Kate Douglas Wiggin and Performing American Femininity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT Title of Document: ‘She Will Not Submit to Be Ignored’: Kate Douglas Wiggin and Performing American Femininity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Carrie Jane Cole, Ph.D., 2009 Directed By: Dr. Heather S. Nathans, Department of Theatre “‘She Will Not Submit to Be Ignored’: Kate Douglas Wiggin and Performing American Femininity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” seeks not only to reintroduce Wiggin as an important American figure of her era, but to do so as an example of the complex restructuring of women’s roles in early twentieth-century American culture via the public performance of self. This dissertation explores how Wiggin performed her different personae throughout her life, how she shifted between the different roles she personified, and how the fluctuation of the definition of “appropriate” feminine behavior affected when and how she performed. The multiple facets of Kate Douglas Wiggin's public personae have never received scholarly attention; this examination offers an ideal opportunity to simultaneously reinvigorate interest in her work and to develop scholarship based on theories of self- representation and performance. By defining and explicating a theory of the performance of self based on discrete acts of self expression, I open the door for scholars in theatre, performance studies, literature, history, and gender studies to re- interrogate and renegotiate previously held conceptions of women’s roles in society in general and within the theatrical sphere in particular. ‘SHE WILL NOT SUBMIT TO BE IGNORED’: KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN AND PERFORMING AMERICAN FEMININITY AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY By Carrie Jane Cole Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. 2008 Advisory Committee: Dr. Heather S. Nathans, Chair Dr. Faedra Carpenter Dr. Jane Donawerth Dr. Franklin J. Hildy Dr. Korey R. Rothman © Copyright by Carrie Jane Cole 2008 Acknowledgements There are many people who have played key roles in both my personal and my professional life as I have undertaken this process. Those who supported my archival work include the archivists at Bowdoin College Library in Brunswick, Maine, Dartmouth College Library, Rauner Special Collections in Hanover, New Hampshire, and particularly Cally Gurley and her staff at the Maine Women Writers Collection, at the University of New England, who helped me both during my initial grant-funded visits to the archive, and throughout my research process as new material was added to the Kate Douglas Wiggin Collection. All of these archives were rich resources for my work; however, this dissertation would have been impossible without access to what I have referred to throughout as “The Quillcote Collection”—those materials that remain at Kate Douglas Wiggin’s summer home under the stewardship of Bill and Carla Turner. The Turners provided me with complete access to the documents and ephemera that were so necessary in my process of recovering a full and coherent portrait of Wiggin’s acts of self-expression. In addition, their unflagging support of my process was immeasurable. Many others offered similar support throughout my process, and I hope that I have acknowledged that to them in a more personal manner than I can here. That said, my heartfelt gratitude must be extended to all of the members of The Dorcas Society of Hollis and Buxton, Maine—the most vigorous cheerleaders anyone could ask for. The support I received from my family has moved me beyond words. Accomplishing the daunting task of completing a dissertation is simply not possible without the rigorous attention of a committee dedicated to helping produce ii the best possible product. Thank you, Jane Donawerth, Heather Nathans, Korey Rothman, Faedra Carpenter, and Frank Hildy. The impact of the mentorship I received during this process made it all possible. I would also like to acknowledge Susan Haedicke and John Fuegi as early champions of my scholarship and members of my committee in the initial stages of the process. My comrades at the University of Maryland, particularly Heidi Castle-Smith, Valerie Joyce, Kimberly “Tony” Korol-Evans, Casey Kaleba, and Justin Thomas, who all helped feed my scholarship, my pedagogy, and my artistic soul. My heartfelt thanks must go to Christin Essin and Deanna Fitzgerald, my colleagues at the University of Arizona, who have been such a great gift as I ended this journey and began a new one. Al Tucci and Jerry Dickey worked tirelessly to provide professional opportunities for me as this process reached fruition. My thanks go to those I have been so fortunate to meet through this work and its presentation at conferences, including Diana Taylor, Tracy C. Davis, Jane Barnette, Jennifer Gunnels, and many more. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents......................................................................................................... iv List of Figures............................................................................................................... v Introduction: “Not quite content to be put by”: Performing Public Persona as a Recuperative Process .................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: “Contented Child of Long Ago”: Impression Management and Persona Performance of and Through Wiggin’s Childhood .................................................... 22 Chapter 2: “It is His Impulse to Create that should Gladden Thee”: Creativity, Play, and Wiggin’s Role in the Free Kindergarten Movement............................................ 58 Chapter 3: “Overwhelmed with Embarrassment and Responsibility”: Kate Douglas Wiggin’s “Private” Public Speaking........................................................................... 91 Chapter 4: “Adventures in Playmaking”: Wiggin’s Dramatic Collaborations and Adaptations ............................................................................................................... 122 Chapter 5: “We Women Cannot be Content to be Mere Spectators”: Performing Philanthropy and the Continued Legacy of Wiggin’s Autobiographical Acts ......... 160 Conclusion: “Slight Changes Ensure Perfection”: Kate Douglas Wiggin and the Performance of Self .................................................................................................. 197 Appendix................................................................................................................... 200 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 208 iv List of Figures Figure 1. Wiggin’s ode to Charlotte Thompson in the Quillcote guestbook. Courtesy of The Salmon Falls Library and Tea Room, Hollis, Maine…….158 Figure 2. An evening of entertainment, as recorded in the Quillcote Guestbook. Courtesy of The Salmon Falls Library and Tea Room, Hollis, Maine……..159 v Introduction: “Not quite content to be put by”1: Performing Public Persona as a Recuperative Process In 1897, international business tycoon George C. Riggs sent a sample of his wife’s handwriting to an expert for analysis. The sample revealed, among other things, that Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856-1923) would “not submit to be ignored.”2 This characterization of Wiggin, an established performer on the lecture circuit and advocate for early childhood education, and well on her way to a notable career as a children’s author, opposes the conventional and accepted image of a woman renowned for her highly traditional and sentimental portrait of young womanhood in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which would secure her international celebrity in 1903. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Wiggin’s character lies in its central paradox—the passion of a woman who would not be ignored juxtaposed with a public persona that is easily circumscribed by the confines of the nineteenth century Cult of True Womanhood, a cult that held sway over the appropriate conduct of women from the time of her birth in 1856 but had waned significantly by her death in 1923.3 Despite the growing Suffrage movement and other opportunities for public advocacy open to women of the era, Wiggin crafted a role for herself that appeared to conform to the tenets of “proper” feminine conduct as espoused by the numerous conservative 1 James Branch Cabell, quoted in Kate Douglas Wiggin’s My Garden of Memory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923), 436. 2 The analyst’s letter is reprinted in Nora Archibald Smith’s Kate Douglas Wiggin: As Her Sister Knew Her (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), 286. 3 Barbara Welter, in her seminal essay, argues that while none of the conduct writers of the era truly define the term “Cult of True Womanhood,” there was no mistaking that, “in a society where values changed frequently, where fortunes rose and fell with frightening rapidity, where social and economic mobility provided instability as well as hope, one thing at least remained the same—a true woman was a true woman, wherever she was found.” See Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820- 1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (Summer 1966): 151-74. 1 etiquette manuals aimed at middle-class women.4 Ultimately, Wiggin publicly performed an iteration of middle-class sensibility and respectability that allowed her to solidify an identity position within the

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