Truth, existence between and among the
categories of race, class and gender freed her to an extent from all of
them. White women were not able to fully approach that image until
Rosie the Riveter showed her muscles, and thus her capabilities, during
World War II. In the end, though a black family might have worked twice
as hard to gather the wealth of a white middle class family, racial barriers
prevented social acceptance of black labor or productivity by the status
quo as much more than half-useful or ultimately flawed. Jacqueline
Jones phrases it best when she says that "discrimination proved to be
good business in terms of employee and customer relations"--in other
words, discrimination was easiest when justified as good for business
(178). Like the experience of white female mill workers, the constant
presence of a gap, even a chasm, between lived experience and social
ideal propounded by the wealthy and powerful translated into low paying
jobs with appalling conditions, and no end in sight. Still, I think
Sojourner Truth offers an image of hope and independence found only
through the democratizing influence of work. Her example makes it clear
that for black women, conceptualizing an idea of work was an entirely
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different process than for white women, trapped as they were in the
clutches of a social ideal. Freed in some sense from the social ideal of
gender because of society's obsession with racial hierarchy, a black
woman could imagine herself in revolutionary ways.
As millions of European immigrants flooded America's shores
throughout the nineteenth century, their presence provided a windfall for
venture capitalists looking for cheap labor to run factories and
businesses.9 Both the capitalists and the immigrants had visions of
prosperity, but for the first generation immigrant family, wealth and
prosperity were difficult to achieve. As was the case in black families,
immigrant families of Russian, German, Irish, Italian and other European
origins almost invariably were not able to afford the luxury of a wife at
home--survival meant both husbands and wives, and even children,
worked.10 The female immigrant worker stepped on American shores in
an entirely different situation than her American (white) counterpart,
already ensconced on land. She was probably either married or the
daughter of immigrant parents, and was usually poor and uneducated.
She inevitably and immediately set to working, whatever her age.
9European immigrants had a profound effect on the economy, and particularly the
factories, in the nineteenth century and it is this aspect of nineteenth century immigration
patterns I am focusing on here. However, they were not the only immigrants entering the
United States; it is important to note particularly the thousands of persons of Chinese
descent who immigrated or were forced to immigrate and were primarily responsible for,
among other things, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Ronald Takaki
estimates that by 1870, there were 63,000 Chinese immigrants in the United States,
concentrated mostly in the western states. See his A Different Mirror: A History of
Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 1993).
10ln fact, some mills recruited entire immigrant families as laborers. See Barbara Mayer
Wertheimer, W e W ere There: 78-79. She says that "more than half of all millworkers in the
textile industry before the civil w ar worked under the family system" (79).
200
Conditions for these working women were exceedingly bad. Poor
lighting, overcrowding, twelve and thirteen hour days with little time for
lunch, cramped working quarters with little fresh air all contributed to
breaking the backs of even the strongest of Old World women, as well as
men. In addition, immigrant women still had to deal with the legacy of the
Lowell pioneers' low wages. Collar launderers of Troy, New York made
between 2 and 3 dollars a week standing over a wash tub surrounded by
furnaces heating water to the boiling point for the washing process. In
addition to the hard labor of washing and rubbing the collars, the women
endured constant exposure to such cleaning chemicals as
"hyperchloride of soda" and "dilute of sulphuric acid" (Wertheimer 172-3,
Foner 52-3). I cannot hope to convey here the incredible conditions and
long hours endured by factory women (and men), and unfortunately, this
is only one example among thousands. Of course, if any worker quit
because of these poor conditions, there were many others desperate to
take her place.
In thinking about the relationship between these immigrant women
and their work, I find that for them as well as black women, even dreadful,
difficult and poorly paid work could be viewed as a means to a future
better life. Indeed, hope for the future was what brought these
immigrants to America in the first place. This particular twist on the
American dream translated for some working immigrant women into
incentive to work, which initiated them into the process of dreaming about
achieving independence from their families or for themselves. In other
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words, despite intolerable factory situations within which women might
easily have lost hope, some were able to take refuge in the idea of
independence that working might bring them or their families. As more
and more factories dotted the landscape, and more and more immigrants
flocked to America seeking fortune, American society itself found it
difficult to maintain the distinct economic relations between men and
women. Swelling numbers of working class families could not exist on
the income of the husband, resulting in a situation where "the poverty
and itinerancy of working-class families . . . stripped married women of
their husband's support and endowed them with an independent
economic identity. The wage system disrupted . . . the relation of male
protection and female dependency" (Stanley 491-2). Less tied to the true
womanhood ideal simply because it was less than a viable option, and
thus less tied to an image of themselves as helpless domestic creatures,
immigrant women could imagine goals and ideals for themselves which
would have shocked proprietous white women of the same era.
Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers (1925) takes us in precisely this
direction.11 Yezierska describes one Russian Jewish family's struggle
with poverty in the New World, and within that struggle, the youngest
daughter's own struggle within the boundaries of her family's Old World
life. It is a novel of oppositions, the largest being the opposition between
Russia and its 'old' ways, and the hustle and bustle of capitalist,
tantalizing new world America within which the Smolinsky family lives.
11Though I am more interested here in the combined contexts of labor, gender and
ethnicity, Louisa May Alcott's Work functions in a similar manner.
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This opposition and the pressures of the clash between American ways
and ethnic customs is especially felt for the Smolinskys because of their
orthodox Jewish faith and the intensity with which the father, a Rabbi,
adheres to these beliefs. The opposition between the old world and the
new becomes especially marked because the father's religious status
means that he stays home and spend his days in prayer and study rather
than working. In the novel, Rabbi Smolinsky's wife and three daughters
are placed in the position of working to support the family, which they do
with varying success. This family structure reverses the typical American
capitalist/gender hierarchy I've already discussed, where labor/work
industry was gendered 'male' and vested with social and political
authority that contrasted sharply with the 'female' gendered domestic
sphere. Work in the Smolinsky family becomes essentially feminine, part
of a different hierarchy which is geared toward supporting the power of
the father/rabbi figure. Clearly, the father still wields the authority, but
investing women with the 'power' of work has the interesting effect of
taking them along into the current of the American dream, where
success, freedom and individuality are the rewards.
It would be easy to imagine this novel becoming a story in which the
main female character seeks to reverse this perceived 'inequity' between
her (immigrant) family's ways and those of the New World-perhaps by
marrying into a life of leisure and ending up being supported by a man
instead of having to support him. In fact, one of the Smolinsky daughters,
Mashah, seems to feel the differences between her family and 'American'
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families in precisely this way. Mashah is described as the beauty of the
family, always concerned about her clothes and looks--no small feat in a
family of six that didn't always know where its next meal was coming
from. "Mashah worked when she had to work; but the minute she got
home, she was always busy with her beauty, either retrimming her hat, or
pressing her white collar, or washing and brushing her golden hair" (4).
This is, of course, at the expense of Bessie, Fania and Sara, who had to
cook, clean and generally pick up any slack due to Mashah's neglect.
So concerned is Mashah with propriety and social acceptance that she
buys her own separate toothbrush, towel and soap, spending a precious
thirty cents of money necessary for the family's very survival. Like the
Lowell mill girls, Mashah hopes work will be a temporary measure on the
road toward leisure, the true woman's American dream; money spent on
personal effects become investments in herself as a commodity. She
attempts to separate one part of herself that society would view less
favorably~her Jewish immigrant origins-in favor of another part of
herself, the beautiful woman with blonde hair. Her hope is that these
physical attributes will procure her the social acceptance-her own idea
of success.
Sara Smolinsky, youngest daughter and narrator of the novel, makes
another choice; in fact, making her own choices is precisely what takes
her beyond the various failures of her sisters. As a ten year old girl, with
no one in her family able to find work, she buys herring from a merchant
and sells it for a profit. Already, the fluidity and ease with which she
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operates on the New World's terms is evident; rather than look for a job,
she goes into business. And after she sells the herring, she undergoes a
transformation from a skinny, poor ten year old girl living under a
tyrannical father's will to a happy girl with hopes and dreams. "It began
dancing before my eyes .... It lifted me in the air, my happiness. I
couldn't help it. It began dancing under my feet. I danced into our
kitchen. And throwing the fifty pennies, like a shower of gold, into my
mother's lap, I cried, "Now will you yet call me crazy-head?" (22-3). She
watches as each of her older sisters' various suitors are rejected for one
reason or another by her father. She watches them, broken hearted,
marry men of her father's choosing. The watching makes her wary and
builds her resolve. "More and more I began to think inside myself, I don't
want to sell herring for the rest of my days. I want to learn something ....
But how can I do it if I live in this hell house of Father's preaching and
Mother's complaining?" (66).
Sara Smolinsky’s capitalist abilities prove not to have been the
genetic legacy of her father. When he seizes an opportunity to buy a
general store, the family ends up being swindled by sellers who had set
up a store full of empty boxes, hoping to lure unsuspecting buyers into
handing over their money. This setback forces Sara and her mother to
work even harder at stocking shelves and hoping customers will come.
When a customer does come, the Rabbi cajoles him for wanting bran.
"Bran for breakfast? Such things you only hear in this crazy America ....
This is a sensible store. We don't keep such nonsense" (133). His
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'sense' is capitalist non-sense and threatens to drive the store out of
business. This proves to be the breaking point. Sara's frustration can be
viewed in capitalist terms as incredulity in the light of her father's New
World ineptness. Like any good American, she rebels against authority
that hasn't proven itself through hard work. Now seventeen, she resolves
to go to New York and work for herself. "You brazen one," her father
shouts, "[t]he crime of crimes against God-daring your will against your
father's will. In olden times the whole city would have stoned you!" Sara
screams back, "[tjhank God, I'm living in America!. . . I'm going to live my
own life! . . . I'm not from the old country. I'm American!" (137-8). Though
not without its ironies, this declaration of independence is another
moment in a long succession of declarations uttered by American women
in search of a better life.
Conflicts between native culture and American ways have haunted
immigrants to this country for many generations. In the case of Sara
Smolinsky, the conflict is clearly set up in gendered terms, between an
exhaustingly dominant father/patriarchy with God on his side, and a
daughter emboldened by the rhetoric of possibility accessed through her
work history. What is crucial to Sara's sense of possibility can be traced
back to that fifty cents in her hand after her first experience selling
herring-a moment when she learned that money = wages = the path to a
better, freer life through economic independence. The message
becomes that money discriminates against no one; success is all about
how much work one is willing to put into achieving it. This is precisely the
206
potential that surfaced in the story "Ely's Automatic Housemaid"--the
potential for industry or technology to blur social categories which the
story became involved in covering up. For Rabbi Smolinsky, the blurring
of social (in this case, gender) categories has particular ethnic/religious
significance, and the rebellion of a daughter upsets sacred laws that will
have far reaching implications, beyond the loss of a wage earner in the
family.
This path to the American dream takes up much of Sara Smolinsky's
time through the rest of the novel. Whether she knows it or not, her path
is very different than any young man from a similar family; lower wages,
worse conditions and longer hours were historically endured by women
like Sara, making their struggle for existence all the harder. She has
difficulty finding a room since no one will take a young, single girl,
especially one who wants a room alone. "This is a decent house. I'm a
respectable woman," one woman exclaims, thinking Sara must be a
prostitute (158). Her path is clearly not that of the typical, socially
acceptable ’woman' because she imagines a career and economic
independence. Once she finds a job, her co-workers see her with a
similar disdain. "I ask you only, why does a girl go to live alone? . . . We
know kid. Can't fool us, baby! What's his name?" (179-80). While
Sara's life is nothing like they imagine, her lack of interest and time for
men might have made them even more suspicious. Society, like her
father, has difficulty categorizing her. The difficulties she encounters are
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those of a woman on a path to success usually gendered male. Like
Sojourner Truth, Sara Smolinsky is being construed as a man.
The berating makes her so self conscious that she decides one day
that she will attempt to look and act like her co-workers. Imitating for a
moment her sister Mashah's behavior, she looks at herself in a mirror
(something, significantly, she never does in the novel before this), and
sees herself as the object of the social gaze--a gray, drab girl that
contrasts quite strongly with an idealized feminine woman. Determined
to make herself pretty (and continuing to look at herself through society's
lens), she buys makeup, a lace collar, and roses for her hat. Naturally,
this attempt fails miserably and she is laughed at even more by her co
workers, who cajole her for attempting to look 'like a lady.' While clearly
Sara cannot win either way, her attempts to act like a 'normal' woman
becomes a drag performance that never quite covers up what's
underneath. She is unsuccessful in negotiating a 'typical' gender;
however, I think this is in part because the co-workers are directing a
double message at her. Sara can never be a 'lady' not only because she
is a working woman-so are they-but because she is a Jew. What they
mean to say is that she can never be a white lady. Like Sojourner Truth,
Sara Smolinsky can never be a white woman; she can thus never
occupy the more acceptable category of at least being a white woman
who works.
Sara Smolinsky's path on the yellow brick road to capitalist success
always places h^| inan a ^ w a rd position because the pith is usually
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reserved for (white) men. We can see by the end of the novel that her
particular successes become more and more difficult to maintain when
Sara, now a teacher, meets up with her father again after many years.
"Pfui on your education," he rails, "What's going to be your end? A dried
up old maid? You think you can make over the world? .... Woe to
America where women are let free like men. All that's false in politics,
prohibition, and all the evils of the world come from them" (205). On the
one hand, it is clear by now that Sara has deconstructed the
overweening patriarchal authority of the Old World. She is even able to
smile at her father, thinking "I no longer say my father before me, but a
tyrant from the Old World where only men were people. To him I was
nothing but his last unmarried daughter to be bought and sold" (205).
But her New World beau, Hugo Seelig, looks remarkably like her father.
As Thomas Ferraro points out, "Seelig is an older, more established
figure [he is a principal at the school where Sara teaches] in the
hierarchy of a profession that bills itself. . . in terms of knowing, learning
and teaching" (573). In other words he is the Rabbi, transformed. His
position of authority as a school principal is one "made sacred by Sara
and the community's respect," and Sara's respect is garnered because of
her ability to participate in the culture and the rituals-here, those of
education-rather than being specifically and dogmatically shut out of the
process (573-4). In fact, the two figures, father and (eventual) husband,
seem to meld together into one, as Seelig's reverence of the Rabbi and
his eagerness to learn Hebrew isolate them in study together as Sara
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looks on. It is what Thomas Ferraro calls a moment of 'spectatorship'
(rather than participation) which is symptomatic of the compromise Sara
makes at the end of the novel to take her aging and ailing father to live
with her. This moment rather abruptly redirects the (capitalist)
momentum Sara had accumulated throughout the entire novel toward a
decidedly domestic path. In effect, the off-kilter gender/labor hierarchy I
described in the beginning has been reset. In the Old World order, Rabbi
Smolinsky lives the life of leisure while his wife and daughters support
the family. Hugo Seelig, the new man, has a job and a career which
carry with it the potential for supporting the new extended family-
providing Sara with the potential for unrestricted leisure to take care of
her father. She ends the novel feeling the burden of womanhood itself.
"It wasn't just my father, but the generations who made my father whose
weight was still upon me" (297). Who Sara Smolinsky is seems always
to be haunted by the spectre of men.
