metrical effort,—unpromisingly labeled “Jephthah’s Rash Vow,”—put forth
by a girl of sixteen, Miss Caroline Howard. Here occurs an indicative
touch. “When I learned,” says this commended Miss Caroline, “that my
verses had been surreptitiously printed in a newspaper, I wept bitterly,
and was as alarmed as if I had been detected in man’s apparel.” Such was
the feeling with which the singing-robes were donned by a maiden in
1810—a state of affairs soon to be replaced by a general fashion of
feminine singing-robes, of rather cheap material. For during the second
quarter of the present century conditions somewhat improved, and
production greatly increased. “There was a wide manifestation of that
which bears to pure ideality an inferior relationship,” writes Mr.
Stedman of the general body of our literature at this period. In 1848
Dr. Griswold reports that “women among us are taking a leading part”;
that “the proportion of female writers at this moment in America, far
exceeds that which the present or any other age in England exhibits.”
Awful moment in America! one is led to exclaim by a survey of the poetic
field. Alas, the verse of those “Tokens,” and “Keepsakes,” and
“Forget-me-nots,” and “Magnolias,” and all the rest of the annuals, all
glorious without in their red or white Turkey morocco and gilding! Alas,
the flocks of quasi swan-singers! They have sailed away down the river
of Time, chanting with a monotonous mournfulness. We need not speak of
them at length. One of them early wrote about the Genius of Oblivion;
most of them wrote for it. It was not their fault that their toil
increased the sum of the “Literature suited to Desolate Islands.” The
time was out of joint. Sentimentalism infected both continents. It was
natural enough that the infection should seize most strongly upon those
who were weakened by an intellectual best-parlor atmosphere, with small
chance of free out-of-door currents. They had their reward. Their crude
constituencies were proud of them; and not all wrought without
“emolument,” though it need hardly be said that verse-making was not and
is not, as a rule, a remunerative occupation. Some names survive; held
in the memory of the public by a few small, sweet songs on simple
themes, probably undervalued by their authors, but floating now like
flowers above the tide that has swallowed so many pretentious,
sand-based structures.
Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, the most prolific poetess of the period, was
hailed as “the American Mrs. Hemans.” A gentle and pious womanhood shone
through her verse; but her books are undisturbed and dusty in the
libraries now, and likely to remain so. Maria Gowen Brooks,—“Maria del
Occidente,”—was, on the other hand, not popular at home, but put forth a
far stronger claim than Mrs. Sigourney, and won indeed somewhat
disproportionate praises abroad. “Southey says ‘Zophiel, or the Bride of
Seven,’ is by some Yankee woman,” writes Charles Lamb; “as if there had
ever been a woman capable of anything so great!” One is glad that we
need not now consider as the acme of woman’s poetic achievement this
metrical narrative of the loves of the angels; nevertheless, it is on
the whole a remarkably sustained work, with a gorgeousness of coloring
which might perhaps be traced to its author’s Celtic strain.
