A STUDY of the WORKS of CÂTHARIÎÎE Ivîâriâ SEDGWICK
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A STUDY OF THE WORKS OF CÂTHARIÎÎE IvîÂRI SEDGWICK DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By RICHARD BANUS GIDEZ, B.A., A, ***** THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 1958 Approved by Aaviselr Department of English ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to express his thanks to Mrs. Grace Wilcox of the Stockbridge Public Library for her information on the Sedgwick family, the staff of The Massachusetts His torical Society, and Professor William Charvat of The Ohio State University for his guidance and patience. - 11 - TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapters Page I ......................................... 1 II ............................ 32 III .......................................... 135 IV .......................................... 229 V .......................................... 285 Bibliographies ............................... 310 111 CHAPTER I Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789 - 1867) of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, wrote six novels, six long didactic tales devoted to the education of young people and social reform, two short biographies, a novella, a travel tale about Canada, four collections of short stories, and two volumes of letters concerning her European trip of 1839» In addition, she contributed one hundred stories, sketches, and didactic tales to various annuals and periodicals. Her first book appeared in 1822, her last in 1857» During her lifetime she enjoyed both critical and popular success: "No equal this side of the Atlantic" (Poej, "the first very noted female author in the United States," "second to no living author of fiction," "stands at the head of American female writers," and "the first of America's female novelists."^ So popular was she that Sartain's Union Magazine in 1851 looking back over her literary career could say, "The time was when every one who read novels at all, was expected to read those of 2 Miss Sedgwick," Her books appeared at a time when ^Southern Literary Messenger, III (May I837), 33I: Harper's MontHly, XXXV (October 1867), 665; Uorth Ameri can Review, LXXXV (October 1857), 562; London Monthly' Magazine, CL7 (London, 1841), 503; Athenaeum, II (London, September 5, 1835), 693. ^Sartain's Union Magazine, VIII (February 1851), 142, 2 English fiction and taste dominated the American literary scene, yet she was “one of the few American writers who rose into deserved popularity in their own country, id.th- out waiting for the approving sanction of European critics."3 William Cullen Bryant noted that Redwood. her second novel, was held in such high esteem that it had become absolutely dangerous and unsafe not to admire itOne of her didactic tracts Home (1835) reached its twentieth American edition by 1850. Her books were translated into French, German, Swedish, and Italian, In form and content her novels, tracts, and stories owe much to the sentimental novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries both in America and England. In order to understand the tradition that Miss Sedgwick inherited from these novels and modified for her own pur pose, it is necessary to examine these earlier sentimental novels. Although it is an over simplification to say that the American novel is merely a continuation in Amerha of the English novel and that James Fenimore Cooper is an American Scott or Miss Sedgwick an American Maria Edge- worth, it is equally wrong to consider the early American ^Athenaeum, op. cit.. p. 693. ^Quoted in C. I. Glicksberg, “Bryant and the Sedgwick Family," Americana. October 31, 1937, p. 629. 3 novel an indigenous form. Both the English and American novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are part of a cultural perspective larger than the respec tive countries themselves. Though the number of novels published in England dur ing this period was prodigious, most of them have been just ly forgotten. Many are no more than a group of tales strung together with an essay or two into a slight narrative frame work. There was more concern with particular incidents than with the over-all plot. Like Miss Sedgwick's novels, they contain a plethora of incidents, many with no rele vance to the main plot. Many of these incidents were in the novels for no other reason than to provide the novel ist with an opportunity to moralize. The sentimental novelist, especially the American sentimentalist as we shall see, considered himself (or more correctly herself since most of these novelists were women) moralist first and novelist second. Miss Sedgwick's purpose, as she stated in preface after preface, was to instruct the reader upon some moral issue.