Like the novel Memoirs of a Millionaire, (discussed in chapter three),
Bread Givers has difficulty imagining where a plot about an independent
woman might lead. In the case of Bread Givers, however, this gender
roadblock is complicated by the 'shadow,' as Sara Smolinsky calls it, of
her ethnic heritage. To become an ultimate American revolutionary, she
would have had to sacrifice her father and, perhaps, her husband. Rabbi
Smolinsky is an especially representative character because, as a rabbi,
he is a repository of Jewish culture and heritage. The theme of being
alone, the dark side of individualism, is a constant one throughout the
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novel; Sara remarks often during her days of long labor and night school
that she cannot bear the feeling of being so alone. Alone would mean
unmarried, and alone would mean not Jewish, not Russian. This price of
assimilation into American society is very high for a first generation
immigrant, and it is especially high for a woman and a Jew, two
especially marked cultural positions less easily absorbed by an
American culture obsessed with the power and dominance inherent in
capitalism. Sara Smolinsky finds she cannot surrender her ethnic
heritage, even though it means an at least partial return to domesticity
and caretaking. I think 'alone' also means the ungendered or
ambiguously gendered position in which nineteenth century society
would place a completely independent woman, an exile or curiosity,
outside of society's rubrics altogether. This radical individualism is a very
difficult position for a Jewish woman (indeed, any immigrant) whose most
important goal has been to assimilate herself into American culture. In
Smolinsky's early experience, capitalism seemed to offer the promise of
success/assimilation to anyone willing to work, but by the end of the
novel the irony becomes that capitalism can only see her as an ethnic
Everywoman needing to be put back in her place. What is perhaps most
interesting is the pull which the more traditional domestic world seems to
have on Sara; however independent she may have become, this factory
girl still felt the weight of true womanhood's dictates. A more optimistic
reading of the end of the novel would emphasize that Yezierska is setting
her characters on the path of resolving the stark oppositions that haunt
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the novel. By elevating Sara Smolinsky to a more powerful position, then
placing her into close proximity with her father, Yezierska brings the New
and Old Worlds directly together, with the potential for compromise.12 I
am more inclined to think that the end of the novel sees her making the
difficult realization that all along, she has been trading the Old World
patriarchy for the New.
Employment: An Elusive Goal
I want to return briefly to the comparison I made earlier between
Bread Givers and the novel Memoirs of a Millionaire. The contrast
between the two women's paths to success is revealing; for Mildred
Brewster it was a mysterious inheritance, for Sara Smolinsky it was a lot
of work. Memoirs would be an entirely different novel if the plot led
Mildred Brewster through chapter after chapter of toil in ten-hour-a-day
stints as a laundress or an ironer as the means to her later financial
successes; most likely, Mildred would not have found financial success
this way. The class and race distinctions between these two fairly similar
novels about women and their paths toward financial gain and a
semblance of independence make one a benevolence novel and one an
'immigrant' novel. Just as it is difficult to imagine Sara Smolinsky
inheriting thirty million dollars, it is equally hard to see Mildred Brewster
enduring the poverty of an immigrant ghetto. What I want to stress here is
12Mariolina Salvatori argues something similar to this in "Women's Work in Novels of
Immigrant Life" in M ELU S Vol 9 No 5, Winter 1982.
212
the difficulty with which a middle-class woman, someone who might pass
her days reading a novel like Memoirs, might have imagining her path to
financial independence leading through a factory or a sweatshop. It is
also telling that neither novel can imagine work by itself leading a woman
on a path toward vast wealth and fortune, capitalist society's indicators of
true success; Mildred Brewster must inherit her money, and there is
certainly no danger of Sara Smolinsky buying up all the buildings in her
neighborhood. The terms of capitalism are still firmly controlled by men;
success through hard work could be as elusive as the goal of
unemployment.
While Bread Givers demonstrates the difficulties a woman might
encounter in any attempt to conform to capitalist ideals, it also offers the
idea that work is one way-perhaps the way-toward the freedom and
independence that were so much the concern of nineteenth century
women. It is no surprise that as the nineteenth century wore on, more
and more white middle class women were beginning to take up this
advice.13 This new generation of women, indebted to their mother's and
grandmother's struggles for freedom and independence are what Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg terms 'New Women,' who "rejected social conventions,
especially those imposed on women. These women fought stagnation.
They acted on their own" (Disorderly Conduct 176). By the late
nineteenth century, many barriers were coming down; Elizabeth
13lt is interesting to note here that, according to Alice Kessler-Harris in Out to W ork, "in
the early settlements of seventeenth-century America, only one group of w o m en -
domestic servants-could properly be called wage earners" (3). Much had changed by the
nineteenth century.
213
Blackwell's fight to become the first woman doctor in America in 1849
was as much a part of past history as the equally distant Seneca Falls
meeting of 1848. Women's colleges were springing up in the northeast,
responding to the larger and larger numbers of women seeking the
education their brothers took for granted. In part, the vision of freedom
and independence being pursued by these women was a result of the
rise of a middle class in America whose financial affluence meant an
extended childhood and education for young women whose futures
might otherwise have been the factory or marriage. This meant that,
increasingly, women wanted to work outside the home because it meant
entrance into the economy on their own terms, rather than as a function
of a father, brother or husband. Changes in property laws later in the
nineteenth century began to forge a place for this New Woman as an
economic entity, able to own, and perhaps more significantly, able to
earn and keep a wage without being obliged to turn it over to her
husband. In a country where economic independence is a crucial aspect
of personal freedom, it is not surprising that one of the indicators of
women’s increasingly independent status is that they began to actively
pursue work in the nineteenth century.
It is important to point out that these New Women, usually white, were
less likely to work in factories or as domestics like their immigrant and
black counterparts; their education and middle class backgrounds meant
that they were more apt to pursue professional careers rather than factory
positions. This is not to say that there was a sudden opening up of'mk%'
214
professions and women were welcomed with open arms, but rather that
these women might hold jobs like that of a secretary, locating them in a
world of office buildings high above the sweatshops. They were likely to
be nurses or teachers, professions in which the way had already been
forged by an earlier generation of pioneers. In fact, an entire category of
’women's' jobs developed, like nursing or teaching, which funnelled
women into professions which at the same time could be annexed by
society as not threatening. While women were beginning to enter the
traditionally 'male' sphere of society, their grand entrance was carefully
regulated via this segregation. For this reason, it is important to
contextualize any idea that major progress was being made. Still,
through the efforts of these women (as well as the efforts of her immigrant
and black counterparts), the gap between women's ideal domestic role
and her relationship to work/labor was becoming more ambiguous. Less
and less would it be a shock for a woman to work at some point in her
life; more and more, women were seeking out careers rather than
marriage as the way to economic self-sustenance.
Still, the term 'career' is loaded with class implications. The effect of
the rise of New Women was the emergence of distinct classes of working
women, imitative of economic stratification already present in American
society. For earlier generations, 'work' could be looked down upon by
women attracted to, and feeling superior because of, the ideal of
domestic pursuits. Now more affluent women could pursue professional
positions, avoid the stigma of the factory, and revel in their newfound
215
independence. The General Federation of Women's Clubs, in its History,
opens with a mini-history of women in general, from the beginning of time
to the present day. They discuss the state of their contemporary society
in terms of just such social stratification, saying that "[i]t was the advent of
the butcher, the baker, the tailor, the candle-maker, the cannery, the
ready made clothing house, the steam laundry, and a thousand other
industries, once hers, now taken over into the hands of men, that made
out of what had hitherto been one great class of women at least three
distinct classes" (24). The factory worker is one extreme and the woman
of leisure, "[giving herself] over to the pursuits of personal pleasure" is the
other (25). Most interesting to me here is their description of a
burgeoning middle term, a "great throng of earnest, eager women who
are neither forced by the exigencies of their fortune to add to the wage-
earning capacity of their families nor are they willing to give themselves
up to a life of personal indulgence" (25). This middle class of women,
able to choose a profession or not, make up what the General Federation
considered the class of women best suited for its reform-minded work. It
is easy to see the class implications of nineteenth century benevolence
movements of all types and the way in which religiously motivated
caretaking roles easily fit themselves into, and were reinforced by, class
rubrics. While benevolence certainly meant distribution of important aid
to those in need, it also meant highlighting one's own role as not-less-
fortunate. Sojourner Truth's powerful (working) arm is such a horrific
216
sight because it cannot be annexed by her middle class audience into
this type of comfortably less-than status.14
The sharp differences between these New (white) working Women
and their working class counterparts was the end result of the rubrics of
capitalism working its way into the lives of women. Just as the advent of
industrialism brought with it a new set of distinct social classes, so did
working women begin to fall into its categories. Talking about working
women later in the nineteenth century becomes a complicated process of
unraveling class, gender and race hierarchies which could operate
simultaneously. In most cases, particular jobs were seen as more
socially degrading or acceptable than others; factory jobs were seen as
'low' compared to the lot of an office worker or a department store clerk.
One observer described the situation in a printshop: "[tjhere are nearly a
hundred girls here of varying degrees of intelligence and social rank . . .
[t]he linotypers and proof-readers have nothing whatever to do with the
bindery girls, making sharp discriminations wherever possible"
(MacLean 43). In part these divisions reflected the relative tolerability
and skill of various positions at the particular job, but on the other hand
they reflect the seeping of class distinctions into the ranks of working
14lt is also important here to highlight the Hom e Economics movement of the nineteenth
century, a niche wherein women less comfortable with working outside the home directed
their energies toward the professionalization of domestic life itself. This move had the
interesting effect of postulating the home as a workplace worthy of study and attention
and highlighted woman's role as its head-rather than going out to the workplace, women
brought the workplace to them. Ironically, the effect of this movement w as to create all
sorts of jobs and educational opportunities for women that led them outside the home.
But ultimately, the home economics movement reinforced socially sanctioned gender
role stereotypes, only slightly dressing-up the old refrain that women should remain at
home. See Kessler-Harris, Out to Work (117).
217
women. Naturally, black and immigrant women were apt to have to take
the 'lowest' jobs, since they were not likely to be hired for anything else.
The difficulties in talking about women working is revealed in another
way through a genre of texts I call the 'studies.'15 These books are about
working women, by women authors of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century whose position as author/analyzer sets up dichotomies
that are visible throughout the text itself. In The Woman Who Waits
(1920), Frances Donovan sets up her project this way:
When I decided to become a waitress, I had no idea of
writing a book. I did not at this time imagine that I was going
to get anything out of my adventures except an experience.
I thought I might get some material for articles that might be
of real interest and I thought I could do this in a short space
of time. I had no idea of what I should discover. I did not
imagine that I was entering a new world and that I should
return with a knowledge of life new and strange to me. I
had had no particular desire to make discoveries. I merely
wanted to see what other women, not in my world, were
doing. (12)
This sense of entering a mysterious world different from her own is
characteristic of these texts; in some the pretext for entrance is an actual
scientific study of working conditions or wage scales.16 While less
15S ee also Donovan's other forays into the world of work--T he Saleslady (Chicago: Univ
of Chicago Press 1929); and The Schoolma'm (NY: Frederick A. Stokes Co. 1938). Other
examples of studies of this type include: Cornelia Stratton Parker, Working With the
Working W oman (NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers 1922); Edith Abbott, Women in
Industry; Annie Marion MacLean, W age Earning W om en; Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie
Van Vorst, The W oman Who Toils. Being the Experience of Two Gentlewomen as
Factory Girls (NY: Doubleday 1903); and Alice Henry, The T rade Union W om an.
16lt is crucial to note the w ay in which the language of science could reinforce social
hierarchies of all types by lending its air of authority and finality to whatever area of study in
which it was applied. As I discussed in chapters one and two, the authority of this
language was used specifically to call the blurring of gender lines by women activists into
question. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg puts it this way:" . . . as bourgeois women began to
challenge the pre-eminence of fem ale domesticity within the pantheon of bourgeois
218
scientifically motivated than some texts, The Woman Who Waits still
purports to investigate and discover just what the lives of 'working'
women were like. The sense of a marked difference between the author
of the text and the women studied is highlighted by the genre itself; the
hierarchy between the studier and the studied, the gazer and the object
of the gaze, the middle and working class all work together here and
demonstrate themselves as mutually reinforceable and nearly equivalent
terms. The need to study or analyze women's work itself is certainly
indicative on some level of the ambivalence and anxiety which work (at
least, certain types of work) could engender among both women and
men. Frances Donovan's nine months as a waitress is an experience
she can look back upon, reflect upon, and write about as something
separate from herself, without having to continue to experience, out of
necessity, for the rest of her life. The implied ideal becomes the life of the
author outside of the text, who is able to look upon the life of the working
woman without having to get her hands too dirty. In one way, the text can
be read as more about Donovan herself than about the lives of
waitresses, an apology for her middle-class status.
Most revealing along these lines are the way in which Donovan is
regularly fired from or quits her various waitressing jobs. Her first job
lasts four days, until an incident occurs where the manager insists she
values, the male bourgeois elaborated, in an increasingly deterministic language, the
original medico-scientific insistence that women's biology was women's destiny" in
Disorderly Conduct (178). T h e employment of the scientific gaze by women to analyze
other women is thus very problematic; it is reminiscent of the authoritative voice of the
boarding house rules posted to regulate the lives of factory women at Lowell,
Massachusetts.
219
bring a patron cream for his coffee when he doesn't want it. "You do as I
tetl you if you want to stay here," he shouts. "I'm not particular about
staying," she replies, and is promptly fired. The availability of work is
such that waitressing jobs are easy to find, and Frances Donovan moves
freely among them in a manner that reveals her economic status. She
decides to quit a later job because "it was my first long hour job and I
found it very exhausting" (95). Investigations of the lot of working women
become for New Women a type of intellectualized benevolence or meta
work. Studying working class women was one way New Women could
insure the stability of their own social/work status. This is not to erase the
positive effects of educating the public about the poverty and horrible
working conditions; I mean to point out, however, the precarious position
of the New Woman as she began to align herself with the voice of the
(male) bourgeoisie. While society was beginning to castigate New
Women for their masculine-coded, work-oriented goals with the rhetoric
of race genocide among other things, New Women could divert attention
from themselves by saying that it is these working class women who are
doing the terribly difficult (unfeminine) jobs, being forced into prostitution
on the side because of low pay, doing things no woman should have to
do. Women took up the same oppositionary positions against each other
that men had already taken up against them; in effect they were using the
female ideal against each other. Sara Smolinsky was never able to
220
completely resolve the oppositions that characterized her lifelong
struggle; New Women had an equally difficult time.17
In the nineteenth century, labor unions were at the forefront of
negotiating the boundaries of work and its place within people's lives
and within society. The history of labor unions and their conflicts with
managers and owners over working hours, conditions and pay is a vital
part of the history of this time period. During a time when discussions
and conflicts about wage work played themselves out in the form of
strikes and related labor unrest, looking at what kinds of discussions
were going on in relation to women's labor is revealing. If we use wage
work and women's relationship to it as a barometer of sorts to understand
society's perception of gender, we presume gender ’progress' as women
forging a relationship with capitalism. From this perspective, the 1848
Seneca Falls Convention looks different than the way it is usually cast.