As Mrs. Samuel Gilman, Caroline Howard, of whom we have already spoken,
carried the New England spirit into a Southern home, and there wrote not
only verses, but sketches and tales, much in the manner of her sisters,
who never left the Puritan nest; though dealing at times with material
strange to them, as in her “Recollections of a Southern Matron.” With
the women of New England lies our chief concern, until a date
comparatively recent. A strong, thinking, working race,—all know the
type; granite rock, out of its crevices the unexpected harebells
trembling here and there. As writers they have a general resemblance; in
one case a little more mica and glitter, in another more harebells than
usual. Mrs. Sigourney, for instance, presents an azure predominance of
the flowery, on a basis of the practical. Think of her fifty-seven
volumes—copious verse, religious and sentimental; sketches of travel;
didactic “Letters” to mothers, to young ladies; the charmingly garrulous
“Letters of Life,” published after her death. Quantity, dilution,
diffusiveness, the dispersion of energy in a variety of aims,—these were
the order of the day. Lydia Maria Child wrote more than thirty-five
books and pamphlets, beginning with the apotheosis of the aboriginal
American in romance, ending in the good fight with slavery, and taking
in by the way domestic economy, the progress of religious ideas, and the
Athens of Pericles, somewhat romanticized. Firm granite here, not
without ferns of tenderest grace. It is very curious and impressive, the
self-reliant dignity with which these noble matrons circumambulate the
whole field of literature, with errant feet, but with a character
central and composed. They are “something better than their verse,” and
also than their prose. Why was it that the dispersive tendency of the
time showed itself especially in the literary effort of women? Perhaps
the scattering, haphazard kind of education then commonly bestowed upon
girls helped to bring about such a condition of things. Efficient work,
in literature as in other professions, is dependent, in a degree, upon
preparation; not indeed upon the actual amount of knowledge possessed,
but upon the training of the mind to sure action, and the vitality of
the spark of intellectual life communicated in early days. To the
desultory and aimless education of girls at this period, and their
continual servitude to the sampler, all will testify. “My education,”
says Mrs. Gilman, “was exceedingly irregular, a perpetual passing from
school to school.... I drew a very little and worked ‘The Babes in the
Wood’ on white satin, with floss silk.” By and by, however, she “was
initiated into Latin,” studied Watts’s Logic by herself, and joined a
private class in French. Lydia Huntley (Mrs. Sigourney), fared somewhat
better; pursuing mathematics, though she admits that too little time was
accorded to the subject; and being instructed in “the belles-lettres
studies” by competent teachers. Her day-school education ceased at
thirteen; she afterward worked alone over history and mental philosophy,
had tutors in Latin and French, and even dipped into Hebrew, under
clerical guidance. This has a deceptively advanced sound; we are to
learn presently that she was sent away to boarding-school, where she
applied herself to—“embroidery of historical scenes, filigree, and other
finger-works.” (May we not find a connection between this kind of
training, and the production of dramatic characters as lifelike as those
figures in floss silk? Was it not a natural result, that corresponding
“embroidery of historical scenes” performed by the feminine pen?) Lydia
Maria Francis (Mrs. Child) “apart from her brother’s companionship, had,
as usual, a very unequal share of educational opportunities; attending
only the public schools”—the public schools of the century in its
teens—“with one year at a private seminary.” She writes to the Rev.
Convers Francis in 1838, “If I possessed your knowledge, it seems to me
as if I could move the whole world. I am often amused and surprised to
think how many things I have attempted to do with my scanty stock of
learning.” Catherine Sedgwick, “reared in an atmosphere of high
intelligence,” still confesses, “I have all my life felt the want of
more systematic training.”
Another cause of the scattering, unmethodical supply may have been the
vagueness of the demand. America was not quite sure what it was proper
to expect of “the female writer”; and perhaps that lady herself had a
lingering feudal idea that she could hold literary territory only on
condition of stout pen-service in the cause of the domestic virtues and
pudding. “In those days,” says Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “it seemed to
be held necessary for American women to work their passage into
literature by first compiling a cookery-book.” Thus we have Mrs. Child’s
“Frugal Housewife”; and we find clever Eliza Leslie of Philadelphia,
putting forth “Seventy-five Receipts,” before she ventures upon her
humorous and satirical “Pencil Sketches.” The culinary tradition was
carried on, somewhat later, by Catherine Beecher, with her “Domestic
Receipt Book”; and we have indeed most modern instances, in the
excellent “Common Sense Series” of the novelist “Marion Harland,” and in
Mrs. Whitney’s “Just How.” Perhaps, however, it is not fancy that these
wear the kitchen apron with a difference.
In addition to lack of training, and to the vague nature of the public
demand, a third cause operated against symmetrical artistic development
among the women of those electric days preceding the Civil War. That
struggle between the art-instinct and the desire for reform, which is
not likely to cease entirely until the coming of the Golden Year, was
then at its height. Both men and women were drawn into the maelstrom of
the anti-slavery conflict; yet to a few men the artist’s single aim
seemed still possible: to Longfellow, to Hawthorne. Similar examples are
lacking among contemporary women. Essential womanhood, “das
Ewigweibliche,” seems at this point unusually clear in the work of
women; the passion for conduct, the enthusiasm for abstract justice, not
less than the potential motherhood that yearns over all suffering.
