Cassandra and Charles: Revising Male/Female Relationships in Stoddard's The Morgesons

I’ve been thinking about Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons ever since I read it, mainly because it’s a really creepy book. Larisa recommended that I blog about it, which I thought was an excellent suggestion to work out some of the weirdness. I’ve been using words like “creepy,” “haunting,” and “weird” to describe The Morgesons, mainly because of the slightly mocking, satirical tone. Stoddard seems to call into question firmly established nineteenth-century (and contemporary) social conventions, mainly through her main character, Cassandra, and her interaction with others. Stoddard criticizes the idea of female solidarity (Cassandra’s relationship with her sister is bizarre, to say the least), the job of the feminine/domestic sphere (the women in the Morgeson family take no part in domesticity), and women’s reliance on familiar male figures for care and support before marriage (Cassandra’s father and cousin both fail her in different ways). Stoddard lays bare the difficulties of these conventions, which she seems to argue are fine in theory but become increasingly difficult when mixed with actual, roiling humanity. I suppose that’s why the text is so unsettling; we still privilege these conventions today, and drawing them into the proverbial light of day is uncomfortable. The entire text deserves far more treatment than I can give it here, but I’d like to isolate one textual moment for further exploration: Cassandra’s relationship with her cousin Charles.

Throughout the semester we’ve discussed writers’ attempts to revise male/female relationships and the institution of marriage. Young lovers are described as brother and sister—Willie and Gerty in The Lamplighter and Ellen and John in The Wide Wide World (among others). Young girls’ relationships with their fathers seem slightly romantic—Gerty and Philip Amory in The Lamplighter, for instance. We’ve generally seen this as an attempt to revise marital relationships; if we transfer lover-like relationships on to caring platonic, familial men (like fathers and brothers) it will model appropriate behavior for future husbands. Stoddard calls idea/practice into question in The Morgesons, playing out her criticism in the relationship of Cassandra and Charles.

Cassandra travels to stay with her cousin Charles and his wife Alice to attend a finishing school. From their first meeting, Charles affects Cassandra physically, though not in ways we’ve seen in other texts. Cassandra is not overcome with feelings of love or goodness; rather, Cassandra narrates, “His face was serene, dark, and delicate, but to look at it made me shiver” (69). She goes on to say that something “intangible, silent, magnetic” existed between them: “An intangible, silent, magnetic feeling existed between us, changing and developing according to its own mysterious law, remaining intact in spite of the contests between us of resistance and defiance” (74). These are not the feelings of “brotherly love” we’ve seen in other novels. These are dark and mysterious, and according to the text, wrong. Even though Charles and Cassandra share a mutual attraction, the consummation of their relationship is marked as a violation in the text.

In a swiftly moving textual moment, Cassandra offers a flower to one of Charles’s associates. The narration continues: “He was about to take it with a blush, when Charles struck it out of my hand and stepped on it. ‘Are you ready now?’ he said, in a quick voice. I declared it was nothing, when I found I was too ill to rise the next morning” (84). Cassandra, who is described as healthy and vivacious in comparison to her sister Verry, has never been sick in the novel. But after Charles “crushes her flower,” she inexplicably falls ill and has a sickly temperament for the rest of her life. The physical/emotional relationship between Charles and Cassandra is certainly a transgression. Charles is married and her cousin, and the consummation of their relationship is shrouded in violence.

As Stoddard revises the platonic, paternal narrative of male relatives in women’s fiction, she seems to argue that the protective paradigm is all well and good until humanity and attraction intervenes. When real-life is thrown into the mix, even familial relations have the potential to fail women. Her father later fails her economically, and Charles fails her sexually. All in all, Stoddard is most certainly questioning the hopeful status quo of “platonic” relationships in fiction as a means of revising the institution of marriage.

The Power of the Erotic: Avis Finds Her Art

We spent a lot of time in class discussing the scene of Avis’s “awakening,” and it made me start to consider alternative/expanded readings of that textual moment. We can certainly read it as a scene of her awakening as an artist—at the end of the experience she sees the Sphinx, which becomes her lifetime masterpiece. But as I was reading, I couldn’t help but notice the sexual language, imagery, and subtext of the passage. I’d like to take a closer look at those textual elements and perhaps make some meaning of their inclusion in her “artist’s awakening.”

When Avis first decides to drink the “Eau de Fleurs d’Oranger,” it is described as an experience reserved only for women: “Leave men their carousel, their fellowship, the heart’s blood of the burning grape. In the veins of the buds that girls wear at their bridals runs a fire of flavor deep enough for us” (79-80). I immediately questioned who “us” was, and I concluded that it encompassed all women. While men are left to their carousel (competitive tournaments or conveyor belts—both are equally daft) and wine, women will find fire in the buds of flowers. Of course, Phelps specifies that it’s the flowers that women “wear at their bridal runs,” immediately linking the liquor to marital consummation and virginity. She goes on: “The wine of a flower has carried many a pretty Parisan to an intrigue or a convent. Could it carry a Yankee girl to glory?” (79-80). Given the sensual nature of the previous sentences, we could read the wine leading a girl to “intrigue or a convent” as leading a young girl to sexual adventure or pre-marital pregnancy. Or both. Either way, the final question about leading a Yankee girl to glory implies that there are other outlets for this erotic energy than sex acts, for Avis’s “glory” rests in her art.

Avis’s awakening is slow, occurring in waves. The imagery is of various mythology, people, places, and periods of history, but it’s always tempered with a description of Avis’s physical reactions. At first she’s “laughing” and “excited.” Next there is a “dull but not painful pressure set slowly in the brain,” and soon after she “felt herself spin round and round” (80). Strangely, she soon after narrates, “Nothing had happened, except that the darkness had become alive” (80). As the scene ends, she “lay back upon her pillow with a sudden, long, sobbing sigh. She was very tired, but she had seen her picture” (83). I initially thought the darkness, which came alive in this scene, was her artistic instinct but it could also be read as Avis’s sensuality. She had been cultivating her artistic abilities from a young age, so describing her artistry as “darkness” doesn’t seem representative. Given the physicality of Avis’s experience, I think we have to read the scene as grounded in the body and potentially sexual, but I’d like to offer the idea that Avis’s artistic awakening and her sexual awakening are intrinsically linked.

Even though I’m highlighting the physical/sexual elements in this scene, I don’t mean to downplay the obvious artistic benefits this awakening has in Avis’s work. In fact, I think describing the two in such complimentary terms (and so closely together, in the same scene) indicates Phelp’s feelings that these two “awakenings” are closely aligned. As she “lay back upon her pillow” with a “long, sobbing sigh” she feels as though she could work. Avis’s personal realization of her sensuality and the agency therein opened up new artistic possibilities. In “The Power of the Erotic,” Audre Lorde argues that if women (who are systematically encouraged to ignore their erotic power) could harness their erotic agency and apply it to all areas of their lives, that they would be unstoppable. Lorde is careful to emphasize that the “erotic” is not “sex,” but rather the power in recognizing one’s own sensuality and harnessing that power. In this scene, it’s clear that Avis finds and recognizes her own power, channeling it to her art. Sadly, the social systems that prevent women from ever accessing this power also prevent Avis from following her awakening to its full potential, for the scene ends with Avis sobbing “like any broken hearted women who was not going to pain a great picture tomorrow” (84).

“Conspicuous Consumption” and Feminity in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth post by Larisa

Lily Bart is what we would today call a shop-aholic. She goes to the best places and buys the best clothes, jewels, hats, umbrellas, shoes, and of course, perfume. As Cynthia Griffin Wolff points out in her introduction, this lifestyle was recognized by social historian Thorstein Veblen who “coined the term 'conspicuous consumption'” (xxi). And indeed we see many examples of such behavior throughout the novel. Lily is able to go through quite a bit of cash in a short period of time. For instance, she gives Gerty $300 at one time and also gambles by playing cards with her friends. As Wolff points out in her introduction Lily is greedy, but she is also a product of her “corrupt society” which is clearly illustrated by the cluttered Victorian home and overly ornamental style of dress (xxi). With these historical ideas in mind, I found it especially interesting to look at how Lily both resists and participates in such “conspicuous consumption”--ultimately becoming a product herself of idealized femininity.

One of the most striking moments of Lily's packaging herself as a helpless female is when she asks for Gus Trenor's help to invest her money and increase her income. By doing so, she transgresses and leaves her female-defined space as a consumer and becomes a participator in the male-dominated economic spaces. Unfortunately for Lily, Trenor does not allow her to enter into a business relationship since obviously doing so is offensive to him and would likely violate societal norms about women earning money. Instead, he positions himself into a pseudo-marriage relationship by giving her money and not allowing her to earn money through investments. Even though Lily tries to escape this consumer experience, she is unable to since she cannot be an agent for herself.

Another striking moment of Lily's evident role as a product or package is when she attends the opera with Mr. Rosedale and Trenor. She is shown as an object to be looked at or visually consumed by the crowd in general, but most specifically by Rosedale, Trenor, and eventually George Dorset. She has to allow all this consumption in order to continue participation in her corrupt “set”.

At the tableaux vivant we again see Lily package herself as a product for consumption. She chooses to emulate a painting that will show her beauty in a flattering light. And while the usual suspects (Trenor, Rosedale, and Dorset) all admire her, it is Lawrence Selden who truly consumes Lily in this moment. And while we see that he does love her, his love does not motivate him to any action beyond some heavy breathing and kisses in the garden.

Interestingly enough, even as Lily's social currency begins to decrease in value, she is portrayed as continuing to maintain the costly persona required in her set. She is described as standing with “admirable erectness” (218) when she is kicked off the Dorsets' yacht; when she is disinherited by her aunt, Mrs. Peniston, she is “all nobility” (223); and even when she must move to a boardinghouse, she continues to “keep up a show of prosperity” (247).