Rather than a founding moment, Seneca Falls was a crucial turning point
between the women's rights ideals put forth much earlier by women in
the labor movement and women of the new middle and upper classes
who had the leisure time to actively pursue these ideals. From Philip
Foner's perspective, "practically every argument put forth by the middle-
17T he studies are one step from a genre of advice manuals for working women cited by
Sarah Eisenstein in Give Us Bread But Give Us Roses: Working W omen's Consciousness
in the United States (London: Routledge 1983). In chapter four, "Victorian Ideology and
Working Women," Eisenstein discusses the ways in which these texts sought to give
advice on issues such as the most desirable and ladylike jobs and ways to behave while
on and off the job so as to avoid impropriety. The implication of this rush of advice, of
course, was that by entering the job market a 'true' woman was in danger of being
victimized by all sorts of threats to her essential (non wage-working) femininity.
221
class women's rights pioneers was advanced in the publications of the
militant factory women" (33). The class separation between suffragists
and the population of women at large who they claimed to represent is
the same separation as that between benevolence women and their
charges, and that between new women, fresh out of college, and their
scientific 'subjects,' often working-class women. The answer to the
question I posed earlier in this chapter— how did the Grimkes and
Stantons and Anthonys connect their conceptualizations of female
identity to capitalist narratives of self definition through industrial ization-
is, then, that often these two streams had difficulty connecting at all.
Connections were being made, however, by women of the working
classes. However materially different their situations than those of their
sisters of leisure, the difficulties they encountered look remarkably similar
to those endured by suffrage women. Issues that began to be dealt with
by labor at large-pay, working conditions, etc.-w ere issues that women
had all along been concerned with, since at the heart of women's labor
issues was the idea of gender equality. In her brief utopia "A New
Society," Lowell mill worker Betsy Chamberlain puts forth a Declaration
of Sentiments-like list of resolutions, including "[t]hat the wages of
females shall be equal to the wages of males, [and] that they may be
ertablfed to maintain proper independence of character and virtuous
deportment" (Eisler 209). This was 1841, seven years before Seneca
Falls; if we consider that the Lowell mills first opened in 1822, it is easy to
see that women's issues had been brewing for quite a long time. Strikes
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and protests by women workers were already going on in the 1820's and
30's, but it was not until 1900 that the International Ladies’ Garment
Worker's Union was formed, and in 1903 that the Women's Trade Union
League was founded.
Much of the nation's attention in the later nineteenth century was
focused on labor unrest among working-class men. But between and
among the rise of labor unions like the Knights of Labor and the
American Federation of Labor, the strikes and the violence, were
women's voices and women's issues. For the 4 million-plus women in
the United States labor force by 1890, sheer numbers and obvious,
rampant exploitation made them a group men had to deal with. The
conflicts that resulted over contact between organized (men's) labor and
various women workers and women's groups is just another example of
the difficulties women had impressing upon the societal milieu the idea of
gender equity. One of the ways in which this conflict was expressed was
the difficulty women/women's organizations and unions had in joining
the large and influential labor unions, a situation that looks much like the
conflicts among male and female abolitionists regarding participation in
that movement. In part, this later conflict was the result of the continuing
imposition of the social ideal of womanhood; labor and industry could still
be righteously considered a 'man's' realm. One source of this self-
righteousness was the fact that women's labor put them into direct
competition with men, leading men to view women laborers as a threat.
Since women were invariably paid much less than men, if men went on
223
strike to protest their wages or working conditions, the owners and
managers could hire female workers at much less than their male
counterparts. Men "saw women as part of a reserve of cheap labor being
used against them, and they often blamed the women instead of their
employers for their plight" (Foner 12). The fact that the rise of industry led
to the de-skilling of jobs only contributed to this problem, since it resulted
in the division of formerly skilled work like milling and cloth production
into small increments able to be performed by anyone, including women
and children.18
These conflicts often expressed themselves in gendered terms typical
of the nineteenth century. Sounding much like the abolitionists and anti
suffragists before them, male laborers and labor leaders would argue
that women belonged in the home, not working, and had no place
speaking before them or arguing for their place among them. Thus, in
1845, Sara Bagley, among the most important female labor agitators of
the nineteenth century, had to ask, "[f]or the last half a century, it has
been deemed a violation of women's sphere to appear before the public
as a speaker, but when our rights are trampled on and we appeal in vain
to legislators, what shall we do but appeal to the people?" (Foner 37-8).
Cutting references describing women activists as "factory amazons" and
"shouting amazons" reveal the (ongoing) threat women workers-turned-
18Social divisions were continually invoked and taken advantage of in precisely this
pattern by capitalists; women w ere hired to replace men, black men and women or
immigrants were hired to replace white women (or men) at even lower wages, Italians were
hired to replace Jews, and so on down the line. See Foner, W om en and the American
Labor Movement, chapter seven.
224
agitators posed to gender ideals (Foner 41, 79). Alice Henry notes that
comments like "[g]irls oughtn't to be in our trade, it isn't fit for girls," or
"[m]arried women oughtn't to work," were not uncommon--no doubt
Henry cleaned up the comments for publication and consumption by her
1915 audience (266). Ultimately, the problem for women workers was
not only working conditions and low pay, but a perceived clash by society
between labor rights and women's rights. Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman
and many others, Alice Henry argued that "it is the masses or unskilled,
unorganized, ill paid women and girl workers, who in so many trades
today increase the difficulties of the men tenfold . . . arguing that
organization of all workers, including women, benefited both men and
women and/or society at large (285). In effect, women were being forced
to ask for two things at once, material improvements and gender
equity.19 The result of this ideological segregation was that women were
eventually forced to form their own separate unions, usually short lived.
Racial discrimination meant that often black women were in turn forced to
form their own organizations to address their particular concerns, but
they were accepted along with white women by the Knights of Labor in
the 1880's (Foner 96). This lack of cohesiveness among working women
made the road to success through equality all the more difficult.
19l think this basic conflict between two different paths is at the heart of many conflicts
between different groups of women in the nineteenth century--for example, the
ideological and literal split in the suffrage movement, the gap between benevolence
women and working class women, the gap between white, black and immigrant women,
and so on.
225
When Betsy Chamberlain called for equal pay for equal work in 1841,
I think she, along with all the women who took up the same cry,
expressed a possible bridge between these two poles. Such a solution
would not only bring women wage earners out of the incredible poverty
they experienced, but the effect might be to create a society where men
and women were equal on that most important gage of social m easure-
earning power. Out of this idea comes a utopia like Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's Hertand (1915), which imagines a world that not only reflects
women's capabilities, but adds the point that the 'real' world might be a
better, more peaceful place if their potentialities were tapped. The
problem with Herland. however, is that Charlotte Perkins Gilman can only
imagine gender equity in a lily-white racial landscape separate from
men, effectively reasserting the multiple gaps between the ideal and the
real. Anna Bowman Dodd's socialist twenty-first century in Republic of
the Future (1887) takes a grim and inflated view of such a process of
equalization. Wolfgang, the writer of the series of letters that make up the
novel, finds this America to be dreary, dull and lifeless. "No man can
have any finer house or better interior than another," a situation he calls a
"deadening uniformity" (21). When Wolfgang attempts an arranged
meeting and finds only the daughter of the gentleman at home, we can
see another result of socialism's broad hand-of course, the ambiguity of
gender roles. While Wolfgang finds it difficult to distinguish gender
based on clothing, he relates that the voices of the sexes allow him to
distinguish between them. The strange particularities of the domestic
226
lives of these citizens-abolishment of kitchens and housework, now
completely mechanized-becomes an indictment upon the women's
movement. "The perfecting of the woman movement was retarted for
hundreds of years by the slavish desire of women to please their
husbands by dressing and cooking to suit them," the novel posits
sarcastically (30). Dodd's heavy sarcasm is most apparent when she
discusses this society's view of motherhood as the "chief cause of
degradation of women" (39).
Dodd's later account of how this America reached this socialist state
links women to her indictment of the Anarchists and Socialists-
foreigners who "imported their revolutionary doctrines with them"~who
were responsible for this society's transformation. Women's agitation
seems to have led in part to these troubles with foreigners (Dodd is
particularly rabid about persons from Ireland and Germany) since, as a
result, attention was directed away from the immigrant 'problem.' In any
case, the resultant portrayal of an overwhelmingly monotonous, drab and
lifeless landscape ends up as an indictment of any type of shift away from
capitalist, hierarchical values and places the blame upon women and
immigrants. Certainly Dodd was looking in the right place, since these
were two groups which had done much in the nineteenth century to call
into question values and hierarchies posited by America's founders. Not
surprisingly, Wolfgang's encounter with the daughter (never named)
becomes an ongoing and doomed flirtation which serves as a basis for
the indictment of the society at large. The woman's ultimate refusal to
227
return to his native Sweden with him becomes a miniature portrait of all
that is wrong for Dodd in her postulated society. Politically imposed
gender 'equity' has covered over 'natural' instincts between men and
women that become reflective of competitive and economic instincts also
suppressed in this society. What is for Dodd a skewed gender equity
becomes the basis of moral/economic judgement.20
From the opposite perspective, Louisa May Alcott's "Transcendental
Wild Oats" (1873) tells the story of a utopian community whose lofty
principles have gone awry. While both Dodd's and Alcott's stories serve
as indictments of reform idealism, Alcott's differs in that she sees her
utopia as unachieved in part because of unsolved labor inequities, not
because of their erasure. Several families make their retreat into the
New England countryside, hoping to live together in a cooperative
community. The story consists of contrasts between their ideas about the
place and the actual conditions encountered on their homestead,
beginning right away with Alcott's description of their "prospective Eden"
as "an old red farmhouse, a dilapidated barn, many acres of meadow-
land, and a grove" (448). More telling are the conflicts between the
idealistic husbands and the practical wives. "Every meal should be a
sacrament, and the vessels used should be beautiful and symbolical,"
muses one (male) devotee, causing a woman to remark, "[those dishes
are the] hardest things in the world to keep bright. Will whiting be
20The introduction to the 1970 edition of Republic of the Future propels the implications
of the novel into the twentieth century by aligning Dodd's indictment of socialism with
America's then-current staunch Cold W ar opposition to the Soviet Union.
228
allowed into the community?" to which the response is, "Such trivial
questions will be discussed at a more fitting time" (450). This theme of
contrasts continues throughout the piece, which becomes a witty satire
on lofty utopian ideals that fail to realize the practical matters of the
everyday world. Not surprisingly, the utopian community soon falls apart,
since ideas do not prove capable of bringing in food and supplies for the
winter. "Transcendental Wild Oats" ends with the wife of one devotee
assuming the helm, assuring her husband that "I can sew and you can
chop wood . . . cheer up, dear heart, for while there is work and love in
the world we shall not suffer" (460). Her practical plans are, of course,
quite a contrast to the abstract concepts of her husband and his
compatriots; this brief utopia of shared labor among men and women is
the real ideal I think Louisa May Alcott means to offer us. For Alcott,
gender inequity is an adequate and important basis for broader social
criticism.
Issues of gender and labor played themselves out along a complex
path in the nineteenth century. While shifts in gender roles were a result
of the industrial revolution and the resultant imperative to earn, American
capitalist society was simultaneously engaged in reproducing
hierarchies like gender and race which were standbys of earlier eras.
The position of women in the midst of this flux left her, as I've described,
caught between a social ideal which made her domestic labor disappear
(since it was not wage work), and a sometimes harsh reality which
229
required her to go out into the world and work (a path sometimes strewn
with unexpected rewards). This theme of contrasts recurs in the novels
and stories, where the message is conveyed by resolution of opposites--
in "Ely's Automatic Housemaid" it was domestic vs. technological, for
Sara Smolinsky it was her career vs. her ethnic/domestic background,
and so on. The apprehension with which society could view the blurring
boundaries is apparent in these texts, where shifts are either harshly
criticized or eventually rejected. Capitalism's divisive imperative is
difficult to reconcile with social movements that promote new types of
meaning the resultant ambiguity would necessitate. Any extension of the
domestic sphere was conceivable only within the context of a movement
open to all and committed to broad social reform (Levine 149). This is
Alcott's message, but Anna Bowman Dodd's broad indictment of
socialism brings issues of equality into sharp focus: equality was and is
not orthodox capitalism. For a society founded upon freedom from Old
World constraint and raised on the industrial revolution, this amounts to
blasphemy.
These types of conflicts between an ideal American utopia and the
harsh realities of labor unrest, urban decay and clashes between races
and genders characterized American society in the nineteenth century. It
was a society always looking ahead and beyond to a final magic
resolution to its continually produced dichotomies and conflicts. Women
involved in the labor movement and with the suffrage m o v e m e n t^ re in
their various ways attempting to direct this social dialogue in a specific
230
direction, toward deconstructing woman's symbolic status. Gender's role
in the way labor and work and capitalism was constructed in America is
clearly seen from the difficulties with which society had in
conceptualizing the existence of female laborers, whether black, white or
immigrant. Women's ideal status as non-workers and symbols of leisure
presented by husbands with enough wealth, made their forays into the
world of factory labor and professional occupations difficult. This was not
only due to the fact that society resisted changes in the way it understood
gender, but because changing the way society understood gender meant
changing the way society understood the entire system of economic
relationships between owner and worker, male and female. The intricate
economic webs connecting men and women made understanding
gender a complex matter of understanding economic relations, and for
that very reason difficult to change.
231
Dreaming an American Dream
or
Envisioning a Feminist Utopia
Every generation of immigrants reinvents America in the
shape of what they imagine it to be.
Andrei Codrescu1
When I was in the fifth grade, I learned that the word 'America' comes
from the name Amerigo Vespucci, the sixteenth century man who drew
the official map of what was then considered the New World. I recently
confirmed this fact in an Encyclopedia Brittanica. While fifteenth century
world maps bear little resemblance to those of contemporary
cartographers (whose utopias can be made precise by satellite
projections), Vespucci's map could be thought of as documentary
evidence of Western culture's urge toward imagining and 'discovering' a
New World. That the word America finds its origin in these moments
seems to me very appropriate, since this projection-work has become a
tradition ritualized by succeeding generations of conquistadores for over
five hundred years. This project of constructing dream-maps has come to
1 From Road Scholar. Directed by Roger Weisberg and Jean de Segonzac, Public Policy
Productions 1992.
232
characterize what many now interchangeably call the United States and
America, and it is with this context in mind that I have been using the term
America throughout this project. Perhaps it all began with fifteenth and
sixteenth century Spanish and Portuguese explorers, or perhaps it
crystallized when the English Puritans sought a place of religious
freedom here; whatever the case, the American landscape has hosted
continuous waves of people who have perceived it as both empty
enough to welcome them, but full enough to promise future prosperity.2
These continuous waves of immigrants either literally or figuratively
locate themselves in the utopian space of America, and it is this way in
which I want to read Andrei Codrescu's use of the word 'immigrant.' An
immigrant's specific idea of what he hopes to achieve in his utopia is
based upon his own experiences, in his own present, in his country of
origin. (I am using gender very specifically here; the significance of this
will become clearer later.) For the Puritan, it was religious persecution,
for others it might be lack of economic opportunity; as a result, America-
as-utopia becomes a land of religious righteousness or economic
prosperity, respectively. In other words, there is a specific component of
this construction of dream-maps which exists in the past and/or current
experiences of the dreamer. Lacking the ability to practice their religion,
Puritans sought a landscape within which they could do so. These
2See Carroll Smith-Rosenberg on this point of the construction of an American identity in
"Captured Subjects"; the construction of an empty landscape despite native inhabitants
was part of the process by which British settlers legitimated their own imperialist ideals,
and is crucial in understanding the term America fully. Of particular importance is her
observation that originally, 'American' referred to natives of the continent, and only later
were the natives termed 'Indians.'