The strong Hebraic element in the spiritual life of New England women,
in particular, tended to withdraw them from the service of pure art at
this period. “My natural inclinations,” wrote Lydia Maria Child, “drew
me much more strongly toward literature and the arts than toward reform,
and the weight of conscience was needed to turn the scale.”
Mrs. Child and Miss Sedgwick, chosen favorites of the public, stand
forth as typical figures. Both have the art-instinct, both the desire
for reform; in Mrs. Child the latter decidedly triumphs, in spite of her
romances; in Miss Sedgwick, the former, though less decidedly, in spite
of her incidental preachments. She wrote “without any purpose or hope to
slay giants,” aiming merely “to supply mediocre readers with small moral
hints on various subjects that come up in daily life.” It is interesting
to note just what public favor meant, materially, to the most popular
women writers of those days. Miss Sedgwick, at a time when she had
reached high-water mark, wrote in reply to one who expected her to
acquire a fortune, that she found it impossible to make much out of
novel-writing while cheap editions of English novels filled the market.
“I may go on,” she says, “earning a few hundred dollars a year, and
precious few too.” One could not even earn the “precious few” without
observing certain laws of silence. The “Appeal in Behalf of that class
of Americans called Africans” seriously lessened the income of Mrs.
Child. That dubious America of 1833 was decided on one point: this was
not what she expected of “the female writer.” She was willing to be
instructed by a woman—about the polishing of furniture and the education
of daughters.
And now there arises before us another figure, of striking singularity
and power. Margaret Fuller never appeared as a candidate for popular
favor. On the polishing of furniture she was absolutely silent; nor,
though she professed “high respect for those who ‘cook something good,’
and create and preserve fair order in houses,” did she ever fulfill the
understood duty of woman by publishing a cookery-book. On the education
of daughters she had, however, a vital word to say; demanding for them
“a far wider and more generous culture.” Her own education had been of
an exceptional character; she was fortunate in its depth and solidity,
though unfortunate in the forcing process that had made her a hard
student at six years old. Her equipment was superior to that of any
American woman who had previously entered the field of literature; and
hers was a powerful genius, but, by the irony of fate, a genius not
prompt to clothe itself in the written word. As to the inspiration of
her speech, all seem to agree; but one who knew her well has spoken of
the “singular embarrassment and hesitation induced by the attempt to
commit her thoughts to paper.” The reader of the Sibylline leaves she
scattered about her in her strange career receives the constant
impression of hampered power, of force that has never found its proper
outlet. In “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” there is certainly
something of that “shoreless Asiatic dreaminess” complained of by
Carlyle; but there are also to be found rich words, fit, like those of
Emerson, for “gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.” The critical
Scotchman himself subsequently owned that “some of her Papers are the
undeniable utterances of a true heroic mind; altogether unique, so far
as I know, among the Writing Women of this generation; rare enough, too,
God knows, among the Writing Men.” She accomplished comparatively little
that can be shown or reckoned. Her mission was “to free, arouse,
dilate.” Those who immediately responded were few; and as the circle of
her influence has widened through their lives, the source of the
original impulse has been unnamed and forgotten. But if we are disposed
to rank a fragmentary greatness above a narrow perfection, to value
loftiness of aim more than the complete attainment of an inferior
object, we must set Margaret Fuller, despite all errors of judgment, all
faults of style, very high among the “Writing Women” of America. It is
time that, ceasing to discuss her personal traits, we dwelt only upon
the permanent and essential, in her whose mind was fixed upon the
permanent, the essential. Her place in our literature is her own; it has
not been filled, nor does it seem likely to be. The particular kind of
force which she exhibited—in so far as it was not individual—stands a
chance in our own day of being drawn into the educational field, now
that the “wider and more generous culture” which she claimed has been
accorded to women.
