"A PEN IN HIS HAND": A PEN IN HER HAND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES BY FEMALE ITINERANT EVANGELISTS IN 19TH-CENTURY AMERICA Elizabeth Elkin Grammer Lancaster, Kentucky B.A., Davidson college, 1985 M.A., University of Virginia, 1989 A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Virginia May 1995 i © Copyright by Elizabeth Elkin Grammer All rights reserved May, 1995 ii Abstract This study concerns the autobiographies of seven American women whose lives were profoundly altered by nineteenth- century evangelicalism. called by God, the itinerant preachers Nancy Towle, Jarena Lee, z ilpha Elaw, Lydia Sexton, Laura Haviland, Julia Foote and Amanda smith embraced a life of homelessness and thus wandered outside the ideology of domesticity which defined the lives of most women. Defying categories of gender and race which called them to stay in their places, they became objects of suspicion to others and strangers even to themselves. Literally, psychologically, and ideologically, they were "out of place"; it was in the hope of "placing" themselves that they set about writing their autobiographies. Thus, these narratives offer a revealing view of the autobiographical process, of the tension between self-creation and the cultural construction of identity. Though they desired to be true to their unprecedented experiences, they needed cultural precedents to make sense of their lives and to identify themselves to their critical audiences. They solved this problem by situating themselves within many of the century's prominent discourses. They borrowed and revised the language of home and family to assure readers--and reassure themselves--of their "place" within domestic ideology; they drew upon the language of competitive individualism, quantifying their life work to prove their worth in the iii marketplace of salvation; they located themselves within the biblical paradigm 'of the suffering servant to demonstrate their status within Judeo-Christian history. Narratives about place and placelessness, these autobiographies remind us that the desire for freedom does not cancel the need to belong. Wandering their culture in search of a map that would show them where they were--and thus who they were--these women write "itinerant" autobiographies, stories of departures but seldom of arrivals, stories in search of their endings and their meanings. Ultimately, these autobiographies serve not so much to explain the lives they describe as to summon up the interpretive communities capable of understanding them. Theirs are, then, stories about gender and genre, about the particular predicament of woman negotiating her identity with a reader and, more broadly, with a culture. iv Acknowledgements I want to express my gratitude to the many people who have had a "hand" in my own writing. William Andrews read my prospectus and kindly reassured me of the project's scholarly merit. The Bridwell Library of the Perkins School of Theology at southern Methodist University permitted me on several occasions to read a rare copy of Nancy Towle's autobiography. sue Armentrout at the University of the south was of great help securing interlibrary loans for use in my research. My colleague woody Register suggested I read the works of Susan Strasser and Robert Wiebe, which proved to be invaluable resources for understanding the quantitative ethic found in these spiritual autobiographies. The late Ted Stirling, also at the University of the South, inspirited me with his sense of humor and thoughtfulness; for his support of my teaching and research, I am eternally grateful. Randy Nelson and Max Polley at Davidson College are no doubt responsible, indirectly at least, for this interdisciplinary study: stellar professors of literature and religious studies, respectively, they initiated what now appears to be a life-long effort to avoid choosing between the two disciplines. At the University of Virginia, Deborah McDowell has been similarly inspiring; besides reading these chapters with remarkable care, she gave me the liberating knowledge that all I needed to begin this project were questions, not answers. Alan Howard, Susan Fraiman, and Cindy V Aron also read the dissertation and made invaluable suggestions. My director, David Levin, generously offered to read these pages even after it appeared that I wasn't even going to begin writing them before his retirement. He is, as so many of his former students have remarked, an "exemplary elder." For his close readings of these chapters (the matter and manner), for his inexhaustible reserves of patience, for his words of encouragement, and for his many kindnesses over the last eight years--not the least of which was going 7 5 miles out of his way to visit me and my husband-to-be two days before our wedding--for all these and much more I thank him. He has been a dear friend and mentor. Lastly, this dissertation would not have been possible were it not