233
immigrants' utopia was the achievement of the most perfect church,
which would herald apocalypse and the second coming of Jesus Christ.
This was not the particular interest of many European immigrants to
America in the nineteenth century, however. Economic opportunity in the
form of thousands of factory jobs (in addition to world-wide economic
inequities) was one of the main reasons why these dreamers made their
ways to America's shores. In other words, these concepts of what
America is have much to do with individual nationalities and economic
status. They also have to do with particular histories of the countries from
which immigrants originate-hardships of war, displacement and
upheaval, social unrest or drought are all reasons that might drive one to
seek a place free of such concerns. In the same way that Mikhail Bakhtin
posits the inherent situatedness of novelistic discourse within social
'heteroglossia,' utopia is itself inseparable from the society which
produces it.
Throughout this project, I have been focusing on what I see as this
central significance of history/context in understanding a utopian space
like America. This means I am looking at America not so much as an
inert piece of land which has become a neutral stage for various
performances, but as a utopian narrative-a landscape which has
become indistinguishable from the story told about it, a space where form
and content meet. Examining the details of a dream-map in this way
means explicating "[a] fictional practice which posits a future and
simultaneously interrogates the present moment of its production . . . and
234
thus in positing a future illuminates the past" (Bartkowski 11). This crucial
moment of interface between a narrative future and the present of its
production is central to what constitutes a utopian narrative. This is not to
ignore the particularly fantastic qualities of a utopia or the unique
implications of future-projection, but rather to re-focus on production
rather than (future) finality. In other words, I am focusing on an idea of
utopia (and thus of America) as process rather than product.3 Usually,
we think of utopias as clearly defined texts in the tradition of Thomas
More, fantasy narratives which posit a future world full of ultimate Good.
More's word play in constructing the originary nameL/fop/'a-eutopia
(good place) vs. outopia (no place)--is often cited to demonstrate the
irony common to these texts; while postulating a perfect place, the place
is in fact no-place, nonexistent. This inherent irony becomes the source
of criticism from those who feel that time spent thinking about
impossibilities is time wasted. But America is a place, a place which has
been perceived for centuries as a tangible arena of possibility. It is the
unique way in which this landscape has been perceived which I want to
highlight here. Blurring of this strict definition of utopia might be seen as
overlooking a distinction between utopian thought or thinking (a more
general category), and utopian landscapes as such. My intention is not
to ignore this separation, but rather to read the space between those two
categories, and the effect of that reading is to collapse their distinctions.
3See Frederic Jam eson on this idea of utopia-as-process in "Of Islands and Trenches,"
page 6.
235
From this perspective, utopian texts are never very far from home; utopia
can never entirely be 'no-place.'4
If utopia is not nowhere, then where is it? One of the most striking
things about reading a nineteenth century utopian text (in fact, any
utopian text more than a few years old) are details which point to a
specific historical situation. For example, within and around the social
prescriptions in nineteenth century utopian texts by women authors, we
can see reflections of a contemporary obsession with flying machines of
all types. An airplane-like vehicle provides three men their entrance into
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915); in an earlier novel like
Republic of the Future (1887), the mode of transportation is something
like a cross between a 747 and a blimp. Similar blimp structures occur in
Nettie Parish Martin's A Pilgrim's Progress in Other Worlds (1908) as well
as Mrs. Anna Adolph's Aratiq (1899), where the vehicle is capable of
both land and air travel. While airships do not figure prominently in the
overall plot of these novels, they are revealing of a multi-layered social
obsession with technology and flight within which the airplane as we now
know it eventually emerged. The possibility of flight became a metaphor
4 I would, however, agree with Louis Marin, who says in Utopics that the 'no-place' of
utopia is a result of the fact that utopia is a "figure within discourse" and it "does not signify
reality, but rather indicates it discursively" (197, Marin's emphasis). Rather than focus on
the aesthetic representation itself, however, I am focusing on its process of formation and
how the elem ents of the 'Real,' deployed to re-represent or transform prevailing ideology,
constitute the process of utopia. See also Northrup Frye on this point in "Varieties of
Literary Utopias" in Utopias and Utopian Thought Ed. Frank Manuel (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin 1966); "A fixed location in space is 'there' and 'there' is the only answer to the
spatial question 'Where?' Utopia, in fact and in etymology, is not a place; and when the
society it seeks to transcend is everywhere, it can only fit in to what is left.... The
question 'W here is utopia?' is the sam e as the question 'W here is nowhere?' and the only
answer to that question is 'Here'."
236
for the utopian impulse; in these novels, the airship becomes the literal
vehicle through which social transformation is viewed or achieved. A
century later, these literary airships read as quaint reminders of an earlier
era's literal and figurative dreams of both literal and figurative flight. In
the same way, one of the most striking aspects of watching an original
Star Trek episode is a parallel feeling of datedness. Since Star Trek
was a television show instead of a novel, the abundance of visual and
aural details provide a wealth of effects which, years later, locate
themselves instantly in the late 1960's and early 1970's--from hairstyles
to synthesized theme music to the particular machismo of Captain Kirk.
These utopias are full of the details of the society from which they
originate; for this reason they become what Jean Pfaelzer has called
"metahistories" (3). There is neither a magic nor transcendental source
circumventing that positionality.5
Details of utopian dream-spaces are artifacts of the situation and
culture which produced them. In this way, they become representations
or signifiers of social context, ciphers of social and ideological context. If
we follow Althusser's model of ideology as an Ideological State
Apparatus which narrates an individual's relationship to the Real, it
becomes clear that through the utopian act of (re)representation,
prevailing social ideology is highlighted as a function of representation.
5 lronically, (formerly) utopian spaces themselves become history in the form of
nineteenth century texts located in special collections sections of libraries, or as reruns of
1970's T V shows. W hat originated as a projection beyond history into a space that finally
transcended its grasp in fact proves to be just as much a material part of history as any
other text, written or visual.
237
The authoritative 'story' of social context is set into motion as a narrative
in itself, constructed and temporary, when viewed alongside the utopian
narrative. In this way, as Andrei Codrescu put it, the utopia of America
can be continuously reinvented. The utopian 'product,1 whether strictly
futuristic or simply hopeful, becomes an act of narrative re-representation
of society, the effect of which can be to undercut the idea of fixity and
permanence of the prevailing Ideological State Apparatus. Thus, the
possibility of change is suggested. It is not so important whether or not
actual social change ends up looking like the details of the utopian text;
this is what I mean by suggesting that the utopian product is not the
point. What is important is that the possibility or suggestion of process is
created through the utopian narrative. In this way, I see utopian
narratives as expressions of political and social activism.
Recognition of this type of historical context of utopian narratives can
be traced back at least as far as Lewis Mumford's The Story of Utopias
(1922). For Mumford, 'reality' can be divided into the material world and
the world of ideas; the world of ideas becomes the source of the 'idolum1
or utopian impulse, through which "a new sort of reality is projected back
again upon the external world" (15). This type of strict mind/body dualism
separating a world of (neutral) materiality and a world of (divine) ideas is
often deployed when thinking about utopias. The result is an analysis
which focuses on the text as product, as fantasy, as having extracted and
projected a central spiritual and/or unique, ideal core from the chaos of
reality--an ideal toward which the author wishes to direct readers and/or
238
society. For me, the space created between the 'real' (or material) and
the 'fictional' utopian impulse is not really a space at all, but rather one
ideological or representational system meeting up with another, different
one. As Frederic Jameson puts it:
[For Louis Marin, the] Utopian text [is] a determinate
type of praxis, rather than . . . a specific mode of
representation, a praxis which has less to do with the
construction and perfection of someone's "idea" of a
"perfect society" than it does with a concrete set of
mental operations to be performed on a determinate
type of raw material given in advance which is
contemporary society itself, or rather, what amounts
to the same thing, to those collective representations
of contemporary society which inform our ideologies
just as they order our experience of daily life. (6)
The process of utopian narrative, then, is more like what Frances
Bartkowski called an 'interrogation,' or what I would call a dialogue,
between or among representations— the existing social conceptual
scheme and the utopian replacement. We should understand the
utopian project not as "foreclos[ing] the agenda for the future in terms of a
homogeneous revolutionary plan but rather [as] hold[ing] open the act of
negating the present. . . " (Moylan 26-7).
Not coincidentally, discussing utopian narrative in terms of process
broadens the discussion of just what constitutes a utopian text or
narrative. The utopian impulse (and its powerful effect) is the product of
what I've called a particularly American logic of representation which can
be found in speeches, slave narratives, religious tracts and benevolence
writings as well as in novels or fiction. In discussing and identifying a
definition of utopian narrative in America almost exclusively through the
239
limited focus of the utopian novel, it is easy to construe an idea of a
waxing and waning of a utopian impulse in America, following the
waxing and waning of the production of utopian novels themselves. I
would argue that the utopian impulse and/or the utopian process has
been (and continues to be) central to the construction of a national
identity throughout (and even before) the existence of the United States
of America. As I've discussed, various activist groups throughout
American history, such as nineteenth century woman suffrage activists,
attempted to reshape and redefine just what constitutes the American
ideal by imitating the utopian impulse which shaped the nation's
founding itself. Understanding utopia through the lens of the utopian
novel says more about the particular historical moment within which it
became popular to channel such expression through the genre of the
novel, and is not necessarily indicative of an upsurge in importance of
the utopian impulse itself. From my perspective, utopian narrative
constitutes the way Americans have understood themselves and their
society from the earliest settlements to the present day.6
The New World has variously been seen as a glorious repository of
gold and spices, the location of a fountain of youth and a space within
which religions could be practiced or fortunes made. One way of
6This should not be construed as suggesting that either the idea of utopia or utopian
narratives themselves are exclusively American, or can only be produced in America.
W hat I am highlighting here is the particular significance of utopia in America, a land
specifically constructed in the minds of past and present inhabitants as utopian, as
somehow containing special promise and/or possibility not available elsewhere.
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approaching this constant conceptual reinvention of America is to look at
documents which attempt to codify the idea of America, documents which
are utopian texts in the same sense as Thomas More's Utopia. The
Declaration of Independence is implicitly utopian within its primary
objective, which is to outline the reasons for rebellion against King
George III. The Constitution is more explicitly utopian in that it is a
specific representation of the new nation's sense of just what should
constitute an ideal nation. The elaborate system of checks and balances
between executive, legislative and judicial branches and the
establishment of the Senate and the House of Representatives all point
toward the idea of a utopian state on the scale of Plato's Republic. But in
their original form, the Constitution and the ten Bill of Rights amendments
are significant both for what they include and for what they leave out.
Article one, section two reads that, for purposes of determining
representation, "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned
among the several States . . . according to their respective Numbers,
which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free
Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." Just who
rated full membership in this fledging America was clearly parceled out
as not a slave (and thus, not African-American) and not among the native
people of the continent, but rather those who traced their (white, male)
heritage back to the European settlers of the seventeenth century. But if
we look through the amendments to the Constitution, post Civil War
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Amendments thirteen, fourteen and fifteen declare slavery abolished,
naturalize slaves as citizens (since they were born in the United States),
and allow black men the right to vote. Clearly, what constituted the
American utopia after the Civil War was quite a shift from what the
authors of the Constitution had envisioned. Each constitutional
amendment could be viewed, then, as a potential utopian destination, a
utopian narrative in itself. Proponents of Amendment eighteen, which
established Prohibition in 1919, envisioned a society rid of crime,
alcohol-related violence, disease and, as a result, full of the potential for
social improvement of all kinds. Amendment nineteen, which brought
voting rights to women in 1920, was seen as a vehicle carrying a reform-
minded voting bloc of women into the mainstream; the implication was
that an era of educational and social reorganization and improvement
was sure to follow.
In understanding these amendment-utopias as process, I would view
them as interfaces of competing ideologies. Woman suffrage was the
product of over sixty years of lobbying efforts spreading the doctrine of
gender equity to a society which greatly resisted the idea. Many of the
various literary utopias I've discussed in the preceding chapters are also
utopias which contain this moment where gender hierarchy and gender
equity met and fought it out on various levels. Taken as a whole, the
Constitution institutionalizes a property of fluidity (in the potential for
amendment) which can be read as codifying and institutionalizing the
idea of process, not utopian finality. In this way, this ultimate
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documentary representation of America is quintessential^ American not
necessarily because of the values of representative democracy inscribed
within it, but because it constitutes the 'rules' of identity-formation in
America. It codifies and legitimates the American/utopian logic of
representation which posits an ideal that propels society into peaceful
co-existence as 'we the people.' Thus it establishes the ritual of renewal
that I described earlier in terms of Amerigo Vespucci’s dream-map
cartography, and of the Puritans' legitimization of their religious
enterprise. It is for this reason that I would take issue with Jean
Baudrillard's assessment of America as 'utopia achieved.' While his
Continental view of America exists within a long tradition of texts
stretching back to Crevecoeur and Tocqueville, it is precisely the
capability of metamorphosis necessary to any definition of America which
allows and/or receives his projections as possible.
The fact that the Constitution is an amendable, utopian document as
I've described points toward a perpetual and intoxicating state of
possibility taken advantage of by many generations of immigrants. This
is what Herbert Marcuse meant when he said that "progress must
continually negate itself in order to remain progress" (36-7). The
implication is that utopias must be abandoned to continue to be
possible.7 This cyclical quality, however, is tantamount to an admission
7For this reason, the idea of the frontier in American history, in all its complexity, cannot be
underestimated. Originally, the New World was a frontier for European explorers; then,
the area immediately surrounding Roanoke Island or Plymouth Rock; later, the frontier
constituted anything west of the Mississippi River, and so on— each idea of 'frontier'
discarded and eventually replaced by another. The frontier marks the dividing line
between the known and the not-yet-known, a line between the present and a possible
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of the fleeting character of any America as a final, ideal utopian
destination. The utopian paradox rears its ugly head if we look at
America in this way; the Constitutional utopia can, by definition, never
finally be achieved. The very amendments which establish a changing
utopian landscape can also serve as miniature dystopias, or marks of
past exclusions and omissions which are part of United States history.