We may trace from the early publications of Lydia Maria Francis and
Catherine Sedgwick the special line along which women have worked most
successfully. It is in fiction that they have wrought with the greatest
vigor and freedom; and in that important class of fiction which reflects
faithfully the national life, broadly or in sectional phases. In 1821
Miss Francis, a girl of nineteen, wrote “Hobomok,” a rather crude novel
of colonial Massachusetts, with an Indian hero. Those were the times of
the pseudo-American school, the heyday of what Mr. Stedman has called
the “supposititious Indian.” To the sanguine, “Hobomok” seemed to
foreshadow a feminine Cooper; and its author put forth in the following
year “The Rebels,” a novel of Boston before the Revolution. A more
effective worker on this line, however, was Miss Sedgwick; whose “New
England Tale”—a simple little story, originally intended as a tract—was
published in 1822, and at once drew attention, in spite of a certain
thinness, by its recognizable home flavor. The plain presentation of New
England life in “Redwood,” her succeeding book, interests and convinces
the reader of to-day. Some worthless elements of plot, now out of date,
are introduced; but age cannot wither nor custom stale the fresh reality
of the most memorable figure,—that manly soul Miss Deborah, a character
as distinct as Scott himself could have made her. “Hope Leslie,”
“Clarence,” and “The Linwoods” followed; then the briefer tales
supplying “small moral hints,” such as the “Poor Rich Man and Rich Poor
Man.” All are genuine, wholesome, deserving of the hearty welcome they
received. “Wise, clear, and kindly,”—one must echo the verdict of
Margaret Fuller on our gentle pioneer in native fiction; we may look
back with pride on her “speech moderate and sane, but never palsied by
fear or skeptical caution”; on herself, “a fine example of the
independent and beneficent existence that intellect and character can
give to woman.” The least studied among her pathetic scenes are
admirable; and she displays some healthy humor, though not as much as
her charming letters indicate that she possessed. A recent writer has
ranked her work in one respect above that of Cooper, considering it more
calculated to effect “the emancipation of the American mind from foreign
types.”
Miss Sedgwick, past threescore, was still in the literary harness, when
the woman who was destined to bring the novel of New England to a fuller
development reached fame at a bound with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” At last
the artist’s instinct and the purpose of the reformer were fused, as far
as they are capable of fusion, in a story that still holds its reader,
whether passive or protesting, with the grip of the master-hand. The
inborn powers of Mrs. Stowe were fortunately developed in a home
atmosphere that supplied deficiencies in training. Fate was kind in
providing occasional stimulants for the feminine mind, though an
adequate and regular supply was customarily withheld. Miss Sedgwick
attributes an especial quickening force to the valuable selections read
aloud by her father to his family; Miss Francis, as we have seen, owed
much to the conversation of her brother. To Harriet Beecher was granted,
outside her inspiring home circle, an extra stimulus, in the early
influence of the enthusiastic teacher whose portrait she has given us in
the Jonathan Rossiter of “Oldtown Folks.” A close knowledge of Scott’s
novels from her girlhood had its effect in shaping her methods of
narration. She knew her Bible—perpetual fountain feeding the noblest
streams of English literature—as Ruskin knew his. Residence for years
near the Ohio border had familiarized her with some of the darkest
aspects of slavery; so that when the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law
roused her to the task of exhibiting the system in operation, she was as
fully prepared to execute that task as a woman of New England birth and
traditions well could be. Since the war, Southern writers, producing
with the ease of intimacy works steeped in the spirit of the South, have
taught us much concerning negro character and manners, and have
accustomed us to an accurate reproduction of dialect. The sublimity of
Uncle Tom has been tried by the reality of the not less lovable Uncle
Remus. But whatever blemishes or extravagances may appear to a critical
eye in the great anti-slavery novel, it still beats with that intense
life which nearly forty years ago awoke a deep responsive thrill in the
repressed heart of the North. We are at present chiefly concerned with
its immense practical success. It was a “shot heard round the world.”