It is not until Lily has been completely displaced from her set of friends that she begins to fade physically as both a model of female beauty and a product for male consumption. Rosedale, who once was eager to marry her, tells her that she is no longer desirable as a wife (255). This rejection by the social climbing Rosedale is the ultimate death knell to her social currency. And yet her final defiant and triumphant act against this conspicuous consumption is her death scene—like the stage in a play, she sets a scene to convey the horrible cost she has had to pay to maintain her self respect. She could have become like Carry Fisher who promotes women's interests and male desires for pay, or she could have used Bertha Dorset's letters to break up her marriage. But instead, Lily withdraws from this consumption by repaying her debt to Gus Trenor with her own limited inheritance and then killing herself. While some may see this moment as a cowardly one, she really is left with very few options to depart with her dignity. And with her death, she inflicts the greatest hurt on her enemies—her check to Gus Trenor will prove that she was not his mistress for pay and will raise questions that will most likely cause others to examine Judy Trenor and Bertha Dorset's supposed friendships with Lily, which may decrease their own societal currency.

The Danger of Sympathy for Women Artists: A Reading of The Story of Avis by Larisa

Apart from being a newlywed and subsequently traumatized by Phelps' picture of married life for women artists, I enjoyed reading The Story of Avis. The language is beautiful. And while I don't think Avis would be my best friend and Philip does deserve to kicked in the kneecaps, this text caused me to think about Phelps' message about the danger of sympathy and sympathetic feelings for the woman artist. Evidently, Avis' feelings for Philip come at a terrible price--her art. In this posting I will look at a few key moments when Phelps shows us the danger.

This compassionate love develops when Avis sees Philip for the first time after he returns from the war. Avis had resolved to stay devoted to her art and not give in to Philip’s marriage proposal, but when she sees him, he is “haggard and gray, tense” and “shattered as a broken column” (99) her artistic eyes are also touched with compassion. Elaine Showalter describes Avis’ feeling as “pity” in her new book A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (176). Whether we see Avis’ emotion as compassion or pity, it is evident that she mistakes it for romantic love. This feeling is manifested physically in Avis as a “marvelous and magnificent change wrought upon [her] face […] by that compassion which steals a regent to the palace where Love the King has been dethroned“ (Phelps 99). And while compassion is a necessary type of love, Phelps’ use of the images of a regent and a king shows us that it is not the type of love that is required for an equalitarian relationship. Unfortunately for Avis, her naïveté lead her to mistake the one for the other and she is swayed by Philip’s physical weakness: Avis’ “heart leaped with the deep maternal yearning over suffering that is more elemental in women than the yearning of maiden or of wife” (102-103). From this moment on, her love is a compassionate and maternal one that brings her only misery.

Avis herself tells Philip that she is “suffering” (105), a suffering she likens to “death” (106). This moment signals the death of her art and her life as an artist. These early scenes before the marriage even begins are merely intimations of what is to come later on. Avis is shown to be more of a mother or caregiver to a husband who is “delicate” (141). He also behaves irresponsibly at the university and shirks the “drudgery of the classroom” (173)--another indicator of his immaturity and questionable masculinity (since a man’s number one job at that time was to provide a financially secure home for his wife and children). Avis calls him her “’poor boy’” and thinks of him as an “excited boy who got into a scrape (176). By portraying Philip in such a light, Phelps is showing to her readers the emotional cost of marriage and mothering for women like Avis. He is described on the next page as “a new burden, as if a third child had been born unto her” (177). And again we see that her love for him has completely altered: “Was it possible that her soul had ever gone upon its knees before the nature of this man? So gentle had been the stages by which her great passion had grown into mournful compassion, her divine ideal become this unheroic human reality, the king of her heart become the dependent of its care” (177).

At the story’s conclusion Phelps shows us that the demands of marriage and motherhood have stripped Avis of all feelings for her husband--“her feeling for that one man, her husband, had […] eaten into and eaten out the core of her life, left her a riddled, withered thing, spent and rent, wasted by the autocracy of a love as imperious as her own nature, and as deathless as her own soul” (244). This terrible price that she pays however is somewhat softened in her daughter’s life. In Wait we see the hope of her becoming a new kind of woman who is “competent to the terrible task of adjusting the sacred individuality of her life to her supreme capacity of love and the supreme burden and perils which it imposes upon her” (246). Phelps envisions a new kind of marriage with a new man, who will not “eat out her core” but will become, “With her, he is a crowned creature; but with him she is a free one” (247). Phelps envisions a more harmonious marriage for Wait, and we can only hope that it happens. And perhaps she is offering her readers the hope also that such a marriage can happen--I hope it can.

Sylvia: The Freak of Moods by Larisa

I read Moods during spring break when I should have been reading Ruth Hall, but I was so entranced by Louisa May Alcott's Behind a Mask that I wanted more. About halfway through Moods, I saw a connection between Sylvia Yule and Jean Muir--even though Jean is an "old" woman at 30 and Sylvia is a young girl of 17--they are both perceived as other than a traditional female. In my previous posting I showed how Jean is likened to a Scotch witch by the men in the story. Well in Moods, Sylvia is never called a witch (most likely because of her age) but she is painted in non-traditional female terms, especially as a trickster or performer like Jean. The passage that really clinches this perception of her occurs on their holiday up the river. Adam tells Geoffrey that they had a wild day while he was babysitting her and describes her as follows: "‘She is freakish and wears as many shapes as Puck,--a will-o-the wisp, a Sister of Charity, an imperious woman, a meek-faced child,--and one does not know in which part she pleases most. Hard the task of him who wins and tries to hold her‘" (220). Not only is Sylvia a trickster in her behavior, but this constant shape shifting is difficult for the men because they are not sure if she will grow up to perform as a traditionally domesticated woman, like her older sister Prudence. But interestingly, neither one of these men are interested in Prudence--they like Sylvia.

While there were not as many scenes of masking by Sylvia as there were of Jean, we see Sylvia's progression from girl to woman, especially in the clothes she wears. For example, when they are on the river trip and visit the family for the golden wedding anniversary, Sylvia changes out of her wet clothes into "Phebe's best blue gingham gown, for the preservation of which she added a white apron" (224). The apron is a clear indicator that she is trying on domesticity, especially as she goes on to put flowers on the tables and hang greenery as a metaphorical mother nature, strewing symbols of fertility about the home. Another time that she is performing womanhood is on her wedding day in which she is described as "a fashion-plate of a bride" (271) and wearing an "unusual costume" (273)--even when she feels like doing so is agonizing and longs to escape. After she is dressed, she sees Geoffrey and Alcott tells us that they “changed characters” (272)--or played different parts. Sylvia is the calm one in this scene while Geoffrey is the one with “pale excitement” (272).

We again see performance by Sylvia when she is a married woman. She and Geoffrey have their fireside fete, she changes out of the clothes (and role) of Mrs. Moor to become Sylvia again, or as Alcott describes it, "to do her part" (286). She puts on "a short, girlish gown,[...and] braided her long hair, with butterfly bows at the ends, and improvised a pinafore" (286). Apparently she could still play either part, and doing so is indicative of her moods, ennui, and general reluctance to become a woman/wife.

In the concluding chapter we see that Sylvia has settled into her role as wife and woman. This time the description of Sylvia is displaced from her physical body onto the house since she now is represented by and contained within the house. Alcott says, "May had come again and the Manse wore its loveliest aspect to greet its master, who came at last and alone. But not to an empty home, for on the threshold stood his wife, not the wayward child he wooed, the melancholy girl he married, but a woman with her soul in her face, her heart upon her lips, and outstretched arms that seemed to hold all that was dearest in the world when they clasped him with the tender cry,--'Thank God! I have my husband safe'" (355). No longer is Sylvia full of moods or performances, but she is easily perceived as a traditional woman, contained within the house and arms of her husband. A happily traditional ending, though perhaps not as interesting as Jean Muir’s story in Behind a Mask.

Narrative Interruptions (or Connections) in Ruth Hall

The episodic nature of Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall is part of what makes the text so enjoyable and easy to read. The transitions are swift and create an urgent sense of progression from one topic (or household or publishing house) to another, encouraging the reader to keep turning the page. Of course, this structure also allows Fern to drop in chapters that interrupt the narrative flow, making readers pause and ponder. For example, scenes like Ruth’s phrenology exam and her visit to the Insane Hospital seem to purposefully disrupt the reader’s momentum, almost asking them to slow down and making meaning of the narrative departure. I’d like to take a look at one of these narrative “interruptions” in an effort to come to a greater understanding of their inclusion. Sadly, ever since a student mentioned a sexual reading of Ruth’s phrenology exam, I can’t read it any other way, so I think I’ll take on Ruth’s tour of the Insane Hospital.

The physical appearance of the Insane Hospital seems pleasant enough. There are flowers, the building is beautiful, and Ruth’s children aren’t the least bit afraid to wander the grounds. It has all the appearances of a quiet retreat, but alas! Fern’s description of the space is immediately contrasted with the haunting, morbid air invading the grounds: “There was helpless age, whose only disease was too long a lease of life for greedy heirs. There, too, was the fragile wife, to whom love was breath—being!—forgotten by the world and him in whose service her bloom had withered, insane—only in that her love had outlived his patience” (209-10). At no point does Fern describe the residents of the Insane Hospital as mentally deficient. She tells Katy that this is “a place for crazy people” (209), but it’s clear that the people who live here aren’t insane. Or at least they weren’t before their families admitted them. The Insane Hospital is, indeed, a place for crazy people, but all Ruth can see are rich, elderly relatives and used up wives. In any other situation it would seem abrupt, but it seems only natural for Ruth to ask, “Have you had many deaths here?”