Their existence points toward the (horrifying) probability that more such
amendments might follow. While the utopian process opens up
prevailing norms to scrutiny, it could also be seen as undermining its own
authority by suggesting the anxiety of constant process.8
In looking at America-as-utopia as this process of constant renewal, I
want to point out that past amendments represent blind spots of earlier
utopias. It is interesting to notice, for example, that the Puritans'
expedition to the New World did not include the consideration that the
New World was already inhabited; in fact, the New World was not 'new'
at all, but had been there all along. This incredible blindness to the facts
of the situation, and obsession with their own dream project (and, not
incidentally, the superiority and finality of it) set the stage for genocide in
later centuries, since the Native peoples of Turtle Island did not figure as
part of the Puritan's plan. This process of what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
calls 'displacement' links Puritan settlers with the imperialist projects of
the European explorers (Captured Subjects 178). In this way I think that
future or utopia. Today Americans think of space or the universe as the sam e kind of
frontier, and it is often upon this uncharted landscape which we project fantasies of
utopian social harmony.
8See Ernst Bloch's notion of the 'melancholy of fulfillment' in The Principle of Hope.
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we can see the utopian impulse as a type of tunnel vision; since the
utopian impulse is particularly tied up with the history of its time period,
this is no surprise. The cast of characters of a utopian space reflect the
particular biases of the age.
I have said that utopia is a moment of interface between two
representations, the ideological representation which constitutes
perceived reality and the utopian representation of the future which
critiques it. It is in this way that I understand Louis Marin's assertion that
"utopia is an ideological critique of ideology," working by displacement
onto a future landscape (195). The process of future projection disrupts
(or displaces) the authority of the ideology it re-represents, or
deconstructs. Yet in recognizing the ideological, historical component of
a utopian space itself, utopias must necessarily be in themselves equally
hegemonic projections. This can be seen in reading the (formerly)
utopian Article one of the Constitution against amendments thirteen,
fourteen and fifteen, the utopia of the abolishment of slavery. We can
also read Amendment fourteen (establishing the right of black men to
vote), against Amendment twenty-four, which abolished poll taxes,
sometimes used to prevent black men and women from voting. In each
case, the previous America-as-utopia was replaced by a subsequent one
which redefined the terms of ethnic citizenship and representation. As I
pointed out in chapter two, something similar occurs in Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's Herland. The triumphant utopia of (white) womanhood is
clearly the result of the defeat of a slave rebellion after the reign of men
245
has already been overthrown. The violence and its genocidal
implications does not seem to concern either Van, the narrator, any of the
inhabitants of Herland, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself. Because of
the essential situatedness of a utopian narrative within the Ideological
State Apparatus from whence it sprung, utopia must be at least in part
understood "as operating within the ideological, both helping it along and
pulling against it" (Moylan 19).
It is this context, then, which I want to read the various attacks upon the
(utopia-seeking) woman movement in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Science-based criticism of women activists, based upon the
possibility of their becoming unfit mothers, or worse, not mothers at all is
just one method through which society attempted to recoup control of
their already established conception of the American ideal. I also think
that it is in this context that we can read the narrative 'doubleness' of
many of the utopian novels which I have discussed in earlier chapters.
By doubleness, I mean the way in which these novels seem to
simultaneously embark upon a revolutionary utopian course, only to
have that course undermined by the end. Memoirs of a Millionaire
comes to mind as one particular case; this is a novel that sets up the
hope of solving multitudes of social problems, then switches course
rather abruptly and protagonist Mildred Brewster dies after retreating into
pessimism and marriage. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ hopeful heavenly
landscapes also undermine their own optimism by replicating the very
rubrics of society which they purport to transcend. The utopian story
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"Sequel to The Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century'," which I
discussed in chapter one, ends in a literal disruption of the narrative
itself, an explosion or earthquake. I read this as a direct confrontation
with possibility, a space of non-narratability opened up by the utopian
wedge Jane Sophia Appleton inserted into the discursive norm set out by
her counterpart Edward Kent in his "Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth
Century." Appleton 'recovers' from this confrontation with radical
possibility by waking the narrator up from her dream. These various
forays and recoveries are reminders of the intimate relationship between
utopian narrative and dominant ideology; it would, in fact, be impossible
to posit a utopia completely outside of social rubrics because it would be
impossible to imagine in those (non)terms, outside of language itself.
Any suggestion by nineteenth century women activists that the careful
structuring of an American national identity by the founding fathers was in
fact nonexistent and/or useless would serve to undermine their project by
undermining the built-in national process of possibility/utopia itself. The
strategy of utopia in America requires an almost surgical precision in
order to posit change while at the same time maintaining the (stable)
conditions for its realization. It is for this reason that the Declaration of
Sentiments is such a brilliant move, since it invokes an idea of change
while simultaneously re-invoking the whole rubric of American national
identity as set forth in its founding documents.
Since ideology and utopia are inseparable, it is from this vantage
point that we can discuss the hegemony of white women in the
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nineteenth century women's movement. In the very same founding
documents which mid-century white women were attacking as
detrimental to gender concerns, race was also codified as equal to
secondary status. However, these women did not approach the issue of
race as they did gender. Since many of the original activists like Lydia
Maria Child were also heavily involved in abolition, the assumption on
the part of some was that race reform was simply given if (white) women
were allowed to run things. This is entirely possible, considering the
elaborately constructed fantasies of some of the utopian novels by
women authors of the time period. In "Three Hundred Years Hence"
(1836), Mary Griffith's reformed society is largely the result of the simple
shift of power to the hands of women. "As soon as they took their rank as
an equal to men . . . there was no longer any struggle, it became their
ambition to show how long the world had been benighted by thus
keeping them in a degraded state" (87). Economic reform, education
reform, free trade and even revised building codes to prevent fires are all
envisioned as the result of gender role reversal. Within and around all
this idealism, we find that most slaves have been sent back to Africa, and
those remaining are proud of their race and would not think of
intermarriage! Griffith's gender utopia solves the problem of race by
ridding the nation of most non-whites and carefully, comfortably setting
apart those that are left.
As I discussed in chapter two, white women activists' approach to
connecting their movement with their sisters of other races was nervous
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at best and racist at worst. With true utopian idealism, white women
overestimated the power of gender reform, not understanding that utopia,
since ideological, cannot exist outside discourse--in this case, race
discourse. In thinking of their utopia in these fixed terms, equally as fixed
as the terms of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution, white
women set themselves up for their own downfall. Since utopia is a
function of prevailing ideology, utopia should not be seen as a final,
ultimate end in itself. Its dual nature as both revolutionary and
ideological takes it beyond that role as simply 'product,' an idea which I
discussed earlier. Utopia should be seen as representing one narrative
direction, which can or will be later modified, changed and rerouted. In
this way, the hegemony of nineteenth century women's lily white gender
utopia was later called to task as black women began to rise out of the
depths of gender and race slavery. They would then posit the obvious-
that no gender utopia was possible while women of color were still
thought of as second class. Ultimately, the realization of gender utopia
has proven to be a much more complex process than those meeting at
Seneca Falls ever imagined.
In understanding the interaction of ideology and the utopian impulse
in this way, utopia might be understood as a dead end of sorts, an
exercise in futility. The utopian impulse looks regulatory rather than
revolutionary, since dominant ideology regulates modes of resistance as
well as conformity (Waugh 196). In implicating a specific positionality of
the utopian impulse or narrative by asserting its specific historical and
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ideological locus, I have indeed implied the inseparability of ideological
narrative and utopian narrative. But this Foucauldian situation, within
which "resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power,"
should not be read as the positing of an ideological monolith over which,
in infinite futility, we all attempt to push our individual boulders (History
95).9 Foucault understood power relationships within ideology to be
"strictly relational. . . their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of
resistance" (History 95). Resistance operates by "fracturing unities and
effecting regroupings . . . cutting them up and remolding them," and
eventually, it is "the strategic codification of these points of resistance that
makes a revolution possible . . ." (History 96). Utopian narrative cannot
be traced outside of the discourse within which it originated, but this is
also exactly the source of its power to disrupt and re-represent.
Gendering and Regenerating Utopia
In one way, America existed as an un-gendered concept in the minds
of those early Americans; the principles of Freedom and Democracy
characteristic of the new United States were annexed as abstract terms
j applying to 'all men,' supposedly beyond the specifics of race and
l ____________________________
| 9S ee also Marcuse's distinction between social structures of Domination and Freedom in
I Five Lectures: 1-2: "Domination is in effect when individual goals and purposes and the
I means of striving for and attaining them are prescribed .... Freedom is a form of
i domination: the one in which the m eans provided to satisfy the needs of the individual
I with a minimum of displeasure and renunciation." This is also similar to Mikhail Bakhtin's
notion of centrifugal and centripetal (centering and decentering) forces in language. See
"Discourse in the Novel" in The Dialogic Imagination Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist (Austin: Univ of Texas Press 1981).
250
gender. The imperatives of nation-formation dictated sweeping
generalizations which went beyond specifics; generalizing at this level
authorized the 'chosenness' and final Truth of the new nation and its
rebellious project. Of course, beneath the glory of the terms of Freedom
and Democracy were very specific cultural erasures. I've already pointed
out the way in which the Constitution specifically excludes two groups of
people (African Americans and 'Indians') from access to the category of
Freedom. Amendment fourteen first entered the word 'male' into the
Constitution, highlighting gender as a nationally legislated condition of
citizenship (measured in this case by voting rights). Before this, however,
other laws and customs enacted gender restrictions whose effect was to
limit full participation by women on different social levels. In this way, the
early American utopia was, in fact, a profoundly gendered national
concept. In the case of African-American women (usually slaves) or
Native American women, gender was even less of an issue, since race
took precedence over gender concerns in the mindset of dominant
ideology.10 White women, while because of their race farther ahead on
the hierarchy of national identity, were nevertheless restricted from its
rights and privileges on many fronts.
10See Carroll Smith-Rosenberg's "Captured Subjects": "British-American women . . .
participated in the process by which the women in a number of critical tribes (Creek,
Cherokee, Iroquois) lost their right to land ownership, their control of agricultural
production, [and] their right to a significant political and religious voice in tribal affairs"
(179).
251
The basis upon which gender hierarchy was justified was the legal
category of 'feme covert,' traceable to English common law precedent.11
Under the doctrine of coverture, a woman was, upon marriage, subject to
the legal authority and protection of her husband. This foundational
doctrine, itself traceable to Canon Law and biblical gender divisions
based on the story of Adam and Eve, legitimized a social situation
whereby a woman had no right to own property or inherit it, no right to
keep wages she might earn, nor any right to divorce her husband, in
many cases. Existence as a legal non-entity, what Eleanor Flexner,
following William Blackstone, calls 'civil death,' was a significant status in
that it created a situation of subjection under the law of marriage which
then translated into women's subjection under the laws of the nation.
Clearly, someone who was 'civilly dead' could not govern, make laws,
participate in the writing of legislation, or sign the Declaration of
Independence. This resulted in the peculiar existence of women as
meta-citizens of America or meta-Americans, experiencing the blessings
of liberty vicariously through a screen of gender relations set up by law
and custom which (self reflexively) empowered their husbands or fathers
or guardians. This screen (or rules of discourse) filtered and directed
11 See, for example, The Lawes Resolutions of W omens Rights: or. the Lawes Provisions
for Woemen. A methodical Collection of such statues and customes. with the causes,
opinions, arguments, and points of learning in the law, as doe property concerne women
(London: John More Esq. 1632); Baron and Feme: A Treatise of the Common Law
Concerning Husbands and W ives (London 1700); The Lawes Respecting W omen, as
the regard their natural rights, or their connections and conduct: in which their interests
and duties as daughters, wards, heiresses, spinsters, sisters, wives, widows, mothers.
legatees, executrixes, and etc. are ascertained and enumerated (London: for J. Johnson
1777).
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what we might call the remnants of the light of utopian America down into
the Platonic cave where, according to social hierarchy, women dwelled.
The difficulty the founding fathers had in imagining women as equal
citizens was the logical outcome of the process within which they had
imagined the new nation itself. Annette Kolodny has pointed out the way
in which America and the potential of the newly discovered land were
integrated into British and American discourse through the metaphor of a
woman's body. For Kolodny, the essential American utopia was "a daily
reality of harmony between man and nature based on an experience of
the land as essentially feminine . . . the land [was] woman, the total
female principle of gratification" (4). The rhetoric of discovery (and thus,
of utopia) was expressed as the conquering of a virgin female body; this
metaphor is a significant indicator of the attempt to justify the imperialist
project of New-World seekers through more palatable gender rhetoric.
This metaphor was transferred into the literal laws of the nation, when the
founding fathers authorized their new form of nationalism by expressing it
in terms of gender difference, reflecting the biblical story of Adam and
Eve. The American paradise was in this way most profoundly modeled
upon a biblical paradise, giving the new nation a sense of moral authority
because of the divine precedent of gender role division.
If the nation was a woman, and the founding of the United States itself
expressed and thought in terms of a heterosexual marriage-model, this
clearly has gender implications for its female inhabitants. If men were the
'discoverers' of the 'female' landscape, clearly any women immigrating to
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America's shores found themselves in a precarious position. Did they
qualify as immigrants in the same way as men? In the sense of numbers
of bodies carried on ships to the New World, yes; once the ships arrived,
however, I think the question becomes murky. If the landscape was
'female' or contained a feminine principle, how could one think the
citizenship of women? Since meaning-makers were heavily invested in
the marriage metaphor as a way of expressing and justifying their
removal to the New World, the numbers of women who came with them
presented a prickly problem. The result? Metaphoric citizenship, which
entitled women to no rights and few privileges--what rights there were,
were derivative of the moral laws of gender as reflected in biblical
interpretations, metamorphosed into legal tracts. As Kolodny put it,
"metaphor and the patterns of daily life refused to be separated" (9). It is
easy to see how this translated into the nineteenth century's doctrine of
gendered spheres, whereby men were seen as naturally suited to the
world of business and politics, and women naturally suited to domestic
pursuits. The home and the family became the microcosm of the nation,
and the idealization of the (white) woman as the pinnacle of moral
achievement justified her exclusion from the 'worldly' realm of laws,
legislation and rights-the realm where meaning is determined. She
could not quite be considered a full-fledged immigrant, and therefore
could not be thought of as a citizen.
It is particularly important to understand the way in which this
nationalism and its gendered terminology affected the imagining (and
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thus, the citizenship status) of women of color in early America. In
imagining the land as a virgin white woman, receptive and conquerable,
early Americans were involved in a process of imagining the nation in a
way which effected a negation and displacement of native (and later,
other ethnic) inhabitants. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg has pointed out that
early European iconographic tradition represented the New World as a
naked American Indian woman (Captured Subjects 178). The
transformation of the perception of Native Americans from this image of a
noble (virgin) savage to the later perception as inhuman savages went
hand in hand with the simultaneous construction of the idea of the
landscape as a white woman, receptive and conquerable. The result
was the denial of identity of Native Americans, along with the
conceptualization of a complex metaphoric and meta-political identity for
white women. As slavery spread and the population of African American
women (and men) increased, they were lumped into the same 'savage'
category as the newly created 'Indians.' This was perpetuated with the
rise of doctrines of race purity and eugenics later in the nineteenth and
early twentieth century.
In understanding the complexities of discourse which dictated gender
roles and created the rules by which women lived in America, I think we
can begin to understand the complexity of the approach within which
nineteenth century women attempted to reposition themselves via use of
the utopian narrative-the American logic of representation. The
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manipulation of gender and race metaphors from which New World
conquerors and the founding fathers claimed linguistic and literal power,
formed the sites from which nineteenth century women began to vocally
resist social and moral constraints. These sites of resistance are
invocations of the utopian impulse and moments of the emergence of a
specifically female and inherently utopian activism. Their critique of
social gender norms set the wheels of the logic of representation once
again into motion.
