UNCOMMON WOMEN UNCOMMON WOMEN Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women’s Writing LA U RA LAFFRADO T H E O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E SS • C O L U MB US Copyright © 2009 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laffrado, Laura. Uncommon women : gender and representation in nineteenth-century U.S. women’s writing / Laura Laffrado. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8142-0618-8 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8142-9186-3 (CD-ROM) 1. Ameri- can literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 2. American literature—19th century—History and criticism. 3. Women in literature. 4. Women, White, in literature. 5. Sex role in literature. 6. Women and literature—United States—History—19th century 7. Feminism and literature—United States—History—19th century I. Title. PS152.L34 2009 810.9'9287—dc22 2008045776 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-0618-8) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9186-3) Cover design by James Baumann Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in ITC Veljovic Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Amer- ican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 C ONTENTS Acknowledgments vii INTROD U CT I ON “Without Any Resort to Amazonian Conventions”: Women, Writing, Representation 1 C H A P T E R 1 “A More Masculine Courage”: Women’s Voice and the Nineteenth-Century Publication of Sarah Kemble Knight’s Journal 23 C H A P T E R 2 “Everything by Turns and Nothing Long”: Configurations of Female Selfhood in Fanny Fern’s Early Periodical Writing 54 C H A P T E R 3 “How Could You Leave Me Alone When the Room Was Full of Men!”: Gender and Self-Representation in Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches 79 C H A P T E R 4 “I Am Other than My Appearance Indicates”: Sex-Gender Representation in Women’s Nineteenth-Century Civil War Reminiscences 106 C ONC LU S I ON “I Found It Hard to Preserve My Self-Control”: Race, Women, Representation 134 Notes 157 Works Cited 171 Index 181 A CKNO WL EDGMENTS I AM HAPPY to acknowledge the people and institutions whose help has been so valuable during the writing of this book. Western Washington University awarded me generous and timely funding in the form of research grants and professional leave. Both Dean Ronald Kleinknecht and Dean Peter Elich provided important support of my work. I am also grateful for the helpful assistance I received from English Department chairs Kathleen Lundeen and Marc Geisler. Frank Haulgren and his staff at Western Washington University’s Wil- son Library tirelessly and patiently located long lists of obscure sources for me, particularly during my research on women’s Civil War narra- tives. I spent many enjoyable days reading the Fanny Fern papers as well as nineteenth-century U.S. literary papers in the Sophia Smith Collec- tion at Smith College. It has been such a pleasure to work with both Sandy Crooms and Maggie Diehl at The Ohio State University Press. The anonymous read- ers arranged for by the press provided meticulous commentary at dif- ferent stages of this project. This book is much better for their insightful and generous readings. Papers and drafts of articles that have become part of this book have benefited from valuable readings by Jana Argersinger, Beverly Lyon Clark, Sherry Lee Linkon, Jane Schultz, and Kathryn Zabelle Stodola. vii viii A CKNOWLEDGMENTS Colleagues and staff in the English Department at Western Washing- ton University assisted me in countless ways, especially Linda C. Flana- gan, Aline Franklin, Tina Nelson, and Pam Race. I owe special thanks to Allison Giffen, who generously put aside her own work to read my chapter on Sarah Kemble Knight. I am indebted to Bill Lyne and John Purdy for their support as well as for the scholarly model they provide in their own work. Bill Smith supplied steady friendship as well as a companionable presence as we kept workaholic hours in our offices. Graduate and undergraduate students in my American literature courses brought enthusiasm and ready engagement to these readings. In particular, Gabe Galanda, Brooke Hoffard, Lynda Jensen, Ann Keefer, David Robinson, Hannah Root, Lindsey St. Hilaire, Shurla Thibou, and Jessica Van Horn raised the intellectual temperature of our classrooms. My dear friend Sara Balogh has long been an example of intelligence and joie de vivre to me. Debbi Hansen’s friendship has given me such pleasure during the years I have worked on this book. Doug Iannelli has repeatedly been a friend in my times of need. Erik Papritz’s kindness and encouragement meant a great deal to me during the last stages of this project. And Sharlane Shaffer provided a model