We find out that Ruth’s friend, Mary Leon, had recently passed away in the Hospital, and when Ruth asks to see the body we get further evidence that the residents of the Hospital are disturbed by cruelty and ill-treatment rather than natural chemical imbalances. As Ruth walks through the corridor a woman screams for the husband and child who ran off without her. The screams of this woman who is chained and whipped regularly affect Ruth so violently that she nearly collapses against the wall: “’Wait a bit, please,’ said Ruth, leaning against the stone wall, for her limbs were trembling so violently that she could scarcely bear her weight” (212). As if readers needed further proof, Ruth’s physical and emotional reaction to the environment of the Insane Hospital makes it quite obvious that the institution makes the residents insane (and not the other way around). And the deceased Mrs. Leon, once described as quite lovely, reflects the despair of the place. Ruth can hardly recognize the emaciated corpse with “sunken eyes and hollow cheeks” while “the gibbering screams of the maniacs overhead echoed through the stillness of that cold, gloomy vault” (213).

It seems quite obvious that Fern is questioning and critiquing the institution of marriage; especially in the ways it victimizes women. Although there could be men residing in the Insane Hospital, we don’t happen to see any of them. The inmates, so to speak, are deserted wives and mothers. What seems less obvious in the text is the idea that this type of captivity, desertion, and torture isn’t always relegated to the mental institution. Earlier depictions of Mary Leon aren’t exactly happy, but they’re usually hopeful: “Ruth was sure that, under that faultless, marble exterior, a glowing, living, loving heart lay slumbering; waiting only the enchanter’s touch to wake it into life. The more she looked into those dark eyes, the deeper seemed their depths. Ruth longed, she scarce knew why, to make her life happy. Oh, if she had a soul!” (95). As Fern’s initial description of Mary Leon continues, we find that it’s a loveless marriage that weighs on her soul in such a desperate way. She cries out to Ruth, “love me—pity me; you who are so blessed. I too could love that is the drop of poison in my cup. When your daughters stand at the altar, Ruth, never compel them to say words to which the heart yields no response. The chain is not the less galling, because its links are golden. God bless you, Ruth; ‘tis long since I have shed tears. You have touched the rock; forget that the waters have gushed forth” (96). Mary Leon’s pain stems from loving a husband who does not (or cannot) love her in return. He is rich, to be sure, but Mary Leon’s unhappy life calls a marriage based on finance directly into question.

Interestingly, even Ruth, a woman who married for love, is “drawn to Mrs. Leon by an unaccountable magnetism” (94). On one hand, the connection between Ruth and Mary Leon could exemplify the important, compelling relationships between women in the 19th century. Or the inexplicable connection between these women could be further textual evidence that the institution of marriage has the ability to victimize any woman, even one who marries a kind and loving man. As we know, Harry fails Ruth as a husband by failing to arrange his affairs before death. And now that I look more closely, I see that the “Insane Hospital” chapter is sandwiched between two chapters detailing Mrs. Skiddy’s trials with her wayward husband. Mrs. Skiddy, who is never portrayed as angelic, is practically demonic as she responds “like ten thousand serpents” to her husband’s request to come home. A chapter that initially seems like an interruption to the text actually connects to the other chapters in real, visible ways. Time and time again marriage fails the women of Ruth Hall, victimizing them in various ways. As a critique of marriage, the “Insane Hospital” chapter is a physical space connecting all these women together.

Revealed: The Popularity of the Name Capitola

I wanted to see if the was any evidence that many girls were named Capitola, so I went to the baby name index provided by Social Security and looked at all the years between 1880 and 1900 (there are no records further back than 1880). I found the following: in 1882, Capitola ranked 826/1000; 1884 #691/1000; 1885 #938; 1886 #911; 1887 #803, and in 1889 #911. So, it is true, Capitola was a popular name, but not any more popular than Mary, which was the top female name in most years.

The Liminal Space of Widowhood in Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern

I noticed an interesting similarity between the characters Frado of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig and Ruth of Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall. Both women are powerless and silenced by family and associated characters. While the silencing that happens to Frado—her mouth is literally held open as she is beaten—is a more horrifying example of what can happen to a woman outside of the dominant cult of True Womanhood, what happens to Ruth is equally horrifying because her “fall” is caused by her husband's inability to protect and provide for her. Harry's failure at True Manhood causes Ruth to be silenced in a way. Her widowhood makes her invisible and puts her into a liminal space both physically and socially. The socio-economic class that Ruth was born into creates a glass floor beneath her. She cannot go down in the social hierarchy because she lacks the skills to do hard physical labor and has two small children to care for. While she could descend to the lowest space of all, as a prostitute, we quickly see Ruth rejecting any hints of such a descent. And because Ruth lacks a husband to provide for and protect her, she also cannot be accepted into the social class she once belonged to. In this sense there is a glass ceiling over her head, which a destitute woman, like Ruth, cannot break through it in 1855. All she can do in this liminal space is to either teach or write.

She is also invisible because many in her old class no longer “see” her. This is clearly illustrated when two former friends, Mary and Gertrude, come to visit her, as described in chapter XLI. When they arrive at her new home, Mary asks, “'Is this the house?'” Then Gertrude answers, “'Ruth Hall couldn't live in such a place as this[....] if Ruth Hall has got down hill so far as this, I can't keep up her acquaintance [....] I wouldn't be seen in that vulgar house for a kingdom'” (99). Even though they approach her home they refuse to enter into it because doing so would socially be a descent just as the house is down a certain hill. Mary's reflection on a past visit to Ruth and Harry's home reinforces their unwillingness to cross into the liminal space Ruth now occupies as an impoverished widow. Their reluctance to cross into this space shows how tenuous their own positions may be and their fears of “taint” by association.

Ruth's position in a liminal space is further illustrated by her relationship with her cousins, the Millets. Chapter XLII shows a discussion between two servants in the Millet household who reflect on the meager generosity of Mrs. Millet for allowing Ruth to do her laundry in their kitchen. The irony of this conversation is that Ruth and Harry used to host the Millets at their home in happier times—but now that Ruth has fallen on hard times, she is only afforded the liminal spaces of a servant: the kitchen, attic, and stairwells. Ruth is thus literally pushed into out into liminal social and physical spaces.

Lastly, Ruth's regulation to liminal spaces is illustrated by her lack of a home. Once Harry dies, she is home-less. She and the children live in boarding houses and cheap rented rooms with minimal furnishings, no kitchen facilities, and in close proximity to strangers. Even though Katy is farmed out to her grandparents, their house is never a home for her. We see this when Mrs. Hall tries to force Katy into the cellar to retrieve some hams. Katy refuses to “'go down in that dark place'”--an obvious allusion to hell. When Katy again she won't go, even if her grandmother tries to kill her, Mrs. Hall asserts ownership, not familial ties, as the reason Katy should brave the dark and rats to fetch some hams (237). Mrs. Hall's treatment of Katy as an object underscores her mercenary nature and lack of love in a space that should be very nurturing. Fortunately, Ruth rescues Katy from the descent into the dark cellar. She then whisks their little family off to a fine hotel. This is the first step in their escape from the liminal spaces they have lived in. Now they are reunited and have enough love to share and food to eat: they are on their way to a true home.

And ultimately, like Frado/Harriet, Ruth/Fanny is able to revenge herself by emerging out of liminal spaces with the publication of her book.

Sentimentality and Gender Performance: Cap and Clara Put on a Show

We’ve talked quite a few times about sentimentality in The Hidden Hand, most commonly in reference to how the text challenges/revises ideas of the sentimental in 19th Century fiction. In the beginning of the novel Old Hurricane urges Herbert to accept his forgiveness and subsequent support saying, “Come, come, boy; I am not sentimental, nor romantic, nor melodramatic, nor nothing of that sort.” We expect this dismissal of sentimentality of Old Hurricane, who is one of the text’s oldest, whitest, richest patriarchs. We don’t expect our heroine to ridicule the power of feeling, but Capitola is decidedly not sentimental. In fact, Southworth tells readers early on that “the soul of Capitola naturally abhorred sentiment,” much to the frustration of other characters in the novel. For instance, when Craven Le Noir declares his love for Capitola, she responds by mocking his feelings: "’Well, I declare!’ said Cap, when he had finished his speech and was waiting in breathless impatience for her answer; ‘this is what is called a declaration of love and a proposal of marriage, is it? It is downright sentimental, I suppose, if I had only sense enough to appreciate it! It is as good as a play; pity it is lost upon me!’" Craven, who is on his knees proposing marriage, is emotionally wounded and cries, “Cruel girl! How you mock me!" But he’s not the only one who is baffled by Capitola’s behavior. Old Hurricane is forever frustrated by Cap’s hardened nature, especially when trying to tailor Cap’s wild ways: “Yes, if I could only get her to be serious long enough to listen to me! But you see Cap isn’t sentimental! and if I try to be, she laughs in my face” (175). She is, instead, a “witch,” a “wag,” a “mimic,” and a “droll.” But even though Old Hurricane finds Cap infuriating, these stereotypically negative qualities are what readers love most about the heroine. She’s got spunk!

Throughout the text Capitola openly disavows all things sentimental; her open (and textually accessible) distaste for sentiment alerts readers to the possibility that Southworth is commenting on fictional sentimentality. What comment she’s making, however, is up for debate. I, of course, have some thoughts and would like to turn to the scene when Cap and Clara switch places. When Clara tells Cap that the Le Noir are men threatening her with a “fate worse than death,” Cap shows “very little sympathy, for there was not a bit of sentimentality about our Cap.” Rather than shed tears and lament Clara’s dismal situation, Cap sets about fixing matters. In order to escape, Cap recommends fooling the Le Noir men by switching places. Cap very plainly instructs Clara saying, “If you go doing the sentimental you won't look like me a bit, and that will spoil all. There! keep your veil close, for it's windy, you know; throw back your head and fling yourself along with a swagger, as if you didn't care, ahem! for anybody, and–there you are!” In this scene Cap is encouraging Clara to act a part, to perform Cap’s masculine persona; Cap “swaggers” and walks with her head thrown back, just like a man. I have to admit, I find this self-satisfied attitude irritating and obnoxious in a man (and I’ve spent enough time with other women to know that I’m not alone), but Cap’s adoption of this affect is both delightful and humorous. Interestingly, too, is that Cap is aware of her every day performance and thus able to give Clara instruction. More to the point though, encouraging Clara to also “put on” the airs of a man, in effect, saves her life. The text seems to argue that there’s something to be said for putting on masculinity: Cap is engaging and Clara is empowered. In a very real way, the texts makes clear that gender is performed and women are capable of wielding “masculine” powers.