As a way of examining the mechanisms of this process of re-invoking
utopia, it is useful to look at the way Langston Hughes enacts such a
process in his poem "Let America be America Again (1938)."12 While
Hughes' poem represents the particular voice and activism of an African-
American within American society, I think this poem clearly and explicitly
delineates the utopian activist strategy I am outlining here. Already in the
title we can sense the problem posed by Hughes; while America exists in
one sense as the land of dreams, in another sense that same America
(or, perhaps, america) has kept the speaker(s) from achieving the
promise of utopia. In the first three stanzas of the poem, words that carry
the promise of freedom intersperse with parenthetic cries from those
denied.
12Chronologically, Hughes' poem occurs many decades after the suffrage and woman
movements, yet I think it functions as a precise formulation, a crystallization of the same
utopian strategy. S ee also other Hughes poems like "I, Too," "Freedom Train,"
"Democracy," "Refugee in America," "Freedom's Plow" and "American Heartbreak" in
Selected Poem s of Langston Hughes (NY: Vintage Books 1990), for developments on
the them e of the lost and/or difficult to grasp American Dream.
256
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Hughes chooses not one particular voice with which to argue with the
idea of America, but a collection of voices. Together, they function as a
powerful collective utterance whose weight is sufficient enough and cry
loud enough to be heard through the persistent drone of freedom and
opportunity (also echoed in the poem) which has been heard in America
since its origin.
As the poem progresses, the tight, alternately rhyming early stanzas
give way to a long list of expressions of pain and suffering-individual
moments within the collective expression. "I am the red man driven from
the land./I am the refugee clutching the hope I seek/ But finding only the
same old stupid plan/Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak." Still,
interspersed with the various voices which speak up in a call and
response fashion, is the thread of the hope. "O, I'm the man who sailed
those early seas/ In search of what I meant to be my home," Hughes
writes, tracing the core of hope underneath the bitterness. The most
painful of unrealized hopes is perhaps best encapsulated in the voice of
the slave: "And torn from Black Africa's strand I came/ To build a
homeland of the free." Freedom, of course, has not been something
easily realized for African-Americans in United States history.
The irony of unrealized hopes and dreams in a land that promises the
opposite is the core of the pain expressed by these voices. Yet the
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voices do not express outright anger or deadened paralysis and despair;
they remain halfway between two terms, the promise of a dream and its
final, total loss. In the last two stanzas of the poem, the collective force of
the voices works to forge a path toward utopian realization by asserting
that America is a "land that never has been yet." The implication
becomes that despite the cyclical belief in an America of freedom and
opportunity on the part of some inhabitants and immigrants, in fact
America has never really been America-as-utopia. This is an important
move, because it challenges those who might assert that the utopia is in
America, but only available to a few. In saying that utopia has not been
achieved, Hughes sets into motion the quintessential American utopian
process, which then allows the voices in the poem to jump on board. In
order for America to be America, these voices and lives and work must
be included--"the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME." The poem, then,
serves as a wake up call; despite the obvious chronicles of pain endured
by many, it can be read as equally as optimistic about an idea of America
as the Declaration of Independence, and every bit as concerned about
restoring hope in the promise of the process of fulfillment. "America
never was America to me/ And yet I swear this oath— / America will be!"
In order to change the way gender was thought in America, then, it is
interesting that the women who met at Seneca Falls in the first organized
meeting to address gender concerns constructed a Declaration of
Sentiments, which modeled itself after the Declaration of Independence.
Why not, instead, just create their own list of resolutions, or form an
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organization? Focusing on the Declaration of Independence reinvokes
utopian rhetoric, quite specifically calling attention to the codified function
of America as a process established in the country's founding
documents. Women strategized that integrating themselves into civil life
(as opposed to 'civil death') meant addressing the integral function of
gender in relation to the distribution of power in America. Of course, the
particular focus of the Declaration of Sentiments is to write the place of
women as full and equal citizens of the new democracy. Their assertion
that "all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these rights are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights
governments are instituted ..." is quite a profound moment in the history
of gender in America, because it very suddenly directs the responsibility
of civil law and government in securing and protecting the rights of
women as full citizens. In other words, it posits the rearrangement of the
terms of gender difference integral to the way in which America itself was
thought.
As was the case with Langston Hughes' poem, one of the implications
of this reinvocation of the utopian process of America formation is the
suggestion that a fully realized American utopia, on any terms, was not
yet in existence. For Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the women at Seneca
Falls, America would not be fully complete (a realized utopia) until the
women which comprised a large part of the population were granted the
rights and privileges that were enjoyed by men. Part of the anxiety and
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criticism that followed their bold declaration was due to the fact that in
effect, it set back the process of American utopian realization by
criticizing its faulty construction-its blind spots. In this way, women were
responsible for calling attention to the possibility of what I've called the
'anxiety of constant process' inherent in the construction of America's
national identity. This is a quintessential American activist strategy, but at
the same time its deployment engenders a scripted resistance from those
who wish to maintain the old utopian ideals. The effect of the Declaration
of Sentiments was to call into question the sacredness of the
underpinnings of the American project itself as it rested in its idea of itself
as a recreation of the final truths of biblical gender harmony. The desired
effect of setting gender truths into motion in this way was the recognition
of women as full-fledged American citizens.
In a different fashion, I think Emily Dickinson accomplishes something
similar to the Declaration of Sentiments with her poetry. Much work has
been done assessing Dickinson's poetry as a radical nineteenth century
project of quasi-escape leading to an empowering transformation; as a
result, many readings of Dickinson's poems exist which develop levels
and strategies through which Dickinson accomplishes such
transformations.13 What I want to add to this collection of readings is not
13See for example W endy Martin, An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily
Dickinson. Adrienne Rich (Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press 1984); Joanne
Dobson, Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence (Bloomington: Univ of Indiana Press
1989); Elizabeth Phillips, Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance (University Park:
Penn State Univ Press 1988); Mary Loeffelholz, Dickinson and the Boundaries of
Feminist Theory (Urbana: Univ of Illinois Press 1991).
260
so much another, different set of guideposts for interpreting her work, but
rather to examine these ideas about empowering transformations by
placing them within the context of the (utopian) process through which
they occur. Like so many other women of the nineteenth century, I think
Dickinson can be read as creating her own specifically female utopian
American space by taking up the project of re-narrating experience on
her own terms.
Suzanne Juhaz has suggested that a line in one of Dickinson's poems
forms a fruitful metaphor for examining her work.
Soto! Explore thyself!
Therein thyself shalt find
The "Undiscovered Continent"-
No Settler had the Mind.
[832]
This "undiscovered continent"--the mind-Juhaz develops into a vast
landscape within which Dickinson lived and wrote. For Juhaz,
Dickinson’s radical project became one of developing a language of the
mind that sought freedom from social restrictions. Thus was her world
one in which "the Soul selects her own Society" (poem 303). Juhaz,
however, is interested in uncovering the parameters and characteristics
of the Undiscovered Continent rather than explicating its process.
Charlotte McClure takes Juhaz's idea one step further by pointing out the
similarity between this Undiscovered Continent and the "Glimmering
Frontier" of poem 696, which "Skirts the Acres of Perhaps McClure
connects the idea of the mind as a retreat from discovery with images of
the American frontier, both figurative and literal. She shows us that
261
Dickinson's process of seeking a utopia can be closely aligned to the
ritual opening/closing of the American Frontier that so characterizes the
American project. From this vantage point, Emily Dickinson can be read
as another in a long tradition of American 'explorers.'
Yet, as a woman, Emily Dickinson's voyage can never be Hernando
de Soto's voyage, nor Lewis and Clark's, for that matter. One of the
interesting aspects of Dickinson's idea of the Undiscovered Continent in
poem 832 is that it calls attention to themes of imperialism inherent to the
American experience. The result of this invocation is a unique twist
within which Dickinson founds her own America by asserting that,
despite the 'discovery' of the Mississippi by Soto, undiscovered lands,
frontiers still remain. The irony of the admonishment 'explore thyself,' like
the phrase 'physician-heal thyself' serves to double the project of the
explorer, or physician, back upon (him)self. The necessity becomes self-
examination, rather than the examination/conquering of others or other
landscapes justified through pre-conceived ideals. The glory of
discovery, from an explorer's viewpoint, is diminished because what
becomes important in the poem is not the land masses or rivers mapped
-th e utopias glimpsed. Like Hughes and Stanton, Dickinson asserts that
America, when read as a synonym for utopia, has not been discovered.
Rather, Dickinson calls attention to the process of discovery itself, rather
than accepting and perpetuating its terms. With this poem, Dickinson
claims the 'undiscovered' nature of her own ideals and asserts her
credentials as one equally capable of exploration.
262
While the critical suggestions of both Juhaz and McClure offer
readings of Dickinson which potentialize her poetic destinations, I'd like
to suggest that what is important in reading Dickinson is this type of
challenge to the process of knowing and understanding itself which
happens through the medium of words and language, rather than any
details, however enticingly cryptic, of a radicalized utopian landscape
she may offer. Dickinson's work creates a persona not necessarily
interested in retracing or emulating Hernando de Soto’s journeys, but in
redirecting his mission. Thus, what other 'discoveries' there are to be
made is not necessarily the point; the exploration is all, and the necessity
is to "leave the familiar, the settlement, in order to explore unknown
space" (McClure 77). Like my earlier distinction between
conceptualizing utopia as process rather than product, I want to
emphasize that as Langston Hughes and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
showed that change involves upsetting standardized categories of
meaning, so does Dickinson continue and/or build upon that tradition.
Martha Nell Smith approaches Dickinson's work by outlining what she
calls a 'hermeneutics of possibility' suggested by Dickinson's poetry. For
Smith, Dickinson's work spotlights the interaction between reading and
authorship inherent in the reading process. Dickinson's 'writerliness'
depends on, acknowledges and encourages interaction on the part of the
reader. Her challenge is evident, for example, in the mountains of
scholarship devoted to interpreting the spacing and dashes of her
originally handwritten poems. Readers must "decide whether to regard
263
the marks as Substantive or accidental, to engage in textual production
and in effect become co-authors" (Smith 52-3). Margaret Homans has
outlined Dickinson's work in terms of a similar project, one that follows
Dickinson's realization of the 'concept of language's doubleness'-a
sense that the meaningful ness of reality as maintained by the stringency
of linguistic metaphor. Her poems, then, attempt to communicate a
challenge to conceptions of textuality, positing an alternative 'Eden'
separate from the 'fallen' world (in Smith's terms) of reading
authoritatively. As a result, they point toward a space where each reader
can assert the authority to posit his/her conceptions about the text.
Attempts to define Dickinson's terms and methods are themselves
testament to the power of these very methods; they demonstrate
Dickinson's interest in inviting readings rather than determining them.
In other words, by teaching us that reading can be an empowering
individual experience, Dickinson offers us a utopia of unrestricted
possibility. She presents readers with words on the page which, upon
examination, access "an attitude that consciously aspires to be
'prelapsarian'-before a fall into knowledge about how Dickinson was as
a poet or as a woman, and before a fall into opinion of how her texts
should appear in print" (Smith 58). Dickinson teaches her readers to see
with their own eyes rather than through preconceived notions posed by
others, be they explorers, founding fathers or scholars. In doing so, she
offers us a means through which we can understand and shape our own
experience, to 'read' differently. This fluid site of reading, and the
264
process which composes it, is the utopia-the New World or frontier that
stretches expectations and conventions. "Because Dickinson places
linguistic power in the context of her understanding of the fictiveness of
language," Homans writes, "she denies the singleness of that control,
democratizing the structure of poetry" (211). By opening up, as Smith
suggests, possibilities for reading, Dickinson pushes language and the
metaphor of the frontier beyond its association with terms like divide or
conquer or settle. The space reached while reading is not one that
should be read as tangible, but as this very process of collaboration and
mutuality which serves to dissolve barriers rather than perpetuate them.
The metaphor of imperialism/the New World suggested by Dickinson
in poem 832 has particular gender significance because the 'discovery'
of America was not only a geographical event; it also paralleled a
particular deployment of the metaphor of the female body. In many
poems, Dickinson directs her energy toward upsetting the linguistic
conventions which specifically establish gender hierarchy.
In lands I never saw-they say
Immortal Alps look dow n-
Whose Bonnets touch the firmament-
Whose Sandals touch the Tow n-
Meek at whose everlasting feet
A Myriad Daisy play-
Which Sir, are you, and which am I
Upon an August day?
[124]
If to settle the New World meant to conquer 'virgin* land, then Dickinson
points out the ultimate failure of that project when she points out that a
___________________________________________________________________________________
265
continent remains undiscovered, and more importantly, unreachable. In
fact, she throws the concept of 'discovery' itself into confusion, because
she undoes the power of meaning attached to the word. In this way,
Dickinson's project is one of undoing the process of metaphorization
which Kolodny pointed out. By calling attention to the relativity of gender
hierarchy, Dickinson calls into question the power imposed as a
condition of the finality and truth of such linguistic connections. By
undoing the gender metaphor justifying exploration, Dickinson removes
the significance of any 'discoveries.' Any self-respecting explorer of the
imperialist period would not have claimed to have 'discovered' France, or
Denmark, or Portugal, because these countries, however friendly or
unfriendly, were considered to contain inhabitants equally 'civilized'—
possessing equal subjectivity. They were already 'discovered.' In her
poetry, Dickinson propels woman into an equal position of subjectivity to
that of man. By doing so, she shows that woman can be as equal a
speaking subject as man. The result Dickinson offers is the utopia of
possibility for both men and women, once freed from such power
relations.
Feminist Utopias: Then and Now?
In discussing these various invocations by women of themselves as
equal citizens in the American republic, I am talking about the claiming of
a voice. The idea of reclaiming voices has long been a subject of
266
feminist theory and inquiry, and the significance of these reclaimed
voices can be read on many levels, from the importance of the citizen-
voice of a voter, to the voice of one empowered to speak in public, to the
voice of one empowered to narrate. In whatever role, this individual and
collective 'voice' was one through which women spoke as women (not
unproblematically) in the nineteenth century. That women were
speaking from a specifically gendered stance was a moment of claiming
a quite profound power, considering that women's voices had in the past
often been heard only through the filter of their husbands or fathers, if at
all. Angelina and Sara Grimke's efforts to speak out against slavery
despite the social stigma against women speaking in public places is an
early, literal attempt to both summon and spread the power of the voice of
American women. While precedents and effects can be argued one way
or another, I think we can see the echoes of this earlier raising of
women's voices later at Seneca Falls, where white women, empowered
by speech, took the next step of demanding social legitimacy for their
words. The nineteenth and early twentieth century women's movement,
in all its various guises as labor movements, benevolence organizations
or religious explorations each take this empowerment in different
(utopian) directions.
