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Volume One of Judith Sargent Murray's Poetry Manuscripts Tammy Mills View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 8-2-2006 "Lines Written in my Closet": Volume One of Judith Sargent Murray's Poetry Manuscripts Tammy Mills Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Mills, Tammy, ""Lines Written in my Closet": Volume One of Judith Sargent Murray's Poetry Manuscripts." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2006. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/11 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “LINES WRITTEN IN MY CLOSET”: VOLUME ONE OF JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY’S POETRY MANUSCRIPTS by TAMMY MILLS Under the Direction of Reiner Smolinski ABSTRACT Once holding an esteemed literary reputation as author of The Gleaner (1798), an eclectic collection of prose and poetry serialized and sold by advance subscription, Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820) was virtually forgotten for nearly two centuries. The 1986 discovery of manuscripts believed to have been lost prompted critics to evaluate anew Sargent Murray’s literary accomplishments. Previously unpublished poems and letters mark the prolific author as an important figure in early America’s self-conscious attempt to establish a national literature. This dissertation makes available Volume One of Sargent Murray’s poetry manuscript journals: two hundred and twenty previously unpublished poems and two that were published in The Massachusetts Magazine. The poems in Volume One serve as a representative sampling of the poet’s oeuvre, and the critical introduction and annotations of the first volume provide evidence of her stature as an important figure in early American political activism. She stands out as an early feminist, as a keen observer of social and historical issues (most notably the contest with Great Britain), and as a staunch proponent of the Universalist Church in America. INDEX WORDS: Judith Sargent Murray, Universalism, The Gleaner “LINES WRITTEN IN MY CLOSET”: VOLUME ONE OF JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY’S POETRY MANUSCRIPTS by TAMMY MILLS A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2006 Copyright by Tammy Mills 2006 “LINES WRITTEN IN MY CLOSET”: VOLUME ONE OF JUDITH SARGENT MURRAY’S POETRY MANUSCRIPTS by TAMMY MILLS Major Professor: Reiner Smolinski Committee: Robert Sattelmeyer Tanya Caldwell Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2006 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PART ONE CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 “Yes I must write”: Sargent Murray Answers Her Calling 2 GIFT POETRY 15 “Delay thy task—for when begun, / But with thy life it will be done”: Judith Sargent Murray Supplants the Virtues of Domesticity 3 WAR POEMS 41 Slow To Join the War Fervor, Judith Sargent Murray Questions the Efficacy of War: “Can stars and stripes the fair from anguish save?” 4 RELIGIOUS POETRY 71 Setting “the prison’d spirit free”: Judith Sargent Murray Finds Universalism 5 EDITORIAL POLICY 99 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 111 PART TWO TRANSCRIPTIONS 116 NOTES 407 1 Chapter One Introduction— “Yes I must write”: Sargent Murray Answers Her Calling Born into a wealthy, prominent New England sea merchant family1 and demonstrating talent for learning, Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820) made good use of her family’s extensive library, turning her love of reading and her quest for knowledge into a writing career.2 At the age of eighteen, she entered into a reportedly loveless marriage with sea captain John Stevens (1741-1786), who, facing debtor’s imprisonment, fled to the West Indies where he died. Two years after her first husband’s death, Judith Sargent Stevens married British Universalist minister John Murray (1741-1815),3 a family friend ten years her senior. Based on love and mutual respect, this second marriage for both was a happy one, but monetary troubles plagued the once wealthy Sargent Murray and her husband. She hoped her writing would supplement her husband’s church stipends, but money did not flow as easily as her pen. Earnings from advanced- subscription sales of The Gleaner (1798), a collection of poems, essays, plays, and a novel, failed to make the Murrays wealthy. Nonetheless, as her unpublished manuscript poem, “Lines written in my closet” suggests, Sargent Murray wrote out of a need far greater than recognition or money, both of which she desperately craved. The writing process granted physical retreat and time for retrospection for a woman very much tuned into the political and religious turbulence around her. The following poem, included in its entirety, illustrates the sanctity of writing for Sargent