But that doesn’t mean “masculine” powers are more, well, powerful. We can’t forget that Cap’s performance of the “feminine” sentimental allows her to escape the Hidden House in the same fashion. When Clara has successfully “passed” for Cap, now it’s time for Cap to play Clara: “’Hush! here comes Dorcas Knight! Now I must make believe I’m Clara, and do the sentimental up brown!’ concluded Capitola, as she seated herself near the door where she could be heard, and began to sob softly” (312). Capitola does the sentimental "up brown," allowing her to conceal her identity and safely make it into town where she may have a chance to escape. True, the timely arrival of Herbert Greyson enables Cap to free herself of the Le Noir men, but we can’t forget that performing the sentimental got her to the altar in the first place. (I can only imagine that Southworth intended this mild irony.) When Cap and Clara switch places, then, the female performances of feminine sentimentality and masculine defiance are equally as effective. Even though the text seems to poke fun at sentimentality, it does not mock feminine emotion or feeling or experience. In fact, it seems to challenge the essentialist idea that there is a common, shared female experience. Cap and Clara are equally defiant and determined in their own right, and both are equally capable of sentimentality or defiance. I'd like to make clear that I'm not arguging (nor do I believe) that there are certain traits/behaviors that are decidedly "masculine" or "feminine." And I certainly don't think the text is promoting this idea either. Rather, it seems that Southworth is challenging the ideas of essentialist gender roles.

"'What Fools Men Are!'" A Reading of Behind A Mask by Larisa

We talked in class about the idea of performance and performing as a woman, especially of Jean Muir’s performance and her conquests of Edward, Gerald, and Sir John. What struck me in the concluding chapter, was the following line from Jean's letter to Hortense: "'What fools men are!'" (450). I immediately remembered Puck, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, who says something very similar: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" Jean’s use of this assertion reinforces not only the foolishness of humans--males especially--in matters of love but it further aligns Jean with Puck, who is a “shrewd and knavish sprite.” Characters in the novel frequently describe Jean in similar terms, which fit well since she is a trickster like Puck. I did a word count on the electronic version of Behind A Mask found at Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8bhmk10.txt) and counted six different times that she is called or described as a witch or bewitching.

So taking this idea of “witchery” in mind, I re-read the denouement and found some interesting descriptions of Jean. For instance, when her letters are discovered and read, Lucia protests that, “’A woman could not do it!’” (446)--meaning a woman could not artfully set out a plan to seduce a man like Major Peter Sanford did of Eliza Wharton in The Coquette. Here we see Lucia assert that Jean is something other than a “woman” or a woman like herself. Lucia does nothing in such a calculated method. Ned describes Jean as not being a woman, but as possessing “’the art of a devil‘” and using “’charm’” on their friend Mr. Sydney (445). Alcott further describes Jean in other worldly terms as “an apparition” (451) and describes her as “fixing on Gerald the strange glance he remembered well” […] “before she vanished from their sight” (453) saying she fixed a look seems to be similar to putting a spell on someone, and saying she vanished just once again reinforces this witchery about her.

All of these descriptions Alcott uses further complicate Jean’s role in the text. And so I still wonder, is she a woman? Is she a “Scotch witch”? What exactly is she? She gets married in the end to a rich lord (every girl's dream match: wealth+title+old man=independence in a few years)--but the way she does it seems to bother some people in our class. And really, if we were to find out at the novel’s end that she is a witch, we would not really be surprised. This confusion and complexity makes her a fascinating character to analyze--especially when we see her role as Lady Coventry will be her best performance yet.

Reading the Domestic Spaces: Capitola's Bed Room/Body

We talked at length in class about the trap door and underlying pit in Capitola’s bed room. It is really the only domestic space that we see her in and we get a lot of description of the space, the furnishings and furniture in that space. It is a “large shadowy space” (72) that instantly lead me to feel anxiety for Capitola being taken into by Mrs. Condiment. However, once I saw that it has a nice big bed, a rocking chair, two arm chairs, a dresser and wash stand, I thought she would be very appreciative because it was much better than living on the streets. But as soon as Mrs. Condiment starts talking about the trap door, and the author drops hints like, “the simple accident of its arrangement, depended, on two occasions, the life and honor of its occupant” (72)--I started to feel concerned again. And then when Mrs. Condiment tells Capitola that the trap door was used to trap Indians, I started to feel sick. But now that I have finished the novel and see how the trap door functions as a plot device and a symbol, there is much more to be discussed than we talked about in class. For instance, it perplexes me that Capitola tells Pitapat, “I do not like the smell of food in my bedroom” (261). Why does she not want food in an obvious domestic space, especially when she was someone who lived on the streets and food was hard to come by? An obvious answer is that perhaps Southworth is just setting up the later scene with Black Donald’s invasion of Capitola’s chamber. So I went on and re-read the scene of her “awful peril” and looked at that domestic space again as representative of Capitola's body.

First of all, the bedroom is in a far distant corner of the house. It takes a lot of time to get to that space. There are many passageways one has to go through, corners to turn, and empty rooms to pass. Pitapat is the only one who regularly goes there besides Capitola. Mrs. Condiment goes there only twice. General Warfield is only there once. So I find it very interesting that Black Donald and his gang members have no problem finding that space and can make it there without getting caught. The gang members all hide under the bed, which is a personal and intimate space representing Capitola. Since a bed is usually one shared with one who is a lover or child, their close proximity to it shows how Capitola could become like them or be with them. But she manages to get rid of them before she is violated in that personal space.

Black Donald, on the other hand, actually gets laid in Cap’s bed after he is retrieved from the pit. Even though they are not in the bed together, they have still shared the same bed, which invites further exploration of the pre-pit scene. I see it as a seduction scene that Southworth rewrites to empower Capitola instead of Black Donald. He thinks that by locking the door he has captured her, an uninvited entrance that can be read as a near rape and/or kidnapping. But unlike other maidens in similar scenes, Capitola does not faint or scream. Instead she remains cool--as a cucumber. Black Donald’s equation of her with an object of consumption, and the ensuring scene in which he eats ham, then cheese, and then bread while swigging away on the brandy is a precursor to the consumption he plans of Capitola’s physical body in a seduction or rape. The inevitability of the sexual consumption seems even more imminent when they start making the egg nog, since they prepare it together and the eggs themselves represent fertility and female sexuality. Capitola tells him, “it takes two to make egg-nog” and then she shudders when he takes off his coat, a definite physical response of excitement and/or fear (367). Then after Black Donald consumes the egg nog, it seems he will go on further to consume Capitola, but then Southworth shifts the power dynamic when Black Donald moves his chair onto the rug that conceals the trap door. Sitting in a chair, he is over the pit, under the trap door. This pit, or old cellar, is a yonic symbol or space that represents femaleness and Black Donald falls into it because he will not yield to Capitola’s attempts to convert him into a Christian male. Perhaps if he had listened to her pleadings to reform and given into her female power, he would not have had to enter a dark and scary space. However, Southworth doesn’t kill him in that space--instead, he is reborn, violently, from entering Capitola‘s domestic space--the bedroom and the pit underneath. And like a helpless baby emerging from a mother’s womb, he has to be helped out of the space and lays in bed for an extended period of time before he can walk to the judge and await his trial. When Capitola gives him the tools to break his chains, she is again acting like a figurative mother who gives her child the tools needed to go out into the unknown world. In this way we can read the bed room as a representation of Capitola herself and her body. She is the bedroom and the bedroom is her.

Love, Death, and Narration from Beyond the Grave: Howe's The Hermaphrodite and Spofford's "The Amber Gods"

The Hermaphrodite wrestles, in various ways, with the idea of a physical versus spiritual love or connection. Laurence, whose body is fraught with tension, cannot know physical love and must maintain romantic relationships on a spiritual/emotional level. In fact, a spiritual connection between lovers is both romanticized and valorized in the novel, making it seem like the ideal sort of love. Again and again, characters are engaged in love that transcends all physicality, beyond death, existing only on the spiritual plane. Quite fittingly, then, the novel ends with the death of Laurence, whose inability to love in physical form has always been written on his body. But the final passage of the novel doesn’t reflect any of the idealized, spiritual, or transcendent love. In fact, it’s rather morbid: “I heard the sound of many footsteps ascending the stairs, and silently entering the room. My brain was now excited to a vivid consciousness of the horror of my fate, and I longed earnestly for the power of averting it by giving some token of life. At this moment, I heard another step, of how well known, and then the falling of one upon his knees beside me. Silence, dead silence from all—of that he could have spoken, that I might but hear his voice once more” (Howe 198). The present and active consciousness of Laurence’s narration is, perhaps, the most disturbing element of this scene. He is not narrating from beyond the grave but rather from inside it. The present tense—“my brain was now excited to a vivid consciousness to the horror of my fate”—gives the distinct impression that Laurence narrates from a point of consciousness, “vivid” consciousness to be exact. We, of course, have to wonder what “the horror” of his fate might entail. It could simply be death, but I’m not sure one “averts” death by giving “some token of life;” averting death is as simple as being alive. One might, however, want to give a sign of life if their spirit were trapped in an apparently deceased body and wanted to avoid being buried or burned alive.