Claiming a voice is claiming the power to speak. By speaking, women
claimed a position of subjectivity in relation to language and thus in
relation to the language of American nationalism. For these women, the
power to speak meant the power to direct, as opposed to being directed-
267
the power to shape rather than to be shaped. Looking back at Annette
Kolodny's analysis of the American landscape as it was/is represented
as the body of a woman, we can say that the claiming of a voice
problematizes the status of woman as this kind of object of
representation. By claiming a voice, women claimed themselves as
speaking subjects, as speaking bodies. What would be the effect if the
(virgin, spotless, beatific) landscape talked back? At that moment, the
hegemony of that (male) voice is disrupted and its ideology, or rules of
representation, are called into question. The Declaration of Sentiments
worked in this way by disrupting the hegemony of the speaking voices of
the founding fathers. The result is a (possible) disruption and redirecting
of the urge to represent in that manner. By speaking, and thus becoming
speaking subjects, women asserted themselves as full-fledged American
citizens, reinventing America in the shape of what they imagined it could
be. In this way, women began to construct their own dream maps of a
transformed American landscape. By embarking on the journey to
utopia, women emerged as full fledged 'immigrants' to an already
historically potentialized American landscape. In other words, going
about the business of reinventing America (in Andrei Codrescu's terms)
means, in part, taking on this process of claiming subjectivity. In doing
so, one emerges as another immigrant pilgrim on the path to
utopia/America.
But there is so much more to it. The journey to utopia is a path of
activism which involves resistance to the power relations dictated by
268
prevailing discourse patterns. But a 'monolith' of prevailing ideology
should be seen, as I’ve discussed, as sets of power relations rather than
as emanating from a central source; it is "reiterated acting that [becomes]
power in its persistence and instability" (Butler, Critically Queer 17). In
other words, power emanates from repetition and conformity which
becomes a way of representing law, convention, what is believed to be
'right.' Along with this assessment of the nature of power, it is equally
important to remember the implications for the concept of that very
speaking subject that has been so often the pursuit of later twentieth
century activist and revisionist inquiry. Power relations, including the
allocation of subjectivity, are all sets of collectively defined 'truths,' or
effects of discourse, which should not be understood as final,
transcendental, or essential. In understanding the nature of discourse in
this way, I want to point out the resultant intricate, multifaceted nature of
resistance. In other words, claiming subjectivity and/or a voice was a
nineteenth century feminist utopia. But it is not enough. That so many
utopian novels written by women in the nineteenth century simply
imagine societies in which gender roles are reversed, with not-very-
liberating results for slaves or working classes and others, is indicative of
the limits of this path of (narrative) resistance. This is a way of reiterating
Louis Marin's understanding, which I expressed earlier, that utopia can
only be an ideological critique of ideology. The path to utopia-the path
of resistance and activisnv-should not be understood as a yellow brick
road to an Emerald City, along which rebellious people shed moldy,
269
constraining identities for new and improved ones. There is no 'identity'
underneath, around, inside the discourse through which we know
ourselves to be 'women' or 'men.' Supposedly new and improved,
unrepressed and liberated identities will inevitably turn out to be the
same old clothes-recycled fashions.
As a way of approaching how to proceed from this point, I want to look
at the way Ellen Pee! has outlined her view of the parameters of feminist
praxis. She has outlined what she sees as two forms of oppositional
feminism within gender inquiry, utopian and skeptical.14 For Peel,
utopian feminism/idealism is fatal to narrative since it induces the staticity
of closure and repetition of old forms of power and dominance, a "chilly
perfection" (34). Skeptical feminism, "a questioning, doubting, inquiring
attitude," operates by challenging the complacencies and dangerous
fixed notions of utopian feminism (34). With this analysis, 1 think Peel
mistakenly separates two facets of one complex utopian and activist
process, the details of which I have outlined in this chapter. Utopias,
especially utopian novels, where details of the ideal state are imagined
in all their (possible) splendor, should not be understood as final or static.
When read solely as prescriptive texts or utopian products, utopian texts
are divested of much of their significance. Utopian narrative contains the
'skeptical' impulse which Peel outlines; utopias are about criticism of
dominant ideologies. Far from being fatal to narrative, utopia constitutes
14 Peel now terms skeptical feminism 'pragmatic' feminism. Her division of feminism(s) is
similar to Frederick Engels' distinction between utopian socialism and scientific socialism
in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Beijing, China: Foreign Language Press 1975
(originally 1880)).
270
the narrative strategy through which generations of Americans have
imagined themselves. Through the details of any utopia, we can
understand the approach (not always successful) through which an
author or speaker has attempted to disrupt the web of meanings which
create the 'truth' of ldeology--in the case of feminism, the 'truth' of gender
subordination. Utopias are artifacts and indicators of the 'skepticism' Peel
advises, and would not occur without that very skepticism. More
importantly, I think that the 'skepticism' Peel advises only grazes the
surface of the complicated task of resistance I am outlining. Resistance
involves much more than simply stepping back to some neutral space
and looking originally and critically at the surrounding world.
Still, I think Peel's skepticism about the implications of the
finality/stasis of utopia poses a valid and important reminder about the
deployment of utopian narrative. As I have shown, throughout the history
of the United States, attempts to codify the concept of nationhood based
on (utopian) documents like the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution have had, in some cases, wide-ranging destructive
consequences. The effect here is an attempt to create a definable
'someplace' out of the inherent 'no-place' of utopia. Peel's analysis
highlights the complex nature of resistance itself, rooted as it is in
prevailing ideologies. Feminism, inherently utopian in nature, must not
settle for easy, comfortable answers which fail to completely address the
wide range of gender power relations operant in society. Mistakes have
been made, for example, in the dearth of analyses of the specific
271
oppressions of women of color by (usually white) feminists of both the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Feminism must not continue to fall
into the trap of the deployment of the utopian narrative as a means of
blindly weilding power disguised as reform. Utopias indicate possibility,
but should not be construed either by authors or readers as dictating its
terms. As Peel herself asserts, feminism must keep focused on the idea
that "the end is the means, the answer is the question" (47).
In Technologies of Gender. Teresa de Lauretis outlines parameters of
a reformational strategy by advising that women should:
[understand] the elsewhere of discourse here and now, the
blind spots, or the space-off, of its representations. I think of
it as spaces in the margins of hegemonic discourses, social
spaces carved in the interstices of institutions and in the
chinks and cracks of the power-knowledge apparati. And it
is there that the terms of a different construction of gender
can be posed-terms that do have effect and take hold at the
level of subjectivity and self-representation: in the
micropolitical practices of daily life and daily resistances
that afford both agency and sources of power or
empowering investments; and in the cultural productions of
women, feminists, which inscribe that movement in and out
of ideology. . . . (25)
The state of possibility she suggests should not be understood as
utopian product, as a fifty-first state where women run the government
and men stay at home with the children, or any variation on this theme of
gender role-reversal. Rather, the state of possibility should be
understood as the utopian process as I have outlined it, and as
nineteenth century activists and their successors have put it into practice
in various forms. It is not about finding yourself, not about seeking the
primal woman trapped within, though it may involve these moments in
272
part. I understand de Lauretis' suggestion that alternative constructions
of gender can "take hold at the level of subjectivity" as the suggestion of a
critical, material point of departure, not as a complete solution.15 The
state of possibility is a condition of potentiality in relation to discourse
within which those who empower themselves to speak exist while
speaking, thinking, acting. It is a moment which inspires myriad
individual or cultural visions of splendor and stability, change and
rebellion within the morass that is the discourse through which we know,
speak, and understand. The state of possibility is nonexistent and
therefore unreachable as a place unto itself, yet it is often claimed to
literally exist or claimed to be achieved to serve a nexus of power
interests. Claiming that a State of Possibility has been realized (or is
close to being realized, and would be closer to being realized with your
cooperation) freezes the very potentializing forces which allowed its
thought and formation into hierarchies and laws and fixed power
relationships, often with destructive results. I have shown the numerous
ways in which, for example, nineteenth and early twentieth century
scientific discourse continually invented ways to re-contain feminist and
suffrage resistance. But it is not only within so-called dominant power
structures which this urge toward utopian containment occurs. We can
15 Judith Butler notes in "Critically Queer" that Gayatri Spivak has called identity a
'necessary error.' This concept is particularly important to understand in the context of
deconstructionist politics, which can be read as threatening to dismantle the concept of
identity before som e groups (ie persons of color) ever have a claim to it. In this way, it
might be paired with another of Spivak's term s-'strategic misreading.' Still, as Butler
points out, "the necessity to mobilize 'the necessary error' of identity. . . will always be in
tension with the democratic contestation of the term which works against its deployments
in racist and misogynistic discursive regimes" (20).
273
also see this urge-to-fossilize-perfection in the vehemence of the identity
politics of suffrage activist groups which, while gaining power from their
claim to a female identity, froze that very power into categories of
inclusion and exclusion which simply repeated established patterns of
race and class dominance under the guise of activism. The difficulty
which the National Organization for Women had in incorporating women
of color and lesbians under the larger banner of the 1970's women's
movement comes to mind here. Feminism must "become a discursive
site whose uses are not fully constrained in advance" (Butler, Critically
Queer 21). Working strategically with and through the pattern of power
relations, which fight to affirm permanence, constitutes immigrating
toward a state of possibility. Activists must fight to remain immigrants,
and learn to be comfortable with being on the road. This means a highly
radicalized process of calling attention to modes of hierarchization and
hegemony rather than simply, only, appropriating and replicating their
power relation while labeling ourselves 'free.' As I have said, it means
calling attention to the process through which language creates meaning
(and thus 'truth') through representation, and then disrupting and
redirecting this process. It means constant vigilance, constant self-
criticism, and a lack of complacency. The intoxicating claim to identity
and power and subjectivity must be viewed as temporary and contingent.
One means through which a path toward resistance for women has
been mapped is in Helene Cixous' essay "The Laugh of the Medusa."
She begins: "I shall speak about women's writing: about what it will do"
274
(245, Cixous' emphasis). Women's writing is, for Cixous, a powerful tool
that should be deployed toward a double goal-both to "break up, to
destroy; and to foresee the unforeseeable, to project" (245). Cixous is not
interested in offering specific parameters through which women's writing
should occur or be judged; in fact, she affirms that this would be
impossible to define (253). Rather, her advice focuses on the fact that
writing should simply begin. "When I write, it's everything that we don't
know we can be" (264). In this, Cixous recognizes that the utopian
project involves encouraging and fostering women's voices, and thereby
potentializing the disruptive power of their challenge to prevailing
ideologies.16
Resistance (and thus, utopia) is, of course, realizable not only via
writing. The world is full of all sorts of resistances-Teresa de Lauretis'
'micropolitical practices of daily life'— moments when we refuse to
conform to actions or behaviors whose acceptability is grounded in
linguistic fictions, previously established utopias. These moments spark
resistance, and resistance may build into organized opposition. Yet
micropolitical practices are movements of their own. By imagining
possibility, we playfully project ourselves or our circumstances beyond
the confines of the ideology of the present. These utopias, whether they
eventually become novels, organizations, or remain personal fantasies,
are the seeds of transformation. Utopian spaces are interfaces or
16While many readers Cixous' work essentialist, I am focusing here on a reading of this
piece which emphasizes her call to active participation in visioning a future, not dictating
its terms. W hether or not essentialism exists in Cixous' work (a charge Cixous herself
denies), essentialism is the antithesis of utopia.
275
frontiers, the front lines of the determination of meaning which normally
occurs via conformity and repetition.
As a way of offering strategies of resistance and (utopian) activism
within contemporary assessments of the nature of power, I would like to
specifically link (and not incidentally, complicate) Teresa de Lauretis'
concept of micropolitical practices as a means of accessing utopian
narrative with the current critical discussion of the notion of
'performativity.' If we view power as a set of repetitive and habitual
relationships, this becomes, for Judith Butler, the 'performative act' of
power~the way in which power establishes authority through what is an
effect, a 'performance,' of its rituals by all of us. In the context of one of
her discussions of this topic, Butler attempts to specify the parameters of
the power of a specifically queer activism by indicating that in that very
repetition are the spaces through which the 'habit' of power relations can
be redirected by queer politics. "The resignification of norms is . . . a
function of their inefficacy, and so the question of subversion, or working
the weakness in the norm, becomes a matter of inhabiting the practices
of its rearticulation" (Critically Queer 26, Butler's emphasis). This creates
a window of opportunity which exploits the performative nature of power
relations by 'working the weakness,' or using power against itself by
exploiting its mechanisms, its 'performances.' In this way, power is a site
of both oppression and potential which, through the appropriation and
direction of 'performative acts,' can become a space which spawns
276
movements like (for Butler) the current queer activism, or, I would add,
I older movements like feminism and civil rights. This is precisely where I
would locate the site of utopian production, the space within which
activist (utopian) narratives (however emancipatory or re-regulatory)
emerge. Clearly, by understanding and articulating the nature of power
! as it operates in and through discourse, we better understand the nature,
I
; significance and potential of utopian narratives.
i
I'd like to offer the strategies of one contemporary feminist/activist
! group, the Women's Action Coalition (WAC) as a workable model of
activism which begins to operate along these lines. I see WAC's feminist
roots as traceable to the Stantons and Anthonys and Grimkes of the
i
nineteenth century through one of its stated goals--the passage of the
Equal Rights Amendment, a piece of legislation originally submitted to
! Congress in 1923. In this way WAC also connects itself with feminists of
j the 1970's, who took up the ERA banner and nearly succeeded in re-
| utopianizing the Constitution through this particularly feminist
! amendment. Clearly, too, WAC is indebted to past activists for 'solving'
i
i
certain problems of gender in America; the right to vote, for example,
gave women certain privileges and expanded the boundaries of the
j definition of the female gender. WAC's women (and in many cases their
mothers as well) were born voters but realize that, not surprisingly,
suffrage did not prove to be the utopia it once seemed. WAC is also
clearly indebted to the example of the radical confrontationalist politics
set by ACT UP! (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power) in the 1980's.17
As a way of understanding how this organization positions itself in
relation to feminism and the contemporary social milieu, I want to
consider WAC's manifesto, "Aims of a Comprehensive WAC Approach"
(Figure 1). I would like to read this statement of aims as a specific
moment in the history of feminism in America; alongside the Declaration
of Sentiments, a further milestone of sorts along the road toward a
feminist America/utopia.
My concerns about WAC's aims centers around the construction of
the 'media' as a central, oppressive power structure to the detriment of
delineating its huge (and therefore vulnerable) complexity as well as
democratic potential. However, WAC's consideration of national and
international media also reflects an important recognition of the
technological means by which and through which power is established
and maintained, created and represented in the current information age.
Rather than simply eschewing media altogether as 'oppressive' and
demanding a gender-specific tech-free separatism, WAC advocates
media sophistication, appropriation of media tools by women, and use of
media to control and produce alternative images. In the spirit of Donna
Haraway's cyborgs, WAC understands that if an incarnation of Thomas
17|t is important to remember, however, that radical protest is nothing new to the American
Women's movement. The W oman's party picketed the White House in 1917, with some
women receiving jail terms as a result. Following the precedent of their more radical British
sisters, these women went on hunger strikes once in jail and were force fed as a result.
See Flexner, Century of Struggle: 294-97.
278
Jefferson to appear today, offering a Declaration of Independence, he
would be much better off on an afternoon talk show rather than trying to
publish a handwritten, wordy treatise that no editor would bother with.
