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Vice Or Virtue? American Interpretations of Elizabeth Whitman And

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Vice Or Virtue? American Interpretations of Elizabeth Whitman And VICE OR VIRTUE? AMERICAN INTERPRETATIONS OF ELIZABETH WHITMAN AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY By Cassondra F. Harris A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate Studies Division Ohio Dominican University Columbus, Ohio in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH MAY 2019 ii iii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………iv INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1………………………………………………………………………………………7 CHAPTER 2……………………………………………………………………………………..17 CHAPTER 3………………………………………….………………………………………….29 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………..43 WORKS CITED…………...…………………………………………………………………….44 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I must acknowledge Elizabeth Whitman and Mary Wollstonecraft, who displayed courage and intelligence in a time when women were given little voice. I feel inspired by your life and writing; I hope I served you well through this project. I would like to thank Dr. Kelsey Squire for being so open and receptive to my idea for this project. It was from her class that I thought of the idea to write about Whitman and Wollstonecraft. Dr. Squire has offered a wealth of knowledge on this topic and I cannot thank her enough for both her guidance with this thesis and for conducting such organized and interesting classes throughout my program at Ohio Dominican University. Much thanks to Dr. Imali Abala, who provided feedback from an outside perspective that was vital in completing this thesis. Her detailed comments motivated me to delve even further into my analysis and to build a stronger argument. My mom was told by her high school counselor that college would be a waste of her time, but went on to earn a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees. She encourages me to take advantage of every opportunity life presents. I am grateful to have her as a role model, mother, friend, and grandmother to my son. My mother and father-in-law have continually offered me words of encouragement and cared from my son when I needed to study. I thank them both for their helping hands. My son, Jameson, was born just a few weeks before I started this program. Although I do not think he would sit still through them now, up until he was six months old I was reading him critical essays I had to read for class. He is my biggest joy and I thank him for his patience and understanding when Mommy could not play, but had to complete homework. Most of all I thank my husband, Kevin, for his dedication to our family and for being a continued source of support. He has had to pick up the slack in caring for our son and home and has never once complained. Without his support I would not have been able to complete this degree. 1 INTRODUCTION Women’s Roles in Late Eighteenth Century America The years of Whitman and Wollstonecraft’s later adulthood and death, the 1780’s and 1790’s, were the two decades following the American Revolution. During the years of war, many women proved to themselves and others that they could be self-sufficient; they cared for their families, property and finances in their husbands’ absence. As a result of the war, men achieved freedom, but women were not recognized as such under the law. Historian Jan Lewis explains that women, unless widowed, could not hold property. When married, they went from being subordinate to their father to being under the authority of their husband. It was typical and expected for a woman to marry, have children, and care for her family and home (23-24). It is not surprising that men were held to lower moral standards than women in the late eighteenth century, but it is important to note that these moral standards were defined by the private sphere for women and the public sphere for men. Ruth H. Bloch argues that women were thought to be as rational as men, but only in their private virtue of “temperance, prudence, faith and charity” (Bloch 42). They were considered more able to regulate their sexual desires, which is why female virtue for unmarried women was closely tied to being chaste. Women were expected to instill morality in their children and were thought to be responsible for the morality of America. These discrepancies in virtue denied power to women of all social classes (Bloch 58). Men had the ability to engage in business and politics. Male virtue was defined as “the willingness of citizens to engage in civic life and to sacrifice individual interests for the common good” and achieve glory and notoriety for public service (Bloch 38, 44). Men who were cowardly, dependent, luxurious, or idle were considered feminine, as they were weak qualities of feminine men, furthering the notion that females were the weaker sex (Bloch 44-45). On the 2 other hand, as Betsey Erikkila explains in her article “Revolutionary Women,” females who entered into politics or business were seen as manly, but this was not a positive thing as their homes and families were thought to be neglected (190). During this time books were more readily available and the moral values illustrated in popular works of fiction were questioned. Cathy Davidson argues that due to the growing popularity of libraries in America, as well as the more cost effective methods of printing, books were more accessible to people of all social classes, including women (Revolution and the Word 10, 27). Fiction was popular in many of the libraries and was criticized, mostly by those of the upper, educated social class. There was a fear that those who were not formally educated, undoubtedly including women who did not have access to universities, would emulate the unvirtuous behavior illustrated in some of the novels they were reading (Davidson Revolution and the Word 49-50). Background and Biographical History of Elizabeth Whitman and Mary Wollstonecraft It is hard to ignore the parallels between the fate of Elizabeth Whitman and that of Mary Wollstonecraft. Both women died in their late 30’s after complications from childbirth, Elizabeth Whitman in 1788 and Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797. Whitman was the daughter of a respected clergyman from Connecticut, and members of her mother’s side of the family had led the government in that state for generations. She was known in her community for being both intelligent and amiable (Davidson Revolution and the Word 141). Despite her good reputation, Whitman secretly fled to the Bell Tavern in Danvers, Massachusetts where she gave birth, and waited for a man who never came. She died around two weeks after delivering a stillborn child. Wollstonecraft faced a somewhat similar disappointment when she was rejected by her first lover, Gilbert Imlay, several months after giving birth to his child out of wedlock. 3 Wollstonecraft met Imlay in Paris in the spring of 1793. She was already well known as the author of the feminist text, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792 in England. Imlay was an American and a writer. She understood herself to be in a monogamous partnership with Imlay and hoped to move with him to America. Their relationship was complicated by his absence during business trips and his affairs with other women. Wollstonecraft later married British writer and philosopher William Godwin in March of 1797, after becoming pregnant with her second child. Godwin and Wollstonecraft were devoted to each other, but did not believe in the traditional concept of marriage. As Peter Marshall describes in his biography of Godwin, Wollstonecraft did not want to “face once again the social ostracism of bringing an illegitimate child into the world,” so the two conceded to marry (185). Wollstonecraft died from an infection almost two weeks after the birth of her second daughter. The life choices made by Whitman and Wollstonecraft would have been discussed around the same general time period due to the texts published about each woman’s life. The Coquette, by Hannah Webster Foster, was published in 1797, just one year before William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Memoirs was released in London in 1798, and later published in America in both 1799 and 1804. Given that the full title of Foster’s novel is The Coquette; or The History of Eliza Wharton; a Novel Founded on Fact, many thought the text to depict Whitman’s life accurately through the fictional character, Eliza Wharton. The account of Whitman’s death was a topic of discussion and rumor, even before Foster’s epistolary novel was published, as it was documented in newspaper reports throughout the east coast (Davidson Revolution and the Word 141). Wollstonecraft’s reputation was tainted after Godwin published Memoirs, which exposed her affairs, mental instability, and suicide attempts (Davidson Revolution and the Word 132-133). Godwin included details about 4 the ways in which his wife courageously supported her friends, family, and even herself. However, these points were overlooked by much of the public. The narrative of the lives of Whitman and Wollstonecraft quickly turned into cautionary tales about the dangers for women who lived an egalitarian lifestyle and desired freedom from being subordinate to a man. Research Interest When completing coursework for my master’s degree, I read Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, published in 1797 and loosely based on the life of Elizabeth Whitman. I was struck by the way Mary Wollstonecraft’s argument in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, printed in America in 1792 and reprinted in 1794, resonated through Hannah Webster Foster’s novel. Foster’s seemingly cautionary text appeared to provide subtle questions about a woman’s role and limitations in society. I became interested in the lives, works, and texts written about these women, who in many ways, led parallel lives.
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