of feminist courage and grace that continues to inspire me. I am most deeply indebted to my family. My sister has unstintingly given me encouragement and assistance well above and beyond the call of duty. I am humbly and eternally grateful to her. My brothers have been loyal and loving supporters of my choices. Their children, Jenny, Julie, Anthony, and Andrew, grew along with this book. It gives me great pleasure to witness their ever-increasing literacies. My parents have always taken pride in my scholarly work. Though my father did not live to see this book completed, up until his death he made weekly inquiries regarding its progress. My mother, among her innumerable selfless acts, allowed me to instruct her in nineteenth-century U.S. women’s writing. This book is dedicated to her and to the memory of my father. Several passages in chapter 2 appeared in an essay in In Her Own Voice: Nineteenth-Century American Women Essayists, ed. Sherry Lee Linkon (New York: Garland, 1997). An earlier version of chapter 3 appeared in ESQ 48, nos. 1 and 2 (2002), copyright 2003 by the Board of Regents of Washington State University. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared in Over Here: A European Journal of American Culture 17, no. 2 (1997). INTROD U CT I ON “Without Any Resort to Amazonian Conventions” Women, Writing, Representation IN A BRIEF periodical piece, “Independence,” published in the New York Ledger on July 30, 1859, Sara Willis Parton, writing as Fanny Fern, viewed the nation’s July Fourth celebration through a gendered lens. Using rhetorical questions, Fern sketched restrictions governing public behavior of nineteenth-century U.S. middle-class women: Can I go out of an evening without a hat at my side? Can I go out with one on my head without danger of a station-house? Can I clap my hands at some public speaker when I am nearly bursting with delight? Can I signify the contrary when my hair stands on end with vexation? Can I stand up in the cars “like a gentleman” without being immedi- ately invited “to sit down”? Can I get into an omnibus without having my sixpence taken from my hand and given to the driver? Can I cross Broadway without having a policeman tackled to my helpless elbow? Can I go see anything pleasant, like an execution or a dissection? (War- ren, Ruth Hall 314–15) Ending her list of questions with whether she could be nominated for governor, senator, or president, Fern concluded, “Bah—you know I can’t. ‘Free!’ Humph!” Fern’s “Independence” simultaneously protests and consents to the entrenched nature of public behavioral restric- tions for white middle-class women. The periodical piece’s apparent subject—that Independence Day in the United States disregards the 1 2 INTRODUCT I ON absence of female independence—enables Fern to disparage gendered cultural restrictions, implicitly invoking images of herself booing public lecturers, avidly observing dissections, and freely walking out alone at night. However, by offering no possibilities of Fern’s actually performing these imagined disruptive acts, the piece suggests Fern’s dependable compliance with current social arrangements. By 1859, the year this piece was written, Willis had scandalously and repeat- edly transgressed normative middle-class gender assumptions through divorce and a sensationalistic career, and she had elicited public exco- riation for unwomanly behavior as the author of the novel Ruth Hall.1 Despite or perhaps because of those events, in “Independence” Fern constructs herself as a woman who at times may internally resist pub- lic constraints but who will always behave appropriately. The pro- vocative American women under examination in Uncommon Women: Gender and Representation in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women’s Writing enact central features of Fern’s text. All violate a presumptive nor- mativity in their lives, writings, and self-representations while cor- respondingly and contradictorily aligning themselves with prevailing gendered assumptions. Uncommon Women considers challenging female representations in diverse, highly readable, U.S. women’s texts first published in the nineteenth century. Throughout this study, I consider women’s auto- biographical concealments in forms ranging from cross-dressing to pseudonymity to posturing. My discussion centers on texts of six white women—Sarah Kemble Knight, Sara Willis Parton (“Fanny Fern”), Louisa May Alcott, and S. Emma E. Edmonds, with lesser though still significant critical attention to Mary Livermore and Annie Turner Wit- tenmyer—and one Black woman, Harriet Jacobs. I first examine the nineteenth-century publication of the eigh- teenth-century travel journal written by white middle-class Sarah Kem- ble Knight.