They understand that the question is really no longer whether or not the
revolution will be televised, but whether we should watch it on CNN or
another channel. The point here is that defining the terms of a new
activism and a new utopia means understanding that utopia, and/or
activism, can only be an ideological critique of ideology. The strategy of
performativity, which closely follows this notion of intertwined and
inseparable ideologies, necessitates total immersion, which potentializes
i all sorts of new and unusual media/art/activist and utopian forms, rather
[ than a separatism which, in purifying its own ideologies, misses the point
entirely.
I am especially encouraged by WAC's use of phrases like, "To
j counter," "to reveal," "to engender," "to demystify," "to resist," "to
i
j challenge," and the like. These terms show a methodology of activism
| which is interested in creating sites of possibility and potentiality rather
i than norms to be followed. The phrases suggest an approach rather
; than delineating highly specific and regulatory codes or practices. In this
s way, WAC moves (somewhat) beyond a morbid concern about the
parameters of its own identity. The ability to be self critical, as in item
nine, furthers this point. Most interesting to me is that WAC even thought
of suggesting an idea of utopia itself--the 'video utopia'-an apt image of
the possibility of a transformed and radically democratic media. Further
279
strides might be made toward this utopia by developing critiques of the
i
j media which take into account not just its content but its process and its
accessibility. It is surprising to me, for example, that in item nine, WAC's
questions center around the production and ownership of their own
p
! identity. This is, of course, very important to consider, and part of WAC's
j
| whole critique centers around control of images rather than their being
I
| controlled by outside parties. However, additional specific levels of
j inquiry would be both useful and necessary: questions about the
intersection of class and race with media access both in terms of
I
ownership of equipment and in terms of production itself; questions about
what significances can be seen in media genres like the sitcom, the late
j night interview show or the afternoon talk show; questions about how the
: 'news' creates a seamless interface between what is seen by viewers as
! 'live' and what is in fact a fiction of fragments constructed by a production
i
! crew, and how that affects our image of what 'happened' as fact or history
in any given situation.
| In exploring a path toward a feminist utopia which is the current
I incarnation of strategies of nineteenth century feminist pioneers, I want to
: emphasize the radical potentiality a notion of performativity opens up.
The concept of 'performativity' as activist politics should be understood
as the means through which the repetition which establishes power is
redirected. But, "[pjerformativity. . . is to be read not as self-expression or
I
self-presentation, but as the unanticipated resignifiability of highly
invested terms" (BUtler, Critically Queer 28). In other words, resistance,
280
like utopia, cannot (and should not) be wholly predicted and mapped.
This is another way of saying what I've already outlined about the nature
of utopian narrative; that utopias should not be considered as products in
and of themselves, but as process, always incomplete and ongoing. The
most potent resistances, activisms, utopias are the unexpected ones. In
more concrete terms, this means that the real potentializing force of the
WAC manifesto can be located in its evocation of a 'radical democracy,'
rather than any of its specifically outlined media critiques. In that spirit,
may WAC's mission continue to evolve, whether within and through its
own organization, or through influencing and inspiring women to pursue
their own utopian projects.
By thinking, speaking and acting every woman affirms the possibility of a
feminist utopia.
281
Aims of a Comprehensive WAC Approach
1 . To counter mainstream media's
presentation of issues most
affecting the lives of women.
2 . To reveal the insidious effect
of media on shaping public
opinion.
3 . To engender a critical attitude
toward the dominant media.
4. To demystify mass media's
methods, motives, and
technologies in order to empower
and enable women to become
comfortable in front of and behind
the camera.
j 5 . To resist the dominant media
I by using use current technology,
j including interactive video, public
I access, satellite telecasts,
| commercial broadcast and cable
stations, alternative networks
| (such as deep dish TV), as well as
i consumer grade camcorders.
I 6 . To challenge the mass media's
[ refusal to acknowledge efforts and
I achievem ents of those seeking
I economic, social, legal,
| educational, occupational and
representational equality.
7 . To document W AC actions for
the W AC archives and for
distribution and licensing to the
’ media. (Two minutes of early W AC
S footage recently licensed to BBC
: netted W AC $700.)
8. To record activities relating to
WAC's mission as a women's
organization committed to direct action,
and to produce public service
announcements and educational tapes
focusing on issues affecting the lives of
all women.
9 . To develop a media policy reflecting
W AC's current consensus on such
questions as: what are our standards for
deciding which outside media
producers and reporters are allowed
access to W AC as a group? Should
requests from outside producers go
through some kind of formal screening
process? Should outside producers be
required to license footage from our
archives if suitable for their purposes?
How are issues of copyright and
licensing handled? How will the issue
of group memory be handled in the
context of an ever-fluid membership?
(The floor on several occasions has
denied W AC members permission to
videotape meetings. W AC
consequently found itself in the
questionable position of allowing
representatives of the mainstream
media a privilege it had denied its own
members.)
10. To help reclaim what video
artist/activist Joan Braderman calls a
"video utopia ..." a video which has to
emerge from a context of radical
democracy, where everyone is thrust
into consciousness, community,
speech and action.
i
• Figure 1. from "WACTALK," New Directions for Women Vol 22 No 3,
May-June 1993.
282
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Appendix
292
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Utopian Novels and Stories
by United States Women
and
Selected Bibliographical Sources Which Reference Utopian Fiction by
Women Authors
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Bruce, Muriel. Mukara. A Novel. New York: Ray Henke Co., 1930.
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Clarke, Frances H. (pseudonym Zebina Forbush). The Co-Qptilian: A
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(note: this may be the same Frances Clarke who is author of Morgan
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1909.)
i
| Cleghorn, Sarah Norcliffe. "Utopia Interpreted." The Atlantic Monthly.
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294
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1
I Fisher, Mary Ann. Among the Immortals: In the Land of Desire. New
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I
!
Giles, Faye Stratton. Shadows Before: or. A Century Onward. Humboldt,
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— . The Industrial Army. New York: Baker and Taylor, 1896.
! Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Moving the Mountain." The Forerunner.
| Vol. 2, 1911.
— . "Herland." The Forerunner. Vol. 6, 1915; rpt New York: Pantheon,
1979.
j — . "With Her in Ourland." The Forerunner. Vol. 7, 1916.
i
Gillmore, Inez Hayes Irwin. Angel Island. New York: Holt 1914; rpt New
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Griffith, Mary. "Three Hundred Years Hence." American Utopias:
! Selected Short Fiction. Ed. Arthur O. Lewis. New York: Arno Press,
1976 (originally 1836). (Wright 1: 1073)
295
j Hale, Sarah Josepha Buell. Liberia; or Mr. Peyton's Experiments. New
York: Harper and Bros. 1853; rpt. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Gregg
Press, 1968. (Wright 2: 1064).
i
j Harris, Clare Winger. "A Runaway World." Weird Tales. July 1926.
Henley, Carra Depuy. A Man From Mars. Los Angeles: B. R. Baumgart
1901.
Howland, Marie Stevens Case. Papa's Own Girl: A Novel. New York:
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; Johnston, Mary Ann. Sweet Rocket. New York: Harper, 1920.
Jones, Alice llgenfritz and Merchant, Ella. Unveiling a Parallel: A
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Upper Saddle River, NJ: Gregg Press, 1975; rpt. Syracuse: Syracuse
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! Jones, Lillian B. Five Generations Hence. Fort Worth, TX: Dotson Jones,
1916.
J Kayser, Martha Cabanne. The Aerial Flight to the Realm of Peace. St.
Louis: Lincoln Press, 1922.
Kinkaid, Mary Holland. Walda: A Novel. New York: Harper, 1903.
Kinnear, Dr. Beverley Oliver. Impending Judgements on the Earth: or
"Who May Abide the Day of His Coming." New York: James Huggins,
; 1892.
Knapp, Adeline. "One Thousand Dollars a Day: A Financial Experiment."
■ One Thousand Dollars a Day: Studies in Economics. Boston: Arena,
1894.
— . "The Earth Slept: A Vision." One Thousand Dollars a Day: Studies in
Economics. Boston: Arena, 1894.
Lane, Mary E. Bradley. "Mizora: A Prophecy." The Cincinatti
, Commercial. Nov 1880-Feb 1881; rpt. New York: G. W. Dillingham,
1889; rpt. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Gregg Press, 1975.
(Wright 3: 3203)
296
Lease, Mary Elizabeth (Clyens). The Problem of Civilization Solved.
Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1895.
i
i
Lowe, Mary and Grigsby, Alcanoan Q. (pseudonym Jack Adams).
. Neoua: or. The Problem of the Ages. Topeka: Equity Pub. Co., 1900.
Martin, Nettie Parish. A Pilgrim's Progress in Other Worlds: Recounting
the Wonderful Adventures of Ulvssum Storries and His Discovery of
the Lost Star 'Eden.' Boston: Mayhew, 1908.
Mason, Caroline Atwater. A Woman of Yesterday. New York:
Doubleday, Page and Co., 1900. (Wright 3: 3631)
I Mason, Eveleen Laura Knaggs Hiero-Salem: The Vision of Peace,
i Boston: J. G. Cupples, 1889. (Wright 3: 3632)
— . An Episode in the Doings of the Dualized. Boston: Fish and Libby,
1898. (Wright 3: 3633)
McGlasson, Eva Wilder (Brodhead). Diana's Livery. New York: Harper,
1881. (Wright 3: 677)
Mead, Lucia True Ames. Memoirs of a Millionaire. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1889. (Wright 3: 3675)
Meredith, Ellis. The Master Knot of Human Fate. Boston: Little, Brown,
1901.
Moore, M. Louise and Beauchamp, M. Al Modad: or, Life Scenes
\ Beyond the Polar Circumflex. Shell Bank, Cameron Parish, LA: Morre
| and Beauchamp, 1892. (Wright 3: 3817)
I Morgan, Harriet. The Island Impossible. Boston: Little Brown, 1899.
Oliphant, Margaret (Wilson). A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen. New York:
Macmillan 1907 ; rpt with three additional chapters as A Little Pilgrim
in the Seen and the Unseen. Chicago: Progressive Thinker Pub. Co.,
1913 (originally London: Macmillan 1882).
Orpen, Mrs. Adel (pseudonym Elizabeth Richards). Perfection City. New
York: Appleton, 1897.
I
Peattie, Elia M. and Tibbies, T. H. The American Peasants: A Timely
Allegory. The Economic Library Vol. 3 No. 6. Indianapolis: Vincent
Bros., 1892.
i
297
Pettersen, Rena Oldfield. Venus. Philadelphia: Dorrance and Co., 1924.
I Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart (Ward). The Gates Aiar. Boston: Houghton
j Mifflin, 1868; rpt Cambridge: Harvard Univ Press, 1964.
I ---. "A Dream Within a Dream." The Independent. Vol. 26, 1874.
---. Beyond the Gates. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883. (Wright 3: 5755)
— . The Gates Between. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883.
! (Wright 3: 5762)
! ---. "Within the Gates." McClure's. May--July 1901.
Pittock, Mrs. M. A. The God of Civilization: A Romance. Chicago: Eureka,
| 1890.
! Richberg, Eloise O. Randall. Reinstern. Cincinatti: Editor Publishing,
Rogers, Bessie Story. As It May Be: A Story of the Future. Boston:
] Gorham, 1905.
I
■ Rupert, M. F. "Via the Hewitt Ray." Wonder Stories Quarterly. Spring
! 1930.
j Shelhamer, Mary Theresa. Life and Labor in the Spirit World. Boston:
i Colby and Rich, 1885.
i
| Sherwood, Margaret Pollack (pseudonym Elizabeth Hastings). An
Experiment in Altruism. New York: Macmillan, 1895. (Wright 3: 4914)
Sill, Alice. "The Man From Atlantis.” Overland Monthly. Jan. 1906.
| Snedeker, Caroline Dale Parke (Caroline Dale Owen) Seth Wav: A
Romance of the New Harmony Community. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
! 1917.
— . The Beckoning Road. New York: Junior Literary Guild, 1929.
; Spotswood, Claire Myers. The Unpredictable Adventure. New York:
Doubleday, 1935.
1900
298
Stone, Mrs. C. H. One of "Berdan's" Novels. New York: Welch, Fracker,
1890. (Wright 3: 5264)
Thompson, Harriet Alfarata Chapman. Idealia: A Utopian Dream: or
Resthaven. Albany, NY: Lyon, 1923.
Tincker, Mary Agnes. San Salvador. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892; rpt
New York: Arno Press, 1978. (Wright 3: 5500)
j Vassos, Ruth and Vassos, John. Contempo: This American Tempo. New
i York: Dutton, 1929.
i
---. Ultimo: An Imaginative Narration of Life Under the Earth. New York:
Dutton, 1930.
Von Swartout, Janet. Heads of the City of Gods: A Narrative of Olumbia
I in the Wilderness. New York: Olumbia, 1895.
!
Waisbrooker, Lois Nichols. A Sex Revolution. Topeka: Independent,
, Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith. Susanna and Sue. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1909.
Woods, Katharine Pearson. Metzerott. Shoemaker. New York: Thomas
Crowell and Co., 1889. (Wright 3: 6058)
Wood, Mrs. J. Pantaletta: A Romance of Sheheland. New York:
I American News Co., 1882. (Wright 3: 6064)
I Yourell, Agnes Bond. A Manless World. New York: G. W. Dillingham,
i 1891. (Wright 3: 6170)
; Note: Those titles which are available on microfilm, as collected by
Lyle H. Wright in American Fiction: 1774-1900 (New Haven, C T :
Research Publications, 1968), are noted by volume and title number.
1894.
Sources: Selected Bibliographies Which Reference Utopian
Fiction by Women Authors
Bartkowski, Frances. Feminist Utopias. Lincoln: Univ of Nebraska Press,
1989.
Bleiler, Everett F. Science Fiction - The Early Years. Kent, Ohio: Kent
State Univ Press, 1990.
Clareson, Thomas D. Science Fiction in America: 1870's - 1970's.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.
Currey, L. W. Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors. Boston: G. K. Hall
1979.
Kessler, Carol Farley. Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by US Women.
London: Routledge/Pandora Press, 1984.
— . "Notes Toward a Bibliography of Women's Utopian Writing 1836-
1899." Legacy: A Study of Nineteenth Century Women Writers. Vol. 2
No. 2, 1985: 67-71.
Moskowitz, Sam. Strange Horizons: The Spectrum of Science Fiction.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976.
Pfalezer, Jean. The Utopian Novel in America: The Politics of Form.
Pittsburg: Univ of Pittsburg Press, 1984.
Roemer, Kenneth. The Obsolete Necessity. Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ
Press, 1976.
Rooney, Charles J. Dreams and Visions: A Study of American Utopias.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.
Schlobin, Roger C. Ed. Urania's Daughters: A Checklist of Women
Science Fiction Writers 1692-1982. Mercer Island,WA: Starmont
House, 1983.
Wright, Lyle H. Ed. American Fiction: 1851-1875. San Marino, CA:
Huntington Library, 1965.
300
American Fiction: 1876-1900. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library,
1966.
American Fiction: 1774-1850. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library,
1969.
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