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Aday Melissa Thesis1.Pdf Motherhood and Literary Form in Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women by Melissa J Aday, B.A. A Thesis In ENGLISH LITERATURE Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Approved Dr. Michele Navakas Co-chair of Committee Dr. Jen Shelton Co-chair of Committee Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School May, 2012 Copyright 2010, Melissa J Aday Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... III I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 II.THE MATERNAL IN CHARLOTTE TEMPLE ................................................................. 8 Narrative Non-linearity: The Mother’s Story in Charlotte Temple ........................... 9 The Mother’s Foil .................................................................................................... 12 An Ideal Model ........................................................................................................ 15 The Epistolary Component: A Note from Home ..................................................... 18 A Love Letter ........................................................................................................... 20 The Mother’s Letter ................................................................................................. 21 Charlotte’s Surrogate Mothers ................................................................................. 23 The Didactic Voice: Narrator as Mother .................................................................. 26 Charlotte’s Letter Home: An Imitated Voice ........................................................... 28 III. THE MATERNAL IN LITTLE WOMEN ..................................................................... 32 Marmee’s Voice as Frame ....................................................................................... 32 The House as a Symbol for Marmee ........................................................................ 35 Formative Experiments: Learning Through Play ..................................................... 40 Developing the Individual House ............................................................................ 51 Finding the “Palace Beautiful” ................................................................................ 54 IV. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 60 NOTES .......................................................................................................................... 65 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................. 67 WORKS CONSULTED .................................................................................................... 69 ii Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 ABSTRACT In this essay I will examine mother-daughter relationships in eighteenth and nineteenth century American novels, claiming that the mother characters instruct their daughters to function within society’s guidelines while at the same time encourage them to develop individuality. I will frame my argument using Lora Romero’s discussion of nineteenth century American domesticity in which she claims that domestic novels are conservative in some areas yet progressive in others. I complement this perspective with that of Julia Stern who provides criticism of eighteenth century American sentiment which I use as a model for acknowledging the ambiguities in mother-daughter relationships. My essay directly responds to a recent special edition of Studies in American Fiction in which editors Jennifer Desiderio and Desireé Henderson call for a recontextualization of Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple. In analyzing the relationships between mothers and daughters in Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, I will show that eighteenth and nineteenth century American daughters can neither separate themselves entirely from maternal figures nor wholly conform to them. Instead daughters must find ways of manipulating the socially constructed maternal role in order to illustrate their own individualities and function within the changing American nation. iii Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In 1868 Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, a novel that focuses on the nineteenth-century domestic household grounded in a mother’s relationship with her daughters. A scene in chapter eight depicting an emotional conversation between Marmee, the matriarch, and Jo, the second daughter, provides readers with a striking view of mother-daughter interactions which highlights the duality of the maternal nature. The discussion takes place in the aftermath of youngest sister Amy’s fall through the ice on the river, a result of Jo’s spiteful neglect of the young girl. Distraught by the realization that Amy has come so close to death, Jo cries “It’s my dreadful temper! I try to cure it; I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. Oh, mother! what shall I do! what shall I do?” (Alcott 77). In response Marmee compassionately tells Jo of her own struggles with anger, explaining how she is “angry nearly every day of her life” and that her anger is something she tries desperately to “cure” (Alcott 78). The conversation continues for over three pages, and in that span Marmee never once lets her daughter know that anger is a natural emotion or attempts to examine the root of Jo’s anger. The mother shows “patience and humility . sympathy and confidence” to her daughter, but her conversation tells Jo not that it is alright to feel anger, but instead it insists that Jo realize that she must “try with heart and soul to master this quick temper, before it brings [her] greater sorrow and regret” (Alcott 79). In this exchange we are shown the ideal mother, a woman whose personal efforts are centered upon the goal of being the “woman [she] would 1 Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 have [her daughters] copy” (Alcott 79). She is intent upon guiding her children with love, but she must also frame their growth within the guidelines society sets forth, principles which bind her as well. Her maternal nature is jaded with a sense of tyranny through which she evasively teaches her daughters to mimic her own actions. The inherent duality of the scene encourages a sense of skepticism regarding the formation of domesticity which encourages examination of the motherly bonds between adult mother and female child. My argument in this essay is that eighteenth and nineteenth-century American novels of sentiment affirm the idea that, through the mother, and only through the mother, is the daughter expected to formulate any definition of self. While the mother encourages this independent self-development, she also confines it within dominant social strictures. Thus the daughter functions as an extension of the maternal being in mind, body, and action, becoming an icon that is comforting to a society shaken in its beliefs and fearing the changes to come. These principles appear in Susanna Rowson’s post-Revolutionary War novel Charlotte Temple (1794) as well as Alcott’s postbellum Little Women. Though published nearly seventy five years apart, both texts exhibit a similar focus upon a comforting yet controlling mother figure who encourages and confines the daughter’s self-development. Rowson provides Lucy Temple as her central maternal character, but she places Lucy at a continual distance from her daughter, Charlotte. While Lucy stands as the model which Charlotte is meant to follow, their separation hinders the mother-daughter relationship in a way which makes Charlotte susceptible to alternate mother-like forces. Regardless of these 2 Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 difficulties, Lucy Temple remains the touch point in Charlotte’s thoughts and the object to which she clings for self-definition. Alcott too makes her mother character, Marmee, the guiding figure of the story, allowing her the freedom to develop “experiments,” often as instances of guided play, through which she educates her daughters (Alcott 106). By encouraging games such as Pilgrim’s Progress in which the girls take on pretend “burdens” and “travel through the house,” Alcott’s Marmee provides her children with freedom to improve themselves individually, but limits their freedom by educating them within society’s expected norms (Alcott 13). As in Charlotte Temple, the daughters of Little Women are expected to model themselves upon the virtues evident in their mother and to censor themselves according to conservative social mores, ideas which manifest themselves in American society in new ways in the midst of the fears inherent in post-Civil War changes within the nation. The ambiguities of the mother/daughter relationships suggest that readers should skeptically analyze the maternal image, determining ways to revise the role of mother rather than wholly mimicking or breaking away from the given ideal.1 This essay identifies three critical characteristics of early and postbellum American novels of sentimentality geared toward young women. My first claim is that the novels present daughters who are learning to speak in individualized versions of the maternal
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