It’s hard (pretty impossible, actually) to know what happens next in the novel, if anything. And we can’t really know if this “ending” is really the end, since Howe’s novel was recovered as an unfinished work in disjoined pieces. Laurence could, potentially, escape from his mortal body and transcend the earthly plane to await (or meet) his lovers. Or he could be trapped in his hybrid body forever, meaning that no matter how long Ronald (I can only assume it’s Ronald’s familiar footsteps he hears) waits, they will never reunite with God. It seems, from the textual evidence available, that Laurence is trapped in his body for eternity. At the very least, Laurence’s death provides a shocking alternative to the other moments of death and dying in the novel.

I plan to do more with this alternative ending, but first I’d like to look at the end of another novel ending in death, potentially narrated from beyond the grave. Harriet Prescott Spofford’s “The Amber Gods” is, throughout the story, rather grim and eerie and ends with the death of the narrator, Yone: “So I passed out of the room, down the staircase. The servants below did not see me, but the hounds crouched and whined. I paused before the great ebony clock; again the fountain broke and it chimed the halfhour; it was half past one; another quarter, and the next time its ponderous silver hammers woke the house, it would be two. Half past one? Why, then, did not the hands move? Why cling fixed on a point five minutes before the first quarter struck? To and fro, soundless and purposeless, swung the long pendulum. And, ah! What was this thing I had become? I had done with time. Not for me the hands moved on their recurrent circle any more. I must have died at ten minutes past one” (Spofford 83). Unlike Laurence, Yone does not remain in her lifeless body but moves about the house, readily acknowledging her death. The servants did not see her, but the hounds sensed her presence, marking her deceased soul as tangible. And time stops; Yone simply acknowledges that the hands on the clock no longer move for her. She plainly says, “I must have died as ten minutes past one.” In “The Amber Gods,” death is simply life without progression. The text never indicates that death would bring transcendence or eternal love, though Yone does wish that she could stop time to isolate particular moments of love and adoration.

We’ve been discussing all semester the morbid process of becoming a “true” woman; a true woman requires avoidance of all pleasures of the flesh, a pious nature, and angelic, selfless behavior. We see this trend in The Lamplighter especially Emily becomes more perfect as she nears death. And Mrs. Sullivan has more influence beyond the grave than she did while rooted in her mortality. But Spofford’s “The Amber Gods” (1860) and Howe’s The Hermaphrodite (1846) seem to revise these ideas, offering an alternative ending. We know from Toni Morrison that “the subject of the dream is the dreamer,” and so I have to wonder what’s at stake as the authors work through, in impossible postmortem narration, different options for living and dying. Spofford’s Yone exists in the world of the flesh and refuses to minister to the sick, tend house, or demurely receive suitors. Her character is both earthly and sensual, and though she doesn’t live past the end of the novel, she most certainly lives during it. She doesn’t ascend to a higher plane after death but remains in the same world, only now she’s unable to act or affect change. Howe’s Laurence, on the other hand, forgoes most worldly pleasures (sex, food, etc.) in favor of fulfillment from a higher power. But Laurence’s fate does not mirror other characters’ eternal reunions. He remains trapped in his body. Both authors seem to argue that postponing earthly pleasures, detaining romantic love until the possibility of an eternal bond, isn’t as desirable as some fictional scenarios may suggest.

Space and Place in Wilson's Our Nig

Larisa and I talk a lot about spatial analysis, and I guess I was thinking about it while I was reading Our Nig, because I found myself tracking descriptions of the space, trying to make meaning of the setting. There’s a lot going on in the novel; overall depictions and conceptions of “home” are challenged, and race and sexuality most certainly complicate a woman’s role in the domestic sphere. Mag Smith, Frado’s mother, lives in a home “contaminated by the publicity of her fall,” directly connecting domestic space with a woman’s virtue. Frado, codified in the novel as black, is held captive in the home (it would be interesting to read this novel as a captivity narrative…) and finds freedom in outside spaces: the barn, the woodpile, the hill with the sheep. Characters, too, are described in terms of space; Jack is Frado’s “shelter” (67). But I’m going to resist delving into those topics in favor for a chance to explore Frado’s little room at the Bellmont estate, beginning with the kitchen.

The kitchen is one of Frado’s primary work spaces, and thus also a place of much punishment—a rawhide is “always at hand in the kitchen” (30). It’s described as a space occupied by all members of the household, and characters are constantly entering and exiting while Frado toils. Mrs. Bellmont, especially, marks the kitchen as a space to conduct “housekeeping” and harshly monitor Frado: "It is impossible to give an impression of the manifest enjoyment of Mrs. B in these kitchen scenes. It was her favorite exercise to enter the apartment nosily, vociferate orders, give a few sudden blows to quicken Nig’s pace, then return to the sitting room with such a satisfied expression, congratulating herself upon her thorough house-keeping qualities” (66). The kitchen is the setting of most of Frado’s brutal beatings, is where Frado must eat her small ration of food (until James intervenes), and is rarely (if ever) described in pleasant terms.

The one place in the house that Frado is, theoretically, safe from abuse is in her own little apartment, described in one scene as a safe haven: “But there was one little spot seldom penetrated by her mistress’ watchful eyes: this was her room, uninviting and comfortless; but to herself a safe retreat. Here she would listen to the pleadings of a Savior, and try to penetrate the veil of doubt and sin which clouded her soul, and long to cast off the fetters of sin, and rise to the communion of saints” (87). Though “uninviting and comfortless,” Frado’s tiny room is a safe retreat as Frado attempts to “rise to the communion of saints.” Interestingly, then, initial descriptions of Frado’s room are far more ominous—the “L chamber,” as Mrs. Bellmont calls it, hardly seems fit for a child. According to Jack, Frado would “be afraid to go through that dark passage, and she can’t climb the ladder safely” (26). Nevertheless, he escorts her to the little room and “opened the door which connected with her room by a dark, unfinished passage-way” (27). Obviously, Frado’s little room isn’t a place people visit, nor do they ever plan to visit. It is simply “an unfinished chamber over the kitchen, the roof slanting nearly to the floor” and only a “small half window furnished light and air” (27). On her first night there, the “hot sun had penetrated the room, and it was a long time before a cooling breeze reduced the temperature so that she could sleep” (28). If you haven’t noticed yet, Frado’s “safe haven” is often discussed in terms of penetration. The hot, abusive sun penetrated her room making it too warm to sleep. And Mrs. Bellmont seldom penetrated her room, though we can assume she was there sometimes since “seldom” is not “never.” In fact, the only person we ever see there with Frado is Jack. The language of penetration conjures obvious sexual imagery, and it’s no coincidence that it appears so many times in the bedroom of an (for all intents and purposes) enslaved woman. If readers needed any more spatial clues, the L-chamber is located directly over the kitchen, which is the primary site of Frado’s abuse; though secluded, the L-chamber is never separate from the house and never truly safe.

Of course, once Frado decides to peruse a religious relationship, Wilson’s use of penetration describes Frado’s desire to “penetrate the veil of doubt and sin which clouded her soul.” Here is where I think the novel begins to mimic the captivity/conversion narrative genre—Frado begins to sort through the abusive experiences of her captivity and use them as moral fodder for her conversion. Her reclamation of the word “penetrate” indicates that any untold sexual abuse is part of that conversion and atonement.

Thoughts on Sexuality and The Hermaphrodite

This book, The Hermaphrodite, has been an unusual text for me to read. I honestly have not read anything like it before. And like I told Amanda in our tête-à-tête this week, I did not enjoy reading this book but I did like that it made me think about my beliefs about gender and how gender is constructed in our society. This has been especially interesting to me since I have also been reading about gender in my feminist theory class, especially Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva. Their questions about what defines a woman caused me to think differently about this text. For example, Beauvoir states, "One is not born a woman, one becomes one." So if we follow this argument when looking at Laurence, we can say that even if he has biological female parts, because he was chosen to be a man and continues to live as a man, even if he has female breasts and beautiful "female" hair, he is not a women because he chooses not to become one. The other idea I found interesting from Kristeva is her belief that we are not just one distinct sexual identity and that there are as many identities as there are people. This argument would also support a reading of Laurence as an intersexed person who is a sexual object to both women and men. What is troubling for me about this novel is that Laurence is so tortured and tormented. I kept wishing for a happy ending for him, that he could feel some peace. So, while I am still not sure what I think about this novel, my compassion for an intersexed person have increased.

Also, something interesting Amanda and I also discussed was that there was little discussion of Laurence's physical experience when he was playing the part of Cecilia. We see Berto help him into his disguise and then we see him take the clothes off, but there is not discussion of the in between times. So I wondered how he felt about having to wear such clothes. Did he feel bound and constricted? Did he feel some freedom to unbind his chest (since we assumed he was binding his breasts while he was away at school)? And even though we see them doing a dance and burning the clothes once he becomes Laurence again, we never get much discussion of the constriction the clothes would have been. Well, those are just my first few thoughts. I really need to think about this book more. It is so very interesting and complex.

Domesticity in Our Nig by Harriet Wilson

Even though this is the second time that I have read Our Nig, I was horrified anew at the inhumanity of the Bellmont family. Not only the physical beatings, but the silencing of Frado caused me to cringe again and again. As I was reading it and consequently talking with Amanda about it, I kept wondering, "Why are we reading this book?" (specially after reading The Lamplighter)."What meaning can I make of this supposed sentimental novel?" It wasn't until I read Lois Leveen's article (provided by Dr. Gaul) that I really began to see Wilson's novel as a response to and a commentary on white domesticity in nineteenth-century America. Leveen's spatial analysis of Frado's entrapment and "Mrs. Bellmont's sitting-room racism" (575)is fascinating.