Murray, while also hinting at the social ramifications she faced as a result of her decision to pursue writing: 2 Lines written in my closet Yes I must write, it soothes, and calms my mind, And with my pen, my fairest hours I find. Retir’d from care, to this far distant spot, Would I could say the world were then forgot, My various Musings, pensive, grave, or sad, 5 And moments too, by sacred joy made glad, Are here indulg’d, while none presumes to trace, My lov’d retreat, my little sheltering place, Serene I dwell on memory’s brightening page, And in past scenes with new delight engage: 10 Anticipate each future joy or grief, Smile at the bliss, and seek from tears relief, When heart felt sorrows every where surround, And with their barbed arrows deeply wound. Nor can I, seated solitary here, 15 The censuring tongue of rancrous malice fear, None but my Father God my conduct views, Who with paternal love my steps pursues, And to his searching eye I make appeal, My heart doth only common failings feel. (Ms. V.1, p. 287)4 3 Not content with the complacency of the domestic sphere, the author consciously, actively, and purposefully engaged in the political and religious controversies around her all the while aware of the “censuring tongue[s]” (16) that disapproved of her decision to write. Sargent Murray’s “sensitivity to criticism and her own worth in her chosen profession plagued her during her life” (Dorgan 72). Nonetheless, as her poem relates, in times of “heartfelt sorrows,” Sargent Murray found solace through the act of writing, even as the decision to be a writer pained her. That her poetry was completed in a “little sheltering place” (8) exemplifies the poet’s station in the new republic: the female author wrote in a tiny closet, hidden away from those who disapproved of her writing. In her “lov’d retreat,” only “Father God [her] conduct view[ed]” (17). The poem’s title—“Lines written in my closet”—is emblematic of the poet’s position as a female writer in the eighteenth century. The necessity of writing in secrecy exemplifies the prevailing notion that writing did not belong in the female sphere, at least not overtly. Yet, while she was often compelled to write in secret, Sargent Murray championed freedom. Judith Sargent Murray lived in a pivotal time in American history: she lived near Boston, and her family was involved in maritime commerce, giving her a vested interest in and providing her with a close view of the war with Great Britain. In Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray, Sharon M. Harris cogently summarizes the era in which the prolific author lived: “Her sixty-nine-year life spanned crucial decades of revolution and national independence that redefined concepts of citizenship, literary genius, and women’s rights. Perhaps no American woman writer until Margaret Fuller equaled Murray in intellectual powers, in the breadth of genres in which she wrote, or in public 4 recognition” (xv). Yet despite her success as an author, at times it must have seemed as if her once comfortable personal world was crumbling: conflict with Great Britain loomed, placing her maritime and military family members in peril. Sargent Murray’s stately house at forty-nine Middle Street in Gloucester, Massachusetts, offered an expansive view of Gloucester Bay where she could spot British man-of-war ships convening before the Revolution. The conflict with Great Britain became a salient topic in her poetry as tensions ignited.5 Once free from Britain, America became determined to establish its own identity, and the founding fathers created a legislature to govern themselves, leaving women conspicuously absent from their plans. In 1776, Abigail Adams asked her husband in a famous, often-quoted letter to “remember the ladies” as he established laws to govern independence or face the possibility of rebellion. Like her famous contemporary whom she knew personally, Sargent Murray, too, demanded notice. Always opinionated and rarely reticent, Sargent Murray published her views on what opportunities women should have in the new republic in the better-known essay On the Equality of the Sexes (1790) as well as in her lesser-known poetry, which was written between 1775 and the early 1800s. For Sargent Murray, finding a niche for herself and other women in the newly sovereign republic became paramount. Despite that “the only career opportunities for women of [Sargent Murray’s] class at the time were marriage and motherhood” (Harris xvii), Sargent Murray strived to establish for herself a literary reputation. As her poetry and essays convey, Sargent Murray was fully aware of her prescribed role as a woman, but she longed for and insisted upon more opportunities for 5 those who shared her gender.
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