Ten thousand copies were sold in a few days; over three hundred thousand
in a year; eight power-presses were kept running day and night to supply
the continual demand. The British Museum now contains thirty-five
complete editions in English; and translations exist in at least twenty
different languages. “Never did any American work have such success!”
exclaims Mrs. Child, in one of her enthusiastic letters.... “It has done
much to command respect for the faculties of woman.” The influences are,
indeed, broad and general, which have since that day removed all
restrictions tending to impress inferiority on the woman writer, so that
the distinction of sex is lost in the distinction of schools. Yet a
special influence may be attributed to this single marked manifestation
of force, to this imposing popular triumph. In the face of the fact that
the one American book which had stormed Europe was the work of a woman,
the old tone of patronage became ridiculous, the old sense of ordained
and inevitable weakness on the part of “the female writer” became
obsolete. Women henceforth, whatever their personal feelings in regard
to the much-discussed book, were enabled, consciously or unconsciously,
to hold the pen more firmly, to move it more freely.
In New England fiction, what a leap from the work of Miss Sedgwick,
worthy as it is, to that of Mrs. Stowe! The field whence a few hardy
growths were peeping, seems to have been overflowed by a fertilizing
river, so rich is its new yield. It is the “soul of Down-East” that we
find in “The Minister’s Wooing”” and “Oldtown Folks.” Things spiritual
are grasped with the insight of kinship, externals are drawn with the
certainty of life-long acquaintance. If we glance at the humorous side
of the picture, surely no hand that ever wrought could have bettered one
smile-provoking line in the familiar figure of Sam Lawson, the village
do-nothing. There is a free-handedness in the treatment of this
character, not often found in more recent conscientious studies of local
types. It is a painting beside photographs. A certain inequality, it may
be admitted, appears in the range of Mrs. Stowe’s productions. They form
links, more or less shining, between a time of confused and groping
effort on the part of women and a time of definitely directed aims, of a
concentration that has, inevitably, its own drawbacks.
The encouragement of the great magazines, from the first friendly to
women writers, is an important factor in their development. _Harper’s_
dates from 1850; the _Atlantic Monthly_, in 1857, opened a new outlet
for literary work of a high grade. Here appeared many of the short
stories of Rose Terry, depicting the life of New England; unsurpassable
in their fidelity to nature, their spontaneous flow, their grim humor,
pathos, tragedy. In the pages of the _Atlantic_, too, suddenly flashed
into sight the brilliant exotics of Harriet Prescott, who holds among
American women a position as singular as that of Poe among men. Her
characters have their being in some remote, gorgeous sunset-land; we
feel that the Boston Common of “Azarian” is based upon a cloud rather
than solid Yankee earth, and the author can scarce pluck a Mayflower but
it turns at her touch to something rich and strange. Native flavor there
is in some of her shorter stories, such as “The South Breaker,” and
“Knitting Sale-Socks”; but a sudden waft of foreign spices is sure to
mingle with the sea-wind or the inland lilac-scents. “The Amber Gods”
and “A Thief in the Night” skillfully involve the reader in a dazzling
web of deceptive strength.
In “Temple House,” “Two Men,” and “The Morgesons,” the peculiarly
powerful works of Mrs. Stoddard, the central figures do not seem
necessarily of any particular time or country. Their local habitation,
however, is impressively painted; with a few swift vigorous strokes, the
old coast towns spring up before us; the very savor of the air is
imparted. Minor characters strongly smack of the soil; old Cuth, in “Two
Men,” dying “silently and firmly, like a wolf”; Elsa, in the same book.
There are scenes of a superb, fierce power,—that of the wreck in “Temple
House,” for instance. The curt and repressed style, the ironic humor of
Mrs. Stoddard, serve to grapple her work to the memory as with hooks of
steel; it is as remote as possible from the conventional notion of
woman’s writing.