for the love and support of my family. My parents encouraged my childhood love of reading and sacrificed much to send me to three remarkable ins ti tut ions where that love blossomed into my life's work. My husband, John, generously shared his knowledge of American literature as I prepared for my oral exams and as I wrote this dissertation; he spent many a lunch and dinner listening to and commenting on the ideas that eventually found their way into these pages; he read and reread drafts of each chapter, saving me from countless logical and stylistic embarrassments. For his willingness to sacrifice his own work, his leisure time--even his sleep--I am forever indebted. His involvement in this project was never, however, solely of an academic nature. His constant and vi abiding love sustained me, as always, during the writing of this dissertation. He is, and forever will be, my best friend and soul-mate. He has blessed my life and for that I thank God. And last, but not least, I thank Porgy and Bess, my Welsh Corgis; their generous lickings, frequent interruptions, and voe if erous barking kept me sane these last three years. Perhaps now they will get the walks they deserve. vii Contents An Introduction: 1 "Some Wild Visions": The Spiritual Autobiographies of 19th-Century Women Preachers Chapter 1 : 4 O "Breaking up Housekeeping": Evangelical Women Autobiographers and Domesticity Chapter 2 : 9 7 "Feverish restlessness and mighty movement": Female Evangelists in the Marketplace of Salvation Chapter 3: 147 Singularity and the uses of Opposition chapter 4: 214 "Strangers in a Strange Land": Evangelical Women Writers and the Form of Autobiography An Afterword: 262 The call of the Preachers: The Cry of the Faithful Evangelical Women Writers and the search for an Interpretive Community Notes: 283 Bibliography: 329 viii For my father, Daniel Collier Elkin, Jr. And to the memory of my grandmother, Jessie Louise Guthrie Rich Filled with their boundless love and support, moved by their remarkable faith in me, inspired by their exemplary lives, I am, without a doubt, a pen in their hands. An Introduction Some Wild Visions: Spiritual Autobiographies of 19th-century women Preachers "Say, female stranger, who art thou? That thus, art wandering through our land. Thy youth, thy sex, thy modest brow; Thy lonely state, may all demand. Why is it, thou has left thy home, With strangers only to sojourn? No friend attending,--but alone, Thou wing•st thy way, both night and morn? Has some wild vision, struck thy brain; To wander forth, from door to door? Whilst friends, afar, in grief remain, By restless, wayward fancy, bore?" Poem by Judge~- to Miss M. __ , and afterwards presented to Nancy Towle Nobody has been able to learn who "Miss M._11 was, or how exactly she inspired Judge__ , s foray into verse. But the Judge was right later to present it to Nancy Towle, one of the . seven American women whose evangelical careers and spiritual autobiographies I analyze in the present study. It describes her life rather well, and very much in the terms Towle herself chose when she came to write her autobiography: she, like the others, led just the lonely, wandering, visionary existence described in the poem. But it probably describes even better the puzzlement which women like Towle provoked in those they met. Of the poem's six sentences, five--including the last-- are questions. None of them are answered; the identity and motives of the "female stranger" named in the first line are, at the end, as mysterious as at the beginning. Towle's decision to include the poem in her autobiography might be 1 2 taken as her promise to answer the questions it raises: Who am I? What have been my motives? What "wild vision" has impelled me into the lonely, footloose, and highly unconventional life of a female itinerant minister? The answer Towle and her sister itinerants insist upon is that God called them, often against their wills, often by way of "wild visions, 11 to leave their homes, their husbands, their families and friends, to wander the earth preaching the gospel. Another answer might be that evangelical religion "awakened" these and other nineteenth-century American' women to the possibility of moving outside the limited and limiting sphere of the home, their own or, in the cases of the black female itinerants, Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw and Amanda Smith, those of the white families for whom they worked as domestic servants. The nineteenth century in America, in fact, ended as it began, with an awakening: one religious, one secular; one beginning in Connecticut and spreading throughout the nation, one in the fiction of Kate Chopin. The second Great Awakening in America, now generally recognized to have occurred between the 1790s and the 1840s (or 1850s if one includes the revival of 1857-58), affected an untold number of women, who were thought to be more "naturally" religious than men.