^ Like the earlier senti mental novelist. Miss Sedgwick was at her best in indivi dual scenes and incidents. The plots which merely provided ^See particularly the prefaces or introductory remarks to The Linwoods (New York, 1835)> PP» xi-xii; Home (Boston, 1836), p. 4: Live and Let Live (New York, 1837)j P» 1; Morals of Manners (New York, 1846), pp. 3-4; The Boy of Mount Rh'igi iBoston, 1847)5 pp. 5-65 Married or Single? (New York, 1857)5 p. V. 4 her with a framework for individual episodes cannot stand close scrutiny. My examination of her novels will show the emphasis she gave to scene over plot. Indeed, Miss Sedgwick's brother Harry suggested to her in 1822 that she write in "disconnected masses, which you can afterwards weave to gether."^ Such a method of writing could hardly result in unity of effect in a novel. Many an English and American novelist imitated Richardson’s use of the epistolary form. Such a method had enabled Richardson to render directly "the minds of his characters in the very moment of thinking and feeling."? But to novelists after Richardson the epistolary form was merely a convenient tradition, often used with little thought as to its effectiveness. It rendered, according to Herbert Ross Brown, yeomanly service; To the moralist, it furnished a handy mold into which he could pour his homilies. To the educator, still slight ly distrustful of romances, it offered many sugar-coated lessons on a wide var iety of edifying subjects. To the senti mentalist, it provided an unrivaled means of depicting every tremor of the feeling heart.o ^Life and Letters of Catharine Maria Sedgwick, ed. Mary E. Dewey (New York, l8?l), p. 1^3". ?Walter Allen, The English Novel (New York, 1955), p. 4 3 . ^Herbert Ross Brovm, The Sentimental Novel in America. 1789 - i860 (Durham, North Carolina, 1940), p. 72. 5 Although Miss Sedgwick's novels are not in the strict sense of the term epistolary, they do make considerable use of the epistolary form. To give her books an added touch of authenticity in addition to the claim that they are based on truth, she often ends a novel with a letter she had received from one of the characters in the story in forming the author and the reader of the fates of the var ious personages in the novel. When she did use the epis tolary form as the main means of narration, she was some what uneasy about its artificiality, "Mary Smith," a twenty page story written in the form of a letter by a young girl, ends with the authorial comment, "A pretty Q long letter, I think, for a girl not eight years old I" Novelists after Richardson adopted more than his manner; they adopted his subject matter as well. Pursuit, seduction, and endurance— virtue tested under extreme cir cumstances— were the main subjects of these popular novels. One of the most typical and popular both in England and America was Regina Roche's The Children of the Abbey (1798, reprinted in America the same year), Caritat's, the most famous of the American circulating libraries in the late eighteenth century, claimed in its blurb of the book that ^"Mary Smith," Juvenile Miscellany, II (May I829), 134, 6 "few novels have been read with more avidity and few are more deserving an attentive perusal.Earl Bradsher in his study of Mathew Carey, early American publisher, calls it the most popular British novel in America before Scott Because it is typical of the English sentimental novel and because it provides a convenient model against which one can examine the modifications in the sentimental formula the American novelist introduced, it deserves a brief de scription. Amanda, its heroine, is young, inexperienced, chaste, and delicate, the perfect model of the sentimental heroine. She has lost one parent, her mother (she loses her father later in the book), and is sought after by the villainous Colonel Belgrave (Richardson’s Lovelace), A penniless governess, she is discovered by the wealthy Lord Mortimer as she reads at the foot of a moss-covered tree, singing a song, and wiping away tears. Mortimer, whose "soul was naturally the seat of every virtue," was able "to wnund the softer feelings of her soul.)! But before the two lovers can be united, Amanda must spend the better part of two volumes escaping from the clutches of Belgrave. ^^rown, 0£. cit., p. 26 footnote. ^^Earl L. Bradsher, Mathew Carey (New York, 1912), pp. 81-82. 7 Despite the fact that Belgrave ruins her reputation, Amanda's "heart, seasoned in the school of adversity, could bear its sorrows with calmness^As in Clarissa, there is a struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Amanda can exclaim to Belgrave after he has abducted her, "Monster ... your arts may have destroyed my fame, but my innocence bids defiance to your powers." Good, of course, triumphs; and at the end of the novel, Amanda, "faint but pursuing" and now an heiress, falls into the arms of Mortimer, better off for her ordeal, for her and her brother Oscar's "past sorrows are only remembered to teach them pity for the woes of others.