Before reading the article, I clearly saw Mrs. B and Mary as evil, and Mr. B as complicit in their cruelty. However, I was inclined to see Aunt Abby, Jane, Jack, and James as Frado's "friends" who helped her make the best of a bad situation. But Leveen's article helped me to see that they really were not Frado's friends--they were just as guilty as Mrs. B, Mary, and Mr. B in imprisoning Frado in their house. Even though they didn't abuse her, they never helped her escape and even used her as a screen to deflect Mrs. B's abuse off of themselves. I don't need to reiterate all Leveen's points here, but I do want to say that she helped me to see a different face of domesticity than those I have been reading about, especially when looking at The Lamplighter. Gerty's life is similar to Frado's--both are orphaned/abandoned and both find new caretakers. But because Frado is a mulatta and Gerty is white, Frado's entry into domestic spaces is a descent into domestic hell and Gerty's is into a domestic heaven. Gerty finds friendship, love, and acceptance in domestic space. Frado finds none of these. She is entirely trapped and tortured in the spaces because of her skin color and status as indentured servant (not "help" as Gerty would be). Even when Frado finishes her indenture and can physically leave the Bellmont's house, she still does not have her own domestic space and must work for other people. When she is abandoned by her husband, this is further evidence that she cannot enter into the domestic space that white women can. She is forever shut out of domesticity because of her skin color. So, while this posting may not make much sense, and is in no way as thorough of an analysis as Leveen's, I hope this blog does evidence that my thoughts and perceptions about domesticity have been expanded by reading both the primary and secondary text.

19th C. Women in Theater

Check it out!

Theater Review | 'In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)'

A Quaint Treatment for Women Wronged

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: February 18, 2009

Sarah Ruhl’s spirited and stimulating new comedy is a fanciful but compassionate consideration of the treatment, and the mistreatment, of women in the late 19th century.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/theater/reviews/18vibr.html

Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week, but rather than address all of the texts, I think I’ll stick to one: Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). Inspired by (and including large parts of) her essay, “The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men, Woman versus Women” published in The Dial in 1843, Woman in the Nineteenth Century explores at greater length issues of marriage, religious and intellectual freedom, and the true desires of women. Fuller directly addresses her readers, often pinpointing and chastising her male audience, other times appealing to her female readers (especially young women). These addresses have received much critical attention, making Fuller a favorite among Women’s Rhetoric and performance studies scholars (see Sandra Gustafson’s “Choosing a Medium” for a good rhetorical analysis of Fuller’s sentimental performativity in relation to the Feminist movement). There are moments, however, that Fuller addresses neither men nor women specifically and merely targets the individual reader, uniting the desires of each gender in her refusal to address them separately. I found these moments some of the most interesting, mainly because it’s hard to know who Fuller expects to affect change; the agency is difficult to determine, projecting responsibility onto both men and women.

In a particular passage, which I plan to discuss here, Fuller assess the desires of women, laying bare typical assumptions about female wants and needs: “It is not the transient breath of poetic incense that women want; each can receive that from a lover” (38). Interestingly, the social narrative detailing women’s wants hasn’t changed much since Fuller’s 1845 composition. If you google “what women want,” you’ll end up with some pretty unsavory results. Our contemporary definition of the “transient breath of poetic incense” is a little more graphic than depictions in the 19th Century, to be sure, but the idea that women gain fulfillment from men remains true in contemporary projections of female desire. Most images of feminine beauty and desire are the products of a hetero-normative, masculine driven ideas; a lover’s “poetic incense” is a direct manifestation of the dominant patriarchal culture. But thankfully, Fuller is clarifying for reader that these profusions of romantic love aren’t on her list of feminine desires. In fact, she marks these things as easily accessible—“each can receive that from a lover”—and because they can be so easily attained, they’re no longer desirable. Fuller goes on to say that if a woman does want these things she “needs but to becomes a coquette, a shrew, or a good cook, to be sure of that,” adeptly showing all presumed feminine desires in their true light: as socially constructed negative stereotypes. Except for the “good cook,” which I found puzzling. It’s almost as though Fuller takes a prized feminine role (the culinary domestic) and groups it with socially despised feminine behaviors (a coquette and shrew) to point out that these negative feminine roles developed from the same masculine desires that demonize them.

Women also don’t want economic gain, fame, or societal positions: “It is not money, nor notoriety, nor the badges of authority that men have appropriated to themselves.” Fuller continues saying, “If demands, made in their behalf, lay stress on any of these particulars, those who make them have not searched deeply into the need.” It is this particular line that made me pause for a moment. I initially thought that Fuller must be referring to white men, highlighting them as not only the societal group most out of touch with true feminine desires but also the group with the most power and thus capable of advocating for women’s rights. But as I re-read the passage, I realized that it’s not exactly clear, which is noteworthy given Fuller’s tendency to directly address her intended audience. It seems that women, too, could be mistaken about their desires; advocating for all American women of the time period, female activists working for women’s rights to positions of power or fair wages have misplaced their efforts. According to Fuller, there’s something more important—more desirable: “It is for that which is the birthright of every being capable to receive it, -- the freedom, the religious, the intelligent freedom of the universe, to use its means; to learn its secret as far as nature had enabled them, with God along for their guide and their judge” (38). Fuller believes that freedom transcends social constructions and cultural markers of equality. “Every being capable to receive it” should be able to tap into the power of the universe. It’s obvious that, at this point, Fuller’s discussion of women’s rights/desires had transformed into a discussion of the true desires of humanity. Or what should be the true desires of humanity, according to Fuller. The fact that she simply addresses her audience in general (rather than distinguishing between her male and female readers) take on a new importance here: if we continue to think in terms of “man” and “woman,” separating their rights and desires, then we hinder the development of human rights. A preoccupation with gendered differences distorts the larger mission. Of course, Fuller goes on to debate the inequitable power dynamics of marriage and criticizes institution for oppressing women, so it’s not like she’s blind to gendered oppression. Her focus on human rights to universal freedom seems like a long-term goal.

Interestingly, Fuller’s argument that a focus on gender distracts us from larger goals is common today among those who wish to ditch feminism in favor or “humanism.” And those transitioning from Women’s Studies to Gender Studies seem to use similar logic. I understand the need to advocate for universal human rights, but large-scale social movements cannot happen in one fell swoop. We have to break up the work into manageable pieces, working together and yet separately. Moreover, the decision to ignore women’s rights in lieu of human rights assumes that women have achieved all their universal, global, social, and individual desires. And we all know that’s not the case. It seems like rather than focusing on one or the other, we must focus on both.

More on Philip and Domestic Spaces by Larisa

The reading for this class is getting more interesting all the time! I am really loving the focus on sentimental and domestic novels that we have had the past few weeks. In this posting I would like to respond to some comments from Dr. Gaul about my last post about The Lamplighter . Here are her comments to my last posting:
I wonder if you could go a little further with your ideas?  Why do you think Gertrude has to leave the house and go to the summer house to meet Philip?  How is his placement in that space (and in a series of hotels throughout the novel) significant to his character's development? Were you meaning to suggest that Philip becomes domesticated when he enters Emily's space?  Why do you think he builds a new home for them at the end of the novel?

First of all, I have been doing a lot of reading about houses and the use of domestic spaces, but have not found anything that discusses the purpose and function of a summer house, so I will just have to analyze that space based on my reading of the text. The summer house at first seems to be a place solely for lovers to meet. So Gertrude and Philips affectionate conversation there was initially confusing because I knew from early on in the novel that he was her missing father. Cummins description of Philip and the “youthful fire of his eyes” (258) immediately convinced me that he was Gertrude’s father since Cummins had just described “the deep brilliancy of her large dark eyes” (258) and frequently used the descriptor of fire to describer Gertrude’s temperament. Consequently, all the lover-like scenes between Gertrude and Philip never convinced me that there was a romance there. And when Gertrude remarked that Emily had never met Philip, I knew that something was a foot! (I am too well read in the sentimental genre to not spot these clues!)

When we first meet Philip, he is in the hotel’s breakfast hall (257), when we see him again it is on a steamboat where he is mysteriously lurking in shadows before introducing himself to Gertrude (266). Then later he is on a mossy rock (270). He keeps popping up like a stalker in a 21st century TV show on Lifetime. And yet he isn’t a stalker--we know that because he is always in scenes of nature and always ready to aid Gertrude. He isn’t like Mr. Bruce, who we first meet as a snake in the grass; he never did anything to help Gertrude. He was only an annoyance. Philip, on the other hand, is frequently pictured in natural scenes. For example, when they meet on that Sunday morning and she cries for his pain, he uses nature to illustrate his painful experiences (277). After that he flits in and out of indoor spaces, but never stays inside for very long. He is continually on the edge of the groups, unsure of his welcome. It is not until he meets with Gertrude in the summer house, a domestic space that is both inside and outside, that he accepts the invitation to fully return to domesticity as a father and lover/husband. When Gertrude takes his hand and he willingly goes with her to Emily, his return to his former home and former love indicates his return to domesticity. He stops moving around, popping in and out of scenes, and becomes a solid fixture in the family that Gertrude has created for herself as our sentimental heroine. And because Philip is finally domesticated by Emily, he is able to really settle down and build a house. This new house is also a sign of renewal and reconciliation with the family he left and the mistakes he has made--he is the Prodigal who has returned home. Cummins describes it eloquently this way: “And is the long-wandering, much-suffering, and deeply-sorrowing exile happy now? He is; but his peace springs not from his beautiful home, his wide possessions, an honorable repute among his fellow-men, or even the love of the gentle Emily. All these are blessings that he well knows how to prize; but his world-tried soul has found a deeper anchor yet,--a surer refuge from the tempest and the storm; for, through the power of a living faith, he has laid hold on eternal life” (421). Like Gertrude, Philip has been re-claimed and rescued, and found his way back into domesticity, but also into the arms of a heavenly father through his reconciliations with Emily, Mr. Graham, and Gertrude. This final scene of domesticity is punctuated with a beautiful sunset that reminds us that the once-wild Philip is now inside looking out and a firm fixture of domesticity.

Iola Leroy and the Politics of Race in the Sentimental Novel

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week, and sometimes I have no idea how I’ll process all the information. Basically, I feel like a sponge. As I talk to more people who have gone through the exam process, I am finding that this feeling is common, but I often wonder how I’ll ever retain all the material! Whew. And now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, please bear with me while I work through some of the critical, secondary material I’ve been wresting with over the past week. I’ve been reading Karen Weyler’s Intricate Relations: Sexual and Economic Desire in American Fiction and Caroline Levander’s Cradle of Liberty: Race, the Child, and National Belonging from Thomas Jefferson to W.E.B. Du Bois. I’d like to condense and discuss the major arguments in each of these texts, and then maybe I’ll even have a little discussion of Iola Leroy.

Weyler’s Intricate Relations was compelling and interesting, merging ideas of sexuality and economics. I found one of the most compelling descriptions of the book (and its title) on the back of the book (I love it when this happens): “In 1799, the novelist Charles Brockden Brown used the evocative phrase ‘intricate relations’ to describe the complex imbrications of sexual and economic relations in the early republic. Exploring these relationships, he argued, is the chief job of the ‘moral historian,’ a label that most novelists of the era embraced.” But Weyler doesn’t relegate her study to novels—she explores a wealth of social documents and narratives, eventually coming back to the novel as a space where, she argues, all these narrative converge to create a sexual and economic narrative of morality. One of the most interesting points, to me at least, was her discussion of a “fall” in early society. A woman “fell” sexually, saved only by a timely marriage. To “fall” as a man, however, was to fall economically, and the salvation for this transgression was a well-calculated marriage. We talked last semester about how, especially in the early parts of the nineteenth century, that marriage was more of an economic relation between men rather than a union between two people in love. As novels worked to revise this dynamic (a process which we addressed in class yesterday), the dynamics of economics and sexuality must also evolve and adapt. We can see this revision in The Lamplighter (and other “women’s fiction”): the heroine supports herself (at least some of the time), the marriage is between two people who love each other (though the man is clearly the primary bread-winner), and “sexual” scenes are played out between platonic characters, placing the agency in an internal, personal, and safe relationship rather than in a potentially “economic” one like marriage.

Changing venues just a bit, I’d like to talk briefly about Caroline Levander’s Cradle of Liberty. Given my recent interest in young girls and Girl’s Studies, I was pleased to find out that Levander’s text is all about literary representations of children in writing of the early national period. She argues that, rather than focusing on adult subjects, beginning an analysis of “a U.S. liberal endeavor with the child . . . provides a unique opportunity to chart liberalism’s inner workings—to see how the child, by simultaneously representing the promise of autonomy and the reality of dependence, both shapes and constantly threatens to disrupt liberalism’s two relational antipodes” (3). She takes this a step further, though, and thinks about how the child works to establish race as a critical element of national formation. She begins buy exploring the ways authors use the child to portray the “self,” a term she reads as an unadulterated, uncorrupted version of identity. Levander then extends this reading to child-centered narratives discussing race, analyzing how these two discourses operate as one: “To the extent that the child represents the liberal-democratic state, it takes on and perpetuates the racial meanings inhering in that social entity. Analysis of the child therefore does not simply index who suffers from racism (and is therefore equated with the child) but, more fundamentally, reveals racial domination to be a system—like patriarchy—that underpins and enabled liberal-democratic societies” (14). She doesn’t look at actual children, but rather at representations of children in American Literature, linking her analysis to contemporary uses of children (in many social texts) to display the natural, intrinsic “self” of a nation.

Ok, and now on to Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy. How’s that for a smooth transition? Let’s see if I can make some connections. One of the first things I’d like to say about this novel is that it is very clearly using the format of a sentimental novel, even sometimes subverting the conventions of the genre for its own rhetorical purposes. As a side note, this process of subverting genres is called “disembedding” a genre (I learned this from Melanie Kill) and is an interesting way into a textual analysis—genre theorists argue that one always “disembeds” for a purpose, usually to question the status quo. Of course, one could argue that authors of sentimental novels are already writing to subvert societal standards, making texts like Iola Leroy especially rich for analysis. In a full-length study, it might be fun to analyze the reasons the novel originally developed as a genre and then trace all subsequent progressions to Iola Leroy, but for today I think I’ll just look at it with other, traditional sentimental novels.

Iola Leroy follows the life of a young woman, Iola, who is the daughter of a wealthy white man and a black woman. At the beginning of the novel, readers find out that Iola’s father loved her mother (who could, and did, pass as white), freed her, married her, and refused to let his children know that they had any black blood. Iola and her brother (Harry) grew up in a slave owning family, thinking they were white. Sadly, Iola’s father dies, the mother’s freedom and marriage are proven false, and Iola and her mother are sold into slavery. It is at this point that the novel takes on the format of a sentimental story. Iola loses everything and is harassed by evil masters, though she never gives into moral or sexual corruption. Thankfully, slavery is abolished and Iola is freed, at which point she sets about gathering her family back together, which is very much a coming of age journey. She is employed as a teacher, able to earn a living helping others. Her moral struggle, however, is the point I find most intriguing.

In The Lamplighter, we watch Gerty learn to harness and control her bad temper. When she does, she becomes an almost angelic representation of the true woman (unless duty calls). Iola Leroy’s struggle, however, is directly impacted by racial politics. As a woman who could, and had for years, passed as white, Iola makes a choice to live as a black woman. She struggles to find work, encounters supreme disrespect, and declines marriage proposals based on race (more on this later). She overcomes these obstacles with the same unflappable dignity that we see in Gerty. Interestingly, Iola is always described as a “true woman,” so much so that white men, even after learning of her black blood, want to marry her. She declines, citing social stereotypes and prejudices as her reasoning. I think, however, that we could also think of her refusal to marry a white man (even though they could both live together as a “white” couple) is another way of revising the power dynamics of marriage in literary texts. Harper uses the unequal power dynamics inherent in racial tensions of the times and applies them to marriage. She makes it very obvious that, despite appearances—even though everything looks good on the surface—that the institution of marriage is inherently flawed. Of course, the novel still ends in marriage, but Harper does extensive work to make it equitable and digestible.

Iola and Dr. Latimer (her soon-to-be husband) were unified in “their desire to help their race”; their “hearts beat in loving unison” for this common cause and “one grand and noble purpose was giving tone and color to their lives and strengthening the bonds of affection between them” (266). Dr. Latimer, we find out, could also pass as white but chose to live as a black man, unwilling to ignore his people and their plight. They were united in a common cause: “Between their lives were no impending barriers, no inclination impelling one way and duty compelling another. Kindred hopes and tastes had knit their hearts; grand and noble purposes were lighting up their lives; and they esteemed it a blessed privilege to stand on the threshold of a new era and labor for those who had passed from the old oligarchy of slavery into the new commonwealth of freedom” (271). Dr. Latimer and Iola are united in a common cause, working to help former slaves transition into a new realm of freedom. There are no “barriers” or “compulsions” to keep them from the “commonwealth of freedom.” Harper’s use of anti-slavery rhetoric in her discussion of marriage is telling, for using a language of freedom to describe an (sometimes) oppressive social institution draws an obvious parallel between the two. But Dr. Latimer and Iola are revising the narrative, united in “one grand and noble purpose,” working to end oppression on a variety of levels.

Domestic Spaces in The Lamplighter Blog #4 by Larisa

This week I have done little reading. I have mostly been looking for sources about Marion Harland and fortunately have found a few articles and many primary texts that I hope to use for my mid-semester project. The reading I have done has been about domestic spaces and domesticity, from Clifford Edward Clark, Jr.’s The American Family Home 1800-1960. His ideas have caused me to think differently and see domestic spaces differently in novels. A few ideas that I was aware of before was the importance of domestic space, especially for women to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers. But I had not really analyzed how the house and the space was feminized until reading Clark’s ideas and listened to discussions in Dr. Gaul’s class last week about The Lamplighter. Many of the students pointed out that Gerty’s models of domesticity were closely intertwined with inside spaces. These women follow the prescribed ideals of True Womanhood that Barbara Welter points out, such as piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. For instance, Mrs. Sullivan is never seen outside her home. We do see Emily Graham outside the home, but she is rarely in an outside space, and we see that she is more comfortable inside--such as the house, a church, a private room in a hotel, or retiring in the ladies’ lounge. Patty Pace is often seen outside and in other people’s domestic spaces, but she is not really a true mentor to Gerty. She is merely a foil to Gerty who shows us what Gerty could become if she puts off domesticity and marriage until it is too late.

Using these ideas and insights gained from class discussion, I looked again at the reconciliation scene between Gertrude, Phillip Amory, and Emily Graham in The Lamplighter. She first learns about her father’s identity while reading his letters in her own domestic space, her private room. And when she finishes reading his letters, she flies out of the house, into the out of doors where she is very comfortable, but then enters another domestic space, the summer house. It is in that space, a typical meeting space for lovers, that Gertrude and her father profess their love and acceptance of each other as child and parent. Then the scene shifts back into the house where Emily is waiting for Phillip. Interestingly, she does not come outside, but waits in her female space for him to enter. Gertrude describes Emily as waiting, weeping, longing, and praying for Phillip--all characteristics of the true woman. The narrator reminds us that Emily is a girl still, who had “retained much of the freshness and all the loveliness of her girlhood” (394). So it is in the domestic space that this true woman reconciles with her lover--a reconciliation that seems almost a religious experience as Phillip is forgiven and restored to the family he lost. When he parts from Emily, he leaves her in the room. Then Gertrude enters and she and Emily say a prayer together: "Emily, who, kneeling by the sofa, with clasped hands, uplifted face, and with her white garments sweeping the floor, looked the very impersonation of purity and prayer. Throwing one arm around her neck, Gertrude knelt on the floor beside her, and together they sent up to the throne of God the incense of thanksgiving and praise!” (401). The narrator leaves us in no doubt that Emily and Gertrude are True Women and that their domestic space is what Clark calls a “family altar…more venerable than any altar in the cathedral” (29). True to the tenets of the cult of domesticity, it is the women, not the man in the family that participates in religious ritual.

Reading Clark’s ideas and thinking about the cult of domesticity has also led me to see familiar texts in a new light. For example, last night I watched the last half of the new Masterpiece Theatre version of Sense & Sensibility. I have read the book many times, seen different movie versions, but what struck me this time was the importance of the houses and the domestic spaces in the film. One of the sisters, Elinor, paints a watercolor of their former mansion and hangs it on the wall of their new little cottage when they move in. The painting seems to be all that they have left of their former wealth and seems to remind them of that constantly as it hangs over the fireplace in the main parlor. Anyone walking into the room would immediately see the painting. But at the film’s end, Eleanor has painted a watercolor of the little cottage. She removes the other painting and hangs the new one over the fireplace. While this act seemed unimportant to me the first time I saw the film, it now takes on new significance after my reading about domestic spaces. Clark points out that in the 19th century, people began to identify themselves with their homes and often had photographs taken outside the home, with the home a central figure in the picture. While Eleanor did not paint her family in the picture, this acceptance of the new and smaller domestic space is signified by the new painting. What else is interesting is that while the sisters are often shown in outdoor spaces, at the film’s conclusion, we see both sisters married--Marianne is carried by her husband over the threshold into her new house and Eleanor is seen happily watching her new husband feed their chickens in their yard. Both women are now married and tied to a domestic space. All these connections I missed before, but now I am seeing them!

I just found this publicity photo online and interestingly, the women are pictured with the cottage in the background. Many other shots have this same background. It is interesting to see them with the cottage, which is not where they start or where they finish in the film's action.
http://www.videodetective.com/photos/1275/Sense5.jpg

Sentimental Persuasion: The Minister's Wooing

I'm planing to write about Stowe's The Minister's Wooing, but before I begin my exploration of that text, I'd like to share some thoughts I had during Friday's class discussion of The Lamplighter. The students were doing a fantastic job of working through the performative functions of sentimentality, really latching on to it's persuasive nature: the characters care, they are sympathetic and cry, we become sympathetic, care about the same issues, and cry along with them. As they were talking, I was thinking about how the novel, through Gerty and Emily's early relationship models this behavior for readers. As a young child, Gerty is swayed easily by Emily's tears. The moment Emily is saddened by Gerty's behavior, she regulates her mischief. If Emily cares deeply about something, Gerty also cares. Gerty is sympathetic to Emily's feelings and ideas and grows into a refined young woman by altering her behavior to suit Emily's kin, concerned desires. Modeling this good behavior-- complete with a positive outcome-- may be a method of letting readers know how they should respond to the text's sympathetic scenarios. Young readers, like young Gerty, require instruction, which the book provides and models as a method of ensuring the appropriate and desired reader response. In this way (and I'm sure there are others), sympathy can be use as a rhetorical device of persuasion. Just some thoughts-- now on to The Minister's Wooing.

I've spent the majority of this week reading Stowe's The Minister's Wooing and thinking about how it connects to our previous discussions sentimental novels and intimate female relationships. It's a romance novel, that follows the marriage of Mary Scudder. Quick (very quick) plot summary: Mary deeply religious is in love with her childhood friend James, he leaves for 3 years at sea and is thought dead after a shipwreck. Mary, at the urging of her mother, becomes engaged to the stringent minister. A week before the wedding, James reappears, alive and well. Mary, however, is determined to marry the minister because it's God's will, even though she doesn't love him. It's a long novel, so there's a lot to discuss. The mother/daughter relationship is infuriating and worthy of much discussion. Also, Aaron Burr plays the role of the would-be rake, if he wasn't thwarted and converted by Mary's goodness. And a French character becomes Mary's best friend and confidant, trying at every turn to thwart Mary's engagement to the minister. But for the sake of brevity, I'll stick to one discussion that interests me most: Stowe's style and use of sentimentality.

It seems that Stowe's mission in The Minister's Wooing is to satirize Calvinism, addressing in particular predestination. Interestingly, though, she rarely directly mentions predestination as an open topic in the novel. Her commentary is more acutely felt in her portrayal of her characters as they wrestle with individual actions and religious agency. As characters fall in love with non-believers, they must come to terms with loving someone, believing they are wholly good, and yet knowing that their beliefs will sentence them to an eternity of doom. Stowe, in stroke of genius, allows readers to see all internal conflicts and doubts. In all of their hesitant humanity, it's easy to identify and sympathize with the characters. Even the minister wavers in his conviction. I even found myself identifying with their internal struggles, loving the characters, and was eventually unwilling to believe that the romantic lead was destined for hellfire and damnation. Their humanity was sympathetic, which I thought was a compelling and rhetorically effective usage of sympathy. Of course, Stowe is known for her usage of humanity as a persuasive device. Uncle Tom's Cabin uses the same appeal to audience humanity, though the plot doesn't revolve around a marriage and so doesn't seem as (what I would term) traditionally sentimental. I'm going to keep thinking through this, especially as I continue to read Wyeler's Intricate Relations and will probably post more on this idea soon.

Barbie's House

Okay, you have got to watch this! Talk about domesticity and women's roles:

Blog #3 Girl Power! Nineteenth-century Style by Larisa

Even though Nina Baym calls The Lamplighter “more absurd” (165) than Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World, I truly enjoyed Gerty's journey from abused orphan to independent woman. However, for a few days I have been puzzled about my reasons. But then today as I was reflecting on Gerty, I realized I admired her because she is a “girl who does things”(to borrow a phrase from Robin McKinley's Newbery Speech given in 1985. (You can find the speech here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061028014102/http://www.robinmckinley.com/Essays/Newbery1985.html)). My entire life my appetite has always been for fiction that has an active heroine who gets busy making her life happen, instead of waiting around at home for life to come knocking on her door. I feel just as Amanda does and echo her sentiment: “If isn't about a woman, I don't want to read it.” So even though The Lamplighter was written in the 1850s and we are living in 2009, there is much to admire about Cummins work and indeed, we are indebted to women writers like her. Thanks to them there are many more novels about “girls who do things” and the things we do today are even more diverse and varied than in 1850.

First of all, let me talk a little bit about Robin McKinley and why I admire her writing. She writes fantasy novels that feature strong female protagonists. I am not sure which one of the five girls in my family first discovered her, but we quickly shared all her novels amongst ourselves and literally ate them up. My favorite is The Blue Sword. A romance in the true literary sense, it is the adventure story of a social misfit who discovers that she has a magical gift and saves her people from annihilation. McKinley borrows heavily from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and sets her story in a familiar British colonial landscape. Her writing is fresh and engaging, her heroine is flawed and real, and the adventure story is one that girls and boys alike can relish. One of my sisters loves McKinley's heroines so much that she has even named one of her daughters after her (Aerin). The Blue Sword is a book I read again and again—just for the thrill of seeing a girl have all the adventures typically ascribed to her male counterpart. McKinley talks about her writing in this speech when she got the Newbery medal and refers to Tolkien's one fully developed female character, Eowyn. Let's pause here and revisit this character as portrayed in the cartoon version—just to refresh our minds about what a girl who does things looks like.

It is because of authors like Maria Susanna Cummins that we now have contemporary fiction like McKinley's that features these strong female protagonists. The girl power of the nineteenth century is the mother of the girl power in the twenty-first century.

We see this girl power clearly in Gerty. She is a strong and resourceful middle class girl who saves herself, a marked shift from the seduction narratives of the eighteenth century that featured passive and easily seduced maidens. The contrast between Gerty and Eliza Wharton in The Coquette is striking. When a man like General Sanford, Ben Bruce, tries to entice Gerty into a life of indolence and wastefulness, she gives him the cold shoulder and eventually drives him off by her strength of character and words. If Eliza Wharton had been able to do that, there would be no tragic ending. Bravo for Gerty, the girl who does things! I do recognize that she must be helped and mentored along this journey of self actualization, but once she is on the path, it is her choice to continue that makes it all happen. Uncle True picks her up out of the gutter, but she first puts herself into the position of being noticed. Her physical effort to embrace the light he carries and escape the dark represented by Nan Grant starts Gerty's journey.

Gerty then makes many more choices that take her through trials and tribulations that make her into the independent and empowered woman we see at the novel's conclusion. These choices I see falling into four main categories: 1. education; 2. domesticity; 3. religion; 4. self-control and identity. Education first of all provides Gerty not only with a career, but it also teaches her self control and focus. Her intellectual gifts bring her satisfaction and independence. When she is given the command by Mr. Graham to travel with them, she instead chooses her own course: to work in the school as an assistant teacher and to care for Mrs. Sullivan and Mr. Cooper. She says, “I believe it to be my duty, and am therefore willing to sacrifice my own comfort” (146). This education also empowers Gerty to give her financial and familial independence when many young women orphans of her time and social standing would have had little other careers open to them. Secondly, Gerty chooses domesticity. She learns homemaking skills from Mrs. Sullivan and then creates a home space for herself and Uncle True. Knowing how to run a home and care for people are valuable skills and important for a woman on the marriage market, but also allows Gerty to create a family of her own choosing. This family eventually includes her childhood friend Willie, now a grown man, her recovered father, and new stepmother/mentor, Emily. Thirdly, Gerty chooses to create a personal relationship with God after receiving instructions from Emily Graham. She is empowered by this relationship when she suffers terrible personal losses. The narrator tells us that, “In many a time of trouble did she come to God for help; in many an hour of bitter sorrow did she from the same source seek comfort and, when her strength and heart failed her, God became the strength of her heart” (41). And finally, Gerty is able to master her temper and submit to circumstances. Every time she does, situations favor her and she comes off the winner. Time and again she puts up with insults and bad treatment, but eventually her Christian patience rewards her with the marriage and financial situation she so deserves. The novel ends with Gerty and Willie watching the lamps lit by God (the stars) and all former enemies are now her friends.

So while our lives in 2009 are different from Gerty's in the 1850s, there is much to learn about power and choice. We can thank Cummins and McKinley alike for inspiring us all to be girls who do things.